Each weekend we highlight the most relevant stories Wired News has covered. To find out what's coming up, click over to The Calendar of E-vents.
Hand it over: PalmSource 99 began with the worst keynote address in tech-conference history. But it got better, as Palm outlined a future in which the ubiquitous handheld moves beyond beaming games and personal info and takes on serious stuff -- like corporate data and email.
Some developers expressed concern that applications previously sold as Palm shareware are being given away as inducements by the likes of Amazon.com and eBay. Like it or not, however, that's the growing reality, and there was agreement that developers in the wireless era better start thinking about alternative sources of revenue, such as advertising, sponsorship, or selling services.
How to: Can't leave PalmSource without a word on Handspring's Jeff Hawkins, the father of handheld computing while at Palm. He talked and kept the audience rapt with gems of computer design wisdom. The takeaway: Start with product functionality and user experience, and design back from there.
A follows Q: Tim Berners-Lee sat down for a Wired News interview, talking about "these funny things that start http-colon-slash-slash, and then some gobbledygook which is the name of the document," as well as other matters Web. Which, you should know, he invented.
Stopped at the door: "There are some realities in this marketplace that Comdex is ignoring," said Mike Lavers. Yeah -- like the fact that a growing number of tech "execs" (such as Lavers, who is 17 and CTO of Matrixcubed Internet Services), are not yet legal. The semiannual Las Vegas trade extravaganza, coming up next month, told Lavers nobody under age 18 will be allowed on the floor.
Days later the Comdex capitulated, and now welcomes the young 'uns. No change in core policy, though.
Tussle on the Hill: Friends and foes of MP3 took their cases to Washington, giving a 90-minute briefing to a group of senators who hold regular luncheon information sessions. The arguments were familiar enough -- emusic's Robert Kohn said the music industry's SDMI was a pain and would flop à la Divx, and industry rep Hillary Rosen said uh-uh.
Bill of wrongs: The First Amendment is a beautiful concept, but in practice many Americans seem to find it challenging. So suggests a survey by the Freedom Forum, which discovered that most adults don't believe that "people should be allowed to place sexually explicit material on the Internet," and only 10 percent strongly support that right.
It's alive: George W. Bush's Web site woke up, unveiling a completely new look after weeks of no changes or updates whatsoever. The slumber was in striking contrast to the aggressive Net strategies waged by Republicans Forbes and McCain, as well as Demos Bradley and Gore.
And it's hacked: Whoops. Within hours of the grand relaunch, crackers had replaced Dubya's mug with a bright-red hammer and sickle. According to a screen snapshot, the hacked site quoted the International Communist League's belief that "we must take the Marxist doctrine of proletarian revolution out of the realm of theory and give it reality."
Bring it on: Australian survival experts Stan and Holly Deyo said they'll ride out the millennium in a windy rural town an hour and a half northwest of Melbourne. There, they've stashed away 110 kg of grain, 43 kg of dairy products, 18 kg of rice and pasta, 17kg of legumes, 500 servings of vegetables, 428 rolls of toilet paper, a box of Ritz crackers, a package of Juicy Fruit gum, and 1.75 liters each of rum, tequila, vodka, triple sec, and Jack Daniels.
Space for rent: A Texas Web-hosting company agreed to pay US$100,000 for the right to stamp its name below the backside belt of Evander Holyfield's trunks.
Yes, we can be bought: Digital-music operations, meanwhile, are using stock options to gain the endorsement of big-name artists -- and this can amount to serious bucks. For instance, Alanis Morissette's management company, Atlas/Third Rail, got 658,653 shares of MP3.com. That's $24 million worth, at last count. In return for their stock offers, Net companies expect the artists to plug their sites so they can create a mutually beneficial promotional engine.
A good thing, for her: Shares of Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia Inc. jumped more than 75 percent in their debut on the New York Stock Exchange, following an $18-per-share initial public offering. Meanwhile, 10 million shares of World Wrestling Federation Inc. opened up 88 percent from their initial offering price. (For more IPO news, check our special section, IPO Outlook.)
Off limits: Three men who regulators say illegally tried to sell stock on eBay agreed to remove their postings, and securities regulators touted the action as a precedent-setting move in its mission to eradicate online stock fraud. EBay, for its part, has a policy prohibiting the sale of securities on its site, and officials said the company wasn't on the hook for the postings.
Ich bin ein E-Trader: E-Trade is teaming up with financial services company Berliner Effektenbank to bring online trading to Germany, doing so from Berlin. Why not Frankfurt, the finance capital of the country? Hey, this is the Net! "For an Internet brokerage, the location of our operations is entirely irrelevant," said Berliner Effektenbank board member Guido Sandler.
Abra cadaver: Independent casket sellers defended themselves against attacks from funeral directors, who are losing business to the indies. Easy to see why, too. On the Web, consumers find something totally foreign to the traditional death care industry -- information. Price comparisons abound, anathema to an industry that has thrived in a death-denying culture where people pay the asking price at the local funeral home and rush for the door.
Whose future is it?: Industry types, attorneys, and a few rockers got together to predict what shape commercial music will take in the next five years. Noticeably absent at Music Biz 2005 was you, the consumer. Anyway, while the label representatives continued to promote their view of a secure digital distribution system, artists were more focused on the new creative and promotional opportunities the Net presents.
Job well done: The Home Office was among the big "winners" at the British version of the Big Brother Awards, drawing the Lifetime Menace Award for curtailing the right to silence, creating a national DNA database, opposing efforts to strengthen data protection, and sponsoring the closed-circuit television industry. But not all the prizes were for dubious achievements; five "Winstons," Privacy International's awards for champions of privacy, were also given out.
Monitor this: If Echelon exists, as some people suspect, it might have had a bad day on Thursday. That's when activists were encouraged to pass along a few of the keywords sought by the near-mythical worldwide computer spy network –- a network which reportedly scans all email, packet traffic, and telephone conversations in an effort to ferret out potential terrorist or enemy communications.
Organizers of Jam Echelon Day said it was hard to tell if the theoretical sniffing system was affected, but observers monitoring hacker lists and activism sites said they detected a lot of participation.
Home schooling: Online operators said they offer a more educational experience than traditional traffic schools, for less time and with greater convenience to offenders anxious to keep moving violations off their record. The California DMV doesn't like the idea -- citing attendance verification as an issue -- but most court systems in the state are backing one online course or another.
Chief speaks, we listen: Until there is open competition, federal regulators won't approve the kind of large-scale deregulation the local phone companies are demanding. That's not just someone's opinion; it's the position of William Kennard, head guy at the Federal Communications Commission, which he explained in a speech to the United States Telecom Association.
Reactionaries: More consumer empowerment in the news, this time on the medical front. Orchid Biocomputer, based in Princeton, New Jersey, launched GeneShield.com, to help people determine how the small but significant variations in their genes called single nucleotide polymorphisms, or SNPs, can affect how they will react to a drug. Complications from drug reactions are the fourth leading cause of death in the United States, and send more than 100,000 people to the hospital every year.
More med-tech: Researchers said they've come up with the first human gene therapy that arms the immune system against its own prostate cancer cells. The vaccine, created from the genetically altered cells of prostrate cancer patients, was designed to ferret out and destroy prostate cells, particularly those that have survived surgery and have the potential to turn malignant.
Devotion pays: Babylon 5: Into the Fire may live after all. Sierra said last month that it was killing off the game as part of a massive reorganization. But angry fans responded by spreading the news of the game's demise to gaming sites, fans, and developers everywhere. Now? "There are four companies who have shown interest in purchasing B5. We are now in discussions with all of them," said a Sierra exec.
That's the week that was. For information on ongoing goings-on, click over to The Calendar of E-vents.
