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Tuesday, December 8
Apple released a Mac
OS 8.5 to 8.5.1 update to fix bugs and address disk
corruption problems. The read
me file lists improvements and bug fixes.
If you work in the high-tech or online industries, check
out Netslaves,
a place where real-life Dilbert employees tell their tales
of woe. (Parts of this site are not family-oriented, so use
your own judgement.) The first story documents the day
Prodigy decided to remove all traces of sex from its
service.
Free Internet access
Following up to last week's look at free Internet
schtuff, Steven E. Bourg clued us in to Freei.net,
based in Washington state's Puget Sound region. Freei.net
users view ads through the iSee software, which must be in
use while on the Internet.
One free ISP I've mentioned before is Tritium.
You have to use their AdPath software and view ad banners
that rotate every 30 seconds. Once a month, you're asked to
fill out a questionnaire. Daniel Rosenzweig, author of the
Call
Waiting FAQ here on 56K.COM, has a Tritium account, so
I've asked him for his thoughts on Tritium.
Tritium has expansion plans, but their coverage is still
limited. In the mean time, check out Peter
Scott's large listing of world-wide Free-nets or
Allan
Platt's smaller Free ISP list.
If you have any experience with free ISPs, shoot me an
email. I'll summarize the responses on Friday.
Cable modems
A Cable
World survey found that 73% of PC users would not pay
$40 a month for cable modem access to the Internet. This
despite the much greater speed of cable modems compared to
the PC users' current modems.
Com21
has announced what it describes as the first toll-quality,
voice-over-cable interface.
Loring
Wirbel of EE Times looks at voice over IP developments
in the cable modem industry.
Motorola has licensed
Intel's USB reference design for its DOCSIS cable
modems. DOCSIS is Data Over Cable Service/Interoperability
Specification, a new cable modem standard. A USB-connected
cable modem is easier to install than an Ethernet card and
doesn't tie up an IRQ.
Friday, December 11
Due to a problem with the server, I couldn't upload the
news or check email until Saturday, but it's all better now.
:-)
News.com
is helping to spread rumors that AT&T is forging a deal
to provide phone service over Time-Warner's cable services.
Rob Billings writes:
I'm currently working for an ISP. Well we've
had nothing but nightmares trying to get many modems
working with our USR Total Control Units (with the latest
firmware). Well, anyways, The LT Winmodems have been one
of the worst. Well, a fellow employee found an LT driver
version 5.32. I've been testing this driver for nearly a
week now, and I'm really impressed with it. with this
driver I'm loading pages 30 percent faster then with the
5.18 driver. I can now stream audio and video off the
internet, and can enjoy online gaming with out lag time.
here is a link to a copy of this driver. http://808hi.com/56k/x2-lucent.htm
Son of free ISPs
Following up on Tuesday's news, I asked Daniel about his
experience with Tritium,
a free ISP. It turns out that Tritium is out of service
until it finds new financial backing. Meanwhile, Daniel is
using another free ISP, NetZero.
NetZero's list
of access numbers covers most of the 50 states.
Erik Meier is another Tritium refugee who has made the
switch:
I have a couple of accounts at Tritium but
right now there network is down. When it was working it
was pretty fast as they used compuserve for their
backbone. Right now I use NetZero and they are pretty
incredible. They have POPs nationwide and I've already
used it in four locations around the country. I really
like these services and am glad to see them proliferating
throughout the country.
M. Perry, a Tritium refugee who now uses a pay ISP, wrote
in with his experience:
It was a good service but, the customer
service sucked (did not exist). It took weeks to get a
password or an answer to an Email. It worked well once
you got online.
Ben Sullivan of The
New York Times Syndicate profiles NetZero and its
founder and CEO, Robert Burr, and TechWeb
has additional coverage. The NYT story notes that a similar
service, bigger.net, went bankrupt in October.
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