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May 1999 Archive

infosift

In the beginning, there was only one weblog. We are all coattail riders. [5.4.99]

It'll never happen, but I support it anyway: Death to .com! [5.4.99]

Why bother tracking down individual copyright violators when you can just threaten to sue the whole Web industry? [5.4.99]


While Network Solutions continues to claim they "own" the InterNIC domain registry database, the DOJ's antitrust squad decides the matter's worth looking into. [5.5.99]


Sex and drugs rank high among topics for online research among college students. Imagine that! [5.6.99]

Early word is that the new Star Wars movie rocks. No wait, I mean it sucks. [5.6.99]


If I had the patience to collect anything, it would probably be kaleidoscopes. [5.7.99]


San Francisco, Austin and Seattle top YIL's annual rankings of the "most wired" cities in America. NY has slipped out of the top 10, while LA's still struggling to crack the top 20. [5.8.99]

After more than 75 years in service, Old Sparky's finally been put out to pasture. [5.8.99]


After you discover your Star Wars personality type, you may want to find out which Star Wars character corresponds to your astrological sign. [5.9.99]


Forbes has a pretty interesting article on the impending onslaught of wireless handheld devices and services. But what's the deal with that weird pull quote in the middle of the second page? [5.10.99]

The Black Hole was a bad Disney movie. The Pink Hole sounds like a bad, definitely-not-Disney movie. [5.10.99]

Salon examines the unlikely cult of Fast Company. [5.10.99]

The sidewalk ends. [5.10.99]


As if regular text-based spam weren't eating enough bandwidth, Real now offers a new scheme for embedding streaming audio and video in e-mail. Whose side are you guys on, anyway? [5.11.99]

How would you like a personal desktop search engine that watches over your shoulder while you surf, indexing every page you visit? Thanks to Apple's Sherlock technology and this nifty little widget, you can have it. [5.11.99]

The rise of computer technology is driving typewriter devotees underground. [5.11.99]

The Net consolidation craze even extends to the smart-smut crowd, as Nerve offers to buy out its spiritual predecessor, Bianca. [5.11.99]


Today's the day when people all over the Net come together for a single common purpose -- to crash Moviefone's servers. [5.12.99]

Scientists have discovered a "sadness center" in the brain that, when electrically stimulated, produces instant suicidal depression. [5.12.99]

After Morgan Stanley blocked its employees from accessing a job-hunting Web site, the site's operators retaliated by erecting a billboard in front of the company's headquarters. [5.12.99]


All this time I thought the exclamation point was the punctuation mark du jour; turns out it's the long-neglected semicolon. [5.13.99]

Classified advertising was always supposed to be the killer app for newspapers moving online -- but now it looks like they may find their lunch already eaten by auction sites. [5.13.99]

Paging Michael Crichton: Australian scientists may use cloning technology to resurrect a marsupial wolf species extinct since the '30s. [5.13.99]

Senate to ISPs: You are now legally obligated to buy this software. [5.13.99]


It's even more fun than a taser: A proposed non-lethal weapon would use an ultraviolet laser to conduct an immobilizing electrical current. [5.14.99]

Beware the PowerPoint zombies. [5.14.99]

Digital certificates have been used for a while now to certify applet code from "trusted sources"; a new startup wants to apply the same technology to certify trusted content. [5.14.99]


I always thought The Mining Company was a pretty weak name for an Internet directory service. It looks like the company's executives finally agree with me, but I'm not sure their new name is any better. [5.18.99]

As if the browser war matters anymore: Looks like IE's really taking the lead away from Netscape on corporate desktops. Too bad that won't show up in the Media Metrix numbers, since they don't count users surfing from work. [5.18.99]

Mmm... snax. [5.18.99]

William Shatner speaks out about Star Trek fans in his new book, Get a Life! [5.18.99]


I had promised myself I wouldn't bore you with any more Star Wars links, but this one was too good to pass up: Salon examines relationships destroyed by Star Wars obsession. [5.19.99]

Dreamline is a gorgeous online gallery of the surreal, haunting artwork of noted comic-book guy Dave McKean. [5.19.99]

Bob's PowerPoint presentation was going swimmingly until his computer melted. [5.19.99]


Looks like the new wireless Palm VII is getting a pretty lukewarm reception. [5.20.99]

If you're like me, you're always having trouble keeping your scaffle straight from your scag, or your Frisco Special from your friskie powder. Now you can avoid that next drug culture faux pas with this comprehensive A to Z of street terms. [5.20.99]

Forget about stock options. Memory manufacturer Kingston gives out incentives in the form of cold, hard cash -- to the tune of $20,000 per employee. [5.20.99]


I was pretty enamored of Intel's Web Pad handheld prototype until I realized it's not a portable computer at all, just a portable I/O device for an old-fashioned desktop. Where's my Knowledge Navigator? [5.21.99]

Glow-in-the-dark mice promise to make life much easier for cats around the world. (Thanks Rebecca.) [5.21.99]

Is it just me, or does the notion of trademarking the phrase "open source" seem like a contradiction in terms? [5.21.99]

The record industry's attempt to jack up royalty fees for Internet music services (from the standard 6 percent to over 40 percent) has been shot down in court. [5.21.99]

Borders needed to ramp up its affiliate program; About.com needed an e-commerce angle. Chocolate, meet peanut butter. [5.21.99]

E eclipses X as the premier letter of the moment. [5.21.99]

What is the hidden connection between that hot new Sim game and the abstract theory of pattern languages? [5.21.99]


The old school battles the new as Atari founder Nolan Bushnell takes on Quake champ Dennis Fong in a cutthroat Pong faceoff. [5.24.99]

As the Big Three online bookstores declare an all-out price war, independent booksellers are getting caught in the crossfire. [5.24.99]

You know you've got a problem with pollution when even the microorganisms have cancer. [5.24.99]


The Interactive Paper Project was developed to allow scholars to dynamically annotate academic papers during the peer-review process. But this approach could just as easily be applied to any kind of electronic document, potentially turning the whole Web into a Slashdot-style discussion group. [5.25.99]

Is Sony's upcoming Playstation 2 too powerful for its own good? [5.25.99]


AOL's disgruntled former volunteers are taking the company to court to try to get paid for what they promised to do for free. [5.26.99]

Looks like that stolen print of The Phantom Menace came to an untimely end. [5.26.99]

Like tears in rain: Dolly the clone sheep may have an artificially short lifespan due to irregularities in her DNA. [5.26.99]

At some point during her well-documented travels, Melissa apparently met the boy virus of her dreams -- and now their mutant spawn threatens to wreak havoc just like Mommy did. [5.26.99]


A childhood favorite finds new life as a way for grown-ups to experience architecture from afar. [5.27.99]

A group of British students tried a more systematic approach to domain-name speculation by hitting InterNIC with the alphabetical equivalent of a war dialer. [5.27.99]


Just because you don't live in Australia doesn't mean they're not watching your every move. [5.28.99]

Even the Mac faithful may be surprised at the latest test results showing Mac OS X Server running circles around Solaris and NT. [5.28.99]

I don't want a flying car unless it makes a sound like George Jetson's. [5.28.99]

Why would Microsoft want to publish a dictionary? Orwell knew the answer long ago. [5.28.99]


Last night I saw Conceiving Ada, a weird little movie about Lady Ada Lovelace, the first computer programmer. Part historical biography and part futuristic science fiction, the film toys with a lot of interesting ideas but takes an impressionistic approach that sometimes verges on incomprehensibility. [5.29.99]


"R2-D2, put down that cigarette!" (There's something quaintly charming about this. If it were made today, Artoo would be holding a crack pipe and Threepio would bean him with an iron skillet.) [5.31.99]

Moxie is Canada's answer to ChickClick. (Or is that estronet?) [5.31.99]