Sillyness on other people's websites The Potatoland Shredder

http://www.potatoland.org/shredder/

A summary of XML technologies and theory. A good source to get a little more of the theory under your belt.

http://special.northernlight.com/xml/#intro

The Webmonkey.com Article: Search Engine Optimization

Before I landed my cushy job as a magazine editor, I spent three years under the hood at Hotbot as an engineer and manager. Between days reading our log files and nights shmoozing with other search engineers, I learned more than I'd ever wanted to know about where search traffic comes from, and where it goes to. I even wrote an article about it for Webmonkey.

Dozens of companies had pitched their optimization services to her, but Christina, a former MSN manager as smart about database schema as she is about business plans, balked. Why pay someone to set up bogus domains, build huge farms of gateway pages, and cram hundreds of keywords like "britney spears" into Artloop's HTML? The very idea ran contrary to the information architecture and site layout her staff had worked so hard to make as clean and clear as possible for their visitors. Moreover, as a Web user herself, she'd learned to recognize these traffic-grabbing methods and had become wary of sites using tricks to get her to click. Why should she assume her own customers would behave differently?

And she was right: Trying to fool search engine users with keywords and trick tags makes sense only if your goal is to flash a lot of ad banners, return traffic be damned. That used to be the business model for an entire industry. But most sites in business today hope to convert first-time visitors into loyal customers by building long-term relationships. Sure, searchers need to find your site, but the results on Hotbot's Top Ten lists show that the only results people stick with are the ones that don't try to scam them. Trap doors, redirects, keyword spam, and multiple domains that host the same pages are more likely to make people reach for the back button (a move the Direct Hit technology behind Top Ten results can detect), not their credit cards.


So, rather than waste money on consultants, Christina and I decided to create our own search optimization spec. Using data gleaned from representatives of leading search engines, insider data, and old-fashioned trial and error, we came up with our own strategy for getting traffic from search engines and portals without having to fake people out. In the process, we encountered so many dubious "experts" with something for sale that we decided to raise the bar on them and publish our notes for free.

Imagine our surprise when Google's engineers read this article (when it first published in early June, 2001) and invited us to visit their offices to dig even deeper into the workings of their gigapage Web index. Of course we took them up on the offer, and we've updated this article with our notes from those meetings. We've also included answers to the best questions from the hundreds of emails we've received over the past couple months.

But before you can benefit from the sweat off of our brows, you have to get your priorities straight.

To get the rest of this article, visit:
http://www.hotwired.com/webmonkey/01/23/index1a_page2.html

Gilligan's Island Theme song sung to Staiway to Heaven tune: You need audio on your computer to hear this one.

http://www2s.biglobe.ne.jp/~pennywiz/Funhouse/gilliganE.html

Beginning Perl Notes and Tutorials
http://www.lies.com/begperl/

Annotated references to Dennis Miller's Commentary on Monday Night Football

The Dennis Miller Bio Site: http://espn.go.com/abcsports/mnf/sights_sounds/dmiller/

Encyclopedia Britanica's commentary on Dennis Miller's weird references: http://espn.go.com/abcsports/mnf/s/annotatedmiller/010827.html

Dreamweaver 3 instructions for a pop-up menu system

http://dreamweaver.cybermeister.net/complexmenu/

Toys for you Geeky friends

http://www.plantraco.com/main.html

Commentary on how to view the Tech Slowdown - To Gauge the Internet, Listen to the Steam Engine

By WILLIAM J. HOLSTEIN http://www.nytimes.com/2001/08/26/business/26SVAL.html?ex=999964640&ei=1&en=5ca90d1d55089687

John Steele Gordon did not pass judgment on the Internet in his book, "The Business of America." In a recent interview, however, he did have some things to say about dot-com mania and its historical precedents.

Q. How does the Internet compare with earlier waves of technology?

A. Some technologies are more fundamental than others. A better can opener doesn't change the world. But when a technology does something revolutionary, it changes the whole economic universe. A perfect case is the steam engine. Somebody born in 1720 would be utterly mystified by the world of 1820, which by then included railroads. The Internet is one of those very fundamental technologies; the microchip is another.

Q. Do you think that we understand the full dimensions of what the Internet will do to us?

A. Heavens, no. It will be a hundred years before it fully plays out, just like the steam engine. We are now at the point with the Internet that they were with the railroad in 1850. It's just beginning.

Q. Was the rush to invest in dot-coms typical of earlier investment manias?

A. Very typical. Whenever a new technology is brought before the public in a very impressive way, there is always a rush to invest in it, to get on the bandwagon. If you get on the right bandwagon, you get enormously rich. Of course, guessing the right horse is very difficult, especially when there are 10,000 horses in the race. After Lindbergh flew to Paris in 1927, for example, there was a bubble in aviation stocks. People rushed in without even knowing what they were buying. It turned out that one, Seaboard Airlines, was a poetically named railroad. It wasn't an airline at all.

Q. What are we learning from today's technology bust?

A. Old Andrew Carnegie's formula still applies. Whether you're making steel or software, you invest to be the low-cost producer. Keep the money. Don't pay it out in dividends. So that when times are bad, you can swoop in and scoop up the pieces. Bill Gates, for example, is sitting on billions of dollars and marketable securities. We haven't seen the last of him.

Q. You don't seem to think governments can be effective in breaking a monopoly.

A. Antitrust enforcement is a hippopotamus. It lumbers in after the game is over.

Q. So your view is that monopolies eventually self-destruct?

A. Right. Nobody works any harder than they have to. Lions don't make their living chasing fast wildebeests. They do it by chasing slow ones. It's the same in the marketplace. If you have the right widget and everyone comes to you, you get lazy.

Q. Do you subscribe to the view that we have a "new economy" that behaves differently than it did a few years ago?

A. Yes, we have a very different economy than we did 25 years ago. We haven't abrogated the laws of economics or the business cycle, but it is different. It's much more globalized than it was. And we learn about information so much faster.

Q. Will economic momentum resume?

A. This period reminds me of the English economy in the early part of the 19th century when their economy was exploding. The term "millionaire" was coined in 1827 by Benjamin Disraeli. Everybody was making so much money. The whole society was shifting. Power was shifting from the aristocracy, which owned the land, to the middle class, which owned the factories.

Q. So are you optimistic?

A. Over the long term, I'm very much a bull. Over the short term, it's a bumpy flight. 

Virus Information from Symatec

This is about the best place to see if there is a new virus or worm threat.

http://sarc.com/

Exploration of World Wide Web Tilts From Eclectic to Mundane

By AMY HARMON http://www.nytimes.com/2001/08/26/technology/26ONLI.html?ex=999837639&ei=1&en=fe2b32805f7cece2

Bob Dudley remembers a time not long ago when his favorite activity on a sunny weekend afternoon was surfing the World Wide Web. Drifting from one hyperlink to another, he read online diaries, became a fishing rights expert, played search engines against each other to see which came up with the best results.

It was, he says, "like going to a bookstore and browsing through all the stacks — oh, look at this, oh, look at that! I couldn't pull myself away."

This summer, Mr. Dudley, a 53- year-old advertising consultant, has been spending weekends outside. The Web still comes in handy for checking stock quotes and news, and he used it recently to look up prices on kayaks.

But in a shift mirrored by many other Internet users, Mr. Dudley's interest in the Web is no longer driven by eclectic imagination. When he logs on now, he knows what he wants and he mostly knows where to get it.

The new utilitarian view of the Web marks a disappointment for cultural critics who had seen the medium as fundamentally more democratic than traditional media outlets like radio, television and newspapers, because the barriers to entry were so low. The Web was supposed to subvert corporate domination of culture by giving a global soapbox — or printing press, or television station — to anyone with a computer and a modem.

While plenty of people do publish their personal musings and pictures of their babies, new data shows that for many people, the Web has become a routine electronic device. Often, Internet users stick to a half- dozen sites for news, sports scores, airline tickets and other things they need regularly. Many set up "personalized portals" that display only the categories of news, entertainment and financial information they are interested in when they log on.

Last year, about 60 percent of Internet users visited more than 20 Web sites in a typical month, according to Jupiter Media Metrix (news/quote), a research firm that measures traffic online; this year the proportion is close to half. The number of people using search engines as a starting point has also decreased significantly, a reflection of the more direct, predetermined approach to the Web.

People are spending more time online, according to Jupiter; the average user in the United States spent 20.7 hours in July, up 2 hours from last year. But their visits are concentrated in fewer places.

"We always think of the Internet as being very diverse, democratic — that everyone goes to hundreds of sites every week," said Mark Mooradian, a senior analyst at Jupiter. "In truth, that's less and less the case."

Only 15 of the thousands of sites that provide health information attract enough traffic for Jupiter to rank them, and last month 43 percent of the visitors to those went to the top three. Visitors to news sites concentrated their attention even more heavily, with 72 percent going to MSNBC, CNN and The New York Times (news/quote) on the Web in July. Among map site users, 82 percent visited Mapquest.com last month, compared with the 3.3 percent who went to Randmcnally.com, the fifth-most visited map site on the Web.

In a separate survey, conducted by the Pew Internet and American Life Project earlier this year, 29 percent said they were spending more time online, and 17 percent less. The reason most often cited by people who said they were spending more time was that they needed to for school or work. About half of those who said they were spending less time online said simply that it was no longer necessary.

That America's infatuation with the Web as a destination for cybersurfing adventures has morphed into a more mundane fondness for an information tool is in many ways testament to how quickly it has become a part of everyday life for so many.

"I guess I feel I've found most of the things of interest to me," Peter Merholtz, 28, of San Francisco, wrote in an e-mail message. "Surfing jaunts tend to feel like bicycling around the block. I'm also much more pointed in my Web use — I typically get some durn-fool notion in my head (like pursuing semiotic and cognitive issues in cartography), fire some queries into Google, and click until either the subject seems exhausted or I am."

What is lost, some say, is the experience of serendipity and the delight in finding things that you would not naturally seek out.

"What I worry about when it comes to the Web is that people are encouraged to drill down into their areas of concern to such a degree that they get closeted in their own reflections of themselves," said Joseph Turow, a professor at the Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania. "That can militate against an open society. And surfing was a way out of that."

Indeed, the Web has more than lived up to its promise as an easily searchable database of human knowledge for researchers, academics and anyone who wants to answer a health question or get directions or find out how long jasmine tea should steep before it gets bitter.

But its impact on popular culture is harder to discern. Many of the online magazines that had grander ambitions than recording the random thoughts of an individual author have disappeared in recent months. So have several independent entertainment sites that showcased animations and movies that had no other outlet.

And while much has been made of the threat file-sharing sites like Napster pose to the mainstream music industry, most of the music being traded online is Top 40 hits.

That may be partly because major media corporations have met the threat of the Web by using marketing budgets and advertising in television, print and radio outlets that they already own to drive consumers to their own sites. And as numerous Internet start-ups have flopped or come close, the big media companies have scooped them up, even as they merge with one another.

The arrival of residential high- speed Internet connections, often cited as the next wave for the Web, is likely to further the advantage of major media sites over homespun Web broadcasters, because the cable and phone companies that provide the connections allot far greater bandwidth for downloading material than for consumers to put their own contributions online.

Of course, it may simply be human nature to flock to what everybody else is looking at. Features like Yahoo (news/quote)'s "Buzz Index," which lists the most-searched news stories and photos of the day, build on themselves in a sort of self-fulfilling prophecy of popularity.

"The Web is a democracy of opportunity, but not necessarily of outcome," said Bernardo Huberman, a fellow at Hewlett-Packard (news/quote)'s research laboratory and author of "Laws of the Web," to be published this fall by the M.I.T. Press.

"At the beginning it was like a beautiful, fertile ground where all sorts of organizations could theoretically survive," he said. "But the selection process has been incredibly fast."

Even in a study he did of sex sites, which tend to have similar material, Mr. Huberman said he found very few sites attracting most of the visits.

Perhaps it is not surprising that most people's explorations of the Web would be limited, just as there are only a handful of best-selling books, and "West Wing" and "Survivor" garner greater audiences than other shows. But because the Web offers the potential for many millions of voices, critics say the consolidation of attention may say more about the public's interest in cultural diversity than it does about the medium itself.

"A medium can't do any more than its users want or think to do with it," said Mark Crispin Miller, director of the project on media ownership at New York University. "The emergence of every new major medium over the last century or so has invariably been accompanied by a lot of utopian expectations. All our major media have come at us as if from God himself to redeem us from the restrictions of time and space."

Still, the Web has come closest to actually doing that. And many of those who make an effort to take advantage of what it has to offer say that the cultural impact of the Web lies not in its would-be alternative media outlets, but in the way it facilitates communication between individuals who would otherwise never have the benefit of each other's experience.

Steven Johnson, co-founder of Feed, an online magazine that suspended publication in June, said that when his wife, who is pregnant, was recently put on bed rest, he had searched the Web for information about her condition. In addition to WebMD (news/quote), the Internet's most-visited health site, and others put up by doctors, he found 20 or 30 sites with accounts of ordinary individuals who had been through the same experience.

"What it hasn't done so far is create great flowering of publications or media channels, and of course I have an interest in that," Mr. Johnson said. "But maybe it turns out that what the Web is good for is connecting people."

But that may be better done by e- mail, instant messaging and other parts of the Internet not related to the Web. That is what teenagers, the next generation of Internet users, appear to be far more interested in, according to researchers.

Griffith Dudley, Mr. Dudley's 12- year-old son, for instance, says he and his friends have designed joke Web sites and use the Web for school reports. But other than instant mes saging, they do not spend a lot of time online.

"We know how to use the Web," the younger Mr. Dudley said. "We can use the Web. We usually just don't."

http://www.nytimes.com/2001/08/26/technology/26ONLI.html?ex=999837639&ei=1&en=fe2b32805f7cece2

Data Mining Goes Underground

Data centers strain local resources, don't hire locally, erect ugly buildings, and tear up city streets to complete fiber links. But USDCO might have the last laugh, sinking to new depths and stymieing critics while quarrying data into dollars.

by Alex Goldman ISP-Planet Associate Editor [August 24, 2001]

This article can be found online at the following location: http://isp-planet.com/profiles/2001/usdco.html

There are four things that municipalities don't like about data centers. First, urban utility companies complain that these facilities put a strain on city power grids. Second, local government types fret about the fact that data centers provide little in the way of employment opportunities for the average Joe Citizen. Third, urban planners grumble that data centers are windowless warehouses contributing no aesthetic value to cityscapes or suburbia.

And last of all, but perhaps most important, cities are no longer enthusiastic about allowing their streets to be dug up to lay new fiber optic runs. Last year, local authorities in Washington, DC even placed a temporary ban on new fiber pipes--these anti-data storage facility sentiments are mimicked and murmured across the nation.

It's enough to make data center operators want to find a big hole and climb inside.

At least one data center operator has done just that. Underground Secure Data Center Operations (USDCO) opened for business in July and offers 750,000 square feet of data center space hidden deep inside a disused gypsum mine near Grand Rapids, Michigan.

The company was founded by six partners in September 2000 when the mine owner, food warehouser Michigan Natural Storage, decided to find out what else could be squirreled away in its underground expanse besides perishables. Because data has a better shelf-life than lettuce, the six-some decided that data storage could turn their subterrestrial real estate into a real gold mine.

Inside out buildup
Irvin Wolfson, USDCO partner and vice president of sales, and Bob Savage, USDCO vice president of IT, explained how the data center was built. Savage said USDCO's data storage solution would not be easy to imitate.

"Most data centers are built from the outside in," Savage said. "They're not scalable. If they're running out of room, you're talking about adding a power generator, building an additional facility next door--a lot of money. We can just throw up some walls and add a room. We're built from the inside out. We laid the cables and designed the center first, and we can grow as demand arrives."

Actually, there's a little more to it than that. First, USDCO created the data center space by pouring concrete on top of the solid rock floor. Next, simple metal walls are erected, creating a room (right) with an exterior that is adjacent to the rock walls of the mine (below).

The gypsum mine is level, rather than vertical. Hidden 85 feet below the earth's surface, the mine is roughly oval in shape, and it has a virtually unlimited supply of free, humid, 50-degree Fahrenheit air. USDCO simply hooks up two large fans in each room--one to push air in, the other to pull air through--and, presto! It has a cooling system that requires very little maintenance or power. Since the data center is underground, it is also not subjected to storms, fires, or other natural disasters. In theory, mines might be vulnerable to flooding or earthquakes, but these are geological rarities for inland Michigan.

Additionally, subterranean security is a breeze--there just aren't that many doors and windows in a cavern. What systems could be knocked out by Mother Nature or ill-intended intruders are readily righted by redundancy.

USDCO operates its data plant with a fully redundant power plus backup generators and two upstream providers. It would take a cataclysmic event to to put data stored at USDCO in harm's way. Even if power is somehow interrupted, the data storage facility would be one of the first locations brought back on-grid because its food storage capabilities on the other side of the servers.

It also has redundant access to upstream providers, USDCO has an internal OC-12 SONET ring connected to Sprint and Cable & Wireless through redundant fiber cables--one connection made out of each end of the mine--through a DS3 pipe from Ameritech. Savage says that the company also has dark fiber ready, if necessary, "up to OC-192 and beyond if a customer requires it."

Data treasure trove
Is USDCO buying other mines? "We have options on other sites," said Wolfson, "but we want to be self-financed. We've had VC offers because our business plan is obviously good and obviously different, but we want to grow organically. Also--it may be a Western Michigan thing--but we believe in something called 'service.' We don't want to expand too fast."

USDCO might have financed the operation alone, but it did not go solo when it came to powering up the facility. Michigan Natural Storage, USDCO partner and the mine's owner, played an important role in bringing power to the data center and helped the fledgling business hookup with potential clients, too.

USDCO, through its partners, can provide tape rotation, server monitoring, and database services for any size and type of businesses. Partners are welcome to provide more lucrative services like consulting and equipment sales, too. One partner, SequoiaNet provides a wide variety of Web-based services and is licensed to sell Dell, HP, IBM, and Compaq products. But Wolfson says that USDCO serves small- and medium-size businesses with gold-standard storage solutions.

"We're a new company. For a facility of this size, we're unusual because we also work with small companies that have annual business of less than $10,000," Wolfson said. "With power included, the monthly price of a collocated server is about $100 for 1U, plus $80 per additional 1U, with 10 GB of monthly throughput included."

USDCO can afford to offer low rates for its data services. With low rent and minimal property taxes, as well as curtailed cooling costs and easy expansion capabilities, USDCO is sitting pretty in the bowels of the earth. And with 750,000 square feet of data storage space available, USDCO just may turn this depleted gypsum hollow into a real gold mine.

** This article contains an HTML table showing information we cannot display properly in this email. To view the full article with table, visit http://isp-planet.com/profiles/2001/usdco.html.

Important research for Men to understand

(from http://www.ananova.com If you have not seen their Avatar, it is worth a look.)

Brulee beats Brad to get women's hearts racing

Women prefer a good pudding to Brad Pitt, scientists have revealed. The sight of mouth-watering dishes turned females on more than sexy pictures of Hollywood's hottest men. The findings emerged after volunteers were tested with heart monitors to compare reactions to food and sexy stars. The tests were carried out by supermarket chain Tesco. After being wired up they were shown pictures of several Hollywood hunks and a range of desserts. And when presented with a tempting raspberry creme brulee the heart rate shot up to an average of 142 beats a minute.
But a snap of Pitt, 38, registered only 105. He even trailed behind a chocolate truffle torte (135), exotic praline Paris-Brest (122), and chocolate trifle (115). Still, he created more of a flutter than a lemon and raspberry torte (100) - but only just, reports The Sun. Russell Crowe, 37, was 99 beats per minute, followed by Leonardo DiCaprio, 26, on 92 beats. The research was aimed at assessing the impact of food's appearance on women shoppers - whose normal heart rate is 70. Choc puds caused the biggest reaction among women aged 20 to 30 and brulees were top for 30 to 40-year-olds.

Last updated: 07:25 Friday 24th August 2001

Jung - Myers-Briggs Personality Test
http://www.humanmetrics.com/cgi-win/JTypes1.htm

From T h e I n t e r n e t T o u r B u s
SIX YEARS of Searchable Archives at http://www.TOURBUS.com !!

In my last post I mentioned that The Hunger Site had gone the way of break dance movies and Members Only jackets (remember those?) and suggested some other online charity sites you could visit instead. That post seems to have struck a chord. In fact, that post generated such a response that I decided to spend one more post talking about some great online charities recommended by your fellow riders.

As for my promised post about half.com, we'll just place that post in my "Giant Rat of Sumatra" file until Thursday. [And for those who don't understand the reference, Sherlock Holmes said of "Giant Rat of Sumatra" that it is "a story for which the world is not yet prepared." I have found that the "Giant Rat" excuse is WONDERFUL to use when you haven't finished a particular assignment or project.]

Fellow TOURBUS rider Karen writes: I just read your latest newsletter and thought your readers might be interested in this site if they are looking for a way to make donations without actually spending money. It helps the rainsforests, the pandas, breast cancer and, my favourite, the big cats. You might want to check it out and pass it on - I've been there almost daily clicking to help for well over a year. http://www.care2.com/

JR suggests a site within care2.com: Here is a site that I have used as part of my "Free Philanthropy Log on Protocol." The site is http://bigcats.care2.com/ and has links to the Rainforest Race, Panda Race and the Breast Cancer Race. It works as easily as the Hunger Site.

Elliot recommends another rainforest site: Here's a site I go to everyday... http://www.saverainforest.net/ "Click on the button above to save rainforest. There is NO cost to you. Sponsors pay to preserve the rainforest." Once a day you can go there and click. Every sponsor on the page, Will result in saving 5 square feet of our rainforest.

Patricia offers two sites: http://www.quickdonations.com/ and http://www.donationjunction.com/ These are my favorite donation sites. They include freedonation and others by category. including One Minute Donation

Barbara sent me an online greeting card telling me about http://www.webreleaf.com/ , a web site where you can go and click a button to help plant trees in US National Forests. It's completely free and it only takes a moment to help plant a tree In my last post we also talked about two sites that provide information about charities around the world. Max suggests a third site you should visit: I check out charities once in a while for my job, and I like to use GuideStar http://www.guidestar.org/ to get the dirt on charities. They have detailed financial reports, and basically a lot more information than the BBB on those that are questionable. (GuideStar obtains copies of 1099 filings with the IRS.)

Craig, an employee at General Motors, offers the following: You mentioned in this week's Tourbus that "charity begins at home, and justice begins next door." In that vein, you may be interested in the Webhands site: http://www.webhands.org/ .

This site was created by my employer, General Motors, and is an online directory of charitable organizations in communities all across the USA. It can be used to quickly search for charities that provide food, clothing, shelter, literacy classes, and services to reduce the "digital divide." It helps answer the question "How can I help in my own community?"
The Webhands site also includes a link to GM Global Aid, another site which allows one to make secure online donations to several US and international disaster relief organizations (e.g., American Red Cross, The Salvation Army, unicef, and the United Way).

And, finally, Howie writes: I don't know if you have run across Charity Focus http://www.charityfocus.org/ , but it is a resource for organizations that have limited resources to get help in setting up a web site. They are handling quite a few projects and can always use some more capable volunteers.

If this doesn't help you find a replacement for The Hunger Site, nothing will! :)

Not for viewing while eating

http://hairyback.com/gallery/

A low cost way to have users order promotional supplies

FREE! - Quick and easy to setup, the CafePress.com online store is the easiest way to start selling branded merchandise online. Just upload your artwork, design up to 14 different products, and get your own personal online store. When orders are made, we take care of product manufacturing, shipping, and customer service. All you have to do is promote your store and collect commission checks.

http://www.cafepress.com/cp/info/index.aspx

Suggestions for eCommerce Sites

A Stupid Idea Has Made Me Lots Of Money

A year and a half ago I thought, "why not sell Jackalopes on the Internet." Well, this stupid idea has made me a lot of money. When I started with my own domain name I got 2-5 hits a day. Well, now I'm getting thousands of hits.

Want to make money from your web site? Follow all or some of my 10 suggestions.

1) Don't try to compete with the big boys. Find your niche market. Find products or services that your competition doesn't have.

2) Advertise for free. Make sure you register with the top ten search engines. Do this yourself and don't be fooled by all the offers to register your site with 1600 search engines. What you will get is a lot of spam.

3) Test market. Try one or a few test marketing ideas to see how it works. Try it more than once. It might not work the first time.

4) Forget paying for banner ads. Web surfers are tuning out on banner ads. Text links get more traffic. I tried a free offer. They gave me 10,000 banner ads that usually cost $195 for one week. Guess what? I only got 25 hits. If you advertise with banner ads, do not pay for CPM, pay only for CPC. What is CPM and what is CPC? CPM means cost per M, which is the Roman numeral for 1000. That means that if the banner is viewed you pay! CPC means cost per click. Someone has to actually view your page for you to be billed for the click.

5) Run a contest and give away something. What to get a lot of new traffic to your site? Give something away. One contest alone brought thousands of visitors to my site. Many signed up for my email newsletter. Some signed up to win money on another site which brings be
money from their affiliate program.

6) Get your links. Find other sites that compliment but don't compete with your site and ask them to share a link with you.

7) Look into Webrings. Yahoo bought out Webring.org but this is still a good place to look. Search these rings and ask for the sites to link to you or join the ring.

8) Pay for Rank. I use GoTo. You can open an account for $25 and bid for placement on their search engine. They power many different search engines so your results are on many search engines. They have a search engine suggestion and bid tool so you can see how many searches
have been done the last month and how much you have to pay for your search word or phrase.

9) Get on AOL. Register with GoTo and be in the top three listings and you will come up on the top spots. AOL has over 20,000,000 clients. Miss this market and you lose.

10) Get on Google. The web page results page on Yahoo are from Google. Register with Google and your will be on Yahoo!

Follow these suggestions and I guarantee you will get results.

Thanks a lot and good luck.

---------------------------------------------------------------
About The Author: Dr. Jack A. Lope http://www.jackalopejunction.com/
Jackalope Junction Wyoming Gift Shop Casper, Wyoming

World's Fastest Computer Unveiled

from www.reuters.com
Last Updated: August 15, 2001 09:55 PM ET

LIVERMORE, Calif. (Reuters) - A U.S. government laboratory unveiled on Wednesday the most powerful computer in the world, programmed to simulate the explosion of a nuclear bomb.

ASCI White, a $110 million computer squeezed into enough refrigerator-sized units to fill a couple of basketball courts, was officially unveiled by scientists aiming to simulate nuclear tests the government has promised not to carry out for real.

The beast, built by International Business Machines Corp. IBM.N from off-the-shelf processors with a souped-up version of its commercial operating system, AIX, weighs as much as 17 full-size elephants, takes as much cooling as 765 homes, and can do in a second what a calculator would take 10 million years, IBM says.

Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, a government funded laboratory which is home to the machine, aims to find out a bit quicker than that how an atomic bomb blows up so that it does not have to test any more.

"We are in a race against time as we have to pass the baton to a new generation of nuclear engineers who have neither designed nor tested a nuclear weapon," said David Schwoegler, a spokesman for Lawrence Livermore.

The last U.S. underground test was about 10 years ago.

Like gunfighters after the taming of the West, U.S. nuclear scientists who have designed and exploded nuclear weapons are a dying breed. Computers are being brought in to fill the gap.

The 10-year Accelerated Strategic Computing Initiative, ASCI, is about half-way done.

It aims to produce a computer that can simulate a nuclear explosion by 2005, with a machine that can do 100 trillion calculations per second, compared to ASCI White's 12.3 trillion.

Compaq Computer Corp.CPQ.N is working on an intermediate step and plans to deliver within a couple of years a 30-trillion per second calculator.

A reminder to be careful

Engineer drops tool, slices 70,000 telephone lines
LONDON--Around 70,000 Telewest subscribers lost their phone
lines on Tuesday after an engineer dropped a spanner while
fixing some equipment at the cable company's offices in
Scotland.
The spanner landed on some batteries, starting a fire that took
down the 70,000 phone lines. Customers were unable to make or
receive calls from 2.30pm, and although most businesses were
reconnected that afternoon many residential customers were cut
off until midnight, according to the Edinburgh Evening News.
Telewest's offices were evacuated and a fire engine called, but
a special fire prevention system reportedly managed to
extinguish the blaze. --Graeme Wearden, ZDNet UK

Color Mixer Redo

http://zse4.com/beacon/color.htm

I redid the color mixer I've used in class. It now is easier to see your settings.

Historical Distribution of U.S. Surnames

http://hamrick.com/names/

Let's track some Dollar Bills

http://www.wheresgeorge.com/

You can write WheresGeorge.Com on the bill to increase the odds it will be entered into the system again, but that would be illegal.

Anagram creator
Type your name and find out what is spells.

http://www.wordsmith.org/anagram/

UFOs in historical Art works

http://homepage.ntlworld.com/m.hurley/

Software that detects spyware shareware.

http://www.infoanarchy.org/?op=displaystory&sid=2001/6/4/12499/31574

Some downloads install additional software that reports your browsing habits to infromation aggregators. This program dtects the most common ones.

How to Select a Fulfillment House

by Dr. Ralph F. Wilson, E-Commerce
Consultant

http://www.wilsonweb.com/wmt6/fulfill-house.htm

As an alternate to warehousing and shipping your
own products, you can outsource the warehousing and product fulfillment function
to a fulfillment house. You'll find many listed in the Yahoo! Directory "Fulfillment
Services" category. Most, however, won't look twice at the small
merchant just starting out. The vast majority are targeting for merchants with
2,000 orders or more each month. Fortunately, however, there are some companies
that serve the needs of beginning Internet merchants.

Fees and Policies to Ask About

When you begin to research fulfillment services,
you rapidly find that they price in enough different ways that they can be hard
to compare to each other -- and it can be difficult to figure out what kind of
bill you'll be paying at the end of the month. Here are some fees and policies
to watch for as you research:

Set-Up Fees. Fulfillment houses charge
set-up fees to help cover their costs of acquiring your business and preparing
their system to take your products. Make sure these are reasonable and within
your budget.

Order Processing Fees. This may include a
flat amount for each order, plus a charge for each additional item in the
package. Rates vary with the number of orders processed per month. Ask if boxes
and packing materials included in the order processing fees or if they are in
addition.

Order Processing Minimums. If you're a
small merchant, you may have trouble making the minimums. Minimums are good for
the fulfillment house but not for you when you're getting started. Make sure
your average number of orders is likely to easily exceed their order processing
minimums or else you'll be paying fulfillment fees even if you aren't getting
orders.

Return Processing Fees. Find out what you
are charged when a customer returns the merchandise and how this process will be
handled.

Storage Fee. This is a monthly fee that
reflects the amount of storage space your products take in the fulfillment house
warehouse. You may be charged per pallet, or per cubic foot, or in some other
manner. Your goal is to keep on hand no more than a two- to three-month's supply
of your product -- no more, or you'll be paying excessive storage charges.

Credit Card Transaction Fees. A few
fulfillment houses will handle credit card transactions for merchants who don't
have merchant accounts. They typically charge a percentage of the total
transaction amount. How does this compare to the typical 2.5% discount rate that
credit cards charge?

Fees to receive merchandise. Look for
charges to check in shipments, verify the box count, and look for visible
damage.

Shopping Cart Services. You can run your
own shopping cart and transmit orders to the fulfillment house via their
preferred methods: FTP, secure download, e-mail, EDI, XML, etc. But it may be
cost-effective to use the fulfillment house's own shopping cart program order
buttons in conjunction with your own website. That way they get your orders
directly and painlessly. Some fulfillment houses also offer accounting and
banking for foreign clients. Ask what services they offer. You'd be surprised
what they can do for you.

Order Transmission Method. Make sure that
the method by which you are required to transmit orders is technically within
your company's grasp. Is it simple or sophisticated enough to meet your needs?

Product Assembly. A fulfillment house can
often assemble your product or kit for you, charging you on an hourly basis or a
time-costed per-piece basis. They can also order products or components for you
so that you're never out of stock. Ask the hourly rate on which these services
are based.

Growth Capacity. Can the fulfillment house
that serves your 100 to 500 orders per month ramp up to 100,000 orders per month
if you get a tremendous response? Inquire about their growth capacity.

Minimum Contract Period. Be careful of
companies that lock you into a six-month or one-year contract. What will you do
if they don't meet your needs, or you don't meet their minimums? You need an
escape hatch if your product line doesn't take off.

Profile of Two Small Business Fulfillment Houses

We're seeing a small but growing number of
fulfillment houses that are seeking to serve merchants with 0 to 2,000 orders
per month. I spoke with two of them.

iFulfill.com
(www.ifulfill.com) of Maumee, Ohio, has been around for several years. Owner
Paul Purdue sees his company's role as enabling the beginning merchant. "We
reduce the entry barriers for the typical small merchant," he says.
"If they can sell it, so be it. If not, they're not losing a lot."
iFulfill's pricing is a bit higher in order processing fees, but it charges no
set-up fees. Purdue's company outgrew his barn, and is now housed in a
warehouse. iFulfill offers a wide range of services to merchants in the US and
abroad.

eFulfillment
Service, Inc. (www.efulfillmentservice.com) of Grawn, Michigan, not too far
from the Canadian border, is relatively new. I was impressed by President Amy
Caughell's enthusiasm to help her clients by being flexible enough to meet their
special needs. Prices and minimums tend to be quite competitive.

Though these two companies' pricing has some
complexities, I've simplified it here so you can see similarities and
differences.

	iFulfill.com	eFulfillment Service
Set-Up Fee	None	$99
Order Processing Fees	$4 each for the first 10 orders, $3 for orders 11 to 20. Drops to $2 for higher amounts. 30¢ for each additional product.	$1.60 per order plus 30¢ per product (i.e. a minimum of $1.90 per order for a single product). Includes average size box and packing materials.
Monthly minimums	None	None
Shipping Costs	Paid by merchant	Paid by merchant
Product Costs	Paid by merchant	Paid by merchant
Monthly storage fees	$4 per product or SKU	$10/pallet/month or 60¢/cubic foot/month if on shelves.
Return processing fee	None currently	Same as order processing fee
Hourly rate for extra services	$20/hour	$25/hour

Each has other fees for extra services, but this
covers the basics. I see both companies' pricing as quite favorable to small
merchants.

Digital Delivery System Options
by Dr. Ralph F. Wilson, E-Commerce Consultant
http://www.wilsonweb.com/wmt6/fulfill-digital.htm

Product fulfillment on the Web is a dream if you have a digital product -- software, information, e-books, member-only subscriptions, and entertainment. Delivery takes place by download, -- and it's completely hands free for the merchant. Yes, there may be some web hosting fees for storage and additional traffic charges, but the cost is low.

The chief difficulty with digitally delivered products is that they are subject to fraud. A private download URL can be given to a friend (who may post it on an online bulletin board). And fraudulent credit card transactions using stolen credit information, leave the merchant to susceptible to damaging chargeback fees.

Here are some systems you can use to sell and deliver digital products. (I am excluding ClickBank from this list because it only handles the sale, not the digital delivery.)

Kagi (www.kagi.com). Berkeley, California company handles transaction, download, and product registration. No sign-up or monthly fee. Charge is a percent of the sales price. The sliding scale assesses 12.5% of a $20 product, 7% of a $100 product, and 4.1% of a $600 product. Compatible with several affiliate programs.

DigiBuy (www.digibuy.com). Set-up fee of $29.95, plus $9.95 for each additional product. Handles transaction, download, and registration. Charges 13.9% of the sale or $3, whichever is greater. Compatible with several affiliate programs.

Synergyx (www.synergyx.com). Paul Galloway's Perl-based CGI program costs $1,500 installed on your server. Requires a merchant account and a payment gateway, but you won't be paying high percentage fees. Includes an excellent affiliate program.

Yahoo! Store (http://store.yahoo.com) includes a crude digital download feature. We link to others in the Digital Download Software section of our E-Commerce Research Room (www.wilsonweb.com/cat/cat.cfm?page=1&subcat=cs_Soft-Digital).

Microsoft's Vocal Chord

SEATTLE

To view the entire article got to http://www.washtech.com/news/media/11867-1.html

Aiyaiyaiyaiyaiy.

Such is the approximate sound Shelley Reynolds emits when she locks the tip of her tongue behind her teeth and extends it, like a back flip, as far as it will protrude. It is not a pretty sight. That is followed by a series of well-calculated grins, which don't look funny. Then she kneads her jaw.

Those are oral calisthenics. Reynolds is a professional. Her job: to use her trained voice to greet millions of people every day across the United States.

You may already recognize the voice of El Edwards, the man behind AOL's famous "You've got mail" line, which reaches the ears of more than 30 million subscribers when they log on to the nation's largest online service. Microsoft Corp. has taken a page from AOL's playbook, giving its No. 2-ranked MSN service a feminine touch to help humanize the silicon-and-metals-and-plastics body of the computer.

Lately, the two tech giants have been clashing over a variety of competitive issues, from Internet access to how to design software. But in the sound of a human voice, they have arrived at a common industry pursuit: to make technology friendly.

For Microsoft, Reynolds is the soul in the machine when its subscribers log on and hear her cheerful voice greet them with "Good morning," "Good afternoon" or "Good evening." (She also bids people "goodbye.")

"I honestly believe I have enough positive energy — this is totally an Aquarius-type deal — if I record these things thinking very positively, I kind of believe metaphysically it cheers people up. They'll get a positive hit," Reynolds says.

Her voice — a gravelly yet soft contralto — is apparently doing some good, if only to reassure consumers that in technology there is nothing to be afraid of.

"There's a comfort level that comes with a voice," says Mike Uretsky, director of the Center for Advanced Technology at New York University.

Fear of technology goes back more than 200 years, he says, when the invention of the power loom caused people to wonder whether machines can think. Even now, the mystery of technology inspires fear.

"The large majority of people don't understand it," Uretsky says. "The thing that gets press is the bad things. The thing that gets into the press is the [computer] viruses, the invasions of privacy. This [voice] becomes an important step, saying, 'Hey, I'm almost a person.' "

The power of voice goes even deeper: "As it turns out, humans are genetically designed to understand verbal language," says Rich Gold, manager of research in experimental documents at Xerox Corp.'s Palo Alto Research Center. "It's the primary means of transfer of knowledge and information."

Voice conveys different meanings, depending on the age and sex of the implied speaker. People respond to what is familiar and to the frequency and pitch of a voice, which in the case of women tends to be higher and thus easier to hear, experts say. Through voice — the lilt in expression, the shades of tone — people connect in a way that words on a computer monitor cannot, a distinction becoming increasingly obvious as people spend more time alone hunched over a keyboard, seeking virtual contact with other people through Internet chat rooms, bulletin boards and messaging services.

"The humanizing of the machine is more than just about voice, it's about language, it's about linguistic interaction," says David Nahamoo, head of human-language technologies at International Business Machines Corp.'s Thomas J. Watson Research Center in New York. "We want to simplify our interaction with the world around us," he says. "The world around us is getting more and more complex."

Nowadays, everything and everybody seem to be talking. Computer don't just talk to people — people talk back, using voice-recognition technology. Automated teller machines remind users to take our receipt. Subway trains warn to stay clear of the doors. Even cars are getting into this verbal thing, barking out map directions.

Fast-growing MSN, which has nearly 7 million subscribers, recognizes the trend and credits the intangible benefits that come with Reynolds's voice. (Her services cost substantially more than the $100 that AOL reportedly paid Edwards in 1989 but well short of six figures.)

"It's worth it for the emotional connection," says Hillel Cooperman, group manager of MSN's user-experience team.

Increasingly, companies are using human voices to personalize Internet sites and services, not only because it makes good marketing sense but also because of technological advances in the past year. Voice — transmitted as data on a computer network — can now be compressed into smaller file sizes.

"It's just starting," says Adam Goodman, president of Voicehunter.com, a New York-based Internet company that specializes in providing voice-over talent.

But Edwards, the voice of AOL, says that Microsoft is coming late to the table with Reynolds's online greetings. "I'm rather surprised it has taken them this long to do it," he says. "I don't think they can improve on what AOL started — what — 12 years ago."

When Microsoft took the leap, introducing Reynolds's voice last year, the company chose someone who is like many of the consumers it's trying to reach: a stranger to the technology. Reynolds, a 34-year-old Seattle actress, has spent all of about two or three hours online in her life, and she doesn't plan to use the Internet "until I can go up to a computer and say, 'Fix me a turkey sandwich.' "

"I'm a total Luddite," she says.

Reynolds had done a number of commercial voice-overs before, including a Microsoft webcast of a U2 concert. She heard about the potential gig at MSN through her talent agency.

When she came in to record her voice, she told Cooperman, the MSN executive, that she didn't know anything about the Internet, and he responded, "Perfect."

"He did not want a formal telephone operator sound," she says. "He wanted it to be warm and personable. He said he wanted it to have soul, and when he said that, I started to understand."

Cooperman and a few other Microsoft engineers and technology wonks selected Reynolds from a pool of about 25 candidates, drawn from talent agencies and the company's own employees. There was nothing scientific about it, he says. Microsoft, the world's largest software maker, made a gut call in choosing Reynolds.

"She sounded sincere, smart, friendly, just someone you'd be psyched to know," Cooperman says. "In the end, a lot of this is subjective. . . . When we heard the voice, we said, 'That's her. Shelley's it.' "

The first thing you notice about her is the black, wing-tipped shoes, minus socks. There's the black pedal pushers that begin at mid-calf and work up to a black tank top and faded seersucker button-down. Then there's her fire-red lipstick and an unruly copper bob.

At least four days a week, Reynolds says she is apt to be found at the Lobo Saloon & Cafe, her neighborhood blue-collar bar, wielding a mug of beer, or perhaps a Jack Daniel's on the rocks, and an American Spirit smoke.

"I'm not really sophisticated," she says. "I'd rather run with people who are construction workers and bricklayers rather than CEOs."

Her crowd also includes casino croupiers, such as her 26-year-old boyfriend, Matthew "Hawk" Ramsay, who stops by the bar in his Calvin Klein pajamas to see his lady. In these confines, she's a celebrity whose photograph graces the arts page in the local yellow pages.

"She's got that southern whiskey voice," says bar buddy Derek Reese, the 34-year-old chef at a nearby restaurant.

Reynolds, a New Orleans product, says her parents "sound way more country" and her two brothers "sound more Cajun." With years of acting training, she sounds more like a cross between Cybill Shepherd and Kathleen Turner.

Like her well-known counterparts, Reynolds tends to play brassy roles. In her latest incarnations on stage, she's been playing "white trash with a heart of gold" parts, she says. In her last local production, "Killer Joe," she was required to come on stage in nothing more than a T-shirt.

For the rest of the world, Reynolds's identity is supposed to remain a mystery. The idea is, she is whomever the MSN subscriber wants her to be. To further connect Reynolds to consumers, her greetings are often accompanied by the subscriber's name.

Reynolds will limber up her voice — what she calls her articulator — with a variety of techniques, which include repeating this phrase several times: "The lips, the teeth, the tip of the tongue, the back of the gums, the alveolar ridge."

To date, Reynolds has recorded about 10,000 names in 14 sessions over 30 hours. In some cases, she will record a name — such as Tamara — in different ways to cover every possible pronunciation.

Sitting on a stool, clutching a sheaf of paper listing names, Reynolds will recite each one as though she knows the person. In some cases, it will be the name of a boy she had a crush on in school years ago. Other times, she will come across a name such as Bruce and imagine she is saying hello to Bruce Willis, the movie star. In her voice is an implied message, she says, a tone that conveys a thought like "Did you enjoy your bagel?" When she gets tired, she will step out of the studio, sit in her 1981 Chevy Luv pickup and listen to country music.

The studio work is paying off. Some friends who signed up for MSN have called her and said, "Dude, that's you!" One friend and neighbor, Jay Martell, became a Microsoft subscriber last year and instantly recognized Reynolds's voice.

"She can say anything to you, and her voice vibrates," says the 29-year-old glass artist. "It picks up a certain audio decibel, and it goes right into your brain, and you can never forget it."

Copyright (c) 2001 by Post-Newsweek Tech Media Group, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

Credit Cards With Chips Have Little Use in U.S.
By SAUL HANSELL from the New York Times

Suddenly, smart cards — credit cards embedded with tiny computer chips — are everywhere. American Express (news/quote) put a chip on its sparkly new Blue card, and issued 2.2 million of them in just 14 months. Rushing to mimic Blue's success, Visa says at least four of its banks will issue seven million credit cards with chips on them this year. And MasterCard says it is getting into the smart card business, too.

The cards may be smart, but so far they haven't showed it. In contrast to Europe, where smart cards have been used for a decade to fight fraud and reduce telecommunications costs, there is hardly anything that can be done with one in the United States.

In other parts of the world, companies are experimenting with using smart cards for electronic cash, but that idea has flopped in the United States. As a result, few stores have smart card readers that can connect with the new, chip-equipped credit cards. Nor do most wireless phones here take chip cards, as they do in Europe and much of Asia. The card companies say the chip cards add security for shopping on the Internet, but a survey showed that only 6 of every 1,000 Blue card holders have actually used the chip on the Web.

So far, smart cards in the United States are little more than a silicon and plastic fashion statement. Credit cards have long been marketed with insubstantial distinctions, like the rise a few years ago in "platinum" cards that differed from gold cards in little more than color. Now some bankers see smart cards as this year's platinum fad, said Michael Auriemma, president of Auriemma Consulting in Westbury, N.Y., only more expensive for the issuers.

"One of my clients said, at least half seriously, that he wanted to put a picture of a chip on the card," Mr. Auriemma said. "It has the same functionality and it costs $3 less."

The credit card companies do worry that customers will eventually notice that the future they have been promising has never arrived. And so they are now scrambling to find useful things to do with the chips that are already in millions of wallets.

"Right now, there isn't a lot of utility associated with the cards," said Carl F. Pascarella, president of Visa U.S.A. "We have to look for ways to justify the chip and create a consumer-value proposition in the marketplace."

READ THE REST OF THE STORY

Dreams of Scientists
TOP 10 IMPOSSIBLE INVENTIONS THAT WORK
http://www.atlantisrising.com/issue4/ar4topten.html

Girl from Ipanema is sued over the song she inspired
by Philip Delves Broughton (Filed: 13/08/2001)
From the London Telegraph Online

TALL, tanned, now 57, and still beautiful, The Girl from Ipanema is being sued by the families of the men who made her famous.
Sixties original: Heloisa Pinheiro, The Girl from Ipanema
Heloisa Pinheiro, the inspiration for the most famous bossa nova song, recently opened a boutique in Rio de Janeiro called The Girl from Ipanema.
The families of the song's writers, however, say she has no right to use the song for commercial purposes.
The shopowners along the fabled Ipanema beach in Rio have rallied behind Mrs Pinheiro, known to all as Helo, while those suing her have been portrayed as enemies of the laid-back beach life so vital to Brazilian culture.
It was 39 years ago that Mrs Pinheiro sashayed down to Ipanema beach, past a bar where two songwriters, Antonio Carlos Jobim and Vinicius de Moraes, were whiling away the day.
Enraptured by the 18-year-old, whom de Moraes called "a golden girl, a mixture of flower and siren, full of light and grace", the men wrote their song. Each day as she walked to the sea, they wrote, each man she passed went "Ahhhhhh".
The Girl from Ipanema was first performed in 1964 on an album by Stan Getz and Joao Gilberto, duskily sung by Gilberto's then wife Astrud Gilberto.
It put bossa nova on the musical map and became an informal Brazilian national anthem, a paean to its sunkissed young women. Millions of tourists have since been drawn to the beaches of Rio by the song's sultry promise.
The bar where Jobim and de Moraes were sitting when they saw Mrs Pinheiro was long ago renamed The Girl from Ipanema and the song's sheet music is painted on its walls. In economic terms, the Ipanema district of Rio has benefited hugely from the song.
Mrs Pinheiro, however, has not been so fortunate. Had the song been written about her today, she might have become a millionaire with the right agent.
Instead, in 1966, she married an engineer, Fernando, and during the intervening years she has done only a little acting and modelling, including posing for Playboy in 1987. Five years ago, her husband lost his job, forcing her to become the bread winner.
Their main cost is paying for their 22-year-old son who suffered brain damage as an infant and requires special care.
"This store is the means I have to guarantee the sustenance of my family," Mrs Pinheiro told the New York Times. "I borrowed $50,000 (£37,000) to set it up and it's not profitable yet, so I can't afford to have it closed down."
Mrs Pinheiro suspects that the songwriters' heirs are jealous, because both Jobim and de Moraes were said to have been in love with her. Though married at the time, Jobim is said to have told Mrs Pinheiro in 1965 that he wanted to marry her. He ended up being best man at her wedding. Jobim's widow is among those suing Mrs Pinheiro.
Carlos Monjardim, president of the Ipanema Merchants' Association, organised a party for Mrs Pinheiro last week, proclaiming her "the eternal ambassador of Ipanema".
He said of the lawsuit: "This is an act of pettiness that shocks and offends the entire community of Ipanema. What Pele is to all of Brazil, Helo is for Ipanema."

AdAware protects you from snooping software from downloaded programs
Version 5.5 was just released, but 5.6 will be out in two weeks.
http://www.lavasoftusa.com/

Dictionaraoke
The M-W.Com online dictionary recently added sample pronounciations. Now those samples are being put together to tell childrens stories and make songs. Check out Dr Seuss's "Green Eggs and Ham" and Celine Dion's "My Heart Will Go On" as performed by the pronounciation speakers.
http://www.dictionaraoke.com/index.html

Fron the New York Times; August 8, 2001 Rebels in Black Robes Recoil at Surveillance of Computers

By NEIL A. LEWIS

WASHINGTON, Aug. 7 — A group of federal employees who believed that the monitoring of their office computers was a major violation of their privacy recently staged an insurrection, disabling the software used to check on them and suggesting that the monitoring was illegal and unethical.

This was not just a random bunch of bureaucrats but a group of federal judges who are still engaged in a dispute with the office in Washington that administers the judicial branch and that had installed the software to detect downloading of music, streaming video and pornography.

It is a conflict that reflects the anxiety of workers at all levels at a time when technology allows any employer to examine each keystroke made on an office computer. In this case, the concern over the loss of privacy comes from the very individuals, federal judges, who will shape the rules of the new information era.

The insurrection took root this spring in the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, based in San Francisco and the largest of the nation's 12 regional circuits, covering 9 Western states and two territories. The Judicial Conference of the United States, the ultimate governing body of the courts, is to meet on Sept. 11 to resolve the matter.

The conflict between the circuit judges and the Administrative Office of the Courts, a small bureaucracy in Washington, deteriorated to a point that a council of the circuit's appeals and district judges ordered their technology staff to disconnect the monitoring program on May 24 for a week until a temporary compromise was reached. Because the Ninth Circuit's was also linked to the Eighth and Tenth Circuits, the shutdown affected about a third of the country and about 10,000 court employees, including more than 700 active and semiretired judges.

Leonidas Ralph Mecham, who runs the Administrative Office of the Courts, and who ordered the monitoring of all federal court workers, said in a March 5 memorandum that the software was to enhance security and reduce computer use that was not related to judicial work and that was clogging the system. A survey by his office, he wrote, "has revealed that as much as 3 to 7 percent of the judiciary browser's traffic consists of streaming media such as radio and video broadcasts, which are unlikely to relate to official business."

Officials in the judicial branch on both sides of the issue provided several internal memorandums written as the dispute continued over the weeks.

After the shutdown, Mr. Mecham complained in a memorandum that disconnecting the software was irresponsible and might have resulted in security breaches, allowing unauthorized outsiders access to the judiciary's internal confidential computer network. "The weeklong shutdown put the entire judiciary's data communication network at risk," he wrote on June 15.

Mr. Mecham warned in that memorandum that on the days before the software was disabled, there were hundreds of attempts at intrusion into the judiciary's network from places like China and Iran.

But Chief Judge Mary Schroeder of the Ninth Circuit responded that the concerns were overblown and that the circuit's technical people carefully monitored computer activity during the week that the software was disabled.

In a June 29 memorandum, she said that there was no evidence that the electronic firewall used to block hacking had been breached and suggested that Mr. Mecham had exaggerated the potential of a security breach because having hundreds of attempted breaches per day was routine and routinely blocked.

The Ninth Circuit disconnected the software, she wrote, because the monitoring policy was not driven by concern over overloading the system but Mr. Mecham's concern over "content detection." Many employees had been disciplined, she noted, because the software turned up evidence of such things as viewing pornography, although they had not been given any clear notice of the court's computer use policy.

Moreover, she wrote, the judiciary may have violated the law.

"We are concerned about the propriety and even the legality of monitoring Internet usage," she wrote. Her memorandum said that the judiciary could be liable to lawsuits and damages because the software might have violated the Electronic Communications Privacy Act of 1986, which imposes civil and criminal liability on any person who intentionally intercepts "any wire, oral or electronic communication."

She noted that the Ninth Circuit had ruled just this year that the law was violated when an employer accessed an employee Web site. In fact, the issues of what is permissible by employers have produced a patchwork of legal rulings and the matter has never been addressed directly by the Supreme Court.

Judge Alex Kozinski, a member of the Ninth Circuit appeals court, drafted and distributed an 18-page legal memorandum arguing that the monitoring was a violation of anti- wiretap statute.

Judge Kozinski, widely known for his libertarian views, said the court employees who were disciplined, an estimated three dozen, could be entitled to monetary damages if they brought a lawsuit.

A spokesman for Mr. Mecham said that the software could not identify specific employees but workstations. When unauthorized use was detected, Mr. Mecham's deputy, Clarence Lee Jr., wrote to the chief judge of the district, urging that the employee who used the workstation be identified and disciplined. One such letter includes an appendix listing the Web sites that employee had visited, some of them pornographic. There is no evidence that any alleged abuse of the system involved judges.

Judge Kozinski said: "Aside from my view that this may be a felony, it is something that we as federal judges have jurisdiction to consider. We have to pass on this very kind of conduct in the private sphere."

Prof. Jeffrey Rosen of the George Washington University Law School, author of a recent book on privacy, "The Unwanted Gaze" (Vintage 2001), said, "It's fascinating that the courts have to grapple with these issues so close to home." The law is evolving, he said, adding: "This drama with the judges reminds us of how thin the privacy protections are. There's a real choice right now whether e-mail and Web browsing should be regarded like the telephone or a postcard."

Judge Edwin L. Nelson, who is chairman of a judges' committee that deals with computer issues, said in an interview that his group met last week and drafted proposals to deal with monitoring. Judge Nelson would not discuss the proposals but they are almost certain to resemble policies used in the rest of the federal government, in which clear notice is given to computer users that they may be monitored.

Jim Flyzik, vice chairman of an interagency group that considers computer privacy issues in the federal government, said that each department had its own policy but that clear and unambiguous notification of monitoring was usually an element.

In the private sector, a survey by the American Management Association this year found that 63 percent of companies monitored employees' computer use.

Using the Windows HOSTS file to defeat pop-up ads.

http://members.home.net/user20million/hosts.html

From "Time - Europe" Illuminating the Web
A good commentary on the web's contents and searching it.
http://www.time.com/time/europe/biz/magazine/0,9868,166169,00.html
Here are their links from the bootom of the story:

On the invisible web you can ...
Look at the earth from space ... earth.jsc.nasa.gov (375,000 images)
See where and how we live on it ... www.worldpop.org/prbdata.htm (85 demographic variables for 221 countries)
Dive into its waters ... www.ilec.or.jp/database/search.html (Database on 500 lakes worldwide)
Learn about the fish that swim in them ... www.fishbase.org (Detail and resources on 25,380 species)
And how to cook them www.recipesource.com (70,000 recipes from around the world)
Pretend to plan your next business trip ... www.tscentral.com (15,000 exhibitions and trade shows globally )
Pick an airline ... www.waasinfo.net (World Aircraft Accident Summary)
Check the weather ... www.weatherbase.com (in 434 world cities)
Watch Wimbledon instead ... www.itftennis.com (Pro tennis results and rankings since 1977)
And relax www.sleephomepages.org

Increase Web Site hits with good page Titles

http://www.searchengineguide.com/aws/2001/titles.html

People weirder than Dan make web sites to meet women
A new line of work for Jesus...Restaurant reviews and purification baths.
http://jesus.com/endorsements/va_restaurants.html
http://jesus.com/date/

Curmudgeon Online
Better Quotations that my site
http://www.curmudgeon-online.com/

Rent a political activist
Have your own message held in front of the White House for $5 per hour...$100 if you want demonstrators included.
http://www.whitehouseprotests.com/

Muppets in Mahna Mahna!
A full length, high quality copy (MPG) of the classic song from the Muppet Show
http://www.bigmeats.net/index.php?meal=meat&dinner=21

Tim Berners-Lee commentary on "Why WWW-dot...?"

http://www.w3.org/Provider/Style/www.html
Tim Berners-Lee also has good links to some of his other commentaries at his personal page: http://www.w3.org/People/Berners-Lee/

The Eightfold Path to Enlightened Website [design]
Some very good links as well as brief and to the point commentary.
http://www.teknozen.com/tekfiles/8.html#graphics

Interesting commentary on Web Page Design.
Not authoritative, poorly researched, slightly out of date, but still interesting.
http://www.cs.umd.edu/~mount/Indep/CHassan/index.htm

An interesting note for advanced users:

http://www.littlewhitedog.com/reviews_other_00021.asp

Connection Speed Tests - Some are better than others

http://www.testmyspeed.com/eastcoastspeedtests.htm

Wall Street Journal eCommerce Special Report

http://interactive.wsj.com/public/current/summaries/ecommerce2001-5.htm

iGeneration and ProsoftTraining Merge Internet Certification Programs
Tue Jul 31 15:06:00 2001 GMT

Companies Form Strategic Partnership to Offer Complete Human Capital Solution

SAN FRANCISCO, July 31 /PRNewswire/ -- iGeneration and ProsoftTraining (Nasdaq: POSO), creators of professional certification for 21st-century information technology (IT) job roles, today announced the merger of the iCP (iGeneration Certified Professional) and CIW (Certified Internet Webmaster) certification programs. No two organizations have had more experience in identifying and developing Internet technology job roles and building certification programs and products to meet the growing global human capital requirements for people with Internet skills. The companies decided to merge their certification programs in response to industry demand, and to better leverage the core strengths of each organization to provide customers with a full range of human capital performance solutions for emerging IT-related jobs.

Earlier this year, the two companies moved to endorse one another's certification programs, allowing the CIW community immediate access to the career and job connection services provided through the iGeneration TalentPool. With the iCP certification program merging with the CIW offering, IT professionals and corporations alike have a one-stop training, certification and job connection solution that sets the standard in Internet professional and organizational development.

iCP certification tests will remain available through December 31, 2001, so that current iCP candidates can complete any in-process training and certification. iCP certification holders will receive comparable certifications or credits in the CIW program. Current iGeneration training partners will have the opportunity to enroll as a CIW ATP (Authorized Training Provider) during a migration enrollment period. More information on the iCP merger with CIW can be found on www.iCP2CIW.com.

iGeneration will focus on providing assessment, placement and human capital performance solutions to corporations. ProsoftTraining has licensed iGeneration curriculum and certification content. Jerry Baird, chairman and CEO of ProsoftTraining, will join the iGeneration board of directors.

"It is with great pleasure that we join forces with the company that has been involved in the creation of professional-level Internet certification as long as we have," said Jerry Baird. "Together we created the category of vendor-neutral Internet certification. Combining our programs and the core strengths of each company will create more value in this certification category for individuals, employers and educators."

"This new partnership also addresses the big questions around employee retention, retraining and staffing that IT leadership is grappling with today," said Gary Millrood, CEO and president of iGeneration. "How do I raise the level of performance? How do I make sure my organization is current on all the latest technologies? Do I have the right assessment tools in place to ensure that I have the best people for the job? The merged CIW certification program and auxiliary iGeneration assessment, training and staffing services is the portfolio of customizable solutions that this partnership brings to the marketplace."


About iGeneration

iGeneration is a professional services organization dedicated to enhancing the performance of today's most valued business asset -- human capital -- to maximize efficiencies and productivity to meet the demands of today's marketplace. iGeneration achieves this by providing end-to-end Human Capital Performance Solutions that improve the performance and job outcomes of today's IT organizations through customized interventions in the form of market intelligence services, assessment, training, custom curriculum, certification and staffing.

The industry-recognized development methodology that serves as the foundation for the iGeneration portfolio of services and products is a research-based blueprint that professionals and companies alike can use as a benchmark for building successful IT careers and organizations. Headquartered in San Francisco, California, iGeneration is privately held. For more information, visit www.igeneration.com, or call 1-877-411-4141.

A new web authoring tool from Adobe with free download.

http://www.adobe.com/products/atmosphere/

The software does require a 5MB player/plug-in to be viewed.

University at Albany Libraries' How to Choose a search engine

The best search engines to find different kind of material.

http://library.albany.edu/internet/choose.html

A study of what activities on the WWW will result in SPAM

http://www.cnet.com/software/0-3227888-8-6602372-1.html?tag=ld

See the story for the results of the study:

From the flood of direct e-mail advertising that most of us receive every day, you'd think the world is full of debt-ridden, sexually deprived people who want easy money.

But, offensive nature aside, these pesky e-mail messages cause problems of a technical nature. They make an enormous mess of your in-box, cramming it with junk and often pushing your account over its size limit.

Before you figure out how to stop the inundation, however, you have to find out where these sneaky spammers come from. How the heck do they get your address? Do they just spam everyone on your e-mail service (for instance, Hotmail), or do they intercept your name when you buy products online? When you sign up for newsletters, do unscrupulous Web sites sell your address? It's hard to know. We decided to find out which online activities and even mail services generate the most junk e-mail and look at ways to recover from the deluge.

CNET contributor Matt Lake opened 12 free e-mail accounts (and monitored some older ones) and dedicated each to one typical online activity. He even opened accounts at each e-mail provider and left them untouched just to examine the myth that just having an e-mail account can generate spam. Next, he joined up at sites that require you to register an e-mail address, posted messages on message boards around the Web, registered domain names, and visited chat rooms. In each case, over a few months, he checked to see which activities attracted the most unsolicited e-mail to an account, then tried to figure out how to remove the spam. Finally, he categorized those behaviors in terms of high, medium, and low risk, and the results were somewhat surprising.

Check out our spam statistics and read on to see which online activities put you at more risk than walking on the train tracks at night. We won't leave you hanging either; we've tested some opt-out options and reported back on whether they actually work.

High-risk activity
What's the worst that can happen to your in-box? Find out which Net activities generate the most spam.

Medium danger
Don't panic. If you're a Webmaster or even a domain squatter, your in-box remains relatively safe.

Lowest spam quotient
You'll be surprised! See which supercommon Web activities are shockingly low on spam servings.

Opt-out attempts
Does unsubscribing really work? Sometimes. Find out some other ways to duck unsolicited mail.

Spam at a glance
Check the stats! A quick look at high-, medium-, and low-risk activities, plus our spam in-box breakdown.

From CDNet News
Pop-under ads fail to catch buyers

http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1005-200-6688554.html?tag=st.ne.1005.saslnk.saseml



By Gwendolyn Mariano
Staff Writer, CNET News.com
July 26, 2001, 2:15 p.m. PT
As pop-under ads gain steam, they fall short of converting Web surfers into buyers, according to a new report released Wednesday.

Research firm Jupiter Media Metrix found that camera maker X10--which uses pervasive pop-under ads that automatically open a browser window linked to the site--had the most significant number of people that dropped out of its ad or Web site. While X10 has achieved a mass reach online, with 32.8 percent of the Web's entire audience between January and May, 73 percent of its visitors left the pop-under window or site within 20 seconds, according to Jupiter.

The results, according to New York-based Jupiter, reveal that pop-under ads build brand awareness at the expense of brand affinity.
The report comes amid the wave of debate over pop-under and pop-up ads that have stirred the advertising community and Web measurement companies. While Jupiter initially defended its inclusion of pop-up and pop-under pages in its traffic numbers, its competitor Nielsen/NetRatings attempted to eliminate such counts from its results.

Marissa Gluck, senior analyst at Jupiter, said even though X10 ads are "ubiquitous" and are at a high frequency of exposure, they don't tell the whole story. She said the Internet is not that dissimilar to offline media in that consumer behavior shows that people react to such ads "just as they do with their TV remote control--they click away advertising they don't find relevant or entertaining."

The X10 ad is "not the widely successful campaign that it might appear to be," Gluck said. "The consumer is in control of the experience despite the best efforts of marketers to impose their will on consumers. Consumers are ultimately the ones in charge--they vote with their mouths, just like they vote with their remote."

X10 could not be immediately reached for comment.

X10 has been climbing Jupiter's U.S. top 50 Web and digital media properties chart, moving up a notch from fifth place in May to fourth place in June. X10 had 28.6 million unique visitors in May and 34.2 million in June.

However, Jupiter said, without traffic from pop-unders, X10 would have only 2.7 million unique visitors. The site's number of engaged shoppers, meaning those who spend at least three minutes on a site, is 1.2 million.

The study compared six sites: X10, Amazon.com, eBay, Monster.com, Unicast and BizRate.com. While X10 had the most significant number of people dropping out of the ad or site, Unicast trailed with a 64 percent drop-off rate, and BizRate.com had a 37 percent drop-off rate.

Yahoo is a registrar for the dot-biz domain names.

http://new.domains.yahoo.com/biz_learnmore.html

The link also contains good info about how the system will work.

From ZDNet News July 18, 2001 Microsoft pulls back on Java support

Microsoft is quietly pulling back support for Java in its new products, dealing a new blow to a rival technology that played a starring role in the software giant's continuing antitrust battle with the government.
Prerelease copies of Microsoft's new Windows XP operating system, which goes on sale this fall, drop the software needed to run Java-based programs. Java software is used to create some of the animated and interactive features of Web pages and hand-held devices; Web surfers using computers with Windows XP won't see those features without loading additional software.

A Microsoft spokesman said Java support was diminished for "business reasons" and noted that it follows last year's legal dispute with Java's creator, Sun Microsystems Inc. Under terms of a settlement with Sun, Microsoft was given the right to continue to use early versions of Sun's Java code in Microsoft products for seven years, but made no commitment to do so.

The spokesman said the Java support in Windows up until now "is a lot of code that many users don't need, and if they do need it there will be a variety of ways for them to obtain it, including through PC manufacturers, who will be free to install it on Windows XP, and by downloading it from the Web." He also said that customers upgrading from an earlier Windows version will still be able to use the Java software.

After Windows XP is launched in October, users will be directed to download a plug-in from Microsoft's Web site (www.microsoft.com) to make Java-based programs work. Without this step, "any Web page that contains Java applications will not run -- it will be a dead page," said Jan Vitek, a professor of computer science at Purdue University, West Lafayette, Ind. "This favors Microsoft's new technologies, and will inconvenience consumers," he said.

For Web-based businesses, Vitek added, "if you want your Web page accessible to the largest number of people, you may want to drop Java" and switch to Microsoft's competing set of products, which is under development and is known as .Net.

Because Java is designed for use across different operating systems, Microsoft has long viewed it as a threat to its Windows monopoly, and the technology has played a central role in the U.S. antitrust case. Among its findings in the case three weeks ago, a unanimous federal appeals court in Washington D.C. ruled that Microsoft had engaged in a deceptive and predatory campaign to cripple Java technology.

Microsoft hasn't said whether it will appeal the June 29 ruling to the Supreme Court. After the ruling, the company said it would work with the government to resolve remaining issues in the case, whether in a settlement or proceedings before a new judge.

A Sun spokeswoman declined to comment.

Tightening Java security
In a separate move affecting Java, Microsoft is tightening security settings in its new Windows and Office programs that in some cases will also disable Java programs. Microsoft's new products will now screen out Java as a possible carrier of computer viruses in e-mail and, under high-security settings, in Web-browsing software. This move, first signaled in a software "security patch" distributed last year, is part of a broader effort by Microsoft to help stamp out the spread of computer viruses.

A Microsoft security-product manager, Scott Culp, noted that the tighter security settings affect several Microsoft products as well.

"We treated our own technology exactly the way we have treated Java," he said. The security settings are fully customizable by the user or by a computer-system administrator, he noted. "We made the default setting the highest possible and want the customer to be able to then make an informed choice," Culp said.

Java backers complain that the new security settings unfairly lump Java with other, more risky types of code, because Java has built-in security making viruses extremely rare. Unlike many forms of "executable" code that Microsoft seeks to block, Java runs in a software "sandbox" in the browser that prevents it from gaining control of the computer. As a result, Java viruses have been rare.

"Making e-mail and browsing more secure is a good thing, but banning Java doesn't make sense," said Andrew Shikiar, the director of Possie (www.possie.org), an Atlanta-based group of Java developers funded by small and midsize companies affected by the changes.

Shikiar also charges that Microsoft's new security rules don't halt the transmission of e-mail attachments that contain Microsoft Word or Excel "macros," a form of code that has often been identified as spreading viruses. But Microsoft counters that it has taken other steps to tighten security on viruses spread this way.

Motoaki Yamamura, development manager for the antivirus software maker Symantec Corp., estimated that about a dozen Java viruses have been found by researchers, compared with thousands based on the "macro" programming features of Word and Excel.

"The threats that I would put at a red-alert level have been zero in the Java category," added Bob Hansmann, enterprise software manager for Trend Micro Inc., another antivirus specialist in Cupertino, Calif.

Yet some corporate computer managers routinely block or scan Java code with gateway programs called firewalls out of a more general fear that computer hackers will find new ways to exploit Java to do mischief. Hansmann speculated that Microsoft is reacting to concerns expressed by some of those customers and said the security restrictions are warranted if managers can turn them on or off.

Lisa Gurry, another Microsoft product manager, said the "macro" security settings in Word and Excel have been tightened using a different approach, substantially lessening their threat while providing the maximum consumer choice. "We want to provide both a high level of security and a high level of choice," she said.

The decision to drop Java support from Windows XP was first apparent last week in a "beta" or test version that Microsoft released to software developers. Java "virtual machine" code, which is what runs Web-based Java programs, had been included in all previous versions. Microsoft didn't announce the change.