"In reality, of course, first-mover advantages proved illusory. For most dot-com startups, being first was simply a way to lose more, faster. Many pundits began to argue that being a fast follower was a better strategy than trying to be the leader. Old-economy CEOs, eager to avoid the hard work of strategic innovation, seized upon this diagnosis to justify their instinctive fear of novelty. Suddenly, timidity was heralded as a virtue.

But the fast-follower advocates had it wrong as well. Most Internet companies failed not because they were first movers but because they were dumb movers. What companies should learn from the Internet debacle is not that being first is a dangerous form of hubris but that being dumb seldom succeeds. When it comes to trailblazing, there are at least three ways to be a dumb mover--none of which is unique to Internet startups."

redux [06.01.01]
MIT Technology Review The Myth of "Internet Time"

"However, being first-or even one of the first-doesn't necessarily confer an overwhelming advantage. Just consider the early personal computer pioneers, such as Atari. Where are they now? Even the recent history of the Internet abounds in counterexamples to the thesis of first-mover advantage. Look at the market for Internet search engines. Five years ago, AltaVista achieved a technical breakthrough that propelled it to dominant status on the world's desktops. Today, AltaVista is a distant also-ran."

" The main reason the first-mover advantage is much less potent than is commonly claimed is that Internet time, the dominant theme of the dot-com bubble, is false. Yes, product development cycles have become noticeably shorter. This is true not just in software, but also in such old-economy products as cars. But consumers do not operate on Internet time. Novel technologies do not diffuse notably more rapidly than they did in the days before dot coms strode the earth."

redux [02.17.01]
Internet World Nielsen on Usability: First-Mover Advantage Is Overrated

"Most of the successful Internet companies were not anywhere near the first to market. There probably is some first-mover advantage, but it has been much overrated and used as a poor excuse for foisting poor-quality services on the public."

"I do not advocate delaying release until you have the perfect design, but I do think that history shows that it is not necessary to rush low-quality products to market as the only way to win. Higher quality that takes a little longer can often be a better strategy."

redux [11.07.00]
Fortune Getting Beyond the Innovation Fetish

"Jennifer Brown, the executive vice president of e-business at Fidelity Investments, has a serious problem with innovation in her group. There's too much of it.

"We have more good ideas than we can handle," she confesses. "We have so many good ideas here--truly innovative ideas--that sometimes our people get a little frustrated that we can't act on most of them.""

"At times like this, a cold economic reality kicks in: The more innovations there are, the less valuable any given innovation is likely to be.

"Another thing that makes cashing in on innovation so difficult is that, as any good intellectual property lawyer will complain, the very digital technologies that make it faster, easier, and cheaper for innovators to innovate also make it faster, easier, and cheaper for imitators to imitate. In the e-world, today's innovation is tomorrow's imitation is next month's commodity. The Net is a fabulous medium for "fast followers"--firms such as Microsoft and AOL, which do a fabulous job of spotting an innovation trend and leveraging resources to make it their own."

Inc.Com Best Beats First

"In fact, being first seldom proves to be a sustainable advantage and usually proves to be a liability. VisiCalc, for example, was the first major personal-computer spreadsheet. Where is VisiCalc today? Do you know anyone who uses it? And what of the company that pioneered it? Gone; it doesn't even exist. VisiCalc eventually lost out to Lotus 1-2-3, which itself lost out to Excel. Lotus then went into a tailspin and was saved only by selling out to IBM."

"The pattern of the second (or third or fourth) market entrant's prevailing over the early trailblazers shows up throughout the entire history of technological and economic change.

"We can already see the fundamental laws of management and commerce reasserting themselves. Consider America Online, clearly a new-economy star that got there by being better, not first. As Kara Swisher describes in her book aol.com, AOL lagged far behind CompuServe and Prodigy, and as late as 1992 had only 200,000 members compared with Prodigy's nearly 2 million. AOL beat out the early leaders not because it had the ultimate solution, but precisely because it knew that it didn't. So long as AOL continues the process of nonstop improvement and evolution -- step-by-step improvement in the eyes of the customer -- it will likely remain strong."

"The Digital Millennium Copyright Act makes creating and distributing programs that break copyright protections a criminal offense. Prosecutors believe the indictments are the first ever issued for violating the DMCA.

"ElcomSoft is the exact opposite of those kinds of people," Katalov said, referring to rogue computer hackers. "We have worked for so long and so closely with law enforcement in this country, you can imagine our surprise that the Justice Department thinks we are criminals. We hope ElcomSoft will have the opportunity to make our case in U.S. courts.

"My top concern is for Dmitry, his future and that of his young family," Katalov wrote. "Dmitry has been detained in San Francisco for a month and is unable to return to his home. ElcomSoft did not violate the letter or the intent of the DMCA, which we will prove in due time. Dmitry should not be made some sort of example.""

MIT Technology Review Breaking Microsoft's e-Book Code

""There is no device that can currently distinguish between a fair use and an illegal use of a copyrighted work," explains Allan Adler, vice president for legal and government affairs at the Association of American Publishers.

But unless publishers give readers the leeway to use e-books the same way they use print books, say many critics, few consumers will ultimately buy into the technology. To eBookWeb's Sperberg, getting rid of the "crazy catch-22" in the copyright law and rules like Microsoft's two-persona limit would be a good start. The fact that Microsoft has now joined Adobe as a victim of e-book decryption efforts, he says, should make it clear that "digital rights management doesn't make things harder for the professional pirate or the black-market publisher; it makes things harder for me, the reader."

Until software makers and publishers can figure out how to protect their e-books without treating all readers like thieves, in other words, the summer of beach-blanket e-books may never materialize."

redux [08.13.01]
The New York Times Software Double Bind
[requires 'free' registration]

"Call it the digital copyright equivalent of having your cake but not being able to eat it. The case of Dmitri Sklyarov, a Russian computer programmer arrested last month in Las Vegas, is drawing attention to a double bind in the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, a 1998 law that some legal experts say extends rights to consumers even as it effectively prevents them from exercising those rights.

The law of which Mr. Sklyarov ran afoul makes it illegal to manufacture or distribute a device designed to bypass technology that protects copyright material."

"The law also makes it illegal for individuals to use such a program - even to make a back-up copy of a book or movie or song for themselves, the type of copies traditionally allowed under copyright law. That is where the double bind comes in. Actually making such copies for personal use is not illegal. But it is against the law to break through the copy-protection measure to make the legal copies."

OpenP2P.Com The End of Innovation?

"The Internet under its original design built a platform that induced lots of innovation in applications and content. And it did this by embracing an end-to-end principle, which meant that the network would remain as simple as possible and push all of the intelligence and, therefore, innovation to the end. This is the vision that is now enabled by a peer-to-peer architecture, and it's the environment that has inspired the greatest amount of innovation around the Internet in its history.

Now this architecture threatens existing interests, business interests and Hollywood interests, and in response to that threat there have been a number of changes that have occurred in both the technical and legal environment, aiming to undermine this platform for innovation, aiming to change it into a platform where it's easier for certain interests to exercise control over innovation on that platform. And the changes at the technical level include changes to the architecture, enabling network owners to exercise more control or discrimination over content that flows across their network or for applications that run on the network. And in the legal environment, the change is brought about by changes in copyright law essentially -- also patent law, but let's start with copyright law -- that radically increase the extent to which copyright holders can exercise control over their content."

redux [07.12.01]
News.Com Library "radicals" targeted in latest copyright battles

"Gone are the days when a librarian's worst offense was hushing patrons one too many times."

In this digital age, the custodians of published works are at the center of a global copyright controversy that casts them as villains simply for doing their job: letting people borrow books for free."

redux [07.30.01]
The New York Times Opinion Page Jail Time in the Digital Age
[requires 'free' registration]

"Dmitri Sklyarov is a Russian programmer who, until recently, lived and worked in Moscow. He wrote a program that was legal in Russia, and in most of the world, a program his employer, ElcomSoft, then sold on the Internet. Adobe Corporation bought a copy and complained to the Federal Bureau of Investigation that the program violated American law and that, by the way, Mr. Sklyarov was about to give a lecture in Las Vegas describing the weaknesses in Adobe's electronic book software. Two weeks ago, the F.B.I. arrested Mr. Sklyarov. He still sits in a Las Vegas jail."

Something is going terribly wrong with copyright law in America."

redux [06.08.01]
ZDNet Technology and the corruption of copyright

"Interestingly, with the onslaught of technology and promises of greater opportunity to share and communicate, copyright is now a hindrance to these ideals, serving only the moneyed interests of owners."

"Historically, copyright protections were afforded to promote expressive discourse fundamental to a democratic society. Today, the very notion of intellectual property serves to commoditize expressive ideas, rather than fostering their dissemination. Whereas initially the provision of an economic benefit was secondary to the promotion of original works, modern copyright inverts this ideal in a continuing effort to establish a marketplace for ideas."

redux [01.23.01]
Cryptome What's Wrong With Content Protection

"Converting the whole world to operate without scarcity is a huge task. Such a large economic shift would take decades to spread through the entire world economy, making billions of new winners and new losers. We will be extremely lucky if by 2030 we are prepared to end scarcity without massive social turmoil, including riots, civil unrest, and world war. If we are to find a peaceful path to an era of plenty, we should be starting HERE AND NOW, transforming the industries we have already eliminated scarcity in -- text, audio, and video. Companies that can't adjust should disappear and be replaced by those who can. As these whole industries learn how to exist and thrive without creating artificial scarcity, they will provide models and expertise for other industries, which will need to change when their own inefficient production is replaced by efficient duplication ten or fifteen years from now. Relying on copy-protection now would send us in exactly the wrong direction! Copy protection pretends that the law and some fancy footwork with industrial cartels can maintain our current economic structures, in the face of a hurricane of positive technological change that is picking them up and sending them whirling like so many autumn leaves."

redux [12.17.00]
Bad Subjects Beyond Copyright Consciousness

"Today's received ideas about intellectual property can be distilled into two major threads: technology killed copyright, and copyright is anachronistic in networked culture. Both of these notions are simplistic and ahistorical, and I'll try to argue that they're shortsighted. What we really ought to be talking about is access to works. Access is related to copyright, but is really more fundamental to our freedom to think and experience. I'd like to propose an expanded access scheme and offer an example of small steps that are being taken in that direction."

redux [07.27.00]
Free Software Advocacy Against intellectual property

"The original rationale for copyrights and patents was to foster artistic and practical creative work by giving a short-term monopoly over certain uses of the work. This monopoly was granted to an individual or corporation by government. The government's power to grant a monopoly is corrupting. The biggest owners of intellectual property have sought to expand it well beyond any sensible rationale."

"This chapter outlines the case against intellectual property. I begin by mentioning some of the problems arising from ownership of information. Then I turn to weaknesses in its standard justifications. Next is an overview of problems with the so-called "marketplace of ideas," which has important links with intellectual property. Finally, I outline some alternatives to intellectual property and some possible strategies for moving towards them. "

"If we simply imagine intellectual property being abolished but the rest of the economic system unchanged, then many objections can be made. Challenging intellectual property must involve the development of methods to support creative individuals."

redux [07.13.00]
Business 2.0 Semantics of the New Economy

"The struggle over monetizing the digital economy is now a war, if we follow the rhetoric of its leaders. The battle over music and movies is inspiring Charlton Heston-like images, most recently from Edgar Bronfman, head of Universal Studios (whose last widely distributed quote came years ago when he declared the Internet the "CB radio of the '90s"), in a speech at Real Conference 2000 in May. "

""I am warring against the culture of the Internet, threatening to depopulate Silicon Valley as I move a Roman legion or two of Wall Street lawyers to litigate in Bellevue and San Jose," Bronfman said. "I have moved these lawyers?not to attack the Internet and its culture, but for its benefit and to protect it."

Bronfman justified his fight as defense of his "intellectual property rights," and those of creators everywhere. "You own a home. You own a car. They're yours - they belong to you. Well, your ideas belong to you, too. And "intellectual property" is property, period." In pursuit of pirates, he said, "we must restrict the anonymity behind which people hide."

"The semantics of the issues intrigue me, and came to my attention through Richard Stallman, who suggests that terminology is a foundation for our ideas, and that words such as consumer, protection, piracy, and intellectual property reinforce faulty premises."

" Online writers and editors frequently talk about writing for a global audience, but in practice, most seem to make little effort to address the particular problems such a challenge presents. This victory of pragmatism over theory is understandable: after all, the vast majority of publications, whether on the Web or not, are not truly international in focus, and no new medium is going to change this fact.

Still, there are some guidelines and a few easy tricks that are quick to implement to make a site more globally friendly.

Ipsos-Reid As the Internet moves into post-revolutionary phase America's share of global users declines

""The Internet is now in its post-revolutionary phase," observes Gus Schattenberg, one of the authors of the Ipsos-Reid study. "The World Wide Web is showing signs of breaking away from the dominance of English, American-derived content.

"While the Web still affords a window on the larger world, users are increasingly able to find what they need in their own language on local sites. In each country, local content will play a role in converting the less frequent users into heavy users.""

WebTechniques Speaking in Charsets

" As more and more of the world embraces the Internet, it is inevitable that less and less of the world will embrace English-only sites. In fact, it is estimated that by the end of this year less than half of all Internet users will be native English speakers. American companies are suddenly feeling the pressure to offer Web sites in multiple languages; perhaps you're feeling the pressure as well.

Yet how do you build a multilingual Web site when the only thing you know about foreign languages came from that high-school Spanish class you slept through?"

"A year later, however, the main advantage of electronic books appears to be that they gather no dust. Almost no one is buying. Publishers and online bookstores say only the very few best-selling electronic editions have sold more than a thousand copies, and most sell far fewer. Only a handful have generated enough revenue to cover the few hundred dollars it costs to convert their texts to digital formats."

"Consumers appear confused, Mr. Arland said, because the devices are neither computers nor hand-held organizers, nor do they connect to the Internet. The appliances download electronic books over phone lines directly from a central server.

The device has been the kind of purchase people imagined someone else might enjoy."

redux [08.12.00]
SiliconValley.Com Forget the hype, e-books still hard on the eyes

"The publishing industry has gotten very excited about electronic books lately. Random House, Time Warner and just about every other publishing giant has put out a flurry of announcements outlining grand plans for digital distribution.

Adding to the hype, Microsoft last week released its Microsoft Reader 1.5 software for the PC, and Barnesandnoble.com released 2,000 e-book titles, while promising to release 150 more each week.

Ignore all this stuff. E-book technology is just not ready. It's too hard to read on the screen."

redux [03.09.00]
Alertbox Electronic Books - A Bad Idea

"Even when electronic books gain the same reading speed as print, they will still be a bad idea. Electronic text should not mimic the old medium and its linear ways. Page turning remains a bad interface, even when it can be done more conveniently than by clicking the mouse on a "next page" button. It is an insufficient goal to make computerized text as fast as print: we need to improve on the past, not simply match it.

The basic problem is that the book is too strong a metaphor: it tends to lead designers and writers astray. Electronic text should be based on interaction, hypertext linking, navigation, search, and connections to online services and continuous updates. These new-media capabilities allow for much more powerful user experiences than a linear flow of text. Linear text may have ruled the world since the Egyptians learned to produce arbitrarily long scrolls of papyrus, but it's time to end this tradition. Nobody has time to read long reports any more: information must be dynamic and under direct control of the reader, not the author."

Xerox Research and Technology A Comparison of Reading Paper and On-Line Documents

"We report on a laboratory study that compares reading from paper to reading on-line. Critical differences have to do with the major advantages paper offers in supporting annotation while reading, quick navigation, and flexibility of spatial layout. These, in turn, allow readers to deepen their understanding of the text, extract a sense of its structure, create a plan for writing, cross-refer to other documents, and interleave reading and writing. We discuss the design implications of these findings for the development of better reading technologies."

redux [03.28.00]
Salon The revolution that wasn't

"The news that Stephen King would release a story exclusively in digital form and exclusively via the Web rode the media mountain like an intermediate skier on a black-diamond trail -- tentatively at first, then with a little more confidence and, finally, hurtling out of control, crashing into unexpected territory. The trade press gave its imprimatur, and within a few days the story spread like a virus over Web and wire. Television and radio chugged behind.

For those who've watched digital content come into its own, the frenzy was nothing short of remarkable."

"...[Publisher Simon & Schuster] seems to be proclaiming something more insidious with the publication of "Riding the Bullet": that not only can it drag us kicking and screaming into the next era of digital entertainment but that, as a traditional content provider, it can control how and when that will happen. For the consumer, it seemed to say, cyberspace offers much that is new -- speed, efficiency, lower costs. But it also reminded us that, for the moment, Old Media and traditional entertainment still rule."

"The Armonk, N.Y. technology giant has teamed with Atomica of Burlingame, Calif. to distribute an application called Answer Delivery, which can be used to turn every word on a Web site or in a Windows-based application into a Web link. Users can then click on a word while holding down the "Alt" key and access related data from a corporate database or Atomica's own database of general information."

"Unlike [Microsoft's] Smart Tags, which offers access to predefined Web sites and pieces of data, Atomica's software can be customized to access data from a corporate database or from Atomica's library of information. Called the Topic Warehouse, Atomica's database includes data ranging from profiles of public companies to definitions from the American Heritage Dictionary.

Accessing content objectively is what sets Answer Delivery apart from the controversy behind Smart Tags, according to Peter O'Kelly, an analyst with Boston-based Patricia Seybold Group.

"Atomica is totally user-directed," O'Kelly said. "It's not doing anything on your behalf unless you tell it to.""

A List Apart Much Ado about Smart Tags

"Microsoft seems genuinely astonished by the reaction to smart tags. As group product manager for Microsoft's Windows Client Shawn Sanford told NewsBytes, "Everybody tends to focus on the negative side of this like we're going to expose (users) to a lot of bad content ... I think we're going to expose people to a lot of good content."

They've missed the point entirely. It's not Microsoft's job to expose users to content while they're on our sites. It's our job as authors, designers and developers. We don't want Microsoft 'saving users from underlinked sites' as one representative told Mossberg. If users feel our sites are 'underlinked,' then it is our job to correct it, not Microsoft's."

W3C Annotation Discussion List Backlash vs. Third-Party Annotations from MS Smart Tags

"There has been a lot of backlash against this idea in the media, including from the Wall Street Journal and others. While some of this is merely that people tend to dislike ANYTHING Microsoft does, a lot of the sentiments seem to be actually directed at the concept of third-party metadata annotations and links.

A lot of people -- primarily web designers or web content authors -- seem to be incensed over the idea that a third party could provide information "on a page" (as displayed by a user agent) which was not placed there by the original author. To those people, Annotea is just as evil and wrong as Smart Tags.

Anyone have any thoughts on this, and what effects this type of reaction will have upon the eventual widespread adoption of the Semantic Web?"

MIT Technology Review A Standard for e-Comments

"Got a few choice thoughts about what you see on the Web? Enter Annotea, a new technology that lets you annotate existing Web documents with commentary of your own."

"With Annotea, users can get analyses and commentaries that go beyond a library computer search. It provides a tool for third parties to ascribe value to Web content."

"AN UNDERGROUND MOVEMENT to deploy free wireless access zones in metropolitan areas is taking hold. If it turns out to be successful, wireless network operators may be fighting against a grounds-up movement that could undermine their multibillion-dollar campaign to offer next-generation 3G (third-generation) wireless services in major metro areas.

The movement, called by some the "parasitic grid" and by others more simply the "free metro wireless data network," has already installed itself in New York; San Francisco; Seattle; Aspen, Colo., Portland, Ore., British Columbia; and London."

redux [08.15.01]
The Village Voice High Speed, Freed

""This is why I love New York," says Anthony Townsend, standing in the middle of Washington Square Park, holding his laptop computer like a butler's tray and scanning the adult playground the place becomes on hot summer evenings. Where else, he asks, can you walk around with a computer, surf the Web, and go utterly unnoticed?

As if to prove his invisibility, or perhaps to demonstrate that he belongs, he hoists his machine like some digital prayerbook and begins chanting: "Jesus! Jesus! Thank you!"

No one - not the guy playing the Ramones on acoustic guitar, not the tonguing teenage lovers - notices this modern miracle worker or the cybernet he has cast around them. Along with some 30 other volunteers in a group called NYCwireless, Townsend's on a crusade to set up wireless Internet access zones: small areas, often called free networks, where people can tap into high-speed connections, without cables or phone lines, at no cost"

redux [07.18.01]
ISP Planet Wireless Freenets

"There is a movement afoot in America and elsewhere to build citywide networks of linked 802.11b access points--owned and operated by individuals in loose-knit community groups.

You could go sit in the park with your laptop or handheld PC and access the Net at 1 Mbps via an antenna on the roof of somebody's nearby home.

The cost to you for infrastructure services--the access points and backbone links that provide the wireless access--zero. Civic minded individuals and companies will supposedly shell out the money to put up the antennas and radios."

redux [04.14.01]
The Street Can You Kiss 3G Goodbye -- and Still Make a Buck?

"Permit me to throw a stick of dynamite in the room: Third generation, or 3G , wireless is dead before it was even born. And after billions wasted on 3G, it's going to be replaced by free wireless local area networks, or LANs.

A technology that the cell-phone industry is spending untold billions on, 3G promises to deliver high-speed data precisely where you don't need it -- on your phone. On the other hand, homes, offices, coffee shops, airports and hotels are building out cheap and grass-roots wireless local area networks that deliver even higher-speed access where you do need it -- your personal digital assistant and your laptop."

redux [12.10.00]
Washington Post 'Free' Wireless Networks?

"With its meticulously preserved rows of army barracks and offices, San Francisco's Presidio neighborhood gives off the illusion that it's still the 1800s, when it was a bustling spit-and-shine military base.

The wireless Internet antennas sprouting everywhere suggest something else: Today's civilian community is home to a very unregimented attempt to build a homemade wireless Web that seeks to rival the expensive plans of telecommunication conglomerates and other corporations."

""I use it in bed, at the cafe, in the car, on the grassy fields," says Brewster Kahle, a 40-year-old high-tech entrepreneur who lives and works in the area. "I'm living a wireless existence."

Salon Unchaining the Net

"Matt Westervelt and three of his friends had tinkering on their minds when they started building their own high-speed wireless network in June. Climbing on the roofs of their Seattle homes, building antennas and trying to make them work with Ethernet protocols sounded like fun. Plus, if the whole shebang actually worked, they figured they'd be able to access their home computer files from the local cafe, play Net-based games while sitting on each other's couches and stream video onto their personal data assistants -- all at speeds of up to 11 megabits per second, far faster than what cellphone operators or other wireless providers offered."

"Call it "the free-network movement" -- a bubbled-up-from-the-underground effort to spread high-bandwidth wireless connectivity everywhere."

The Wall Street Journal Tech-Savvy Web Users Are Taking Indoor Wireless Technology Outside

"Julian Priest is walking east down Clink Street away from his office. He's holding his laptop in both hands and surfing the Web as he goes through an enviable five-megabits-per-second link to his desktop computer. A BBC correspondent appears in a small box on the screen, delivering a report on the U.S. elections, just like you would see on television. "It's pretty cool," Mr. Priest says with a laugh."

"The 31-year-old technical director of a Web agency is one of a growing number of tech-adept individuals who are taking inexpensive wireless-networking technology designed for inside homes and offices and putting it to work outdoors. What they've found is that they can get Internet access as far as a kilometer away from their transmitters -- and at more than twice the speed that the much-touted next-generation cellular systems will offer."

"The main issue here, though, is what to do with professional mainstream journalists who can't tell the difference between head-on and angled impact, who turn speculation into truth, who haven't heard of internationally famous people and events, who advocate whiplash protection to save drivers from blunt force injury, who won't yield to compelling evidence, and who are easily outwitted by a bunch of Chevy drivers thinking aloud at an obscure Web site.

Here's an idea: start a new newspaper where these journalists can pool their skills. Call it the Daily Eagle Aircraft Flyer."

The New York Times Online Journalism Comes of Age
[requires 'free' registration]

"Even as dot-coms continue to crash around us, it is easy to lose sight of the Internet's impact. After five years inside the cocoon of an intense start- up, TheStreet.com, I have emerged to find common activities transformed by electronic connection. Not least of these, journalism has swiftly evolved to handle the rapid emergence of a new medium.

Despite the early concerns about quality and despite its sometimes raw nature, the Internet has become a trusted medium for the delivery of news. Not that all news sources on the Internet are to be trusted, of course. As with the print and broadcast media, some are more reputable than others."

redux [05.22.01]
MediaChannel.Org The Myth In Journalism

"The information model of journalism, already in great disrepair, will be dismantled by the marriage of myth and new media. News is losing whatever franchise it had on whatever information is. Information is no longer some scarce resource, a commodity that newspeople can cull and sell. Our society rapidly moved from information explosion to information overload. Information is everywhere. From online events calendars to live, continuous congressional coverage, anyone can give and get information online. If news is only information, news is nothing.

Yet information overload offers opportunities to news: as myth. In the throes of all this information, the need for myth increases. People grapple with the meaning of rapidly changing times. People seek out ways in which they can organize and explain the world. People need stories."

""It's time for us to work on advocating for libraries to change the image," said one of the "21st Century Librarians," Veronda Pitchford, an African-American librarian in Chicago who wears dreadlocks, enjoys in-line skating, practices yoga and listens to eclectic music. "I want little kids to know that this is an option. I want little girls to see me."

Ms. Pitchford, 30, said that even in an age when computers may be leading children to forget the human touch of a librarian, there is no substitute.

"When I say that we're the ultimate search engine," she said, "I'm not joking.""

redux [07.12.01]
News.Com Library "radicals" targeted in latest copyright battles

"Gone are the days when a librarian's worst offense was hushing patrons one too many times."

In this digital age, the custodians of published works are at the center of a global copyright controversy that casts them as villains simply for doing their job: letting people borrow books for free."

redux [01.18.01]
MSNBC Filter THIS!

"The American Library Association has decided to file a lawsuit challenging a new federal law that would require filtering in public schools and libraries."

"The ALA has been vocal and active about free speech issues. Five years ago, it joined a successful challenge to the Communications Decency Act, which would have regulated Web content deemed harmful to minors had the Supreme Court not declared it unconstitutional. And most recently, it filed a friend-of-the-court brief in the Napster case, arguing that shutting down the service could have chilling consequences for any entity that catalogs information for others to use, including libraries and search engines.""

redux [04.09.00]
Dan Gillmor Librarians are heroes of Net censorship fight

"HEROES OF FREEDOM: They are champions of some vital principles, "the unsung heroes of the fight for free expression, intellectual freedom and access to the Internet"

""Librarians help us find things. They help us read. They help us learn. And lately they've been fighting the good fight for their patrons' right to have access to the unfiltered resources of the newest information resource -- the Internet."

redux [06.15.00]
Digital Library Magazine Who Is Going to Mine Digital Library Resources? And How?

To partially answer the questions raised in the title of this paper -- "Who is going to mine digital library resources? And how?" -- today?s end-users are not capable of mining today?s digital libraries, let alone the more comprehensive digital libraries of the foreseeable future."

"Today?s attention to database creation and better search engines fails to address a critical consumer need. Better digital libraries and more powerful search engines will not get quality materials into the hands of the end-user. Developers of digital libraries must work with content experts to develop an array of information products that help users identify and understand the available resources."

redux [11.24.00]
Wired News Ask a Librarian, Not Jeeves

""The public focus has swiveled to the Internet and away from libraries," said Donna Dinberg of the National Library of Canada. While interest in the library help desk is declining, free commercial Web help services such as Ask Jeeves, Webhelp.com and Yahoo are thriving."

With all these commercial online reference services, will librarians become obsolete? Dinberg wants to shift the info-power back to her domain.

"We know that libraries can provide authoritative information, both online and offline," she said. "And we feel that the only thing stopping us is the fact that patrons aren't coming to the library much anymore."

A new project is attempting to make the library an even more vital research source than ever before. The Library of Congress and its partner libraries are launching a pilot project to bring librarians' expertise to the Internet by forming a global reference desk that is available 24 hours, seven days a week."

redux [06.29.00]
First Monday The Work of Information Mediators: A Comparison of Librarians and Intelligent Software Agents

"Intelligent software agents promise to traverse and organize information spaces for us, alert us, remind us, call for a refrigerator repair-person, communicate with each other ... to fundamentally alter how we accomplish many of our daily tasks. These red-hot and revolutionary software critters have a lot to learn from their closest human peers: librarians. As I read and think about how intelligent systems reason, search, classify, and filter information, I'm struck repeatedly with how librarians do exactly these same tasks. Both act as information mediators for the end user: both negotiate information spaces and retrieve information relevant to a particular user or goal. Librarians have been efficiently accomplishing many of the tasks at which the artificial intelligence community is now working to make software agents competent. Therefore, the development of software agents can be informed by a look at how human information agents do their work.

This paper will examine the characteristics of agency, the work of librarians as information mediators, the differences between human and software agents, the possible tasks for software agents in libraries, and speculate on the future of human and software agency."

"There is something a bit disingenuous about this legal assault, which is, after all, mainly about people who lost money speculating in the stock market. Some are suing because they couldn't get shares in initial public offerings at the offering price; others are suing because they got the shares and lost money on them. Federal regulators and politicians are suddenly shocked - shocked! - to discover that conflicts of interest are rampant on Wall Street.

Still, with $3.3 trillion up in smoke since the Nasdaq hit its peak in March 2000, it's hardly surprising that the people and institutions that helped engineer the epic Internet bubble are being called to account. And for the technology finance industry - which was transformed by the Nasdaq's boom from a relatively obscure West Coast offshoot of Wall Street into a major source of growth and profits for top-tier firms such as Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, J.P. Morgan Chase, Credit Suisse First Boston and Merrill Lynch - it's going to be a painful reckoning indeed."

redux [07.19.01]
The New York Times Opinion Page Cleaning Up Stock Market Research
[requires 'free' registration]

"Investment banks, whose analysts were touting stocks with overwhelming zeal even as the stock market started crashing, are now trying to rehabilitate their images. Last week Merrill Lynch , by some measures the world's biggest investment bank, declared that except under strictly monitored circumstances, its analysts would be prohibited from holding shares in the companies they research. The goal is to remove any incentive for them to boost a stock to ensure their own enrichment. But this novel policy will not entirely prevent conflicts of interest from arising. It should be regarded as a springboard to a more complete revamping of the relationship between publicly available research and investment banking."

redux [06.27.01]
News.Com Will Wall Street analysts turn apologetic?

"Wall Street analysts are known for a lot of things--being too optimistic, failing to warn investors about the dot-com crash, and being the latest target for Congress--but they usually aren't known for their apologies."

"Morgan Stanley analyst Jeffrey Camp cut Exodus to a "neutral" from "strong buy" and gave his clients an apology.

"There are few moments in my career that rival this one in its difficulty and unpleasantness. Elbert Hubbard said, 'The line between failure and success is so fine, we scarcely know when we pass it.' But passed it I have, and it is time to own up," Camp said."

redux [06.11.01]
News.Com Did so many get it so wrong?

"As pundits rush to explain what happened on Wall Street, fingers point to the thought leaders. We read exposés on Mary Meeker and Frank Quattrone--once dubbed geniuses--and wonder how they could have sponsored initial public offerings for the nth online grocer or women's portal. Or we ask ourselves how stock analysts could ride a stock all the way down from $150 to $3, all the while touting it as a "strong buy.""

"These are people who were supposed to be making smart decisions. How did they get it so wrong? The answer is, they didn't."

redux [05.31.01]
The Standard The 'X' in What's Next

"With great fanfare, Forrester Research announced last week that the Web is dead. With so many failing dot-coms, that news wouldn't be so hard to believe - if it weren't that Forrester has spent the past few years touting it as an engine of unrelenting hypergrowth."

But Forrester may be doing more than just trying to unhitch itself from the crazy train of the Web. In some ways, the veteran research firm's latest move shows the analyst business at its finest: giving the industry a rosy spot on the horizon to focus on, a clever name for that spot and a forecast with lots of zeroes in it to throw investors and entrepreneurs into a frenzy."

redux [03.12.01]
Salon Do you kick Yahoo?

"Remember, Yahoo still expects revenues of $800 million this year, and has been consistently profitable while other dot-com flashes-in-the-pan burned through their venture capital with nothing to show for it but some outré TV commercials. Yahoo isn't perfect, but it has maintained its lead as the top Web portal by consistently putting its users first, and its sites remain models of simplicity and service.

All of which raises the obvious question: Plainly, the market's pundits were way off a year ago, at the pinnacle of Net stock mania; so why should we put any more stock in them now? Their downside is looking just as insane as their upside."

redux [03.13.01]
The Washington Post Who Blew the Dot-Com Bubble?

"Henry Blodget, Wall Street's loudest cheerleader for Internet stocks, made it to the front page of the New York Times last week. And thereby hangs a tale about the media and the bubble."

"For it was the mainstream media -- which now take such delight in scolding those involved in the dot-com mania -- that helped push the idea that anyone could get rich by playing the market.

"The media invented Blodget," says Christopher Byron, a columnist for Bloomberg News and MSNBC. "In a bull market everyone loves to cheer, and Henry Blodget was everyone's first phone call. . . . Where were they when companies were trading for 150 times revenues? They were repeating the words of these guys. It's disgusting."

"But while engineers fine-tune Bluetooth and major manufacturers declare its rise is imminent, troubles have emerged. First, with the souring of the economy, corporations - usually the first to adopt new technologies - have cut budgets. Second, sales of handhelds and cellular phones, expected to be market drivers for Bluetooth, have plunged. And last, another wireless technology, originally expected to complement Bluetooth, came in and stole much of its thunder.

The other wireless networking standard, called IEEE 802.11b, or Wi-Fi, has picked up strong momentum among information technology managers and technology savvy consumers."

"Supporters of both technologies say there is room for both in the marketplace. But if Wi-Fi succeeds in adopting Bluetooth's most attractive attributes - low power consumption and cost - it could be used in a wide range of small devices, which could then use the Internet to communicate with each other. This script, some observers predict, could render Bluetooth a well-planned, heavily financed failure.

News.Com Bye-bye, Bluetooth

"Even without competition from 802.11, Bluetooth would have major challenges. That's because the very concept of a cable replacement like Bluetooth is flawed. In a world where every device is connected to a single network (read: Internet), there is no need to connect individual devices on an ad hoc basis.

Consider this--a walkie-talkie is a device that supports communication directly between two nodes. A cell phone is a device that supports communication between "any" two nodes because they are all connected to a common network and they all have unique addresses. Bluetooth is akin to a walkie-talkie, whereas 802.11 connected to the Internet is more analogous to the cell phone model. Obviously the cell phone has a much higher value proposition than the walkie-talkie."

EE Times Bluetooth a no-show as 802.11b clicks at Rawcon

"Support for Bluetooth may be waning, as 802.11b wireless networks rise and fixed wireless and ultrawideband stub their toes on technical hurdles. That's the implication from the program lineup at this week's Rawcon conference in Boston, where a paucity of Bluetooth papers adds fuel to analyst speculation that the highly touted wireless networking technology may not be able to compete with the faster 802.11b on one end and simpler, low-power alternatives on the other.

Represented by a mere two papers, Bluetooth is notable mostly by its absence from the IEEE's Rawcon technical conference, which focuses on all things wireless."

Tornado Insider Bluetooth Shows Its Teeth

"The technology sector has become accustomed to seeing hyperbole reduced to disappointment. The short-range radio technology Bluetooth has been no exception; backed by major players including Ericsson, Nokia, Intel, IBM, and Toshiba, it is now behind schedule and industry expectations."

"According to analyst house Ovum, early expectations of Bluetooth were characterized by "technological myopia," which overestimated its short-term impact. "The immediate future of Bluetooth involves some much needed, although unexciting, connectivity applications," says Jeremy Green, principal consultant with Ovum. "The more futuristic applications, which are the source of much of the hype surrounding Bluetooth, will have to wait until there is a user base to support them.""

SiliconValley.Com Palm puts faith in Bluetooth over rival wireless technology

""In terms of power, Bluetooth will consume less power, but it also has less range," said Craig Mathias, principal analyst with Farpoint Group in Ashland, Mass. "There's nothing to keep someone from turning the range down in an 802.11 radio and getting much the same effect."

Mathias said he thinks if the backers of 802.11b decided to position it as the one solution for wireless connectivity, Bluetooth would wilt. "I've been a Bluetooth skeptic for quite some time now," he said. "It's becoming increasingly evident that 802.11b has advantages in range and cost. I think 802.11 can do anything that Bluetooth can do."

""Taiwan has one of the world's largest computer software and hardware manufacturing bases," said D.K. Matai, managing director of the British-based Mi2. "The computer software programmers in Taiwan are world class. Our view is that getting involved in any kind of conflict with Taiwan, given the kind of intellectual capacity the country has, may prove detrimental."

The Chinese government has been quite open about its future strategic military objective. In paper appearing in the spring issue of China Military Science journal, a member of the Chinese Committee of Science, Technology and Industry of the System Engineering Institute, wrote: "We are in the midst of a new technology in which electronic information technology is the central technology. The technology provides unprecedented applications for the development of new weaponry...Military battles during the 21st century will unfold around the use of information for military and political goals.""

redux [03.01.01]
SecurityFocus Report: U.S. cyber-defense on track

"Three years after declaring cyber-defense a national security priority, the United States government has won the trust of a once-skeptical tech industry, fortified security on military networks, and "created effective public-private partnerships" to combat computer attacks, according to a report released last week by the Critical Information Assurance Office (CIAO)."

"Despite the government's efforts, "Potential adversaries-be they nation-states, cyber-terrorist groups, criminal organizations, or disgruntled insiders-can easily develop effective cyber-attack capabilities" to disrupt the United States' economic power and national security, the report claims."

redux [09.06.00]
Rand Corporation In Athena's Camp: Preparing for Conflict in the Information Age

"The thesis of this think piece is that the information revolution will cause shifts both in how societies may come into conflict, and how their armed forces may wage war. We offer a distinction between what we call "netwar" -- societal-level ideational conflicts waged in part through internetted modes of communication -- and "cyberwar" at the military level. These terms are admittedly novel, and better ones may yet be devised. But for now they illuminate a useful distinction and identify the breadth of ways in which the information revolution may alter the nature of conflict short of war, as well as the context and the conduct of warfare.

While both netwar and cyberwar revolve around information and communications matters, at a deeper level they are forms of war about "knowledge" -- about who knows what, when, where, and why, and about how secure a society or military is regarding its knowledge of itself and its adversaries."

redux [01.04.01]
MSNBC Bytes without the blood in Mideast

"Scenes of street violence are played out day after day in Palestinian towns across Gaza and the West Bank. But another modern-day arena for battle between the Palestinians and the Israelis is growing ever more heated, so much so that the Internet war waged by computer-savvy political activists is being dubbed an "e-Jihad.""

redux [03.22.00]
CNN Kashmir conflict continues to escalate -- online

"A group of Pakistani hackers has used the conflict in Kashmir as a reason to deface almost 600 Web sites in India and take control of several Indian government and private computer systems, according to the group."

"Unlike the majority of Web vandals, the MOS members say they secretly take control of a server, then deface the site only when they "have no more use" for the data or the server itself.

"The servers we control range from harmless mail and Web services to 'heavy duty' government servers," says the MOS representative. "The data is only being categorically archived for later use if deemed necessary."

The Christian Science Monitor Wars of the future... today

"Take the NATO bombing of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade several weeks ago. Rage spread across China and hackers from the mainland attacked the Web sites of the US Departments of Energy and the Interior, and the National Park Service. A subsequent attack brought down the White House Web site for three days. The attacks generated headlines across the country.

What the news media didn't report was that the US government had known for a long time that someone had been in its computer systems - they just didn't know who. Then, in a fit of anger, the Chinese hackers caused some real damage - and gave away the hidden "location" of several "backdoors" they had built in US government networks."

"The US Government Accounting Office estimates 120 groups or countries have or are developing information-warfare systems. According to a report issued by the Center for Strategic and International Studies, 23 nations have cyber-targeted the US."

"On the face of it, the Internet appears to make geography obsolete. But the reality is rather more complicated. If you want a high-speed digital-subscriber line (DSL) connection, for example, geographical proximity to a telephone exchange is vital, because DSL only works over relatively short distances. Similarly, go to retrieve a large software update from an online file library, and you will probably be presented with a choice of countries from which to download it; choosing a nearby country will usually result in a faster transfer. And while running an e-business from a mountain-top sounds great, it is impractical without a fast connection or a reliable source of electricity. The supposedly seamless Internet is, in other words, constrained by the realities of geography. According to Martin Dodge of University College London, who is an expert on Internet geography, "the idea that the Internet liberates you from geography is a myth".

redux [04.02.01]
eCompany Does Geography Matter Online?

""All politics is local," the late Massachusetts congressman Tip O'Neill once quipped. It turns out that the old saw is also true of e-commerce.

Cruise by a Nordstrom in Seattle on a misty spring day and the beige mannequins might be wearing yellow raincoats and duck boots. Three thousand miles away in Boca Raton, the Nordstrom window might showcase dolls dressed in floral-pattern bikinis and sunglasses. But at Nordstrom.com you get the same sell whether you log on from soggy Seattle or sunny Boca.

That's because, in our rush to get online, we've forgotten that some of the rules of real-world selling still apply on the Web. Geography matters -- online and off."

The New York Times E-Commerce: Borders Returning to the Internet
[requires 'free' registration]

"But for auction sites, gambling sites and others, geography is becoming increasingly important, because they must treat people from different locations differently, as is the case with the French government's barring the sale of Nazi-related items to its citizens.

Online advertising companies, too, are increasingly desperate to use geographic targeting tools to reinforce their clients' faith in Internet marketing. In short, for a growing number of companies, this will be the year when the borderless Internet economy becomes an outmoded concept.

"Our customers told us over the past six months or so that it was an absolute requirement that we have geo-targeting," said Mark Joseph, chief technology officer for MediaPlex, an advertising company based in San Francisco."

Marketing Computers IPMapper Literally Targets Online Users

"Caimis Geo's IPMapper service permits web sites the ability to accurately identify IP addresses to geographic locations.

Online marketers can know exactly where their customers are, says Daniel Westrick, director of Caimis Geo. "Right now people have crude web logging applications," he adds, which only identify obvious foreign codes on domain names.

IPMapper permits sites to discern a users location accurate to the city. "It gives you a pretty good idea of where your traffic is coming from," he says."

redux [10.07.00]
Internet Geography Project: Putting place back in cyberspace Overview

"This project arose in response to one of the great myths or the Internet age, i.e. the coming of cyberspace heralds the end physical constraints which will eventually lead to the death of cities. In fact, the exact opposite is occurring. The largest concentrations of Internet users and producers are located in urban areas and many of the most innovative firms in the Internet space are housed in downtowns. There should be nothing surprising about this since, cities have always been the primary source of innovation and will continue to play this role in the future.

Although the power of the Internet does opens up new possibilities for long-range collaboration and even new spaces of interaction within cyberspace it also exhibits much of the traditional unevenness that has characterized urban and economic development throughout history. The fact that information can be easily and widely distributed is often mistaken for an indication that the production of this information is also diffused. In fact, there is a much more complicated dynamic involving the connection of specific places to global networks resulting in a system of production that is both place-rooted and networked at the same time.

"Bell Labs invented the transistor, the laser, and Unix, but it never invented a way for its parent, Ma Bell, to cash in. Xerox (XRX ) PARC presented the world with laser printers, Ethernet computer networking, and the point-and-click interface; the world capitalized on the technology.

Lucent (LU), Hewlett-Packard (HP), and Eastman Kodak (EK ) also employ brilliant scientists who win patents for big discoveries. But like the other storied R&D operations in corporate America, they have succeeded far better at R than at D. "We invented everything and developed nothing," laments Xerox PARC's founder, Jack Goldman.

Then there's IBM Research."

redux [05.30.01]
The New York Times Bell Labs: A Bit Abstract and Always Curious
[requires 'free' registration]

"Bell Labs and its parent company, Lucent Technologies, are still giants of innovation despite recent management fumbles and business failures, many industry experts say.

"Their technology strength is four or five times" that of Alcatel , the French electronics giant that was trying to acquire Lucent, said Francis Narin, president of CHI Research of Haddon Heights, N.J., which tracks companies' inventiveness by analyzing their United States patent portfolios and by tallying how often other companies rely on them."

"But for decades, critics have called Lucent and its predecessors slow in turning the bright ideas into market-leading products that produce a steady flow of revenue."

redux [03.28.00]
Business 2.0 Paradise Lost?

"Transmitting a pulse of light faster than the speed of light is the kind of mind-bending, prestige-building discovery that the NEC Research Institute (NECI) was built to produce. So when Lijun Wang actually performed that astonishing feat last year, no one seemed to care that commercial application of his research is probably many years in the future. The kudos from the scientific community and terrific publicity were justification enough. But with parent company NEC struggling to boost profits, that kind of payoff may no longer be sufficient."

redux [03.21.00]
The Standard Blinded With Science

"Bell Labs is the last vestige of AT&T's bygone phone monopoly. In the serene, uncompetitive days before its 1984 breakup, there was plenty of room for the company to engage in endless research, file countless patents and create enough technology to overwhelm any adversaries. It hired the best scientists and engineers, and let them loose to pursue their dreams. The results included many of the seminal advances in contemporary technology, from the computer chip to the communications satellite.

But that approach was already looking like a luxury a decade ago, and over the past few years rivals that leave the science to others have managed to outmaneuver Bell Labs. "Traditional research has its place, but it's much smaller now," says Marek Wernik, director of disruptive market and business solutions at Nortel."

BusinessWeek Research Labs Get Real. It's About Time

"Xerox' woes might seem to provide evidence that there's something wrong with the U.S. system of corporate R&D. That's not the case. Innovation is rife in the U.S., from industrial labs to contract research outfits and Silicon Valley startups. Says Martin N. Baily, chairman of the President's Council of Economic Advisers: "We've been able to generate a fertile breeding ground because we have a range of funding mechanisms."

Start with the corporate labs, which once resembled ivory towers. Today, their PhDs are getting their hands dirty on real-world customer problems. But ''Xerox has been relatively slow'' to latch on to that trend, says Massachusetts Institute of Technology economist Rebecca M. Henderson, an expert on corporate R&D.

Companies that get more pragmatic about research aren't dropping the "R" to do more "D.""

CompuKiss Engines of Tomorrow

"Change is inevitable, especially in the corporate world. Robert Buderi believes the important factor is how a company initiates and handles that change. His book, Engines of Tomorrow, focuses on the research division of corporations and claims that a company's central research operation is the bedrock of corporate change. Buderi strongly believes that the research process provides the technologies that spur growth.

If you are interested in the history of corporate research as well as corporate development, you will find this book fascinating."

""This is why I love New York," says Anthony Townsend, standing in the middle of Washington Square Park, holding his laptop computer like a butler's tray and scanning the adult playground the place becomes on hot summer evenings. Where else, he asks, can you walk around with a computer, surf the Web, and go utterly unnoticed?

As if to prove his invisibility, or perhaps to demonstrate that he belongs, he hoists his machine like some digital prayerbook and begins chanting: "Jesus! Jesus! Thank you!"

No one - not the guy playing the Ramones on acoustic guitar, not the tonguing teenage lovers - notices this modern miracle worker or the cybernet he has cast around them. Along with some 30 other volunteers in a group called NYCwireless, Townsend's on a crusade to set up wireless Internet access zones: small areas, often called free networks, where people can tap into high-speed connections, without cables or phone lines, at no cost"

redux [07.18.01]
ISP Planet Wireless Freenets

"There is a movement afoot in America and elsewhere to build citywide networks of linked 802.11b access points--owned and operated by individuals in loose-knit community groups.

You could go sit in the park with your laptop or handheld PC and access the Net at 1 Mbps via an antenna on the roof of somebody's nearby home.

The cost to you for infrastructure services--the access points and backbone links that provide the wireless access--zero. Civic minded individuals and companies will supposedly shell out the money to put up the antennas and radios."

redux [04.14.01]
The Street Can You Kiss 3G Goodbye -- and Still Make a Buck?

"Permit me to throw a stick of dynamite in the room: Third generation, or 3G , wireless is dead before it was even born. And after billions wasted on 3G, it's going to be replaced by free wireless local area networks, or LANs.

A technology that the cell-phone industry is spending untold billions on, 3G promises to deliver high-speed data precisely where you don't need it -- on your phone. On the other hand, homes, offices, coffee shops, airports and hotels are building out cheap and grass-roots wireless local area networks that deliver even higher-speed access where you do need it -- your personal digital assistant and your laptop."

redux [12.10.00]
Washington Post 'Free' Wireless Networks?

"With its meticulously preserved rows of army barracks and offices, San Francisco's Presidio neighborhood gives off the illusion that it's still the 1800s, when it was a bustling spit-and-shine military base.

The wireless Internet antennas sprouting everywhere suggest something else: Today's civilian community is home to a very unregimented attempt to build a homemade wireless Web that seeks to rival the expensive plans of telecommunication conglomerates and other corporations."

""I use it in bed, at the cafe, in the car, on the grassy fields," says Brewster Kahle, a 40-year-old high-tech entrepreneur who lives and works in the area. "I'm living a wireless existence."