Electric Word
AOL
When America Online announced its corporate "repositioning" strategy in late October, the blizzard of publicity nearly obscured the bottom line: a US$300 million loss that wiped out every profit the company ever recorded. Instead, AOL focused the message on its three new divisions: the core online service (AOL Networks), a content company (AOL Studios), and a network access provider (ANS).The cherry on the top of this PR sundae was the appointment of Robert Pittman, a former MTV executive, to run AOL Networks, which further propagated AOL's long-running claim that it's the next MTV.We're not buying it. But we do find another rumor entirely believable: AOL's reorganization is merely a prelude to an AT&T-style breakup, with the divisions to be sold off to different buyers. The first to go, Wall Street-types suggest, could be profitless ANS and its pool of modems and fiber. Like a broken-down old car, AOL may be worth more in parts than whole. Ned Brainard
X-Ray
Some anxious Americans may willingly shed their privacy for the sake of safety. But the latest airport security technology should cause even the least discreet traveler to draw the line.Pacific Northwest National Laboratory's holographic imaging radar bounces millimeter waves off the body. These emissions pass completely through clothing but not metal, plastic, or skin. The result: an embarrassingly vivid image of your birthday suit. The FAA plans to use the technology to scan passengers for concealed weapons, with testing in a US airport to begin early this year.The system is already raising eyebrows. "There might be special situations where such a device could be useful," writes Lauren Weinstein of the Web-based Privacy Forum (www.vortex.com/). "But broadscale deployment of such systems in airports seems unlikely to be acceptable to most of the public." Michael Behar
Squash That Scam!
Internet marketing consultant Audri Lanford started Internet ScamBusters last year with her partner and husband, Jim, "after we became furious coming across scam after scam" on the Net. The Web zine www.scambusters.comwww.scambusters.com is an action alert network that digs up dirt on Net and telecommunications fraud, ranging from "services" that charge astronomical prices for domain name registration to con artists who partner with Caribbean-based companies to rake in crooked pay-per-call charges.
The Lanfords, who make their living offering Net marketing advice to businesses that are migrating to the Net, publish an issue of ScamBusters whenever they learn of a new rip-off, usually from a reader's tip-off.
The Net is a fertile ground for con games, Audri says, because "it's easy to be anonymous, it's cheap to do huge distribution, and it's easier to be dishonest when you are not dealing with people directly." But, she adds, the vast majority of Web sites are run by honest people - so there's "no reason to panic" about being scammed.
Mark Frauenfelder
Sign of the Times
Microsoft Network billboards appeared around San Francisco in October, the first wave of an ad campaign created by Weiden & Kennedy, the Portland agency that also handles Nike. Local pranksters apparently felt the message could be clarified.
Gary Wolf
Who's Got the Power?
Armed with a satellite dish and a VCR, Jed Rosenzweig spent nine months capturing unscrambled network feeds, including off-air footage of news anchor Tom Brokaw questioning colleague Dan Rather's sources. Rosenzweig (below), an aspiring documentarian, planned to air these gems on Wild Feed TV, his public-access show in Manhattan.
But in September, NBC, angered by the Brokaw footage, sent two cease-and-desist letters claiming the show had violated copyright law. Rosenzweig's attorney, Robert Perry, disagrees: "This is not copyright infringement." The law's fair use provision, he argues, allows for media to be repurposed for criticism, education, and commentary.
With Wild Feed temporarily off the air, Rosenzweig has turned to the Web www.wildfeedtv.net: "It'll be a place where I can get my point of view out."
Julie Sullivan
Space, the Final Resting Place
During a 1992 flight of the space shuttle, Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry became the first and only person whose remains have orbited Earth. Now, anyone who's ever wanted to be an astronaut can make it into low-Earth flight, at least after she or he dies: for a fee of US$4,800, Houston-based Celestis Inc. (www.celestis.com/) offers burials in the Great Beyond. On Celestis' first mission this month, a few symbolic grams of the ashes of Roddenberry, space colony designer Gerard O'Neill, Timothy Leary, and a handful of other out-there pioneers are scheduled to hitch a ride into space on a Pegasus rocket. The ashes should remain in orbit for about two years, until they burn up in a flash of light when the booster reenters Earth's atmosphere.
Dave Cravotta
Is Walter Watching?
Wall Street pundits aren't the only ones uneasy about the selection of John R. Walter as AT&T's new president and heir apparent to Robert Allen's throne. Turns out Walter, former CEO of the R. R. Donnelley printing company, gives privacy activists the willies as well.
During Walter's tenure, Donnelley's Metromail division, which specializes in the collection and sale of consumer information, was rocked by privacy scandals. In 1994, there were charges that Metromail had improperly used lists of California registered voters for commercial purposes. Then came the revelation that an Ohio grandmother had received a threaten-ing letter from a convicted rapist who obtained her address while entering data from Metromail surveys at a Texas prison. In June, Metromail sold information on 5,500 children to a Los Angeles reporter who used the name Richard Allen Davis - the convicted killer of Polly Klaas.
"There was a pattern of blatant disregard for privacy while Mr. Walter was at Donnelley," says Privacy Times publisher Evan Hendricks. "When people brought up their concerns, he stonewalled like a bureaucrat. Now he's moved to AT&T, where he'll be sitting on an even more valuable gold mine of information. I just hope he doesn't abuse it."
Todd Lappin
Wall Mart
The flashiest piece of hardware on Wall Street isn't a gaudy Rolex or a slick satellite phone. It's Market Site, a sprawling 100-screen video wall that may give Nasdaq the visceral punch the computerized virtual marketplace has always lacked. The 55-by-16-foot visual blitzkrieg stretches across the ninth floor of Nasdaq's headquarters in New York's financial district, with dozens of sources pumping in everything from bid/price quotes on the market's 5,000 traded stocks to video feeds from CNN, press releases, and Reuters news reports. Paul Noble, CEO of Market Site developer Imtech Corp., says the rapidly changing electronic quilt lets the scions of high finance "sense the market conditions. We'll let them feel the trends."
James Daly
The Thai Cost of Business
While a recent Internet World study reports that more than 186 countries are now reachable via email, reasonably priced Net access is still a foreign concept to most folks around the world.
The Bangkok Post - one of Thailand's biggest English-language newspapers - found this out the hard way. For a pair of dialup lines and a few megs of server space, its monthly bill came to B25,000 (US$990). The problem, according to site director Theo den Brinker, is that the government owns a third of each ISP and is reluctant to open the market to private enterprise.
In October, www.bangkokpost.net started being served from the US, and the paper now pays just $30 per month. While this type of workaround may help other Net publishers in Thailand and elsewhere, two other groups continue to suffer: the burgeoning Internet businesses that want to build local infrastructure and the users who want to see what this World Wide Web is all about.
Bob Parks
Mapping Science
Scientific research has its own geography, with well-explored continents and treacherous peaks. Although individuals are familiar with their own fields, no one can fit it all together.
That's why a technique for visualizing research holds such promise. Developed at Sandia National Laboratories, the algorithms will soon analyze connections between 3 million papers. This data is then represented as a three-dimensional landscape, where a mountain range signifying hot research issues in biology may connect to an area in physics by a narrow ridge.
What might we learn from such a map? "Connections that were previously hidden," suggests Chuck Meyers, project manager at Sandia. At the very least, a map of all research would function like a world map:it would give us a sense of perspective.
Steve G. Steinberg
