Tuesday, October 31

I attended a speech yesterday by Vint Cerf, one of the co-founders of the Internet and the TCP/IP networking protocol, in Knoxville, Tennessee. Cerf is a strong proponent of wireless and IPv6, a critic of WAP, uses Ricochet, makes a strong case that the Internet is becoming as much a part of our infrastructure as electricity, and is an excellent speaker who can discuss the Internet on a level understandable to businessmen who aren't also engineers. He mentioned that in the early days of the net, the backbone was just 40K, but he was able to get a 45K analog connection from his hotel room the night before. His chief criticism of WAP is that it requires a gateway that limits customer choice.

CNET reviews two web phones: the ActionTec USB Internet Phone Wizard and the InnoMedia InfoAccel.

Prodigy reported earnings yesterday, with an operating loss of US$106.4 million, leaving the company with $5 million on hand.

EarthLink reported earnings this morning, with a loss of US$41.3 million, excluding acquisition and merger costs, but managed to beat consensus reports by four cents a share.

Suffolk County, home to Long Island, has banned the use of hand-held mobile phones while driving.  

The Washington Post reports on trouble in the Internet advertising market. Click-through rates for banner advertising have been going down for years and continue to fall. The surprise now is that Internet ad spending fell in August, reversing a long trend of ever-increasing revenues. [I know that some people don't like banner ads, but it's almost certain that whatever comes after banner ads will be worse. The alternatives are either more obtrusive, more costly to web surfers, or threaten to compromise editorial independence. - Leslie]

Microsoft now estimates that the hackers reported last week had access to Microsoft's internal network for 12 days, and not five weeks as the company had previously announced.

More webpads and set-top Internet boxes are due out next year. Ericsson's Cordless Screen Phone uses Bluetooth to communicate with its basestation. The FrontPath ProGear uses a Transmeta processor. Nokia's Media Terminal is an Internet access device and digital VCR, a al the TiVo.

CyberAtlas has positive news in B2B e-commerce, with increasing sales and a larger share of web revenues.

Humor site BBSpot announces AOL's new 1000 hours per month plan! It wouldn't be funny except that AOL really did increase the number of free hours for the first month from 500 to 750, making it impossible to use all of the hours even if you stay connected 24x7.

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Friday, November 3

CNET reports AT&T is doing damage control after an anti-spam group posted a copy of a contract between AT&T and NevadaHosting.com. The contract prevented Nevada Hosting from sending spam through AT&T, but explicitly allowed Nevada Hosting to host web sites that were advertised in the spam on AT&T's network. AT&T has stopped providing web hosting to the company.

ZDNet Inter@ctive Investor predicts no future for NetZero, but quotes Prudential Securities analyst Ralph J. Acampora's predictions for a year end rally for tech stocks.

SatireWire reports on a riot at a dot-com refugee camp, possibly ignited by terrible living conditions.

CNET puts the new MSN Explorer and AOL 6.0 head-to-head.

Attendees at Web2000 had a chance to use a wireless service called MatchMaker to pair them up with other singles, but the Palm-based system failed to impress due to communications failures and languorous speeds. 

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