Each weekend, we highlight the most relevant stories Wired News has covered. To find out what's coming up, jump to The Week Ahead.
Feeding frenzy: NBC-Snap. Disney-Infoseek. AOL-Netscape. At Home-Excite. We smell a trend here.
Such is the consolidation mania among Net heavyweights that even Yahoo, with its powerhouse brand and huge audience, felt impelled to grab a major property. GeoCities came at a cost of US$3.58 billion and will extend Yahoo's Web reach past Microsoft and AOL, execs claimed.
All by itself: Rumors swirled, but Lycos head man Bob Davis said his company is comfortable going it alone. Davis, by the way, recently cashed in 60,000 Lycos shares. Lycos, as you may know, is set to acquire Wired News' parent company Wired Digital.
MP3, hacker's delight: Diamond has defended itself against attacks by the recording industry with the claim that the Rio can't be used to make second-gen copies. But thanks to a couple of hackers, that's no longer true.
On another online music front, Sightsound.com said it owns patents on basic downloading technologies. It wants licensing fees from various sites, including MP3.com.
Intel's about-face: Stung by boycott threats, Intel slunk back -- a bit -- from its plan to mark your every move with chip-based ID tags.
Privacy advocates were only partly placated. They went positively ballistic when Sun chief Scott McNealy appeared to mock their concerns.
No privacy here: Crime fighters applauded a new technology that sharpens grainy surveillance-camera footage. Civil libertarians recoiled at Big Brother's improved vision.
Y2K overhype: Americans told surveyers they've heard enough about survivalists packing rifles and dehydrated potatoes. They'd like hard info about the millennium bug, nothing more. That ought to please the federal government, which has quietly hired a media firm to help quell Y2K panic.
Sex still sells: Sleazemeisters or Web entrepreneurs? Meet Seth Warshavsky and Danni Ashe, two veterans of the Net's biggest business, and decide for yourself.
Earnings parade: EBay showed such robust growth that investors easily shrugged off reports that New York City launched a fraud investigation of the site.
AOL and Amazon reported impressive quarterly results, too. Even Alan Greenspan was moved to say a few Net companies might -- just might -- be good investments.
Cashing in: Given the state of the aforementioned market, Compaq's decision to spin off AltaVista, the little nugget it picked up when it acquired Digital Equipment last year, was a no-brainer.
Flip side: Lest you think these waning days of the millennium be loser free, consider Iridium. The nascent telecommunications satellite company dropped $440 million further into debt in the fourth quarter of 1998.
Borrowed time: But what's a little debt, anyway? Amazon planned to sell a half-billion in convertible bonds. But demand ran so high, the company raised $1.25 billion, the lion's share of which will likely go to advertising. Building the brand is expensive.
DOJ v. Microsoft: The trial slogged forth. Redmond professed innocence in its dealings with Intel and grave fear that it could be toppled by the likes of Linux.
Ding dong: The Supreme Court looked at that mess of verbiage called the Telecommunications Act of 1996 and decided to let federal regulators interpret it. That means regional Bells must open their local networks to competition.
The new tube: Now that we've got a silicon tuner, handheld digital TVs are sure to follow. The better to watch the cool digi-programming PBS is pumping out.
Girl talk: Hearst and Women.com said they'll merge traditional women's fare and professional-oriented content. Advertisers are searching for a female audience, and this is the how big media thinks you create one.
Econ 101: Advertising on the Web is growing, but not as fast as ad space. Thus, falling rates. Bucking the trend somewhat are those big sites able to offer advertisers a good demographic picture of their viewers.
Who earns what: MBAs aren't quite a dime a dozen in the tech world. More like $73,382 apiece, a survey revealed. Still, that's less than it costs to find a technical manager.
Cache crunch: A survey of dialups revealed that America Online will take you to the Web faster than anyone else -- if your destination is a big, popular site. AOL caches those at its Virginia HQ, trimming download times for end users.
Hog heaven: Until they found a new organ, doctors in Chicago used pig-liver cells to purify the blood of a woman with a failing liver. She survived.
System overload: A barrage of fraudulent name registrations is making life miserable for Network Solutions staffers and delaying the processing of legitimate requests for new names tagged with .com, .net, and .org. Meanwhile, the new gang at ICANN said they'll soon release guidelines for companies that want to get into the domain-name game. THE WEEK AHEAD
31 January, Miami: The Super Bowl comes just in time; we've exhausted all the tech angles. We even had the story about Apple bringing back HAL.
1 February, Philadelphia: The ACLU said it violates the First Amendment; the Justice Department called it nothing more than an electronic brown bag." A ruling on the Child Online Protection Act is expected Monday.
1 to 3 February, Dubai, United Arab Emirates: For an economically vital region, the Persian Gulf states are shockingly ill-prepared to deal with Y2K, experts say. If it's not too late, the Y2K Conference Expo aims to change that.
2 to 3 February, Washington: After three straight rate declines, Greenspan and Company held steady in November. They meet again, your fate in their hands.
5 February, Tokyo: The stampede? That's traders rushing to buy 5 million shares of Oracle's Japan subsidiary.
6 February, Cape Canaveral, Florida: The launch window opens for Stardust, a NASA mission to collect dust from the comet Wild 2. The first-of-their-kind samples are due back on Earth in 2006.
