Each weekend we highlight the most relevant stories Wired News has covered. To find out what's coming up, jump to The Week Ahead.
From the Kosovo front: Even before the NATO bombs began falling, television and radio transmissions from Yugoslavia were cut off. But thanks to the Net, reports continued to sneak out.
And to keep the information flowing, Anonymizer.com moved to create a filter that would protect the identity of those filing dispatches from the war zone. That may be moot, however, if Yugoslavia's Internet infrastructure is knocked out by NATO's "smart bombs."
Digital desert: Tech execs talked and reporters scribbled at the annual PC Forum in Arizona. Of particular note, Oxygen Media CEO Geraldine Laybourne outlined what it really takes to know your Web audience (it ain't just clickthroughs); and Barry Diller dissed day traders, David Wetherell, and anybody else who might get in the way of the USA Networks-Lycos deal.
High-speed hi-jinks: More than just a cable acquisition, Comcast's US$60 billion purchase of MediaOne Group was another move in the complicated and high-stakes broadband game. Buyouts, investments and cooperative ventures -- Joanna Glasser untangled the mess to find out where this deal fit in.
Meanwhile, in the name of high-speed networks, they're digging up San Francisco's streets. Over and over again.
From Pentium to PlayStation: Sony's got more trouble on its hands. Another company posted inexpensive software that turns a personal computer into a $120 PlayStation game console. No word yet on what Sony's lawyers think of this latest emulator.
Counting on the Web: TV titan Nielsen launched a Web ratings service, challenging the Media Metrix monopoly. Analysts hedged their bets on who might win the battle to define which audience-tracking system rules the online world.
Saving MST3K: Lousy Nielsens earned Mystery Science Theatre 3000 a death sentence last month. Now fans have taken to the Web to mount a rescue attempt, futility be damned.
Slowsville: Anybody who lives in the sticks knows just how irrelevant all the talk of high-speed Net access can sound. Companies like US West say deregulation will spur rural upgrades. Public-utility commissioners aren't so sure.
Hot offerings: No telling what'll happen to these stocks in the long run, but several Net IPOs went through the roof this week. The big winners included Autoweb, MiningCo and OneMain.com.
All Bill, all the time: You could run a busy wire service covering just Microsoft doings. Atop the Redmond-related news heap this week was the company's antitrust overture. Some on the government side found Microsoft's opening gambit lacking, but more talks were set for next week.
Microsoft had better luck in its dealings with Truste. The privacy police, who get $100,000 a year in funding from Microsoft, said the company's collection of hardware data numbers was outside their purview. Not a ringing endorsement for industry self-policing.
While his legal generals tried to keep peace on the home front, Chairman Bill worked on foreign policy. He promised President Carlos Saul Menem that Microsoft would promote Argentina as a "technological hub" if the government there cracked down on software piracy.
Did Gates also try to get Menem to use Hotmail? Don't know. But anyone thinking about signing up for the free Microsoft email service should first read about what a pain it is to close an account.
Lastly, Microsoft joined the computer giveaway frenzy. Free PCs will go out to everyone who uses its Home Advisor site to arrange a loan of $125,000 or more.
Armed for the millennium: Gun and ammo sales appear to be up sharply in the United States. Is the upswing Y2K-related? Probably. But talk of new firearm-control legislation might be the driving force, too.
The wireless alphabet: After much squabbling, regulators agreed on "a single flexible standard with a choice of multiple access methods which include CDMA, TDMA, and combined TDMA/CDMA, all potentially in combination with SDMA." Translation: cell phones of the future should work anywhere in the world. The agreement should also help make wireless Net access a reality.
Quiet, please: Then again, if buzzing and beeping cell phones are the bane of your existence, you might be interested in the frequency jammer offered by an Israeli company.
Your data, your choice: Novell introduced "digitalme," an ID card that allows users to control what information is released to a Web site. Just one more in a growing array of options for online data protection.
Internic intercepted: Network Solutions gobbled up Internic, the domain-name lookup site. Was the power play legal? Hard to say. Confusion abounds as the Net transitions to a competitive name-registration system.
Cracker games: A Belgian bag manufacturer promoted a "Hacker" backpack by promising a free one to everyone who cracked a password competition. The contest frustrated geeks for days, and finally the company's site itself was ... that's right, hacked.
Lawyers love MP3: An international music industry group filed suit against the Norwegian company that built the MP3 search engine used by Lycos. And the Recording Industry Association of America said it, too, was contemplating going after Lycos.
Depite all that, RIAA president Hillary Rosen told Jennifer Sullivan that she likes MP3. Really.
Child's play: He's so young, his mom accompanies him on business trips. But Angelo Sotira is already big in MP3 circles and the Dimension Music founder has grand ideas for making the audio format pay.
Film compression: Music delivery over the Net is exploding. How about movies? Tranz-send, a San Francisco company, is staking its claim on the market with a new system for delivering DVD-quality content.
The 'Tino report: IMacs are flying off the shelves, and Apple is having problems refilling orders. Does this mean a new, hotter machine is on the way? At a sunny annual meeting, Steve Jobs -- he of the five consecutive profitable quarters -- played coy. THE WEEK AHEAD
30 March, Washington, DC: Microsoft, state reps and the Justice Department get together for coffee, bottled water and some talk about an antitrust settlement.
30 March, Los Santos, Costa Rica: MIT's Media Lab brings wireless connectivity to rural doctors, teachers and farmers, as part of its Unwiring the World project.
31 March: The Federal Aviation Administration is supposed to have all Y2K testing completed. But a recent congressional report suggested the agency was lagging badly.
31 March: The US cable TV industry completely shakes loose of regulation. Based on what's happened since the Telecom Act of 1996 became law, consumer advocates are scared.
1 April, San Francisco: Six rooms, three dance floors, two sound systems, four full bars. Mozilla.org is throwing a party -- a big party -- to celebrate the first anniversary of the release of its source code.
