THE WEB'S USER PROFILE UNDERGOES A BROAD TRANSFORMATION
Asian Americans, Hispanics, African Americans, and homosexuals are logging on to the Internet in increasing numbers, exploding the common perception that the typical Internet user is a heterosexual white male under the age of 40. There are many Web sites targeting Asian Americans, who boast a home Internet penetration rate of 69 percent. African Americans are going online faster than any other demographic group. The disabled are also finding that the Internet has much to offer. WEmedia offers the disabled the chance to complete errands from home, including grocery shopping, banking, and clothes shopping. Two portal sites for homosexuals, www.gay.com and www.planetout.com, offer specific content for the gay community. Hispanics are served by the Web site www.zonafinanceria.com, which provides several different types of services in three different languages in 21 countries. (New York Times, 7 June 2000)

WARNED BY THE MUSIC INDUSTRY, WEB SITE FILES SUIT
MP3 search engine MP3Board.com is suing the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) in an effort to defend its ability to include pirated files in its search results. The suit centers on whether a search engine is liable for copyright violations if it brings up pirated material as the result of an automated search. Legal experts say the suit could have a large impact on all search engines if MP3Board is found liable, because major search engines such as Yahoo! and ExciteAtHome would be required to check all of their files. The RIAA accuses MP3Board of abetting copyright violators by providing links to hundreds of pirated music files. The association sent MP3Board a letter on May 25, saying that if MP3Board did not remove its site or eliminate all the links to pirated material by June 2, the RIAA would consider legal action. MP3Board says its search engine has an index of about 500,000 songs, and the company cannot look through every link to see whether the material is pirated. Under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act's safe harbor provisions, search engines and ISPs are not responsible for some of the content they provide. However, the court's handling of some of these provisions remains to be seen. (New York Times, 6 June 2000)

GORE PAINTS PICTURE OF INTERACTIVE GOVERNMENT
Vice President Al Gore used a stop to the Research Triangle area of North Carolina to announce the details of a "national interactive town square" initiative he plans to introduce if elected president. Gore's $100 million technology initiative would place all federal government programs on the Internet by 2003. "The power of government should not be...further away than your keyboard," Gore said. Everyday citizens play a leading role in Gore's plan. Gore foresees citizens using email to provide safety reports to police or to perform other tasks, such as applying for student loans. Gore's plan also would place kiosks in malls so those without home computers could participate in his vision. Citizens could access their personal records by using secure codes, Gore said. Gore also indicated he would continue his efforts to bring the Internet to every U.S. school and library. (Washington Post, 6 June 2000)

ONLINE PUBLIC NOTICES REPLACE PAPER IN ALASKA
The state of Alaska recently mandated all state agencies post public notices on the Internet, replacing the lieutenant governor's office subscription-based print publication the Alaska Administrative Journal with the Alaska Online Public Notice System. System users can search the site using key words or view notices by category, department, location, title, and publication date. Citizens lacking their own computers may access the system through computers located in libraries or various state agencies. Specifications related to printing, posting, and distribution of public notices remain unchanged. (Federal Computer Week Online, 24 May 2000)

EU TO DEBATE LAW ON COPYRIGHTS
The European Union is considering a draft Directive on Copyright and Related Rights in the Information Society, a proposed law that would give digital media greater copyright protections. EU countries such as France, Italy, and Spain have a tradition of strong copyright protections, while the U.K., the Netherlands, and Nordic countries are known for more lax protections. Copyright holders fear the law will exacerbate piracy of digital material. Corporate representatives warn the law will allow individual EU states to provide their own interpretations of how copyright law should be applied. (Wall Street Journal, 25 May 2000)

A COLLEGE LEADS THE WAY IN REQUIRING ONLINE APPLICATIONS
West Virginia Wesleyan is the first college to require undergraduate applications to be filled out and submitted online. Beyond the application requirement, the school provides laptop computers to all students and intends to have wireless Internet access available by fall. Supplemental application material, such as transcripts and teacher recommendations, will still be accepted on paper sent in the mail. Requiring online applications should not prevent anyone from applying, school officials say. Students will be given access to the laptops of admissions counselors visiting high schools or they can use computers available in churches, public libraries, and schools. The application will only take about half an hour for most students to fill out, and does not require essays. Still, some are concerned that disabled individuals will be excluded. The college's president said alternatives would be found for students unable to apply online due to disabilities. A few graduate schools also require applications to be submitted online. (New York Times, 25 May 2000)

PARENTS RAISE CONCERNS ABOUT SCHOOL'S LAPTOP-ONLY ELECTIVE
California's Orange Unified School District has embraced the Internet and is now making e-classes available in its schools. While the district's Villa Park High School moves ahead with its eHistory class, McPherson Magnet School was criticized earlier in the year for closing off its middle-school level English and history classes to students who do not have laptops. Eddie Albright, who has two children attending McPherson Magnet School, was among a number of parents who saw the laptop-only electives creating a digital divide because the classes would put students who cannot afford the computers at a disadvantage. Experts seemed to agree that although it is important to bring technology into the classrooms, it should not be done at the expense of children of poor families. In fact, the Orange Unified school board agreed to look into ways of providing laptops for all of the school's students. The ideas suggested include allowing students to buy new laptops for between $1,500 and $2,000, lease units for $40 to $50 per month, buy used laptops for about $500, check out a unit from the school, or use a school zip drive to transfer information between school and home computers. (eSchool News, 22 May 2000)

4 GIANTS SET TO EMBRACE ELECTRONIC PUBLISHING
Time Warner Trade Publishing yesterday announced two new online publishing sites, iPublish.com and iWrite. Meanwhile, Microsoft, in conjunction with Simon & Schuster and Random House, plans to announce the online availability of "Timeline," a book by Michael Crichton, as well as deals to publish electronic versions of Star Trek books, which will only be available on Microsoft's reader software. The larger companies are entering the online fray to compete with hundreds of smaller Internet startups, and publishers are also hoping to generate interest in electronic books among the younger generations who have not been reading books offline as much as older generations. Time Warner's iPublish will probably provide shorter fiction and non-fiction from established authors, electronic versions of printed books in a condensed form, and maybe even serial books, all to be available next fall. The electronic books will be made available on Microsoft's software, Gemstar's Rocket eBooks, SoftBook Readers, and NetLibrary's Peanut Press versions for Palm devices. The other e-publishing venture by Time Warner, iWrite, would accept manuscripts from any author. No editing fees would be
charged and employees would be hired to read the material. (New York Times, 23 May 2000)

WEBUCATION
Online education may be the next big thing. Education now competes with medical care as the biggest single industry in the U.S., and many people are beginning to invest in online universities and adult education. Established universities are looking to the Internet to widen their reach without having to expand their physical plants. Some investors think online education could benefit from good management practices and the application of multimedia techniques. Foreign students could benefit especially from online education, making higher education and technical training another U.S. export. UNext CEO Andrew M. Rosenfield says developing nations need better educated and trained people, but they cannot afford the infrastructure or the teachers required. Education is not a commodity product, but it can still be profitable. Business education in particular will not necessarily have to compete on price, as Corpedia's Alexander Brigham points out; companies want prestige and are willing to pay for it. It is also easier to market to businesses than to consumers, and online education can be a powerful perk in the tight job market. Education is becoming a life-long activity for some, and the Internet is the most efficient means of delivering this product. (Forbes, 15 May 2000)

ARTIST POWER
More than 20,000 fine art sites have sprung up on the Web, and although traditional dealers are not likely to disappear, the Internet is altering the landscape of yet another business world. These Web sites enable artists to gain greater exposure than they typically receive through the traditional dealer or gallery channels, while buyers do not have to fear being intimidated by gallery employees or haggling over price and instead gain access to information, links to related services such as framing, and expert advice and assistance. However, artists are usually charged a commission to post their work online, ranging from between 25 percent to as much as 50 percent of the sales price. Additionally, there are a variety of different business models a fine art site can choose to adopt. Gallery networks maintain an inventory taken from blue-chip galleries and typically feature work by prominent, established artists. Some sites employ experts who scout artists on behalf of potential buyers. There are also sites that serve as facilitators, merely displaying work for a buyer to browse unaided and then directly contact an artist whose work interests him or her. (Forbes, 22 May 2000)

SAFE-DEPOSIT SERVICES GAIN MOMENTUM ON THE WEB
Safe deposit boxes are now available in a virtual form on the Internet. BankAtlantic Bancorp and NetBank provide a service that allows customers to store and easily retrieve electronic documents online, and four or five other banks may soon follow. A major benefit of the service is safety. "Think of Florida and hurricane season; this allows our customers to download documents and store them outside their home or their office for safekeeping," says Jarett Levan of BankAtlantic. Safedepositbox.com, the service provider for BankAtlantic, utilizes a secure data center hosted by UUNet to store the customer's files. The files are copied and held in three different locations across the country to decrease the possibility of losing the data. Safedepositbox.com also has a general liability policy with UUNet. The company's digitizing technology allows customers to upload, fax, or scan their documents at a secure Internet location. The customers can archive documents and decide who has access to those documents. The virtual safe deposit boxes are available in sizes ranging from 20 to 200 MB with a 10-MB box expected within two weeks. (American Banker, 12 May 2000)

MOVIE PIRATES HITTING PRIME TIME
As the music industry continues to fight online piracy, the film industry is poised to face the next major copyright battle as new technology simplifies the process of sharing and downloading movies over the Internet. Last year, hackers cracked the DVD encryption that prevented piracy and posted the code on numerous hacker Web sites. Even with the code available, DVD files are so large that downloading the files was impractical. However, in February the DivX compression algorithm emerged, allowing pirates to download movies in two to ten hours. DivX, which combines Microsoft's MPEG4 video compression technology and the MP3 audio compression technology, allows users to fit an entire movie on one CD-ROM. To most viewers, the full-screen, full-fidelity stereo sound movies are indistinguishable from actual DVD movies. Web sites are now appearing that catalogue DivX offerings and provide instructions on copying a DVD into DivX format. Still, downloading a DivX movie is much more complicated and impractical than downloading music. The real threat to the film industry is not DivX but broadband, which makes downloading much easier and is becoming increasingly widespread, experts say. (MSNBC.com, 10 May 2000)

BATTLE OVER DVD CODE MOVES TO HYPERLINKS
In a case that could hold widespread ramifications for free speech on the Internet, the Motion Picture Association of America and other top movie studios are requesting a federal judge grant an injunction that would force 2600 Magazine to remove controversial hyperlinks from its Web site. The hyperlinks provide information about DVD encryption. The movie studios contend that the encryption codes are trade secrets, but civil liberties advocates such as the Electronic Frontier Foundation argue that the codes are free speech protected by the First Amendment. This is just the latest round in the battle between the movie studios and New York-based 2600 Magazine. Months ago the studios were granted an injunction that prohibited the Web site from displaying information about the DVD encryption. Electronic Frontier Foundation attorney Robin Gross says the injunction the movie studios are seeking would chill free speech. (Newsbytes, 4 May 2000)

E-NOVEL APPROACH PROMISES NEW CHAPTER FOR BOOK LOVERS
Electronic books might look and feel just like traditional books within the next several years, due to companies such as E Ink that are advancing the technology. E Ink, a small company founded by MIT researchers, is working on flexible electronic paper that looks and feels like standard paper, and electronic ink that can change into different characters. E-book users would be able to change the book's content by plugging the device into a phone line or wireless receiver. Currently, E Ink is using its technology to make indoor signs, since large letters are much easier to produce than the small letters required for a book. J.C. Penney, Eckerd drugstores, and Yahoo! are all using E Ink signs. As E Ink refines its technology, it believes e-books will be possible by 2003 or 2004. E Ink's displays are more readable than any electronic display, and require little power to change content. In addition, the displays stay on even when the power is off, so an E Ink book would not need to be powered after the user has loaded content. Xerox's Palo Alto Research Center is also working on e-book technology, but E Ink appears to be in the lead. (USA Today, 9 May 2000)

STANFORD TO LAUNCH FOR-PROFIT VENTURE FOR WEB SEARCHES
E-Skolar, Stanford University's first for-profit online endeavor, is a medical search engine that enables physicians to find information using multiple databases including textbooks, medical journals reviewed by peers, drug databases, updated clinical guidelines, and the National Library of Medicine. Continuing-education credits sanctioned by the American Medical Association can be obtained by clinicians at the site. The new company, which will operate independently of the university, has a $240 annual subscription fee and provides a faster and higher quality service than other medical sites on the Internet. The company recently signed a distribution agreement with Agilent Technologies and intends to develop corporate partnerships. The university may not develop any more for-profit sites. This site was created in order to keep Stanford at the forefront of online education after the university saw the large amount of competition from outside institutions. (Wall Street Journal, 9 May 2000)

NAPSTER BOOTS 317,377 USERS FROM SERVICE
Napster on Tuesday announced it has blocked from its service the subscribers named last week by Metallica as violating the band's copyrights by allegedly making songs available for online trading. Although Napster agreed to ban 317,377 users, the company warns that the move is based on Metallica's allegations and users might have been "mistakenly implicated." Still, banned users could easily delete Napster software and reinstall it using a different name. Napster opted to block its users rather than to compromise its legal footing in the suits it faces from the Recording Industry Association of America, Metallica, and Dr. Dre. The affected users can appeal the ban, which could either lead to reactivation of the Napster account or leave a user open to a lawsuit from Metallica. Users could be more effectively identified and blocked if NetPD, the British copyright protection firm that found the names for Metallica, hands over other user data it found such as IP addresses. (Cnet, 9 May 2000)

FIRST NATIONAL ONLINE VOTING WILL BE THIS FALL BY ALL STUDENTS
Nearly 10 million secondary school children will cast their online votes in an unofficial presidential election this fall a week before Election Day. Dubbed the "Youth-e-Vote," the project will assign a registration number to all secondary school students in the country. Students will then cast their votes for president, members of Congress and governors in their respective states. Election.com is sponsoring and will oversee the event. Significant additional funding is being provided by the Markle Foundation. Among the goals of the Youth-e-Vote project are promoting good citizenship, testing online voting, closing the digital divide, and encouraging parents to catch the voting bug. "Our goal is to reinvigorate democracy by increasing voter participation and access," said Election.com CEO Joe Mohen. "The remarkable potential and value of online voting will become even more clear with the historic national Internet vote by American students this November." (PRNewswire, 8 May 2000)

COLLEGES GET BAD GRADES FOR WEB SITES
Prospective college students say, on average, university and college Web sites do not provide the information they need. BreathingLife.com Director of Operations Bonnie Matheney says higher education Web sites often have big files and badly placed scripts, as well as high-resolution pictures, which make downloads much longer. Her company intends to offer assistance and information to college and graduate applicants. Case Western Reserve University dean of admissions Bill Conley says college Web pages tend to be bandwidth-heavy because the schools have faster connections than their audiences, so even a focus group reviewing the site on campus will get a different picture than those elsewhere. Student Stacey Recarba researched schools online, and found--after waiting for the pages to download--that she could easily find information about the schools' athletic programs, but application information was much more difficult. Matheney notes that schools have so many different groups within themselves and so many different groups they want to reach that forming a coherent message can be a major challenge. She recommends that someone from the information services support staff be appointed Webmaster to track usage, assign URLs, and keep the system running. (Interactive Week, 1 May 2000)

NAPSTER SUIT TESTS NEW COPYRIGHT LAW
Online music company Napster is testing the boundaries of the two-year-old Digital Millennium Copyright Act in an attempt to have the court drop the lawsuit filed against it by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA). The law's safe harbor provisions state that the users of a service, not online service providers, are responsible for copyright violations. The law was designed to protect software, literature, music, and videos from online piracy, while also protecting service providers like AOL. Napster argues that its services are similar to Web browsers and other Web-based applications, and the company should therefore be guarded by the act's safe harbor. Some attorneys believe the law was not written to protect companies like Napster, and say the law will quickly be rewritten if Napster's argument succeeds. However, even if the music industry defeats Napster, it faces a slew of other piracy threats. In recent years, entertainment companies have pushed for legislation every time a new copyright threat emerges, and the laws seem unable to keep pace with rapidly changing technology. (Cnet, 11 April 2000)

CROSSING AMAZON
Fiercely independent bookseller Powell's Books has won a following by retaining its intimate feel while dealing online with a national audience. The company, which sells mainly used books, has managed to hold its own in the face of competition from slick corporate rivals such as Amazon.com. Powell's credits its success to an independent-minded, intellectual customer base and a bare-bones approach to business. While Amazon.com targets the general public with a range of best-sellers, Powell's caters to academic types with intellectual tomes such as Milan Kundera's "The Unbearable Lightness of Being" and books by small publishers. Powell's keeps its Web operations at a minimum: 35 people fill orders, four develop site features, and four handle computer programming. Powell's low overhead has enabled it to make a profit--an accomplishment that even Amazon.com has yet to achieve. Powell's is currently expanding its business by selling textbooks online directly to students. While Powell's previously sold textbooks to university bookstores, it switched to direct sales when the model became popular. (Forbes, 17 April 2000)

NEW DEVICE COULD BOOST DATA SPEED
A group of researchers on Thursday announced the development of opto-chips, a breakthrough technology that could greatly increase the ability of fiber-optic networks to provide high-bandwidth Internet access. The device is a sophisticated electro-optic modulator that sends data as light signals through fiber-optic networks at least 10 times faster than current electro-optic modulators. Meanwhile, the new technology needs only 0.8 volts to operate, compared with the 5 volts today's devices require. Another advantage of the new modulator is that it does not lose as much data as today's modulators, which can lose signals and disrupt data streams. Researchers made the new modulator from polymers, while traditional modulators are grown as crystals from lithium niobate. Opto-chips could allow fiber-optic networks to provide high-speed Internet access to an almost unlimited number of customers, and the technology could be commercially available in two years if it passes long-term testing. Eventually, opto-chips could enable users to download movies and huge music files instantaneously, although a number of other technologies would need to be developed first to make this possible. (Los Angeles Times, 7 April 2000)

SWEDEN PLANS INTERNET ACCESS FOR ALL
The Swedish government has announced a broadband plan to help information technology permeate the farthest corners of the country. The government's proposal, a funding package of nearly $20 billion to enable the construction of high-speed Internet networks, will directly compete with the country's national operator, Telia, and other operators. Roughly half of Sweden's populace logs onto the Internet at least twice a week. The government's plan will ensure that the country's rural and northern areas have access to broadband networks. All operators will have access to the new government-sponsored network. The government's plan is unique to Western Europe, according to analysts. (Financial Times, 30 March 2000)

CLUELESSNESS: THE OTHER DIGITAL DIVIDE
Although there are an estimated 113 million people who use computers in the workplace and an estimated 105 million people who use computers at home, the majority of these individuals cannot be considered computer literate. This phenomenon, known informally as the "Computer Proficiency Digital Divide," is a result of the fact that most employees use a computer primarily for only one or two specialized purposes, such as word processing or e-mailing, and are not motivated to teach themselves more than is immediately required to perform a given task. For instance, as an accountant expertly navigates the accounting software used in the office he or she may appear to be a computer whiz. However, ask that accountant to create a birthday card or design a database, and he or she will most likely be unable to do so. The majority of Internet users also appear to be severely computer illiterate. Research suggests that most people surfing the Web are simply wandering aimlessly because they lack the knowledge necessary to conduct targeted searches to find specific things. (Interactive Week, 27 March 2000)

GIVING THE WEB THE NEW COLLEGE TRY
A recent survey of 10,000 high school students revealed a university's Web site is the third most important source of information for prospective students, subordinate only to a campus visit and a conversation with a current student. College administrators have acknowledged the importance of the Internet in attracting students and building a school's reputation, and are taking steps to ensure their Web sites are as attractive, organized, and informative as possible. Many of the university sites feature virtual campus tours, course catalogs, student testimonials, listings of scheduled academic and extracurricular activities, and e-mail links to professors. Educators believe university Web sites are important and efficient communication tools that will eventually replace traditional brochures and guidebooks. (Washington Post, 28 March 2000)

ICELAND WARMS TO THE NET
A passion for exploration and a desire to become less isolated from the rest of the world has driven Iceland to the forefront of Internet connectivity. While 55 percent of Americans go online from home, work, or school, nearly 70 percent of the population in Iceland does so. Because the rest of the world rarely sees the island in the uppermost reaches of the Atlantic, the populace has been largely isolated from the world. Essentially, the Internet has enabled the country to join the global community. Prime Minister David Oddsson says Iceland must be connected to the world. In 1996, Oddsson was key in pushing legislation that set aside money for computers in classrooms and support for those interested in pursuing the high-tech world. Computers are now in almost every classroom in Iceland, and within the past five years about 200 information-technology companies have been created. In fact, tech entrepreneurs consider Iceland to be the ideal test market. Cost is a fraction of what it would be in the U.S., and one ad will attract the full attention of the nation's 270,000 inhabitants. Also, failure in Iceland will not be a major loss. (USA Today, 27 March 2000)

HACKERS HAD GATES' CREDIT CARD DATA
An 18-year-old Welshman was arrested on Friday for Internet fraud after a lengthy investigation by the FBI, the Welsh police, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, and various Internet security experts. The teen, Raphael Gray, and his accomplice, another unnamed 18-year-old boy, used allegedly broke into nine different e-commerce Web sites and stole credit card information about 26,000 accounts in the U.S., Canada, Thailand, Japan, and Britain. The FBI says that the activities of "Curador"--the screen alias that the two boys used--could cost as much as $3 million in losses. The FBI also says that the boys obtained the credit card information of Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates, and emailed the information, along with the credit card information relating to the other 26,000 accounts, to NBC subsidiary NBCi. The two boys have been questioned by police and released on bail. (Cnet, 26 March 2000)

GEORGIA CITY PUTTING ENTIRE COMMUNITY ONLINE
La Grange, Ga., last week announced an initiative to connect every school, household, store, and government office in the small town to the Internet. The project aims to make La Grange, population of 27,000, the largest completely wired town in the U.S. The municipal government is paying for the high-speed network, which will be built by merging an existing fiber-optic network with coaxial cable. The network will cost about $300,000 and should be in place this fall. Households and businesses will get free installation, including a cable modem, and Internet service will be free for users for at least a year. La Grange also plans to send out technicians to show people how to use the Internet. One of the main reasons for the project is to attract and maintain Fortune 500 companies in the town, Mayor Jeff Lukken says. However, the initiative will also allow teachers to easily keep in touch with parents and allow students to go online at home, says Lukken. (New York Times, 27 March 2000)

NET SPEED AIN'T SEEN NOTHIN' YET
Scientists at Lucent's Bell Labs have set a new record for transmitting data over fiber-optic cable by moving 3.28 terabits per second of data over 300 kilometers of Lucent's TrueWave optical fiber. At this rate, Lucent's fiber in one second could transmit three times the volume of daily Internet traffic for the whole world. Within years, fiber-optic cable could move tens of thousands of terabits per second of data. This tremendous bandwidth growth will be fueled by the speed of lasers used to encode data and the number of wavelengths a single fiber can carry at once, says AT&T Labs President David Nagel. Researchers are now developing terabit lasers, and the number of pulses a single laser produces is doubling every 18 months. In addition, the number of wavelengths a single fiber can carry at one time is doubling every year. Eighty-wavelength systems are already available, and scientists are working on 1,000-wavelength systems. The Bell Labs' record accounts for less than half a percent of the potential capacity of current optical networks, according to Kerry Vahala, professor of applied physics at the California Institute of Technology. (Wired News, 21 March 2000)

A FAST NEW NETWORK
The next-generation Internet2 is serving as a test environment for new applications that will eventually improve the performance of the traditional Internet. Already, more than 170 universities participating in the project are able to collaborate on the high- speed network in real-time and move huge volumes of data in less than a second. Although individuals will never be able to buy Internet2 connections, some of the advances made on Internet2 will be incorporated into the public network over the next five years, says Internet2 director of communications Greg Wood. The Next Generation Internet, which includes several dozen networking projects such as Internet2 that are now in progress, eventually lead to a faster, more intelligent, and more reliable Internet. The Internet2 project began in 1996 as a way for the research community to continue with its plans for the original Internet, which became slow and commercialized in the mid 1990s. Internet2 applications such as video technology and multicasting are already making their way into the mainstream, says Wood. (Courier-Journal Online, 20 March 2000)

TEACHERS ONLINE BUT DISCONNECTED
Teachers across the nation say they often lack the time, formal training, and readily available help required to effectively integrate technology into the classroom and create the kind of interactive learning atmosphere many educators and business executives believe enhances the learning process. Contrary to popular sentiment, simply putting computers in every classroom is not enough to ensure the equipment will be used to supplement classroom instruction. Some teachers spend hours at home every night attempting to create computer-aided lessons, but most abandon or avoid the undertaking altogether because they lack the patience or know how to successfully attempt such projects. Although some schools offer formal computer training and employ a technology specialist to help teachers with efforts to build technology into their instructional methods, the training is usually not extensive enough and the specialists must often be shared between multiple schools. Several different groups have recommended ways for school districts to improve the situation, including placing a full-time specialist in every school, building more planning time into teachers' schedules, offering more comprehensive computer training classes, and enacting more stringent standards for technology competency. (Washington Post, 18 March 2000)

IBM TO JOIN IN LINUX SUPERCOMPUTING EFFORT
IBM and the University of New Mexico will connect 256 two- processor IBM Intel-based servers with high-speed Myrinet cards to create a 512-processor machine capable of 375 billion calculations per second. The computer, called LosLobos, will primarily be used for scientific purposes, but will be adapted by IBM to provide the "cluster" approach to running software for business tasks and e- commerce. LosLobos is the latest of what are known as "Beowulf" computers, which distribute a task over a network of computers running Linux, a capability that IBM would use to make programs more "multithreaded," or divided into independent jobs and distributed across a multitude of computers. "I would expect we will uncover certain things that Linux is missing that we have somewhere in IBM," says IBM's John Patrick. "Our intention is to apply all the technology and resources we can to help it grow as fast as it possibly can. We intend to contribute those technologies into the open source community." (Cnet, 21 March 2000)

OXFORD ENGLISH DICTIONARY ON WEB
Oxford University Press on March 14 introduced an online version of its internationally recognized Oxford English Dictionary. The online OED, available at <www.oed.com>, will be updated quarterly and is available for an annual subscription cost to individuals of $550 and to organizations or businesses of $795. Oxford University Press also has made a second edition of its dictionary available on CD-ROM and is spending $56 million to create a fully revised third edition. Upon its scheduled completion in 2010, the third edition will contain nearly 1.3 million words and phrases, including additional slang and foreign terms, and will be the first full revision of the original 1928 dictionary. (Associated Press, 15 March 2000)

DIGITAL DIVIDE
While more middle-class families are buying computers to provide their children with access to the Internet and to improve their computer skills, a variety of groups are stepping in to prevent poorer families from being left behind. The most recent findings of the Education Department indicate that two-thirds of classrooms are now wired, according to Linda Roberts, senior adviser on technology to the secretary of education. Meanwhile, the most recent data from the National Telecommunications and Information Administration shows that 90 percent of all libraries are now wired. However, many families realize that they need better access to computers as teachers demand more word-processed and Internet-researched papers, particularly when there are only a limited number of community terminals and limited library hours. Although the private sector has been active in putting computers in schools and in community centers, few programs have sought to get more computers in the homes of the have-nots. However, the Clinton administration's "ClickStart" initiative, announced last month, is one such program. The program would use $50 million to help poor families purchase stripped-down computers and Internet access at low prices. (Washington Times, 14 March 2000)

KING'S THE FIRST BIG-NAME E-BOOK
In a move that may bring greater recognition to the electronic publishing industry, Stephen King has released his latest novella exclusively online. "This has brought huge visibility to the whole category," says SoftBook's Tom Morrow. "The announcement has been a lightning rod in the marketplace." Morrow says SoftBook's Web site has doubled in traffic since the release of the book was announced. The book, called "Riding the Bullet," is available for download on PCs, Palm Pilots, and e-book devices at a cost of $2.50, payable by credit card. Barnes & Noble offered the download free on the first day of the release. Although the decision not to release a hard copy of the novella has generated negative responses from some King loyalists, publishers maintain that because the story is so short, King would not ordinarily have published it. Electronic publishing offers authors the opportunity to publish short pieces immediately, rather than waiting to develop full manuscripts. "For smaller pieces it's a great way to introduce works into a dedicated marketplace," says Morrow. (Wired News, 14 March 2000)

N.VA. BILLIONAIRE ENVISIONS CYBER-U
High-tech billionaire Michael Saylor tomorrow will announce his $100 million donation for the development of a cyber university featuring lectures from the world's "geniuses and leaders." The nonprofit university would provide an "Ivy League-quality" education free of charge to anyone in the world, says Saylor, CEO of software firm MicroStrategy. Saylor plans to donate more money to the effort as it progresses, and he says other philanthropists might contribute as well. In the next several months Saylor plans to start building a studio in the Washington area where lectures will be videotaped. Saylor's goal is to build the university into "a cyber Library of Congress." Currently the online university lacks structure, staff, and specific curriculum, and observers are waiting to see whether the university will meet Saylor's large expectations. Endorsements from legislators and educators will be announced in coming weeks, Saylor says. Saylor says he has already spoken with Congress members about providing federal grants for students to buy the hardware and software they would need to take courses at the school. (Washington Post, 15 March 2000)

RESEARCHERS WORK TO ERADICATE BROKEN HYPERLINKS
University of California at Berkeley computer scientists Thomas A. Phelps and Richard Wilensky have developed a way to potentially eliminate broken hyperlinks. Phelps and Wilensky have written a report that explains how to build links that work even if a page has been moved to another location. Up to one in five links over a year old are no longer current, giving users who click on the links a "404 error" message, says AltaVista's Andrei Broder. The problem of broken links can be solved by assigning each Web document a small set of unique words that come into play if the page is missing, Phelps and Wilensky say. "It takes about five words to uniquely identify a page, if you pick the words cleverly and the page is still out there somewhere," Wilensky says. The five terms allow a search engine to find a page if the URL has changed. The method would depend on Web publishers, unlike previous plans that have relied on a third-party administrator, Wilensky says. One problem that might arise with Phelps and Wilensky's plan is that the unique identifying terms could be edited out of a document, Broder says. (Cnet, 7 March 2000)

CHARGE OF THE LIGHT BRIGADE
Networking and telecom equipment companies are racing to move into the market for optical networking technologies on which the next-generation Internet will be based. Cisco Systems wants to offer optics-based technologies that will eliminate traffic congestion and facilitate the convergence of telecom and TV. Such technologies will lead to new kinds of applications, including video-on-demand and software downloads. The expectation of a bandwidth explosion has led to the emergence of many optical networking upstarts, but the inability to navigate the complexities of standards development will cause some of them to fail. DWDM (dense wavelength division multiplexing) is one of several optical networking technologies that substantially increase capacity. Nortel Networks has revealed DWDM developments that will allow traffic to travel 6.4 Tbps over a single line. Additional optical technologies in development will allow traffic to migrate between different routes without the need for light to be converted into electricity. As a result, bottlenecks could be eliminated and costs could be reduced. (Red Herring, Feb 2000)

STUDENTS FLUNK INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY RIGHTS 101
Universities are increasingly facing problems with students violating copyrights, and some experts say students do not understand the issues surrounding intellectual property. Several schools have blocked their network's access to Napster software, which students were using to obtain digital music that is often pirated. In addition, students are selling lecture notes to private companies, while some experts maintain that the copyright to the notes belongs to either the professor or the university. Students also violate copyright laws on software. The Software and Information Industry Association says 47 percent of the software on college students' PCs is copied rather than bought. Professor Paul Goldstein, who teaches copyright law at Stanford, conducted a study in which he asked a group of students whether they would steal a six-pack of a soft drink or photocopy a book, knowing they would not be caught in either case. Most students felt that shoplifting the six-pack was wrong because the grocer would lose money, and said they would not steal the item. However, most students also said they would copy the book, because the material would remain in the book for others to use, Goldstein says. (National Law Journal Online, 3 March 2000)

NAPSTER IS ROCKING THE MUSIC INDUSTRY
Seven-month-old Napster is named for the nickname of one of its founders, Shawn Fanning, who came up with the idea behind the Internet company. Napster's free software allows users to swap MP3 songs--making it a huge hit with music fans and college students. In fact, Napster has seen its user base grow by as much as 25 percent per day. The hit MP3s are available because someone copied a CD onto the Internet for others, a form of pirating. But Napster users can find hit songs through other users. The software checks a user's hard drive for MP3 files, then publishes a list of them on a central database. Users enter the name of a song or artist for which they are searching, and can download a file from what has become the Internet's biggest music library. However, musicians and record companies are trying to shut Napster down--recently, the Recording Industry Association of America sued Napster for copyright violations and $100 million in damages. And universities are blocking students from using Napster because the program is jamming up campus networks. Napster posts a warning that copying and distributing unauthorized MP3 files may violate the law, but it also insists that it is not liable if people use it unlawfully. Meanwhile, Napster is trying to retool its software to prevent banning by colleges and universities. (U.S. News & World Report, 6 March 2000)

A VIRTUAL REVOLUTION IN TEACHING
Educators are struggling to find their place in an increasingly online world. Internet-based education programs, which are attracting growing numbers of supporters, offer convenience and relieve overcrowding in classrooms. Hoping to attract everyone from teenagers getting an early start on their college careers to older workers balancing education with jobs and families, many schools are beginning to offer online courses. One in three U.S. colleges now offer an accredited degree online, more than twice the rate last year. Yet the flurry of activity in online education has raised many issues, such as whether prestigious universities will maintain their elite reputations--and offer the same challenging coursework--as they join the hordes of schools mass-marketing their courses online. Similarly, critics are debating whether an online degree will have the same value as its traditional counterpart. Furthermore, many public universities are partnering with Internet startups to market their courses, raising a debate over the ethical implications of mixing education with business. Universities say that they are still trying to find the right system for offering online education, including prices and enrollment limits. (Los Angeles Times, 3 March 2000)

FIRST 'DIGITAL DIVIDE' BILL PASSES SENATE
The Senate overwhelmingly passed a bill that would award tax credits to companies that donate their used computers to schools. The New Millennium Classrooms Act, passed with a 96-2 vote, is seen as a way to help bridge the digital divide in computer usage among Americans. The lead sponsor of the legislation, Sen. Spencer Abraham (R-Mich.), says companies have been telling Congress that tax incentives would allow them to provide schools with more computers. The bill will give companies a 50 percent "fair-market value" tax credit for computers donated to schools located in "empowerment zones," poorer areas in need of assistance. The bill will give a 30 percent tax credit for computers donated outside of empowerment zones. A report released last summer by the Commerce Department's National Telecommunications and Information Administration found that the disparity in computer ownership between blacks and whites has increased by 6 percent since 1997. (Newsbytes, 2 March 2000)

ONLINE NOTE SERVICES LURE STUDENTS, RILE PROFESSORS
Online notes services have professors contemplating how the Web will affect their classrooms. For Len Kuhi, an astronomy professor at the University of Minnesota who has found out that one of his students was posting notes from his class on StudentU.com, putting notes on the Web is "an invasion, and intrusion." StudentU.com, part of the Uzone site, is among the online note services that are active at the University of Minnesota. StudentU.com pays students about $400 a semester for taking notes. About 10 commercial Web sites offer note services, and most offer free access to notes after students provide personal information in the form of registration. StudentU.com and Versity.com are among the largest online note-taking services. The University of California, Berkeley, warned students and served StudentU.com with a cease-and-desist order last year because it viewed the selling of notes to be a violation of its honor code. However, unlike Berkeley, Minnesota has no honor code, which makes the issue legally fuzzy for theuniversity. Mark Rotenberg, university general counsel, does not think the school will take legal action. (Minneapolis Star Tribune Online, 7 Feb 2000)

VIRTUAL PUBLISHING: FROM ARTHUR C. CLARKE TO PSORIASIS TALES
Fatbrain.com, an online professional and technical bookseller, has opened up an unexpectedly rich niche market in Internet publishing that has attracted everyone from amateur writers seeking exposure, to print publishers promoting books, to established authors such as Arthur C. Clarke who want to secure an audience for works their regular publishers will not handle. Like rivals 1stBooks and iUniverse.com, Fatbrain has found success by charging amateur writers a small fee to post their work and charging readers to download them. Fatbrain has sold 10,000 titles--fiction and nonfiction--at an average price of less than $3.50 since November. The company, with more than $35 million in funding from Microsoft cofounder Paul Allen and the Highland Capital Partners, has been able to publish teasers and short works by Patricia Cornwell and Jonathan Kellerman. Many in the traditional publishing industry decry the lack of editorial input on Fatbrain and maintain that electronic publishing is merely a vanity press, a charge Fatbrain has taken somewhat to heart and recently has increased its staff of editors. (New York Times, 7 Feb 2000)

CLINTON REQUESTS $2.3 BILLION FOR INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY PROGRAMS
President Clinton's proposed 2001 budget earmarks $2.3 billion for IT research and development, a 35 percent increase from last year's budget. The money would be divided among seven agencies, although the National Science Foundation (NSF) would get the lion's share of the funds, $740 million. The NSF says it will apportion $45 million for the Terascale Computing System program, an attempt to build a supercomputer that can do five trillion mathematical problems every second. NSF also wants to spend $33 million for information-security research, and would provide $11.2 million in scholarships for students who major in information security and then work for the federal government after graduation. The federal budget also increases research funding for NASA as well as the Pentagon's Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. A spokesman for NASA says part of the proposed $230 million for the agency would be used to research alternatives to silicon chips, such as genetic material, for use in computers. (Chronicle of Higher Education Online, 8 Feb 2000)

COLLEGES GET NEW TOOL TO TRAIN TOMORROW'S TEACHERS IN TECHNOLOGY
School administrators' new challenge is finding teachers who know how to use new computer equipment in the classroom. The CEO Forum on Education and Technology last month announced a new component of its plan to address this problem. The latest version of the School Technology and Readiness (STaR) Chart, called "Teacher Preparation," aims to provide teacher colleges and universities with a self-rating tool to help programs produce technology-skilled teachers. The forum has challenged teacher colleges to make the data that they gather public within six months. U.S. Education Secretary Richard Riley, who helped announce the StaR Chart, cited a recent study indicating that only about 20 percent of new teachers feel very well prepared to integrate education technology into classroom instruction. The study also found that fewer than half of U.S. teacher-preparation programs require their students to take classes on technology-based instruction, and only Virginia, Idaho, and North Carolina require teachers to be proficient in technology integration. (eSchool News, February 2000)

FORD TO PUT COMPUTERS MADE BY H-P IN HOMES OF ALL ITS EMPLOYEES
Ford today is expected to announce plans to provide all of its workers with Hewlett-Packard computers and Internet connections for their homes, in the latest of a series of online moves by major auto makers. Ford Chairman William Clay Ford Jr. and CEO Jacques Nasser, along with United Auto Workers President Stephen Yokich, are expected to announce the move at the union's headquarters in Detroit. The plan stems from recent contract negotiations between Ford and the UAW, in which Ford agreed to consider devoting some money "to bring computers and Internet service to every UAW Ford family." (Wall Street Journal, 3 Feb 2000)

CLINTON UNVEILS $2 BILLION PROPOSAL FOR ONLINE ACCESS
President Clinton yesterday revealed the details of his multibillion-dollar proposal to ensure that all Americans have equal access to the Internet. Clinton's plan to bridge the digital divide offers $2 billion in tax breaks to tech companies in exchange for their participation in the effort, $150 million in technology-training funding for teachers, $100 million for the creation of 1,000 tech centers in low-income areas, $50 million to help low-income families purchase computers, and $45 million to fund the creation of tech projects in low-income areas. In addition, Clinton's plan asks for $25 million to help the industry provide broadband service to rural and other areas, and $10 million to help train Native Americans for careers in technology. Clinton says he hopes the plan will make Internet access as common as telephone access in America. (Investor's Business Daily, 3 Feb 2000)

STUDY OF ONLINE EDUCATION SEES OPTIMISM, WITH CAUTION
The University of Illinois last week released its Online Pedagogy Report, describing benefits as well as limits to Internet-based education. The report is the result of a one-year study by 16 of the university's professors to determine the ways in which online classes are effective and ineffective. The group received comments from professors who said that some students are more likely to participate online than in person, and that students seem to put more thought into written rather than oral discussions. However, undergraduate students should not take all of their classes online, and schools should not offer undergraduate degrees completely online, with some exceptions, the report says. In addition, professors should limit online class sizes to about 20 students in order to keep classes unified and motivated, the report says. This contradicts the views of some online education advocates who argue that a key benefit of the technology is its ability to reach a large number of students inexpensively. (New York Times Online, 19 Jan 2000)

O.K., SCHOOLS ARE WIRED. NOW WHAT?
With Internet access available in an overwhelming majority of public schools across the country, the debate over computers in schools is moving away from whether there is a need for them in classrooms to how they should be used. Some educators, such as Ted Nellen, who teaches at Murry Bergtraum High School in New York City, has taken a radical approach to the new technology by integrating the use of e-mail messages into classroom discussions. For example, Nellen e-mails questions to his students and he has them respond with their own e-mail messages, which are distributed throughout the class. Although many educators are not willing to go as far as Nellen, many probably would not even be able to because they do not know how to use the latest computer applications. A 1999 study by the Milken Exchange on Educational Technology found most student teachers responding to the survey were not taught how to use the technology. And a recent survey by the National Center for Education Statistics reveals that only 20 percent of teachers are confident in their abilities to handle new applications and integrate the technology into their classrooms. (New York Times--Education Life, 9 Jan 2000)

DEAL MAY MAKE ONLINE MUSIC PAY
The long-anticipated online music revolution may finally be realized thanks to the proposed merger between AOL and Time Warner, according to record industry analysts. With their combined resources, AOL and Time Warner could establish a digital music distribution standard that other companies could follow. Music sales on the Internet reached about $1 million last year, according to Forrester Research, but sales are expected to soar as high as $4 billion by 2003. Time Warner can use AOL's technological expertise to market its large music catalogue on the Internet. AOL and Time Warner also may develop an online video music channel to compete with MTV, says Paul Vidich, a Warner Music Group executive vice president. Analysts are expecting an increased number of deals between record labels and Internet companies. (Washington Post, 12 Jan 2000)

SEEING IS BELIEVING
The National Transparent Optical Network Consortium (NTONC) is helping to develop the U.S. government's Next Generation Internet (NGI). NTONC is now working on the West Coast part of the network, which eventually will be used to test high-speed broadband applications. Already, NTONC has connected Portland, Ore., and Seattle. Nortel Networks is managing the project, and vendors, carriers, corporations, universities, and research groups have all contributed as well. The backbone of the network is a 10 Gbps OC-192 Sonet system that extends from Seattle to San Diego, says Nortel's program manager for NTONC Paul Daspit. However, only about half of the backbone is complete, and NTONC plans to add Layer 3 switching, ATM, packet-over-Sonet switching, and routing to the network's five main nodal points, Daspit says. NTONC's network allows organizations to study next-generation issues involving protocols and devices, Daspit says. Currently, researchers are using the network to try out high-speed applications such as remote medical diagnosis and real-time distance editing of motion pictures. (Telephony 12/13/99)

SOFTWARE EVOLVING INTO A SERVICE RENTED OFF THE NET
The transition of software from traditional packages to an Internet-based service is likely to advance significantly in 2000. Companies are already using the Internet for internal communications as well as customer transactions, and 24-hour Internet connections are becoming common in homes. Software companies in the future will sell applications as a service, just as utility companies sell electricity or phone service. The move to Internet-based computing is happening much more rapidly than the last major shift in computing, which was the move to client/server architectures that occurred about 10 years ago. In the future, the client could become essentially a Web browser, rather than a powerful PC. The shift of computing to the Internet threatens Microsoft's dominance, which was built on the PC computing model. Experts say any ruling in the antitrust trial might be irrelevant because of the rapid changes brought by Internet computing that are diminishing Microsoft's hold on the market. (New York Times 12/20/99)

BERKELEY USES WEB TO DETECT PLAGIARISM
The University of California is using the Internet as well as the threat of lawsuits to fight plagiarism. The U.S.'s largest university system last spring began using the Plagiarism.org Web site to check the validity of papers against an online database compiled from previously written term papers, books, and journals. The site was the idea of a Berkeley doctoral student and was put together with the help of eight other graduate students. The site allows teachers to search the database for exact matches of phrases of at least eight words. The site was tested on a neurobiology class at Berkeley, where students were required to upload their papers to the Web site. After comparing the students' papers to the online database, one in eight papers were found to contain plagiarized material. The site is now being tested at various other colleges. (Washington Times 12/19/99)

COLLEGES ATTACK MARKET IN NOTES
An increasing number of companies are paying students to make class notes available on the Web, causing controversy at universities and colleges. The University of California campuses at Berkeley and Los Angeles have informed some of these companies that students selling class notes are breaking school policies as well as copyright laws. Many professors and school administrators believe that copyright laws apply to class notes, just as they apply to lectures and handouts. In addition, schools argue that note services encourage students to skip classes. In response, note-taking companies say their services aim to help students make up if they miss a day of class, not to serve as a substitute for attending class. Study 24-7 cofounder Craig Green says publishing a student's class notes does not violate copyright laws because the notes are a student's "interpretation" of the professor's lecture. Green's view on copyright laws is upheld by a 1996 ruling in a University of Florida lawsuit, in which the court held that a professor or university owns lectures and handouts, but students own their class notes. (San Jose Mercury News Online 12/11/99)

THE INTERNET REVOLUTION TAKES OFF
The Internet has brought with it a speeding Internet economy, which has grown 68 percent from 1998's first quarter to the same quarter in 1999, according to a University of Texas at Austin study. Some $507 billion flowed into the U.S. economy with that growth, compared to $301 billion in 1998, and it provided employment for about 2.3 million Americans. Cisco Systems provided financial backing for the study. The study surveyed 3,400 businesses and found that a third of them did not exist prior to 1996; now they employ 305,000 people, and most of them are small or medium in size. Cisco's Doug Karmin points out that the study shows people that the Internet is not something of the future--it is now. (Telephony 12/06/99)

AMD TO UNVEIL A NEW MICROPROCESSOR THAT TOPS SPEED OF INTEL'S PENTIUM III
Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) today is expected to release its new 750 MHz Athlon microprocessor, as well as a low-end 533 MHz K6-2 chip. AMD debuted the new chips, as well as technology to allow laptops to process at higher speeds, at the recent Comdex computer trade show. AMD's new 750 MHz chip is the first to be made using the company's 0.18 micron manufacturing process, which enables the use of circuitry 1/500th of the width of a human hair. Both new chips feature faster processing speeds than industry leader Intel's products, the 733 MHz Pentium III and 500 MHz Celeron. AMD had planned to release the new Athlon chip, which will sell for $799 in wholesale quantities, in mid December, but demand for the chip tempted the company to launch it earlier. (Wall Street Journal 11/29/99)

EXECUTIVES IN TOP-DOWN DRIVE FOR WEB LITERACY
Companies are beginning to encourage their top executives to learn Web skills and to form closer ties to customers in order to prepare for an increasingly Internet-based economy. For example, British Airways recently had its directors pair up with young IT workers for two hours to create a personalized Web site and purchase items over the Internet. Still, 73 percent of British executives do not view technology as a strategic driver, according to a recent Microsoft/Cranfield School of Management study. In addition, the report shows that directors devote only 8 percent of their time to customers, despite the warning by e-commerce vendors that the Internet is giving customers more power. Microsoft's Neil Holloway advises companies to "spend
time with customers every day, get a 30-year-old on your board and be a customer of your own company if you want to cannibalize your own business before someone else does." (Financial Times 11/26/99)

TESTS PUTTING PAPER IN PAST
The Graduate Record Examination (GRE), like the GMAT and TOEFL tests before it, is now offered only on computer. The abandonment of the old paper-and-pencil version of the GRE by the Educational Testing Service (ETS), which administers the exam, has drawn mixed reviews from test takers. Amy Cuddy sued ETS because her scores on the computer version were significantly lower than they were on numerous practice tests and one official paper-and-pencil version. She won. Others, such as Randy Goldberg, like the computerized version better, saying it is less stressful than the traditional test. Regardless, ETS says the computer version of the GRE is here to stay and it offers advantages over the old method. For one, the electronic version is adaptive and uses questions suited to the individual test taker. As was the case with the written exam, the electronic GRE grade is determined by both the number of questions answered and their difficulty. (Baltimore Sun 11/29/99)

DREAMING OF A WEB CHRISTMAS
E-commerce companies are investing heavily in their Web sites to prepare for the coming holiday season, which is likely to determine the ultimate success or failure of many online businesses. This holiday season is expected to be many times larger than last year, with Ernst & Young last week predicting online sales in the U.S. at $12 billion to $15 billion between Thanksgiving and the end of the year. More retailers have established themselves online this year, with 73 percent of U.S. retailers having Web sites, compared with 45 percent last year. The number of Internet users continues to grow, exaggerating the impact of the holiday season on e-commerce vendors. While last year's online shoppers were primarily technology-oriented males, this year's average consumer more closely reflects the traditional shopper profile. Currently, over half of online consumers are women. (Financial Times 11/15/99)

U.S. CAR MONOLITHS MUSCLE IN ON THE INTERNET REVOLUTION
Ford and General Motors have entered into enormous e-commerce deals, with Oracle and Commerce One, respectively, that couldhave industry-transforming implications. The automotive giants are set to move their entire supply operations--worth roughly $300 billion in Ford's case, and $500 billion for GM when affiliate Isuzu's operations are included--to online transaction centers in an effort to save money and time. The online procurement of supplies could lead to a situation whereby a customer orders a car with certain options from the local dealer and waits only a few days, not weeks as the ordering process requires now, for the new car to arrive. Money savings are expected to be significant, as both companies expect to save $1 billion in the first 18 months and $4 to $5 billion over the next four or five years. There is concern over whether suppliers, particularly smaller ones, will be able to update their technology sufficiently to participate in the online exchange. (Financial Times 11/08/99)

COMPUTER SCIENTISTS ARE POISED FOR REVOLUTION ON A TINY SCALE
Computer scientists at a range of institutions have recently made advances in molecular electronics that might eventually lead to computing devices that are incredibly small and powerful. In July, Hewlett-Packard researchers announced that they had built electronic logic gates that were one molecule thick. HP's gates
could open or shut, but could not switch positions again. Now, researchers at Yale and Rice Universities have developed molecular-scale switches that can be opened and shut repeatedly, which is necessary to signify the ones and zeroes used in computing. Meanwhile, HP researchers are creating rows of conductive wires that are less than 12 atoms across, which would be necessary to connect the molecular-level switches. Another molecular electronics lab is rumored to be developing a molecular-level device that holds RAM. Molecular memory devices could provide tremendous storage for a cost of only a few pennies. Researchers say molecular-level circuits could be developed using a chemical process that would "self-assemble" large quantities of the circuits at a very low cost. Although scientists admit that molecular-level computers are still far off, the government and corporations have begun to notice molecular electronics. (New York Times 11/01/99)

STATES RANKED ON TECHNOLOGY THEY PROVIDE PUBLIC SCHOOLS
There are now 8 million computers in U.S. public schools, twice as many as in 1993, according to Dun & Bradstreet's Market Data Retrieval subsidiary, but access to high technology and the Internet is still very uneven nationwide. Delaware leads the nation in the number of students per terminal with Internet access at 5.8, followed by Alaska at 6.0, Nebraska at 7.2, South Dakota at 7.3, and North Dakota at 9.1. However, in the District of Columbia there are 31.4 students per Internet-access terminal, worst in the U.S., followed by Alabama at 30.2, Louisiana at 25.0, North Carolina at 24.9, and Mississippi at 20.1. (Christian Science Monitor 11/02/99)

GM WILL CONNECT DRIVERS TO THE WORLD WIDE WEB
General Motors yesterday announced plans to make Internet connections standard on many of its vehicles next year. For three years GM has been offering its Onstar System, which uses a car phone and global-positioning system to provide drivers with emergency help and travel information. Next year Onstar will provide basic Internet features, and GM plans to boost its current 70,000 Onstar subscribers to 1 million by the end of 2000. Onstar features a built-in voice-activated car phone that allows drivers to connect to the Onstar server by pressing a single button. Onstar's computerized voice can then read drivers updated news from the Internet. Users who sign up for the service next year will have their own Web page that they can update at home or work to select the type of news they want to hear later in the car, such as weather, stock, and sports. Other car manufacturers such as BMW and Ford are also considering mass-market efforts to install Internet connections in cars. "Virtually every major auto manufacturer in the world" is considering Internet connections, says Motorola's Joseph Guglielmi. (Wall Street Journal 11/03/99)

IN EUROPE, SURFING A WEB OF RED TAPE
Europe's e-commerce economy is being held back by rules of the traditional economy, including tax laws and regulations. Roughly 16 percent of Europeans are using the Internet, a jump of 10 percent over figures from just two years ago. Still, European Union rules are restricting the growth of auto sales on the Web, as are German laws that severely restrict retailers ability to offer price discounts. So far, European politicians have been good at giving lip service about bringing down the barriers to a European-wide e-commerce economy but have produced little in the way of action. German, French, and Dutch price-fixing schemes are holding up online book sales. The outdated cartel system has the support of Bertelsmann's BOL.com subsidiary. Reverse auctions, such as the model established by Priceline.com, are outlawed in Germany. One side effect of Europe's tangled e-commerce restrictions is that Europeans are doing their online shopping at U.S.-based Web sites. (Wall Street Journal (10/29/99)

INTERNET2 GETS READY TO OPERATE
Internet2 developers conducted their first demonstration of the new high-speed Internet, broadcasting online live audio and video of a gall bladder operation. The Internet2 project gathers academic, government, and corporate partners to build a high-speed version of the Internet. The technology is designed to enable the development of a new breed of advanced educational and research-oriented applications. The demonstration of the operation was conducted by inserting light, camera lenses, and surgical tools inside of the body, creating internal views of the operation. The application required a steady rate of 2 Mbps of network bandwidth. Ensuring high-speed access and quality of service is one of the top priorities of the Internet2 project, says Guy Almes, Internet2's director of engineering. The project consists of more than 120 research universities, as well as companies such as IBM and Qwest Communications. (Belfast Telegraph Online 10/26/99)

IBM TO ANNOUNCE NEW, FLEXIBLE TRANSISTORS
IBM has developed flexible transistors that combine organic and inorganic materials for the first time. The technology can be embedded in curved surfaces or flexible materials, creating the potential for foldable electronic newspapers and computer screens that could unfold from handheld devices. The technology may also be useful in solar panels, making them easier to transport, said IBM researchers. The chips allow for flexibility by "self-assembling," solidifying from a liquid at low temperatures to form layers of organic and inorganic material with the necessary semiconducting capabilities. The combination of organic and inorganic materials may both lower production costs and increase performance, said IBM researchers.
(New York Times 10/29/99)

ONLINE PRESENTATIONS BOOM AS COLLEGES COMPETE FOR THE BRIGHTEST STUDENTS
Virtual campus tours are now available at many college and university Web sites to attract incoming freshmen by offering a glimpse of campus life. Over 800 colleges now provide virtual tours, up from 200 two years ago, indicating that colleges need an impressive Internet presence to draw top students. One site that offers virtual campus tours belongs to Washington State University in Pullman and allows students to navigate interactive maps of campus, look through a photo library of campus scenes, see live shots of campus, and view videos on various topics of interest. However, admissions officers say virtual tours are intended to encourage students to visit campus in person rather than to replace the need for an actual visit. Although virtual tours can spark interest in a school or help refresh the memory of a student that has already visited campus, the many small details of campus life are difficult to capture online. (New York Times 10/13/99)

CLASS NOTES: SLOAN'S ONLINE ORIENTATION
MIT's Sloan School of Management this year required applicants for the incoming class of 2001 to apply electronically, and the results were very successful. In fact, 75 percent of the incoming class independently formed an online chat room where they are able to discuss projects, make friends, and find roommates. Rod Garcia, Sloan's director of admissions, says the school is considering doing away with part of the week-long orientation process as a result of the chat room. One glitch Garcia noted was the crash of the admission office's computer the night before the electronic applications were due, but those affected were accommodated. (Business Week 09/13/99)

CONGRESS SPENDS $1 BILLION ON COMPUTERS
Congress has spent over $1 billion on new computer equipment, networking technology, and Internet access and Web sites during the last five years as part of Newt Gingrich's "CyberCongress" computer initiative begun in 1995. And Congress plans to continue upgrading and replacing its computer and communications infrastructure to obtain high-speed Internet access and a national e-mail network. Already, Congress has replaced 12,000 computers, installed fiber-optic lines, and centralized 11 independent messaging systems into a single fiber-optic basedintranet. The CyberCongress effort is designed to move Congress away from a paper-based system to an electronic one, with fewer information delays and the ability to put that day's Congressional proceedings on the Web right away for public access. Still, the effort appears to have no spending limits. Pete Sepp, vice president for communications for the National Taxpayers Union, says, "When it comes to information technology, Congress is just chasing its own tail." (Washington Times 09/12/99)

STUDY: HIGH COST FOR WINDOWS 2000 TRANSITION
The migration costs of Microsoft's Windows 2000 are so high that companies implementing the operating system would be unlikely to see a return on investment for at least three years, according to a recent Gartner Group study. The report indicates that the migration cost for Windows 2000 could amount to as much as $3,100 per PC. Gartner vice president Michael Gartenberg says by the time a company would see a return on Windows 2000, it would be time to switch to another operating system. Microsoft has advertised Windows 2000 as offering "increased reliability, availability, and scalability with end-to-end management features that reduce operating costs." Microsoft studies indicate companies migrating to Windows 2000 will see benefits immediately. Microsoft concedes that migration can be expensive, but says Windows 2000 can significantly reduce operating costs by streamlining help-desk operations, improving PC manageability, and offering businesses greater control over software applications. (C|Net 09/09/99)

BACK TO SCHOOL ONLINE
As online learning becomes increasingly popular, Canada is working to gain its share of the market. About 17,000 courses are currently available over the Internet, and about 2,700 of these are offered by Canadian schools. International Data estimates that in the U.S. about 2.2 million people will be registered for online courses by 2002. Experts say Canada must move quickly into the online market or it will lose out to other countries. Canada now has three leading universities that specialize in online offerings, including Alberta's Athabasca University, British Columbia's Open University, and Tele-Universite du Quebec. In addition, online learning in Canada will gain from this fall's launch of Canadian Learning Television, which will provide programming connected to Canadian online courses. Like the U.S., Canada is increasingly linking its universities and colleges to corporate interests. This trend alarms teachers who believe that commercial interests will result in a need to reduce costs and increase profits, which in turn will lead to a loss of teaching jobs. (Maclean's 09/06/99)

DISPUTE OVER ONLINE MUSIC IS SETTLED
The recording industry formally announced yesterday that it will drop all litigation associated with Diamond Multimedia Systems' Rio portable MP3 Internet music player. The industry had hoped to block the Rio, but those hopes were dashed in June when a federal appeals court decided that 1992 federal piracy laws do not apply to the music player. The recording industry is now working with makers of MP3 music players to formulate guidelines for Internet music by year's end. (New York Times 08/05/99)

HISTORY: WE'RE LOSING IT
The promise that modern information storage devices--from magnetic tape to compact disks--would make data inviolate and everlasting is not becoming a reality, according to archivists. Not only are storage device materials subject to aging or accidental corruption, some of the technologies used to record data are becoming obsolete, which threatens to make it nearly impossible to retrieve even the data that does survive. The National Media Lab reports that magnetic tape, floppy disks, hard disks, and videotape can only survive for about 10 years and that CD-ROM is more vulnerable to damage and information loss than originally was thought. In order to assuage part of the problem, the National Archives maintains a collection of out-of-use data storage devices dating back to early steel-wire sound recorders that it uses to transfer old recordings and data onto new formats. (Newsweek 07/12/99)

STANDARDS BODY APPROVES HTTP 1.1
An international standards group declared HTTP 1.1 a draft standard this week. The new version resolves some of the design flaws of HTTP 1.0 and improves the speed of the transfer of information, according to its designers at the World Wide Web Consortium and the Internet Engineering Task Force, which approved its draft standard status. HTTP is layered on top of two other basic protocols to govern the Internet. Internet protocol (IP) is located at the bottom and defines the Internet, while transport control protocol (TCP) sits in the middle and establishes a stream for transferring data, and HTTP, at the top, wraps data into packets and determines how they are sent. While HTTP 1.0 slowed the transfer of information by requiring a new stream for each packet of data sent, the new version can send multiple packets along the same stream. Furthermore, HTTP 1.1 will allow content providers to choose more specifically which content can be cached, allowing Internet service providers to keep copies of frequently accessed content closer to the client to lessen the distance required for information to travel over the Internet. (C|Net 07/08/99)

MOST OF WEB IS BEYOND SCOPE OF SEARCH SITES
A new study from the scientific journal Nature reports that the Internet's rapid growth is outpacing the capabilities of most search engines. The most sophisticated search engines list no more than 16 percent of all Web sites on the Internet, according to the report, and the majority of engines cover less than 10 percent each. Northern Light got top ranks in the report with 16 percent coverage, while Lycos, a much more popular and well-known engine, covers just 2.5 percent. Combined, all of the major engines cover just 42 percent of the Web. The remainder of sites are lost to users unless they know the exact address of a Web site. The search engine companies do not dispute the report's findings, and analysts say the situation may give rise to a backwards leap in the distribution of information as more data is lost to easy public view than is made available. (Los Angeles Times 07/08/99)

WORLDWIDE INTERNET USE TO REACH 130.6 MILLION, STUDY SAYS
Worldwide Internet use will grow by 35.2 million people this year, to 130.6 million, according to a report from eMarketer. By 2003, Internet users will reach 350 million, a 267 percent increase from the end of 1998. The report, which incorporates data from hundreds of different sources, also found that worldwide electronic commerce revenues will increase from $98.4 billion in 1999 to $1.2 trillion by 2003, while the U.S. will earn a majority share of every e-commerce dollar. Germany collects the second-highest level of worldwide e-commerce revenues, with $1.5 billion in 1998 and $4.4 billion predicted for 1999, while the United Kingdom follows, with $3.7 billion in 1999, up from $1.49 billion in 1998. (Reuters 07/08/99)

GLOBAL NET EFFORT WILL PROMOTE NEW PROTOCOL
A forum that aims to encourage the adoption of the updated Internet Protocol called Internet Protocol version 6 (IPv6) will be announced next week, according to a source with the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF). IPv6 Forum members are likely to include British Telecom, L.M. Ericsson Telephone, Nokia, Telecom Italia, 3Com, Cisco Systems, Microsoft, Hitachi, and Nippon Telegraph & Telephone. The move to hasten IPv6 adoption signals the industry's need to update the existing Internet Protocol. The need for more IP addresses to accommodate the expanding Internet population is a major factor driving the push toward IPv6. IPv6's 128-bit address system can provide trillions of IP addresses, while IPv4's 32-bit system provides fewer than 4 billion unique addresses. Other advantages of IPv6 include higher levels of security for online data, improved router performance, better support for quality-of service applications, and real-time communications, according to IETF Chairman Fred Baker. (Computerworld Online 6/29/99)

TEXTBOOK PUBLISHER LAYS PLANS FOR AN INTERNET UNIVERSITY
Academic publishing house Harcourt General is joining the growing business of distance education. It plans to expand its online offerings with three ventures: Harcourt University; an Internet high school for students planning to take high-school equivalency exams; and an e-commerce site called Harcourt.com. Through its university, Harcourt may become the first major publishing house to offer accredited college degrees, pending approval from the New England Association of Schools and Colleges. Yet Harcourt faces much opposition, particularly from college professors concerned that Internet-based education denies students the personal interaction central to a traditional learning experience. University bookstores and other traditional distributors may also oppose the venture because it competes with their sales. Last, Harcourt will face strong competition from the companies and universities already providing online courses. Harcourt maintains that its educational offerings will be unique. Its university, which may begin to offer courses by September 2000, will teach a range of subjects in arts and sciences. (Wall Street Journal 07/02/99)

APPROVAL SCHEME FOR WEB TRADE GAINS ACCEPTANCE
Consumer groups in five European countries are attempting to boost consumer confidence online by rolling out common approval systems for Web retailers. Just last week the British Consumers' Association launched a scheme that offers consumers full payment protection for electronic commerce transactions as well as legal support and advice. Traders who have been certified as compliant by the association's lawyers are eligible for the offering and may display the Web trader logo. The U.K.'s trade and industry department and the European Commission gave their wholehearted support to the initiative. On June 25, Consumentenbond launched a corresponding scheme in the Netherlands. The common approval initiative also will be launched by consumer groups in Belgium, Spain, France, Italy, and Portugal over the next several weeks. The schemes provide a means of recourse for consumers who experience trouble when making cross-border online purchases. (Financial Times 06/28/99)

STUDY: ONLINE ANONYMITY CRITICAL
The viability of the Internet as a commercial and communications medium is dependent on allowing consumers to remain anonymous when online, according to a new report from the American Association for the Advancement of Science. The Anonymous Communication Policies for the Internet report strongly urges governments to think twice before imposing regulations that would limit the online anonymity of consumers. The benefits of anonymous communications greatly outweigh the negatives, according to the report. The study was funded by the National Science Foundation. Ari Schwartz of the Center for Democracy and Technology says the report will likely influence policy changes or proposed regulations. (Wired News 06/29/99)

ONLINE REVIEWS RAISE QUESTIONS IN CYBERSPACE
Anonymous public commentary on commercial Web sites such as Amazon.com is a growing problem, say authors and members of the publishing industry. Publishers say that, because of Amazon.com's high profile, reviews on the site can make or break a book. Tim O'Reilly, CEO of book publisher O'Reilly & Associates, says the reviews at Amazon.com are "increasingly significant as a measure of what's important out there." The site uses more than 2.5 million customer reviews, according to a company spokesman. However, the site does not pre-screen anonymous reviews and rarely removes negative reviews. Some publishing industry insiders suggest that some publishers could be using the anonymous reviews to slam competitors' books. (Los Angeles Times 06/29/99)

XEROX IN MANUFACTURING PACT FOR ELECTRONIC PAPER
Xerox will announce this week that it has partnered with 3M to commercially produce electronic paper. Electronic paper, which has until now been a Xerox research project, is a reusable electronic display that is similar to a computer screen but almost as flexible as ordinary paper. It could be used for such innovations as electronic newspapers that add late-breaking news even while being read. The product uses a display technology called "gyricon" created by Xerox almost 10 years ago. Small beads, similar to toner particles, are embedded in a uniform pattern in a flexible binder sheet. The beads rotate to display one side to the viewer when a pattern of electrical voltage is applied to the surface. The image stays until a new pattern is applied. Despite the new manufacturing deal, electronic paper will not be released for at least another year. (Reuters 06/29/99)

DIGITAL MUSIC STANDARD RAISES HOST OF QUESTIONS
The Secure Digital Music Initiative (SDMI), a consortium of music, consumer electronics, and computer companies, June 28 released preliminary standards for digital music distribution. The standards, which should be finalized within a month, provide technical specifications for portable digital players designed to prevent the players from playing pirated music. The players will read digital watermarks embedded in CDs to determine whether a copy can legally be made. The SDMI plans to include digital watermarks in CDs sold in stores within 18 months. Existing CDs could still be played on portable digital players, which will play any music that does not contain the protection software designating that it can only be played by the copyright holder. The standards are controversial, and several issues must still be resolved. The technology that will be used to protect against music piracy is still uncertain. In addition, manufacturers of portable music players may object to the standards, which have been largely determined by record labels. (New York Times 06/30/99)

MUSIC ON THE WEB PROMISES C-NOTES FOR ENTREPRENEURS
MP3, an audio file format with relatively small file size but high quality sound, has supplanted "sex" as the most popular term entered into Internet search engines. Last year marked the first decline in record sales to the 14-to-24 demographic group, according to the Recording Industry Association of America. The association blames the waning sales on Internet music downloads. Fifteen digital music listening devices were featured at the MP3 computer music summit held in San Diego this month. The summit drew a mixture of artists and entrepreneurs looking to grab a piece of the $38 billion recorded music market. Keynote speaker John Perry Barlow, a former lyricist for the Grateful Dead, said the band would allow its fans to download thousands of previously recorded concerts from the Web. Barlow criticized major record labels for trying to control the way music is distributed, prompting a terse exchange with a lawyer who followed him to the platform. (Washington Post--Washington Business 06/28/99)

E-WORLD FUELS U.S. ECONOMY, REPORT SAYS
The information technology industry is driving U.S. economic growth, according to a report by the Commerce Department. Although the industry is small, only comprising 8 percent of the nation's total economic output from 1995 to 1998, it is responsible for more than one-third of U.S. economic growth. It has also steadied the inflation rate, with the rising quality and decreasing prices of technological products lowering the inflation rate by 0.7 percent in both 1996 and 1997. The industry has contributed significantly to the recent investment boom, with investments in computers and communications responsible for more than half of the growth of business equipment spending from 1993 to 1998. Salaries have increased as well, with information technology workers earning 78 percent more than other workers in 1997. The report, "The Emerging Digital Economy II," concludes that by 2006, almost half of U.S. workers will be employed in the information technology industry or in a field that uses technology heavily. (USA Today 06/22/99)

SURVEY FINDS PC USAGE IN HOMES HAS DROPPED
Although PC ownership has increased significantly, usage of home computers has dropped, reports a survey by Arbitron NewMedia. The survey found that PC ownership has grown from 29 percent in 1995 to 54 percent in 1999, yet the percentage of people that say they regularly use their machine has fallen from 90 percent to 53 percent in the same time period. Similarly, the number of PC owners with subscriptions to ISPs has risen four-fold from 1995 to 1999, while only two-thirds of these subscribers actually use the Internet. One factor in these findings is the survey's exclusion of children under the age of 16, who are often the most active users. Another factor is a change in buyers' motives: previously, consumers bought PCs because they were interested in experimenting with the emerging technology, while now, consumers buy computers because the prices are low and they are easy to obtain. (Wall Street Journal 06/21/99)

ECONOMIC IMPACT OF COMPUTERS
The economic impact of computers has proven difficult to measure, but some economists are now beginning to find strong evidence of the crucial role information technology is playing in the economy's health. At a hearing last week on high-technology's importance to the economy by Congress' Joint Economic Committee, those testifying agreed that IT's role was crucial and growing. The Commerce Department says business investment in computer technology has grown from 7.7 percent of the total investment in durable equipment in 1990 to 45.7 percent in 1998. And a Brookings Institute analyst and others say they are now seeing a big increase in output growth as a result of computers, which may explain the big jump in productivity growth from 0.33 percent from 1993 to 1995 to 2.2 percent from 1996 to 1998. (Washington Times 06/21/99)

STUDY: INTERNET USERS CLIMB TO 92M
A new study from Nielsen Media Research and CommerceNet says that the number of American and Canadian Internet users aged 16 and older has increased to 92 million, up from 79 million in last year's study. "Nearly half of North America uses the Internet," says CommerceNet's Mark Resch. "We use it to communicate, to learn, to shop, and to buy. It is as integral a part of our lives as the telephone." The study also found that the number of women buying goods online jumped 80 percent over last year. Books, CDs, and videos were the most popular items among female online buyers, but the number of women buying PCs online jumped 160 percent to 1.3 million. Still, men account for 62 percent of online sales, and make up 54 percent of people online, the study says. (Associated Press 06/18/99)

INTERNET FAST BECOMING A GLOBAL DRAW
The accessing of non-U.S. Internet domains accounts for approximately 44 percent of all traffic on the Web, according to a recent report from WebSideStory's StatMarket. Common wisdom holds that Internet usage in Asia is set to takeoff, and recent launches of Japanese and Chinese electronic commerce sites have been geared to meet that trend. The StatMarket report shows that 23 percent of all non-U.S. traffic can be attributed to Japan, 15.5 percent to Germany, 6.6 percent to the U.K., 5 percent to Canada, and 4 percent to both Australia and Italy; Sweden, France, the Netherlands, and Switzerland fill out the top 10. Although China, with its two million Internet users, was absent from the list, many Web merchants anticipate that the country will be accounted for as its consumer market continues to develop. (E-Commerce Times 06/10/99)

COPYRIGHT OFFICE RELEASES RECOMMENDATIONS FOR ON-LINE DISTANCE EDUCATION
A report from the U.S. Copyright Office makes several recommendations for changes to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act in order to protect educators' ability to use copyrighted materials in distance education. The act was passed last October to prevent piracy as an increasing number of copyrighted materials have become available online, but some distance-learning experts say the act limits use of educational materials in online classrooms. Traditionally, educators have been granted fair-use exemptions from copyright laws, allowing them to use materials such as book excerpts, audio recordings, and motion pictures in the classroom. To maintain that right, the report suggests a number of steps: lawmakers should clarify laws to lessen the distinction between traditional and distance-learning classrooms; teachers should voluntarily incorporate education about copyright laws into their classrooms in order to prevent piracy; students should be given a password to grant them access to copyrighted materials; the materials should be removed from computers and servers when they become unnecessary; and classroom exemptions from copyright laws should be granted only to non-profit institutions, as they have in the past. (Chronicle of Higher Education Online 06/02/99)

PAPER GOES ELECTRIC
Researchers at Xerox and at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have recently developed electronic ink and electronic paper, which some analysts say may make traditional paper obsolete. Electronic paper is easier on the eyes than a computer screen because it has a higher contrast, and it can display millions of different images in the same space. For example, analysts say that a paper newspaper could easily fit onto electronic paper, and information could be changed every morning by deleting yesterday's news and downloading the current news with no loss of print quality. Some former MIT students have already created a company called E Ink, which has developed electronic ink and paper products and is testing the prototypes commercially. The company recently hung an electronic sign in a Boston department store, where the display is controlled by a computer from within the store's main office. These electronic posters can have text changed instantaneously.
(New Scientist 05/15/99)

HITACHI TEAM IN 'SUPERCHIP' BREAKTHROUGH
A team of British and Japanese scientists funded by Hitachi have made a breakthrough in semiconductor memory technology that would allow the creation of a thumbnail-sized chip so powerful that it could replace storage devices such as hard disk drives. The chip opens new possibilities for lightweight devices such as computers, mobile phones, and entertainment systems, and, if successful, could put Hitachi into the spotlight as a leading chipmaker. The chip could represent a turning point for the industry, as it promises to overcome the physics that currently slow down the development of more powerful chips. The breakthrough is one of many as the team of scientists work to develop a single electron chip that can store one thousand billion bits of data. The fastest RAM chips currently can store only up to 246 million bits of data. (Financial Times 05/18/99)

CHEAP PCS LEAD TO BREAKTHROUGH: COMPUTERS NOW IN 50 PERCENT OF HOMES
The number of U.S. homes with personal computers has surpassed the halfway mark. Although this development is not a surprise, it has happened more quickly than many insiders anticipated. While the increasing popularity of the Internet probably is a factor, figures show that the introduction of a wider range of PCs costing less than $1,000 has democratized computer ownership. Half of the low-priced PC customers never previously owned a computer. Households that earned less than $35,000 in yearly income accounted for 56 percent of $1,000-or-less PCs sales. The number of PCs sold at retail cost of $1,000 or less has dramatically risen from 25 percent in the beginning of 1997 to today's 61 percent.
(San Jose Mercury News Online 04/11/99)

IBM, REALNETWORKS JOIN TO DEVELOP NET MUSIC SYSTEM
IBM and RealNetworks will unveil plans Monday to jointly develop a system for securely distributing music over the Internet. The two companies will combine RealNetworks' software for playing audio and video over the Internet and IBM's end-to-end electronic music-management system. Meanwhile, IBM and RealNetworks will battle Microsoft to capture market share before the Secure Digital Music Initiative (SDMI) selects a standard technology early next year. Analysts say both competitors hope to capture enough of the market to become a de facto standard before SDMI is able to meet and announce a standard. (Los Angeles Times 04/12/99)

LAWSUIT ALLEGES INTERNET PIRACY OF COPYRIGHTED MUSIC
The International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI) has initiated criminal proceedings against the Norwegian software company FAST, alleging that FAST's software is used to download copyrighted music illegally posted on the Web after it is found by the Lycos specialist music search engine, MP3 Search. The IFPI is also looking into the possibility of taking legal action against Lycos, and an IFPI executive says: "These unauthorized files include material from virtually every artist you can think of, from the Beatles to Madonna. We can't tolerate a situation where a search engine as sophisticated as this helps people to access hundreds of thousands of pirated files." (Financial Times 25 Mar 99)

ALL INFORMATION ALL THE TIME
Brian Halla, chairman and CEO of National Semiconductor Corp., predicts that the information appliance market will dwarf the PC market: "Man will be surrounded by these information appliances. We always use the analogy of the electric motor. All day long you've been surrounded by electric motors. And you've never once thought about the electric motor, certainly not about who made the electric motor. It's the same with these information appliances. Literally, in the information age -- we're not quite there yet -- but man will want an infinite amount of information instantaneously, any time, anywhere. And it'll be interactive. That means he won't want to carry his box around with him, but he'll always want access to the database... When a consumer gets in his car, he'll look at the dashboard and say, 'E-mail, please.' And that's different from being in the age of the computer. It's not like you're going to sit at your desk and calculate prime numbers. You want to sit at your desk and get access to the Web and your database on the Web. And you want to do the same thing when you're sitting on an airplane. You'll stick your card in the back of the airplane seat in front of you and have access to your database." (Investor's Business Daily 11 Mar 99)

HALF OF U.S. CLASSROOMS ARE NOW WIRED
The Department of Education says that, largely thanks to government subsidies, 51% of classrooms, school computer and science labs, and school libraries had Internet connections in the Fall of 1998 (compared to 27% in 1997 and only 3% in 1994). Smaller and poorer schools are now just as likely to have Internet connections as larger and wealthier schools. (Reuters/San Jose Mercury News 1 Mar 99)

POCKET-SIZE WEB SERVER
A professor of computer science at Stanford University has created a tiny Web server about the size of a business card and only a quarter-inch thick. Vaughan Pratt developed the device "initially just for the impact... Fifty years ago, a computer with less computational power than a modern pocket calculator filled a whole room, and ran programs consisting of only a few hundred instructions. Today we can fit the extensive software needed to drive a World-Wide Web server into a computer the size of a box of matches." Pratt's server uses a 486 processor and runs the Linux operating system. <http://wearables.stanford.edu/> (Chronicle of Higher Education 26 Feb 99)

IBM'S COPPER CHIP SPEEDS THINGS ALONG
IBM's new microprocessor chip teams computational abilities with a dramatically increased high-speed memory -- up to 32 megabytes -- all on the same chip. Most of today's microprocessors must exchange data with separate memory chips, which impedes performance. The application-specific integrated circuit, or ASIC, uses copper circuitry as small as 0.15 micron. "This is a leading-edge technology," says an analyst with Cahners In-Stat Group. "They really are ahead of everyone else in the industry." This system-on-a-chip will "allow them to put together very sophisticated consumer products," he adds, predicting that the copper chip will be used in a new generation of graphics accelerators, set-top boxes, and digital TVs, phones and cameras. (Los Angeles Times 22 Feb 99)

INADEQUATE COMPUTER TRAINING FOR NATION'S TEACHERS
A report released by the CEO Forum, a national group of business leaders, says that although there are more than 6 million computers in the nation's schools, most teachers lack the training to use them effectively. Why? Because one-third of teacher's colleges don't have enough computer equipment, and because schools are spending less than $6 per student on the computer training of teachers, contrasted with more than $88 per student on computers, computer programs and network connections. (AP 22 Feb 99)

SUN, SONY AND PHILLIPS JOIN TO DEVELOP A POST-PC ERA
Sun Microsystems is forming an alliance with consumer electronics giants Sony Corporation and Royal Phillips Electronics NV to integrate Sun's Jini (pronounced gee-nee) programming environment with the HAVI (Home Audio Visual Interoperability) architecture developed by Sony, Phillips and others; the result of this integration will be the creation of a new generation of networked entertainment devices and appliances (TVs, stereos, VCRs, thermostats, etc.) that can communicate with humans and each other over the Internet. New York Times information technology analyst John Markoff says: "Both the Sun Jini and the new Microsoft Universal Plug and Play alliance appear to be attempts to do roughly similar tasks," but the two technologies "represent deep philosophical differences. Microsoft and the personal computer makers are developing standards for a PC-centric vision of the home of the future, in which a personal computer controls everything from energy efficiency to telephone messaging and video delivery. In contrast, the Jini-HAVI alliance is a radical decentralized approach to computing in which control is spread throughout a network with no central point. In the Jini-HAVI vision of the world, the consumer could control all the appliances in a networked home from a personal computer but could also use a television or even some all-in-one infrared remote control device." (New York Times 19 Jan 99)

IRISH GIRL CREATES CODE TO IMPROVE E-MAIL SPEED BY FACTOR OF TEN
Sixteen-year-old Irish schoolgirl Sarah Flannery has devised a new code that will send e-mail ten times faster, and just as securely, as the current data protection code for e-mail. The current code was developed in 1977 by three MIT students. Flannery says she is considering publishing her discovery rather than patenting it, because she does not want people to have to pay for it. She is being deluged with job and scholarship offers. (The Times Of London 13 Jan 99)

LINUX FOR MACS
A company called LinuxPPC is unveiling its version of the Linux operating system that runs on the Macintosh PowerPC platform. The LinuxPPC 5.0 software will be available for downloading free on the Internet, and an expanded CD version, which includes development tools, AppleShare integration and other features, will be sold for $32. A full version bundled with Applix's ApplixWare will be available for $125. Once LinuxPPC is loaded onto a PowerPC machine, it can run either Mac OSX or LinuxPPC, a feature that may add to its popularity. "A lot of people are looking for an alternative operating system," says the director of product management for Applix. (TechWeb 7 Jan 98)

WEB WISDOM
Bran Ferren, VP for creative technology and R&D at Disney Imagineering, says many Web designers miss the point: "Part of the issue is how to convey (a company's corporate culture) to the outside world. Information technology is now being used to do that in the Web pages that many companies are now using, and they're doing it incredibly badly because they're not taking it seriously as a storytellling problem. Often the Web-experience is frustrating, difficult, convoluted. I can't tell you the number of times I've gone to the Web page of a company and spent ages waiting for dumb graphics to download information. How many times have you seen, for instance, a company that's posted on the Web that doesn't bother to give you a phone number? I don't want to talk to the webmaster or webmistress. But I may want to talk to the president of the company or someone in sales or someone in marketing, and I want to do it immediately... People will do pages that say 'under construction.' What is this 'under construction' nonsense? If you want something that's preliminary, fine. Put up something preliminary. But when I'm on the Web, I want to know about the product you make. This doesn't seem like rocket science." (CIO Web Business 1 Dec 98)

INTERNET 2 PROJECT TARGETS INTERNET VIDEO
The Internet 2 Digital Video Network Initiative is developing software to deliver high-quality video over the Internet. Headed up by Joel Mambretti, director of the International Center for Advanced Internet Research at Northwestern University, the digital-video project is part of a larger Internet 2 program called the Internet 2 Middleware Initiative. New video technology could unleash a flood of niche broadcasting on the Web, says Mambretti. "You won't just have a history channel. You could have a Roman-history channel. You could even have an early-Roman-history channel." (Chronicle of Higher Education 6 Nov 98)

MICROSOFT: WE CAN DECIDE NOT TO OFFER A PRODUCT IF WE WANT TO
In the Microsoft antitrust case, the company argued that it had every right to tell Apple last year that if Apple didn't adopt Microsoft's Internet browser as the default choice on all Apple computers, then Microsoft would simply stop producing software to run on Apple machines. A Microsoft attorney asked Apple executive Avadis Tevanian: "Suppose Microsoft simply decides not to offer a product. Do you have a problem with that." Tevanian's answer: "Yes. I have a problem with them doing it when they are using it as a threat to get us to do something we didn't want to do." (New York Times 5 Nov 98)

MICROSOFT EXECS WORRY ABOUT FREE SOFTWARE MOVEMENT
An internal Microsoft memo written by one of that company's software engineers indicates that Microsoft is concerned with developing strategies for competing against free programs that have been gaining popularity with software developers, such as the operating system Linux. The memorandum warns that the usual Microsoft marketing strategy known as FUD (an acronym for fear, uncertainty, and doubt) won't work against developers of free software, who are part of the O.S.S. (open-source software) movement that makes source code readily available to anyone for improvement and testing. The memo <http://www.opensource.org/halloween.html> says: "The ability of the O.S.S. process to collect and harness the collective I.Q. of thousands of individuals across the Internet is simply amazing. More importantly, O.S.S. evangelization scales with the size of the Internet much faster than our own evangelization efforts appear to scale." (New York Times 3 Nov 98)

FASTEST COMPUTER KEEPS SPEEDING BY
The U.S. Department of Energy now has at the Lawrence Livermore Laboratoryin California an IBM-built supercomputer claimed to be the fastest in the world, capable of a peak performance of 3.88 trillion calculations (or teraflops) a second and employing 5,800 processor chips connected in a "massively parallel" architecture. Energy Department officials hope to have a 10-teraflop IBM system running at Livermore by 2000 and a 100-teraflop computer by 2004. (New York Times 28 Oct 98)

WESTERN DIGITAL DEBUTS 13-GIGABYTE DRIVE
Western Digital Corp. is taking the wraps off its newest hard drive -- a magnetoresistive-based drive that holds 13 gigabytes of data. The drives also come equipped with new technology that automatically detects, isolates and repairs possible problem areas on the hard drive. The 13-gigabyte drive, part of Western Digital's Caviar line, is due out in mid-November, priced at about $339. (Los Angeles Times 26 Oct 98)

GROUP STRIVES TO SET E-BOOK STANDARDS
A group of publishers, software makers and electronics manufacturers have pledged to work together to set technical standards for electronic books. Among the supporters of the standards are Microsoft, SoftBook Press, Bertelsmann, HarperCollins Publishers, Penguin Putnam, Simon & Schuster, and Time-Warner Books. The standards are based on HTML and XML coding systems. Publishers are attracted to the e-book, both because of the savings on printing and distribution costs, but also because they could include more illustrations, charts and even raw data -- material that might be excluded now to save on printing costs. "Publishers could present vast quantities of data without loss of trees or muscle strain for our readers," says the director of online publishing for McGraw-Hill. On the other hand, publishers still have reservations regarding the security of the technology and fear that e-books will provide a new channel for copyright violations and intellectual property piracy. (Chronicle of Higher Education 30 Oct 98)

TRANSFORMING THE NETWORK MARKET
Piyush Patel, senior VP of engineering at Cabletron Systems, predicts an almost-exclusively-data network market in just a few years: "If you look at the last 10 years and what's happened in the network market, the Internet is growing at 1,000% per year and voice is growing at about 10% a year. I think six years from now, the voice market will be 2% of the network and the Internet will be 98%." (Investor's Business Daily 15 Oct 98)

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS OPENS COLLECTION OF WEB DATA
As part of its collection, Library of Congress has created 44 tapes that contain in two terabytes (equivalent in total to about 2,000 copies of the Encyclopedia Britannica) the entire contents of the World Wide Web in the months of January and February 1997. Librarian Robert Zich says: "Every week 1 percent of all Web pages are removed or changed. But some of them are there just as they were in 1994 when we first started.'' The tapes can be seen at <http://www.alexa.com> (AP 13 Oct 98)

ANDY GROVE ON THE FUTURE, THE INTERNET, AND THE iMAC
Intel chairman Andy Grove thinks that the extremely rapid growth of the Internet is leading the industry into "the Valley of Death" -- a destructive period in which "the technology will change and the devices will change." He says computers are essentially designed as standalone general-purpose devices to which networking has been added as an afterthought, whereas future computers will have to be designed as networking machines that also do computing. What would they be like? "The iMac embodies a lot of the things I'm talking about. Sometimes what Apple does has an electrifying effect on the rest of us." (Time 5 Oct 98)

CDNOW, N2K TO MERGE
Online music retailers CDnow and N2K are engineering a merger that will consolidate operations under the CDnow moniker, considered to be the more recognizable of the two names. The two companies were pioneers in the online music business, a field that is projected to grow to $1.8 billion in annual sales by 2001, up from $71 million today. N2K specializes in music genres such as classical, jazz and country, whereas CDnow has built its reputation on its MTV relationship and expertise in pop and rock. "It makes sense to basically come up with one million customers overnight," says one new media analyst. If they continue to just compete against one another, he adds, "the big threat out there is, does Amazon.com eat their lunch?" (Wall Street Journal 7 Oct 98)

BANDWIDTH BOOM
Industry analysts see a communications bandwidth boom on the horizon, with AT&T, WorldCom and Mindspring making major enhancements to their networks and with four other companies (Qwest, Level 3, ITXC, and Williams Communications) building "the equivalent of 80 AT&Ts" (according to North River Ventures). Whereas in 1985 it took six fibers in a fiber-optic line to broadcast a football game, one fiber today could handle such 700 such broadcasts. Experts say that these developments could drive the cost of a long-distance phone call to 1 cent a minute within a year, and should soon thereafter make possible full-fledged TV over the Internet. (USA Today 8 Oct 98)

INTEL TO DELIVER DIGITAL MUSIC TO PCs
Intel Corp. is expanding its commitment to online music in a deal inked last week with Launch, a music-oriented CD-ROM subscription service. The new arrangement capitalizes on Intel's digital broadcast technology to expand on Launch's service with satellite-delivered content, including music performances and interviews with popular artists. "You are able to get the type of musical content (you want) from your PC when you want it," says Intel's director of music marketing. Launch and Intel plan to test their service this fall, with a commercial debut slated for early 1999.
(Broadcasting & Cable 8 Jun 98)

EDUCOM PUBLISHES STANDARDS FOR DIGITAL LABELS
Educom has devised a set of digital labels, called metatags, that can be embedded in educational documents, making it easier for search engines to find them on the Web. The metatag specifications are posted on the Instructional Management Systems Web site <http://www.imsproject.org> , and documents containing metatags will provide information about the page's contents, its title and publisher, and when it became available online, among other things. The tags could also include information such as whether a license is required to use a particular software program. The introduction of metatags will enable computer companies to build educational software around a common labeling standard.

CULTURE, NOT CURRENCY, MAKES A HAVE-NOT COUNTRY
Digital guru Don Tapscott says whether a nation remains a technology "have-not" depends on its mindset, not its bank balance: "It's not the poor countries that are blocking progress. It's countries that have a culture that impedes innovation, that cannot find the national will to go forward with technology. What is it about a national culture that enhances curiosity? You need countries to have an environment where companies have the potential to create wealth." (Upside Apr 98)

ISPs SAY INTERNET DEMAND EXCEEDS TECHNOLOGY
Internet service providers and equipment vendors are warning that Internet bandwidth demands are growing much faster than the capacity of Internet backbones. For instance UUNet Technologies reports that Internet traffic used to double every year, but now its doubling every three to six months: "We have to radically alter our backbone very, very regularly," says a UUNet VP. "We and everybody else are going to have a difficult time keeping up with bandwidth demand." ISPs complain that new video applications are straining current technology, and that it's difficult to build up the backbone without knowing in advance which Internet applications are going to prove most popular: "We're being asked to build bandwidth for the future without really knowing what the traffic will be," says the chairman of Netcom On-Line Communications Services. And while all agree that eventually usage-based pricing will prevail, some are suggesting that the industry may also move to a distance-sensitive pricing scheme, similar to that used by long-distance telephone providers. (Information Week 16 Mar 98)

DIGITAL STRONGARM COULD PROVE INTEL'S SECRET WEAPON
As part of the settlement last year between Digital Equipment Corp. and Intel, Intel received licensing rights not only to Digital's well-known Alpha chip, but also to a more obscure family of Digital chips -- the Strongarm. Strongarm, which may turn out to be the hidden gem in the deal, is a high-speed processor that runs at very low power, making it ideal for use in battery-powered portable devices, such as palmtop computers. The chip is "an absolute technical tour de force," says an analyst with consulting firm MicroDesign Resources. "For $29 to $49, you get performance that rivals a Pentium at about one-tenth the price. And it uses one-tenth the electricity... I think it's going to scare a lot of the other chip companies. Now Intel is armed to enter the consumer electronics industry."
(Investor's Business Daily 12 Mar 98)

INTERNET STOCK PRICES, SOMEWHERE OVER THE RAINBOW
The 25 most valuable Internet companies, including America Online, have a combined value of $37 billion, but 20 of the 25 are still operating in the red. Yet Internet stocks continue to scale new heights, and Silicon Valley venture capitalist John Doerr says that the Internet stock boom is the greatest legal creation of wealth in human history, and is still in its early stages. (Financial Times 12 Mar 98)

NEARLY HALF OF U.S. HOMES OWN A PC
Computer Intelligence reports that more than 45% of U.S. homes now own personal computers, up from 40% in 1996. As might be expected, households with the highest incomes and those with children are more likely to be PC owners: 80% of homes with annual incomes of $100,000 or more own PCs, compared with 25% of homes with income under $30,000; and 60% of families with children own PCs, compared with 38% of childless households. (Wall Street Journal 10 Mar 98)

LUCENT TECHNOLOGY SPEEDS DATA OVER LIGHT
New optical technology from Lucent Technologies will give fiber optic networks a boost, moving the equivalent of 90,000 sets of encyclopedias per second, according to company sources. The technology, called dense wavelength division multiplexers (DWDMs) acts like a prism to increase by an order of magnitude the number of light streams capable of carrying data. In addition, DWDMs don't need to go through the extra step of translating the light signal into an electrical signal in order to pass through switches. "This technology will take off really fast, almost as fast as Cabbage Patch dolls," says the director of strategy for Lucent's Optical Networking unit. (Investor's Business Daily 4 Mar 98)

ONLINE COURSES NEED TO LOOK GOOD TO BE GOOD
Researchers at the University of British Columbia have concluded that to be effective, the appearance of an online course is as important as the content. "We paid attention to the feeling and tone of the course, not just
the content and teaching processes," says one of the researchers. "It's like going into the supermarket -- the food might look all right, but the music drives you crazy, so you leave." The study, "Best- and Worst-Dressed Web Courses: Strutting into the 21st Century in Comfort and Style," includes a "Madonna Award for Best-Dressed Course," which was granted to an American history course at the University of Wisconsin at Madison. The researchers evaluated 127 courses using 43 criteria. <http://www.usq.edu.au/dec/decjourn/demain.htm> (Chronicle of Higher Education 27 Feb 98)

INTERNET MORPHING INTO BROADCAST MEDIUM
Media businesses are viewing the Internet as their next great broadcast medium, with companies such as Walt Disney and NBC making plans to offer video and multicasting entertainment services in the next few months. Radio stations have already staked their claims with more than 1,100 stations broadcasting 24 hours a day over the Internet. UUNet, a major Internet service provider, offers a UUCast service, using a separate set of routers from those that handle its mainstream Internet traffic. "Deploying a
parallel, multicast infrastructure is a capital-intensive solution, but it works," says UUNet's VP of marketing. "The Internet becomes really interesting when you can do something you can't do any other way," says UUNet's manager of Web products. "Iceland Radio broadcasts a radio feed for people from Iceland who live in the United States and the Internet is the only way you can get it." (InternetWeek 23 Feb 98)

PROGRAMMABLE COMPUTER CHIPS
Next month, Metalithic Systems Inc. will release a $1500 sound board called Digital Wings that uses field-programmable gate array computer chips that can be personalized, allowing the user to create and edit up to 128 soundtracks. When used in combination with Windows 95, Digital Wings will give users access to audio synthesis and editing tools comparable to those of a professional sound studio. (Business Week 23 Sep 96 p86)

GOVERNMENTAL INCENTIVES TO BUY A COMPUTER
The New Brunswick government is offering an "unusual" sales tax rebate of up to $250 for anyone buying a computer before the end of the year. The program is part of an effort to accelerate the province's information highway. Two major private sector businesses have joined the initiative with additional incentives for computer buyers: a bank will offer special low-interest terms to anyone wanting to finance their computers, and the local phone company will add three months of free Internet access for new buyers. (Toronto Globe & Mail 4 Sep 96 B1)

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Jón Hrólfur Sigurjónsson (4.11.1999)