Tag - cyberia

 
 

CYBERIA

LIFE / Digital / CYBERIA
Mar 21, 2001
Unfit to print
I was planning to write about the rivers of blood that are running through world stock markets. Paper losses of $4.5 trillion have a way of drawing the eye and demanding an explanation. But the world intervened. (Devoted cybernauts may get that column yet; stay tuned, kids.)
LIFE / Digital / CYBERIA
Mar 7, 2001
Great Domain Robbery
I got a whiff of this story last week at Inside.com. It was in a news brief about a journalist who had floated details about a company that would soon offer new top-level domain names.
LIFE / Digital / CYBERIA
Feb 21, 2001
Who's napping now?
As any music fan knows, the future of Napster, the biggest free lunch of MP3s on the Net, is still very much in legal limbo. Last week a San Francisco appeals court confirmed a decision made this summer: Napster is knowingly infringing the copyrights of recording artists. The court asked U.S District Judge Marilyn Hall Patel to modify her initial injunction, and she promptly enlisted a former Federal justice to act as a mediator between Napster and the plaintiffs. Napster fans already know what this means: It's time to scarf down as many MP3 files as possible before Napster A) blocks the pirated files; B) starts charging a subscription fee; or C) shuts down completely.
LIFE / Digital / CYBERIA
Feb 16, 2001
Get out of my inbox
How much e-mail do you get a day? How much of it is junk mail? I get about 80-100 messages daily, and random sampling (i.e., the day I wrote this) shows that about 25 percent was unsolicited mailings, better known as spam.
LIFE / Digital / CYBERIA
Jan 31, 2001
Castles in the sky
Here's a folk tale for the digital era.
LIFE / Digital / CYBERIA
Jan 24, 2001
Back in the loop
This is not what you would call a lede per se, but indulge me for a few paragraphs. This will take some explaining.
LIFE / Digital / CYBERIA
Jan 17, 2001
Sound the alarm
Ahh, vindication is sweet. Especially when you don't have to toot your own horn. So take a bow, Mark Thompson: You got it in one last week when you identified security issues as anxiety numero uno for Internauti this year.
LIFE / Digital / CYBERIA
Jan 10, 2001
What's it all about, IT?
2001 may well be the year of the IT revolution, but as far as I'm concerned, we're talking about utilITy. From here on, usefulness is going to be the benchmark for information technologies.
LIFE / Digital / CYBERIA
Dec 20, 2000
Real democracy, anyone?
Have we learned our lesson in democracy? God forbid anyone should ever weasel out of voting again with the claim that their ballot doesn't count, that it doesn't make a difference. There is almost no way the margin in the U.S. vote could have been narrower, and with the divisions elsewhere in the country, every vote counts even more.
LIFE / Digital / CYBERIA
Dec 13, 2000
Next stop Wirelessland
A funny thing happened on the way to work . .
LIFE / Digital / CYBERIA
Dec 6, 2000
Ready for takeoff
The pipes are clogging. There are 377.65 million people online worldwide, and some analysts warn that figure could increase by as much as 25 percent annually for a few years to come. Traffic could reach 10 times the current level in a few short years, and demand for bandwidth might reach as high as 200 times current demand by 2005.
LIFE / Digital / CYBERIA
Nov 22, 2000
Connecting the dots
It's hard to believe, but there is some organization to the Internet. The libertarianism that seems to be the dominant ethos rests not-too-lightly atop a neatly organized technical foundation. It has to be this way: The Net is a network of addresses and someone somewhere has to make sure that they hook up. There has to be a coherent system of names and addresses.
LIFE / Digital / CYBERIA
Nov 15, 2000
Whassup on the Web
It hasn't made it into Webster's Dictionary yet, but you already know this word. In fact, it's already in your head. It's that jingle, that logo, that look, that idea. It's called a meme, and there's a whole branch of social science devoted to it. Richard Dawkins, the man who coined the word in his book, "The Selfish Gene," wrote:
LIFE / Digital / CYBERIA
Nov 8, 2000
Nihongo dekiru?
Nihongo dekiru? Since Amazon.com opened for business, its biggest foreign market has been Japan. The company has about 193,000 customers here and they ring up about $34 million worth of sales. Mind you, the domestic Japanese market for online book sales is only $46 million. (In the name of full disclosure, I'm one of those 193,000; I'm not, however, a stockholder.)
LIFE / Digital / CYBERIA
Oct 18, 2000
Singing a different tune
With the Oct. 3 release of "Kid A," Radiohead's hotly anticipated but allegedly "difficult" album (i.e., no guitar solos, love ballads or sing-along chants), the British band accomplished quite a feat: It shot to the top of album charts worldwide, including Billboard's U.S. album charts, the holy grail for any band, no matter how "alternative" they may be.
LIFE / Digital / CYBERIA
Oct 13, 2000
Tomorrow today
Predicting the future is always a risky business, but the uncertainties seem to be magnified when it comes to information technologies. Blame it on "tipping points," unstable equilibriums, systems analysis, whatever, but planning ahead has never been a more hazardous exercise.
LIFE / Digital / CYBERIA
Oct 4, 2000
Who's your buddy?
Last week, AOL and DoCoMo announced a major strategic alliance, but few techno-journos were blindsided by the news. Rumors had been floating since early summer, and the potential benefits were fairly easy to digest. Savvy scribes had probably already put together rough drafts. It was just a matter of plugging the requisite quotes from company executives and industry insiders.
LIFE / Digital / CYBERIA
Sep 20, 2000
I want my RTV
While on vacation in the States, I found myself watching the finale of "Survivor," the climax of a summer of reality TV. I could have turned it off. I could have returned to my book. But no. I had been (blissfully) ignorant of all that had gone on before, but that didn't matter. I watched both it and the roundup reunion in which the 16 participants recounted their experience on the island and their appearances on "Late Night with David Letterman." To make matters worse, I found myself reading cover features about them in major magazines and browsing related Web sites. I didn't want to, I knew it was bad for me, but I was transfixed -- less by the participants and more by the bigger picture, an expansive tableau that includes the precedent of MTV's "The Real World," the concurrent "Big Brother" phenomenon and the whole Web-camera explosion.
LIFE / Digital / CYBERIA
Sep 6, 2000
The horror, the horror
We're back. Did you miss us? That question isn't the product of an (especially) insecure soul. I mean it.
LIFE / Digital / CYBERIA
Jul 19, 2000
Big train a-comin'
Pick your measure. No matter what standard you choose, the information revolution is less than 3 percent complete. That's right: Whether you count users, devices, speed, content or number of applications, the revolution is just revving up. That has two implications: 1) virtual lifetime employment for tech writers; and 2) we don't have a clue as to what the future will bring.

Longform

A statue of "Dragon Ball" character Goku stands outside the offices of Bandai Namco in Tokyo. The figure is now as recognizable as such characters as Mickey Mouse and Spider-Man.
Akira Toriyama's gift to the world