Saturday, January 17, 2004

A List Apart: The Perfect 404. Welcome to the world of the Error 404 page. You've requested a page -- either by typing a URL directly into the address bar or clicking on an out-of-date link and you've found yourself in the middle of cyberspace nowhere. [Tomalak's Realm] 8:11:17 PM    comment []

Approaching critical mass for free Wi-Fi?. Scholitzky's, a deli fast food franchise, has expanded their free Wi-Fi program, and is in direct (overlapping) competition with the for-pay Starbucks network in Austin, Texas. This indicates a continuation of their previous efforts, as blogged earlier here, as they've widened Wi-Fi access from 2 to 40 stores and now require Wi-Fi installation in new franchises. To date their business model, offering free Wi-Fi to attract more customers, appears to be working. If this continues, we may see other service businesses adopting similar strategies to gain competitive advantage; free Wi-Fi could conceivably become a commonplace and expected service across the board. Looking at the bottom line, it all depends on whether the mobile Wi-Fi customer base will be sufficiently large to reward Wi-Fi as a competitive advantage for such businesses as large. It's not clear from the piece how much of the impact is customer retention versus attracting new clientele. [Smart Mobs] 3:21:06 PM    comment []

Microsoft to comply with DOJ mandate on IE default feature. Microsoft Corp. will change its "Shop for Music Online" feature in Windows XP so that it does not automatically invoke the Internet Explorer (IE) Web browser, thus complying with a U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) mandate. The DOJ had complained that this use of IE violated the company's antitrust consent decree with the government. [InfoWorld: Top News] 7:28:27 AM    comment []

I've got the Ph.D. application panic blues. If I don't get into the program of my choice, what will become of life on earth? [Salon.com] 7:25:09 AM    comment []

MIT Spam Conference looks beyond filters. CAMBRIDGE, MASS. - Leading researchers into spam e-mail, along with some of its victims, gathered on the campus of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Friday for the second annual MIT Spam Conference. [InfoWorld: Top News] 7:20:21 AM    comment []

First practical, concrete consequence of Bush's ''new space initiative'': NASA Cancels Trip to Supply Hubble, Sealing Early Doom. The space agency's administrator, Sean O'Keefe, told the managers of the Hubble Space Telescope that there would be no more shuttle visits to maintain it. By Dennis Overbye. [New York Times: Science] 7:17:28 AM    comment []

Plaintiffs Say Microsoft Still Behaves Badly. Two reports filed with a federal court suggest that the government's antitrust agreement with Microsoft has not changed the company's anticompetitive behavior. By John Markoff. [New York Times: Technology] Also, this news flash: there was illicit gambling going on at Rick's in Casablanca. Both of these were not only predictable but widely predicted at the time. Nice to see the story, anyway. 7:12:38 AM    comment []

MoveOn knocked out of Super Bowl. The upstart political organization learns that there's no right to free speech on network TV -- even for those who can pay for it. [Salon.com] 7:07:50 AM    comment []

Readership Analysis. I finally ran some numbers to analyze the impact of Lawrence Lessig's mention of me last month in his post "Seth blog". The number work out, for unique IP addresses referers: ... [Infothought] 7:04:21 AM    comment []

Researcher for whom exploit code means freedom of speech, interview by Sam Varghese, Sydney Morning Herald. 3:43:58 AM    comment []