Category Archives: Uncategorized

up until recently deapleap had been following the stealth marketing manifesto perfected by transmeta. however, now they are in ‘beta’ and attempt to describe what deapleap is:

“We’re here to introduce you to something incredibly cool – an online assistant that can help you out with whatever you’re doing, wherever you go on the Web. Deepleap is a free, Web-based application that provides simple, immediate access to content and services related

“When you’re looking at a word or a phrase on a Web page, or a Web site in general, you can use Deepleap to get additional relevant information, or save or email that information, without visiting dozens of other sites or launching multiple applications. Plus, you can do all sorts of fun and useful things like save items to a universal Wishlist, keep track of your Bookmarks from anywhere on the Web, do price comparisons, search any site… and of course there’s more – why would we stop there?”

it’s still a little vague – conjurs up visions of a souped-up alexa. deapleap CEO, Lane Becker, gives a little more detail on userland:

“…the reality, right now, is that we’ve built Deepleap as a *platform* for doing this sort of contextual relating between sites, and what we’re demonstrating with the beta is more the general concept. So if you pop up Deepleap on an Amazon.com product page, for example, it will give you a set of tools based around buying a product — comparison shopping, reading reviews, etc. Or if you highlight the name of a movie, and activate it, that will bring up a series of movie-related options, like getting movie times for your neighborhood, or checking for the soundtrack at Reel.com. Find a selection of text that you like — an interesting quote, maybe? Highlight it, save it to the Deepleap web site. Useful tools, when you need them.”

sounds interesting enough to bang it around. here’s the privacy policy.

Interested in those new-fangled computer thingies? Can’t afford MIT tuition? Well, Dan Gillmor writes about ArsDigita University which operates via Philip Greenspun’s ArsDigita Foundation. The University plans to, “…provide nothing less than MIT- or Stanford-level computer-science instruction.” According to Greenspun, “”We decided we could afford to spend a million a year” on the tuition-free school…” Apply here. The program features a no money back guarantee.

two points make a trend? following on the heals of yesterday’s post on the demise of the .coms, forrester has also observed the future sky and reported that it’s falling:

“Most Internet retailers will go out of business by the end of next year because of funding problems and competitive pressures, said Forrester Research, a well-respected electronic-commerce research company.”

“”I think there are probably not going to be more than three leaders in each online-retail category,” said Forrester senior analyst Joe Sawyer.”

of course – these predictions are being made by the same companies that hyped the run-up in the first place. hi. ho.

i scooped slashdot with my prior post today regarding cell phone spamming; however, there is an interesting thread that addresses whether or not simple text messaging spamming is illegal under these restrictions on telephone solicitation (see part iii):

“a.No person may
1.Initiate any telephone call (other than a call made for emergency purposes or made with the prior express consent of the called party) using an automatic telephone dialing system or an artificial or prerecorded voice,
i.To any emergency telephone line, including any 911 line and any emergency line of a hospital, medical physician or service office, health care facility, poison control center, or fire protection or law enforcement agency;
ii.To the telephone line of any guest room or patient room of a hospital, health care facility, elderly home, or similar establishment; or
iii.To any telephone number assigned to a paging service, cellular telephone service, specialized mobile radio service, or other radio common carrier service, or any service for which the called party is charged for the call; ”

i’m not a lawyer and i don’t play one on tv, but i will bet that a few distinguished members of the bar will take up both sides of the cause and drag this out to the bitter end while the early adopters of the wireless web are paying to get spammed.

the gartner group predicts that the .com sky is falling:

“”We believe that the vast majority — perhaps 95
to 98 percent — of all dot-com companies will fail
over the next 24 months,” said Michael Fleisher,
president and CEO of GartnerGroup, in his
keynote speech kicking off the market research
company’s annual Spring Symposium/ITxpo on
Monday at the San Diego convention center.

Conversely, “virtually no traditional companies
will be able to survive without a significant
Internet component as part of its business
model,” Fleisher said. ”

while this smells of headline-grabbing sensationalism, if they are even 50 percent right, then there are going to be a boatload of people caught holding the money bag and wondering where their retirement money went.

people have been talking alot about the impending wireless web and m.commerce. however, all is not rose-colored since it appears that some users aren’t so happy with the wireless application protocol or WAP:

“According to a new survey by Tamkang University’s Department of Mass Communications, the three million Taiwanese people who use WAP (Wireless Application Protocol) facilities on their cellular phones are dissatisfied with the cost, speed and range of services available.

Some 86.5 percent of respondents said that WAP services were too slow, while 85.5 percent
complained about the price.”

to make matters worse, a .com genious (ahem) has figured out how to spam cell phones:

“Mike Malarkey, a business-development manager for the District-based educational Web developer Blackboard Inc., was in the middle of a meeting last Thursday when his Nokia cell
phone chirped, sounding a bit like the low-battery warning.

When he checked it after the meeting, he saw that the battery was fine, but he’d just received a text message on the phone’s screen–an advertisement for a Web site selling
cell-phone accessories. ”

hah – evidence that it’s impossible to have an original thought! jacob levy posted a critique of gnutella that draws some of the same conclusions as my previous post:

“…most importantly, it sucks bandwidth. I can easily see how network admins will want to outlaw this beast, if they can. For my evening of experimentation, I downloaded a total of 65 MBytes of files, while my total incoming consumed bandwidth was 365 MBytes, and my upstream bandwidth was 755 MBytes. Yes, really — all that, in a measly five hours.”