Tuesday, February 6

Forbes ASAP's article, "The Little People vs. America Online," looks at potential labor suits against AOL over its non-payment of volunteers who run forums and chat rooms. The problems stem from the fact that AOL is a for-profit company and the volunteers were engaged in producing for-profit product (namely, online content). Further, the volunteers were subject to the kinds of restrictions normally reserved for paid employees, such as "filling out certain paperwork after each shift, mandatory training classes, and a certain minimum hours a week." By Forbes' estimate, if AOL had paid even minimum wage for the volunteers' services, the company's date of profitability would have been moved from 1992 to 1999, and the total compensation would have totaled about a billion dollars.

MSN is dropping its $400 rebate. MSN offered the rebate - initially good towards the purchase of a new computer, but later extended for other consumer purchases - to consumers who signed up for three years of MSN service. The move is expected to hurt sales of new PCs, but has helped shares of competing ISPs.

This year may be the last gasp for free ISPs, as they either get bought out or convert most of their freeloaders to paying customers.

Microsoft has unveiled its Windows XP and Office XP initiatives, which provide a stepping stone to the company's .Net strategy.

Computer security and privacy

A new JavaScript can snoop on forwarded email. When the JavaScript is included in an email, copies of the forwarded message will be sent back to the snoop by HTML-enabled email clients.

A group at Berkeley have discovered flaws in the Wired Equivalent Privacy (WEP) algorithm used to secure 802.11b. 802.11b is used in wireless networking hardware from Apple, Lucent and other companies, and is best known for its use in Apple's AirPort.

Hackers obtained credit card and other personal information on 1,400 world leaders from the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.

Things are tough all over

Motley Fool examines Amazon's prospects, and it isn't pretty. Amazon's debt load is enormous and its projected growth is lower than previous estimates.

Toy retailer eToys is laying off its remaining 293 employees and expects to be out of business by April. This follows last year's collapse of toy stores RedRocket.com (owned by Nickelodeon) and Disney-owned Toysmart.com.

Toshiba has laid off 500, and will cease manufacturing in the US .

Razorfish cuts 400 jobs.

Intel has closed iCat, its hosted e-commerce service. One of the perils of choosing an e-commerce system the last two years has been betting on which one would survive the overcrowded market. An Intel-backed service seemed like a sure thing, but it wasn't so. Expect more e-commerce software and services to go under this year due to the economic downturn.

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Friday, February 9

EarthLink and Sprint are changing the terms of their alliance. The change will allow EarthLink more latitude in seeking other business partners, and may be a sign that EarthLink is seeking another suitor. EarthLink's stock moved up on the news. Yahoo! will have the conference call replay.

Joyce Slaton of the San Francisco Examiner looks at how consolidation of small ISPs affects customers.

AOL and Freeserve are considering a lawsuit against British Telecom over its bungling of a DSL rollout in Britain.

A little-known substance called tantalum has been important in miniaturizing cell phones, and demand and prices for tantalum have soared 600 percent in three years.

The SEC is investigating Lucent's accounting practices.

Many of Brazil's free ISPs are closing or changing to pay access.

Dell is planning layoffs for the first time in the company's 16-year history. Dell had already moved to freeze hiring and reduce travel expenses. Gateway and Hewlett-Packard have cut thousands of jobs.

Linux distribution company SUSE is laying off three-quarters of its US staff.

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