Each weekend we highlight the most relevant stories Wired News has covered. To find out what's coming up, jump to The Week Ahead.
Sex.com, a Net allegory: Millions are at stake in the legal fight over the domain name Sex.com, which makes our investigative report necessary reading. But read it for sheer fun, too. It's the rare news story that has a source cutting short her cell-phone chat with a reporter by saying, "Hold on, I'm being pulled over by the cops."
Selling out: AltaVista is auctioning off popular keywords to the highest bidders. Under the planned program, the first search result will go to the highest bidder. The company said that ads will be clearly marked as such, but the prototype is being greeted with plenty of raised eyebrows.
Name game: As for other valuable Net addresses, we sifted and sorted and found that most of the popular words are taken. For your perusal, here are the dregs.
Audio herd: Sound over the Internet dominated the week, starting with Monday's RealNetworks-IBM collaboration on a system for delivering secured music files. Real cracked the headlines again a day later, saying it would acquire Xing, an MP3 software developer, giving it more oomph in the unsecured realm.
Microsoft made a big move, too, unveiling a new audio compression standard (files about half the size of MP3), a system for paying the musicians, and a new portable player made by Casio. With less fanfare – just a whisper to a reporter – word came down that Apple's next-gen QuickTime will play MP3 files.
Hello, Wall Street: Streaming audio is about more than music, however; it also allows for quirky and narrow programming to flourish, sometimes with great democratizing effect. Take the corporate earnings statement. Once the strict province of insiders, now the little guy is listening in.
Menacing: No movie yet – not for another month – so the current Star Wars story is the fans. There's the bunch in line, the bunch online, and the ones captured on film two years ago.
Another fan: Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen, whose gloriously restored Cinerama theater in Seattle will play host to one of the Phantom premieres.
Pass the sunscreen: Red Hat is looking for six Linux-heads to send to the beach for a week of – yow! – sunshine and frolic. Although modeled on Real World, geeks being geeks, "It's not going to be MTV," a Red Hattie ventured.
For Linux newbies: Caldera Systems said it will launch a Linux OS featuring a graphical installer, a Windows-like interface, and a choice of office applications that includes a Web browser and email client. "No Unix experience needed," promised the company.
Be warned: A programmer with a penchant for poking holes in software said that the major anonymizing programs all could leave their users exposed. The companies, with some justification, blamed the leakiness on browser-makers.
Blame game: Why did 14-year-old Michael Carneal shoot three kids dead in a Paducah, Kentucky, high school? Violent videogames and films drove him to it, say the victims' families. On Monday, they sued 25 computer and media companies for more than US$100 million.
Drugnet: Mix irrational drug policy with an irrational Internet policy and you get.... Well, you get the sort of legislation that recently sneaked through the House in Springfield, Illinois.
Biting back: Network Solutions did not score points with the influential Aberdeen Group by shutting down its Web site in a payment dispute. The peeved analysts, who insist they paid their registration fee on time, struck back.
Imitation is ... illegal: Bloomberg was looking to get even, too. The news site filed suit against the clever rascal who posted a fake Bloomberg News page detailing the buyout of a very real company. At the time, nobody knew who the perp might be, but by week's end a suspect was apprehended.
Privacy blind spot: A Wired Digital engineer discovered that when users bookmark a Web page with Internet Explorer 5.0, a new feature in the software notifies the site. Oops. Just more evidence, said consumer advocates, that software makers need to get a grip on the privacy implications of their code.
Data atop data: AT&T Labs said its survey shows a combination of approaches will be necessary to give people the level of online privacy they want. Privacy advocates said surveys are nice but laws would be better.
Don't ask: Did you say, "Where do you want to go tomorrow?" Hope not. Microsoft claims that's a no-no.
Zapped: No assets. No strategic relationships. No revenues. So, what does Zapata have backing up its planned $105 million Net offering? A concept!
Above all: AboveNet, which sells bandwidth to Internet service providers, has appreciated 800 percent since going public last year. That growth is luring new competitors into the field. AboveNet's reaction: Bring 'em on.
Right for the part: Technology has given Hollywood casting directors an alternative to flipping through huge stacks of glossies in their quest to match actor and role. But so far, the industry isn't certain it's a better way.
End the mystery: Is microwave radiation hazardous to your health? Nobody knows. That's why activists said it's time for a serious commitment to finding answers.
Far out: With a telescope that can extend astronomy's observational reach into the study of ultraviolet wavelengths, scientists hope to get clues about the origins of the universe. Specifically, they'll be peering way out – and way back in time – in search of the simple isotopes that the Big Bang theory says ought to be there.
Even farther out: The UFO Abduction Conference brought together all sorts, but of particular interest were the researchers. Their profession, said one veteran, is one in which "you have to take everything with a boulder of salt." THE WEEK AHEAD
19 to 22 April, Chicago: Comdex does its spring gig with Windows World – and with a Linux Global Summit running concurrently. The juicy juxtaposition comes on Monday, when Bill Gates previews Windows 2000, and then Linus Torvalds talks open source.
19 to 22 April, Las Vegas: On Tuesday, the Federal Communications Commission's Bill Kennard outlines "his regulatory vision for broadcasting and other electronic media." This over breakfast at the annual meeting of the National Association of Broadcasters.
20 April: Microsoft announces its earnings. Last month the company dampened expectations, saying that delays in the release of Office 2000 would cost it $400 million in revenue.
20 April: The domain name wallstreet.com goes up for auction. The bidding's offline; the sales pitch is on.
19 to 23 April, San Jose, California: "People who actually invented the technology talking to people who really needed to understand it." That's what the Internet Security Conference promises.
21 April: The Net governing body ICANN is expected to announce five testbed registrars, another step along the way to competition in administering top-level domains.
23 April: The World Intellectual Property Organization tries to untangle the knotty conflict between domain names and trademarks, releasing a third and final version of a long-awaited report.
