[JackSpratts]

Prank Starts 25 Years of Security Woes
Anick Jesdanun

What began as a ninth-grade prank, a way to trick already-suspicious friends who had fallen for his earlier practical jokes, has earned Rich Skrenta notoriety as the first person ever to let loose a personal computer virus.

Although over the next 25 years, Skrenta started the online news business Topix, helped launch a collaborative Web directory now owned by Time Warner Inc.'s Netscape and wrote countless other computer programs, he is still remembered most for unleashing the "Elk Cloner" virus on the world.

"It was some dumb little practical joke," Skrenta, now 40, said in an interview. "I guess if you had to pick between being known for this and not being known for anything, I'd rather be known for this. But it's an odd placeholder for (all that) I've done."

"Elk Cloner" _ self-replicating like all other viruses _ bears little resemblance to the malicious programs of today. Yet in retrospect, it was a harbinger of all the security headaches that would only grow as more people got computers _ and connected them with one another over the Internet.

Skrenta's friends were already distrusting him because, in swapping computer games and other software as part of piracy circles common at the time, Skrenta often altered the floppy disks he gave out to launch taunting on-screen messages. Many friends simply started refusing disks from him.

So during a winter break from the Mt. Lebanon Senior High School near Pittsburgh, Skrenta hacked away on his Apple II computer _ the dominant personal computer then _ and figured out how to get the code to launch those messages onto disks automatically.

He developed what is now known as a "boot sector" virus. When it boots, or starts up, an infected disk places a copy of the virus in the computer's memory. Whenever someone inserts a clean disk into the machine and types the command "catalog" for a list of files, a copy gets written onto that disk as well. The newly infected disk is passed on to other people, other machines and other locations.

The prank, though annoying to victims, is relatively harmless compared with the viruses of today. Every 50th time someone booted an infected disk, a poem he wrote would appear, saying in part, "It will get on all your disks; it will infiltrate your chips."

Skrenta started circulating the virus in early 1982 among friends at his school and at a local computer club. Years later, he would continue to hear stories of other victims, including a sailor during the first Gulf War nearly a decade later (Why that sailor was still using an Apple II, Skrenta does not know).

These days, there are hundreds of thousands of viruses _ perhaps more than a million depending on how one counts slight variations.

The first virus to hit computers running Microsoft Corp.'s operating system came in 1986, when two brothers in Pakistan wrote a boot sector program now dubbed "Brain" _ purportedly to punish people who spread pirated software. Although the virus didn't cause serious damage, it displayed the phone number of the brothers' computer shop for repairs.

With the growth of the Internet came a new way to spread viruses: e-mail.

"Melissa" (1999), "Love Bug" (2000) and "SoBig" (2003) were among a slew of fast-moving threats that snarled millions of computers worldwide by tricking people into clicking on e-mail attachments and launching a program that automatically sent copies to other victims.

Although some of the early viruses overwhelmed networks, later ones corrupted documents or had other destructive properties.

Compared with the early threats, "the underlying technology is very similar (but) the things viruses can do once they get hold of the computer has changed dramatically," said Richard Ford, a computer science professor at the Florida Institute of Technology.

Later viruses spread through instant-messaging and file-sharing software, while others circulated faster than ever by exploiting flaws in Windows networking functions.

More recently, viruses have been created to steal personal data such as passwords or to create relay stations for making junk e-mail more difficult to trace.

Suddenly, though, viruses weren't spreading as quickly. Virus writers now motivated by profit rather than notoriety are trying to stay low-key, lest their creations get detected and removed, along with their mechanism for income.

Many of the recent malicious programs technically aren't even viruses, because they don't self-replicate, but users can easily get infected by visiting a rogue Web site that takes advantage of any number of security vulnerabilities in computer software.

Although worldwide outbreaks aren't as common these days, "believe it or not there's exponentially more malware today than there ever was," said Dave Marcus, a research manager for McAfee Inc.'s Avert Labs. "We find 150 to 175 new pieces of malware every single day. Five years ago, it would have been maybe 100 new pieces a week."

Symantec Corp. formed the same year Skrenta unleashed "Elk Cloner," but it dabbled in non-security software before releasing an anti-virus product for Apple's Macintosh in 1989. Today, security-related hardware, software and services represent a $38 billion industry worldwide, a figure IDC projects will reach $67 billion in 2010.

Even as corporations and Internet service providers step up their defenses, though, virus writers look to emerging platforms, including mobile devices and Web-based services like social-networking sites.

"Malware writers can't assume you are on PCs or won't want to limit themselves to that," said Dave Cole, Symantec's director of security response.

That's not to say Skrenta should get the blame anytime someone gets spam sent through a virus-enabled relay or finds a computer slow to boot because of a lingering pest. After all, there no evidence virus writers who followed even knew of Skrenta or his craft.

Fred Cohen, a security expert who wrote his Ph.D. dissertation in 1986 on computer viruses, said the conditions were right, and with more and more homes getting computers, "it was all a matter of time before this happened."

In fact, a number of viruses preceded "Elk Cloner," although they were experimental or limited in scope. Many consider Skrenta's the first true virus because it spread in the wild on the dominant home computers of its day.

"You had other people even at the time saying, `We had this idea, we even coded it up, but we thought it was awful and we never released it,'" said Skrenta, who is now heading Blekko Inc., a month-old startup still working in stealth mode.

And where was his restraint?

Skrenta replied: "I was in the ninth grade."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...083100968.html





"Storm Worm" Adds Millions of Computers to Botnet
Jacqui Cheng

The authors behind a specific strain of malware are trying every trick in the book to get users to succumb to their ill-meaning plans. You name it, they've used it: weather news, personal greetings, reports that Saddam Hussein is still alive, reports that Fidel Castro is dead, sexy women, YouTube, and even blogs. The group seems hellbent on creating the largest botnet to date, and they just might do it.

The "Zhelatin gang"—named after the trojan it installed—was responsible for what started out as the "storm worm." First spotted earlier this year, the spread of the "storm worm" started via e-mails purporting to provide information on some dangerous storms in Europe at the close of January. Users who fell for it were directed to a web site containing malicious code aimed at turning Windows PCs into spam bots.

It was a success, if you can call it that; Symantec security response director Dave Cole told InformationWeek in late January that the worm had accounted for 8 percent of global virus infections after a single weekend rampage.

Over time, e-mails containing links to the "storm worm" took on many forms, from supposed missile strikes to reports of genocide. Then last month security firm F-secure noted that the Zhelatin team had switched gears and was focusing on greeting-card spam. The e-mails originally directed users to a web site that prompted the download of ecard.exe, but eventually morphed slightly so that the link pointed to a site that claimed the user needed to install "Microsoft Data Access" in order to view the card. Naturally, this download installed a trojan on the user's computer for the purposes of relaying spam.

And that's when the changes began to speed up. Zhelatin changed its game mid-week to suggestive e-mails from lonely females, which prompted end users to click a link to see what they could do if they "get lonely." Days later, however, security firm Sophos noted that the e-mails had changed once again, this time to spam claiming to contain a link to an awesome new video on YouTube. Same tactic, same virus.

The "Blogging" worm

But if promises of Kelly Clarkson's latest music video in e-mail weren't enough, the worm has now switched its focus to blogs. Unlike the typical "comment spam" that many of us have grown used to on our personal blogs, the worm is actually getting into people's Blogspot accounts and creating new blog posts with links to the trojan.

Security software firm Sunbelt Software speculates that the posts are being made through Blogspot's mail-to feature, where users can e-mail their blog entries to specific addresses in order to have them posted to their blogs. This theory seems to make the most sense, as the worm would just need to comb the user's local contact list and send itself out to everyone on the list, including Blogspot. Heise Security notes that not all of the links work: "they appear to be referencing dynamically assigned IP addresses of infected computers and these computers are at the time either offline or have already been assigned a different IP address."

We may never know whether the Zhelatin gang even meant for the worm to spread to blogs, but the group is probably happy that it did. Heise estimates that, as of early August, 1.7 million computers were infected worldwide as part of a massive botnet, and that number has surely escalated since then. Heise warns that this size could prove a very dangerous threat: "[A]lthough the network has so far been primarily used to send spam, it could also be used for DDoS attacks on businesses or even countries."

Just how many computers are part of the botnet is anyone's guess, but estimates from some security firms are reaching as high as 10 million. Just last June the FBI warned that it had discovered more than a million PCs in a botnet. This looks to be just the tip of the iceberg.
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post...to-botnet.html





Storm Worm Botnet More Powerful than Top Supercomputers
Sharon Gaudin

The Storm worm botnet has grown so massive and far-reaching that it easily overpowers the world's top supercomputers.

That's the latest word from security researchers who are tracking the burgeoning network of Microsoft Windows machines that have been compromised by the virulent Storm worm, which has pounded the Internet non-stop for the past three months.

Despite the wide ranging estimates as to the size of the botnet, researchers tend to agree that it's one of the largest zombie grids they've ever seen -- one capable of doing great damage.

"In terms of power, the botnet utterly blows the supercomputers away," said Matt Sergeant, chief anti-spam technologist with MessageLabs, in an interview. "If you add up all 500 of the top supercomputers, it blows them all away with just 2 million of its machines. It's very frightening that criminals have access to that much computing power, but there's not much we can do about it."

Sergeant said researchers at MessageLabs see about 2 million different computers in the botnet sending out spam on any given day, and he adds that he estimates the botnet generally is operating at about 10 percent of capacity.

"We've seen spikes where the owner is experimenting with something and those spikes are usually five to 10 times what we normally see," he said, noting he suspects the botnet could be as large as 50 million computers. "That means they can turn on the taps whenever they want to."

No one could provide detailed and specific comparisons between the strength of the botnet and the top supercomputers, mainly because it is hard to know for sure the size of the botnet or the power of each computer that is part of the botnet.

Adam Swidler, a senior manager with security company Postini, told InformationWeek that while he thinks the botnet is in the 1 million to 2 million range, he still thinks it can easily overpower a major supercomputer.

"If you calculate pure theoretical throughput, then I'm sure the botnet has more capacity than IBM's BlueGene. If you sat them down to play chess, the botnet would win."

Since the botnet won't be entered in any supercomputer competition, what does this mean for the IT or security manager trying to protect a company?

It means the cyber criminals who control the botnet have a tremendous amount of destructive power at their fingertips. Early this summer, the Baltic nation of Estonia was pounded in a cyberwar that saw distributed denial-of-service attack primarily targeting the Estonian government, banking, media, and police sites.

To protect its network, the country had to shut down key computer systems, and targeted sites were inaccessible outside the country for extended periods.

Swidler said he has no doubt if the Storm worm bosses focused a denial-of-service (DoS) attack on a company, Internet service provider, or government agency inside the United States, it could do a great deal of damage.

"I think there's no question they could damage any single company, whether through a DoS attack or a spam barrage," he added. "I'd be less worried about a Yahoo or a Bank of America than the thousands of mid-sized banks that aren't as well protected. But undoubtedly, this could do a great deal of damage."

Swidler said there's always the background thought that an enemy of a country could basically rent the botnet and launch a DoS attack, shutting down government agencies, utilities or financial centers.

"It's a lot of computing power that could be focused to do a lot of damage," he added. "It's grid computing gone bad."

Last month, Ren-Isac, a collaboration of higher-education security researchers, sent out a warning that the Storm worm authors had another trick up their sleeves. The botnet actually is attacking computers that are trying to weed it out. It's set up to launch a distributed denial-of-service attack against any computer that is scanning a network for vulnerabilities or malware.

The warning noted that researchers have seen "numerous" Storm-related DoS attacks recently.

MessageLabs' Sergeant said the botnet also has been launching DoS attacks against anti-spam organizations and even individual researchers who have been investigating it.

"If a researcher is repeatedly trying to pull down the malware to examine it the botnet knows you're a researcher and launches an attack against you," he said.

Lawrence Baldwin, chief forensic officer of MyNetWatchman.com, said he doesn't have a handle on how big the overall botnet has become but he's calculated that 5,000 to 6,000 computers are being used just to host the malicious Web sites that the Storm worm spam e-mails are linking users to. And he added that while the now-well-known e-cards and fake news spam is being used to build up the already massive botnet, the authors are using pump-and-dump scams to make money.

"That's pretty scary," he said. "Cumulatively, Storm is sending billions of messages a day. It could be double digits in the billions, easily."

Swidler said that since mid-July, Postini researchers have recorded 1.2 billion e-mails that have been spit out by the botnet. A record was set on Aug. 22 when 57 million virus-infected messages -- 99 percent of them from the Storm worm -- were tracked crossing the Internet.

According to researchers at SecureWorks, the botnet sent out 6,927 e-mails in June to the company's 1,800 customers. In July, that number ballooned to 20,193,134. Since Aug. 8, they've counted 10,218,196.
http://www.itnews.com.au/News/60752,...computers.aspx





419Eater DDoS'd?
Spamnation

We've had a report that the popular scambaiting site 419Eater and the anti-scam site Scamwarners are the latest anti-spam sites to fall victim to a distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack. Both sites are down at this time. Details are hard to come by, but there's apparently been speculation that the attack originated from a Russian spamgang.

The Russians are pretty much the 'usual suspects' for any kind of DDoS attack. There's good reason to believe that the Zhelatin (Storm Worm) gang have been behind a number of other DDoS attacks this year, including an attack against anti-spam sites and download sites operated by a rival spam gang. Zhelatin are known to have spare capacity at the moment. There have been reports that they have built up a botnet containing more than a million computers, not all of which are currently being used for stock and pill spam.

For spam gangs like Zhelatin, a DDoS attack is just another item on the menu. When the firehose of the Zhelatin botnet gets turned on your site, it doesn't mean that it's the gang themselves who have singled you out for attack. It's more likely that the attack has been commissioned by one of their customers. In the same way that a customer can order a stock spam run, they can request a DDoS attack (although it has been claimed that DDoS attacks cost more than regular spam runs, because there is a greater risk that ISPs or law enforcement will react aggressively to shut down the machines involved).

Have the Nigerians paid to have 419Eater taken offline? While the picture we have of 419 scammers suggests that there are many people playing that particular game, there may be a few big fish who would have the money to commission an attack and an interest in seeing their particular enemies targeted. Still, it's unclear how much 419Eater would really have affected the scammers' business. While the site has some educational value and must certainly be an annoyance to some of the less sophisticated 419'ers (who waste time and energy on 'prospects' who turn out to be pranksters), it doesn't interfere directly with the spammer's business in the same way as, say, a blacklist site. Scamwarners, on the other hand, appears to be a more general anti-scam site, whose remit also covers such organized crime favorites as money transfer scams.

Earlier attacks have often seemed to be 'flavored', with several anti-spam sites of the same type hit simultaneously. For example, a Zhelatin attack against spamnation.info earlier this year also targeted other sites focusing on stock spam. Other attacks have targeted blacklists, anti-malware and -spyware sites, and general 'umbrella' sites like Spamhaus. (Although Spamhaus is probably under attack 365 days a year, so it may be hard to distinguish an attack from background noise). The current attack, with its focus on anti-scam sites, seems to fit that pattern.

Update: It seems that the DDoS attack has targeted additional sites. Artists against 419 was also hit recently (according to admins from that site, they had recently had some success in getting scam sites taken down, which apparently didn't go down well with the scammers). Another useful anti-scam site, CastleCops, has also been hit, along with other sites hosting antispam forums. One scam-fighter commented:
It kind of makes me smile though: we have definitely impacted somebody's profits ... Always a good day when that's the case.

It definitely looks as if this attack run was bought and paid for by the fake-check scammers and the phishers.
http://www.spamnation.info/blog/arch...ter_ddosd.html





Seattle Man Accused of Stealing Financial Data Via File-Sharing
Gene Johnson

A Seattle man has been arrested in what the Justice Department described as its first case against someone accused of using file-sharing digital data to commit identity theft.

Gregory Thomas Kopiloff primarily used Limewire's file-sharing program to troll other people's computers for financial information, which he used to open credit cards for an online shopping spree, federal prosecutors said Thursday.

Kopiloff was arrested Wednesday at his government-subsidized apartment a few blocks from the federal courthouse here. According to a four-count indictment, he bought at least $73,000 worth of goods online - including iPods and laptop computers - then resold those items at half-price and kept the proceeds. Investigators said he blew through most of the money supporting a gambling habit.

Authorities said they have identified least 83 victims - most of whom have teenage children and did not know the file-sharing software was on their computer. But investigators also said they believe the number of people affected was in the hundreds - and that in all they lost hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Kopiloff did not enter a plea during an appearance Thursday in U.S. District Court, and his court-appointed lawyer said she had not had time to review the charges. A detention hearing was set for Monday.

Though people have been prosecuted for using networks to illegally share copyrighted music, movies and software, the Justice Department called this the first version of an equally - if not more - troubling matter.

Each day, computer users inadvertently share hundreds of thousands of sensitive files through such programs, from banking statements and medical records to tax returns and legal documents, according to Robert Boback, chief executive of Tiversa Inc., a Pennsylvania firm that monitors file-sharing.

Typically the mistakes occur when a user downloads file-sharing software and accidentally allows it to share all files on a computer, rather than just music files, for example.

"If you are running file-sharing software, you are giving criminals the keys to your computer," said Assistant U.S. Attorney Kathryn Warma. "Criminals are getting access to incredibly valuable information."

When other users might search on Limewire for "Madonna," Kopiloff would search for "federal tax return," or for student financial aid forms or other financial information, Warma said. And instead of getting access to a few hundred files containing "Like a Virgin" or "Papa Don't Preach," he would get a few hundred files containing tax returns.

He would vet his victims before opening accounts in their name, ensuring they earned at least $150,000 a year and had good credit, she said.

Boback conducted a frightening demonstration during a news conference at the U.S. attorney's office. Using his company's technology, he showed - in real time - searches being conducted on peer-to-peer networks. As the searches were entered, they scrolled rapidly along the screen of his laptop. Many clearly concerned music files and pornography, but interspersed were scores looking for files that contained terms such as "password" and "medical billing."

"There are tens of thousands of individuals who make a living doing this," Boback said.

The issue also has national security implications, he noted. In July, the company found more than 200 classified documents available by searching a peer-to-peer network, including one that concerned troop movements in Iraq.

Boback testified before the House Oversight Committee on the issue July 24. He noted that among the files his company found was a confidential document addressed to Rep. Henry Waxman, the committee's chairman, concerning a pharmaceutical company's drug trials.

A Limewire representative could not immediately be reached for comment, but at the same congressional hearing, the chairman of Lime Wire LLC, Mark Gorton, said the company warns its users about the dangers posed by the software and instructs them on how to use it safely.

"We continue to be frustrated that despite our warnings and precautions, a small fraction of users override the safe default setting that comes with the program and end up inadvertently publishing information that they would prefer to keep private," Gorton said.

According to the indictment, Kopiloff began using Limewire and Soulseek - free file-sharing programs available on the Internet - about 2 1/2 years ago to search for people who had inadvertently allowed access to their sensitive files.

Kopiloff also obtained some sensitive information the old-fashioned way, from associates who would steal mail or go "Dumpster diving" for discarded financial records, the indictment said, adding that he would open credit accounts and then go shopping online, having items shipped to a UPS store, hotels or post office boxes.

He was arrested after one of his alleged victims, a Texas resident, told his company's security officer - a former Secret Service agent - about how his bank account had been compromised, with someone in Western Washington passing bad checks on his account. The agent forwarded the information to Secret Service agents and police in Seattle, Warma said. Kopiloff has a lengthy history of theft and drug convictions.

Kopiloff is charged with mail fraud, accessing a protected computer, and two counts of aggravated identity theft.
http://www.theolympian.com/northwest/story/209583.html





Sony Halts Production of Rootkit USB Sticks
Tom Sanders

Sony has ceased production of three Microvault USB memory key models that pose a potential security risk to Windows computers.

The spokesperson said that the elecontronics manufacturer stoped shipments of the product earlier this month. Rather than security concerns, however, the company phased out the product line because of "modest sales".

The company said that it is currently investigating the security issues. Pending the investigation, it is unable to say if it plans to instate a recall.

The three discontinued models are the USM-128C, USM-256F and USM-512FL, each of which comes equipped with an embedded fingerprint reader. Sony couldn't quantify the number of devices that have been distributed, but said that a "limited" number had been sold worldwide over the past few years.

Security vendor cautioned that malware writers could abuse a feature of the software that shipped with the device to hide malicious applications from the user and security software. The software, that is developed by Taiwan's FineArt Technology, operates in a way that resembles a rootkit.

In combination with the FineArt technology, the fingerprint reader controls access to the data stored on the device. The software stores information about authorised fingerprints in away that it is invisible to the end user as well as to some anti-virus software.

Although this helps in safeguarding the integrity of the fingerprint data, the folder also could provide a hiding place to viruses and other malware.

A different division of Sony got caught in a rootkit scandal two years ago. Record label Sony BMG at the time put rootkit technology on some of its music CDs in an effort to prevent illegal file sharing.

F-Secure, together with software developer Mark Russinovich, outed the label for using the technolgoy. Sony initially denied that it posed any security concerns, but was proven wrong the malware started exploiting the rootkit functionality. The scandal lead to a government investigation and several lawsuits, the majority of which has since been settled.
http://www.itnews.com.au/News/60374,...sb-sticks.aspx





Connecticut Revenue Agency Reports Missing Laptop

Data about 106,000 state taxpayers was exposed in the theft of a notebook.
Jaikumar Vijayan

Connecticut Gov. Jodi Rell has ordered the state's IT agency to implement new controls for protecting sensitive data on laptops after a recent theft exposed data on 106,000 taxpayers in the state.

Under her directive, the state's CIO has until Sept. 7 to come up with a Laptop Computer Security Policy and associated guidelines for state employees. The policy will require agencies to monitor and restrict sensitive data on laptops and expand the use of secure data access and transport tools, including VPN technology. The new policy is also expected to spell out data breach notification guidelines under which state agencies would be required to immediately notify Connecticut's Department of Information Technology when a laptop is stolen or goes missing.

Rell also ordered the state's IT group to accelerate the selection and deployment of encryption tools for use by agencies.

The governor acted after the state's Department of Revenue Services (DRS) disclosed earlier this week that a laptop containing personally identifiable data on more than 106,000 taxpayers had gone missing. That marked the third report this week of a laptop containing sensitive data being stolen.

In an official statement, the department offered very little information on what might have happened or when the laptop was stolen. All it said was that the missing laptop was password protected and contained details such as Social Security numbers and taxpayer names.

"The agency has no information to date that any of the data has been accessed. All actions being undertaken by DRS are preventative," the statement said. A statement announcing Rell's measures indicated that DRS waited 11 days after the loss to start notifying affected individuals.

The DRS said it has notified the appropriate law enforcement authorities and is in the process of informing all of those affected by the theft. The department has also set up a Web site that state taxpayers can use to find out whether their names were on the compromised list. In addition, the state has contracted with Debix Identity Protection Network (Debix) to provide credit monitoring services to those affected by the theft.

The department did not offer any information on whether the data on the laptop might have been encrypted. But in the past, analysts have noted that when breached entities do not refer specifically to encryption in their notifications, it's a pretty good bet to assume that they did not use encryption to protect data.

The Connecticut theft is the third such incident to make news this week. AT&T Thursday confirmed that a laptop containing unencrypted personal information on an unspecified number of current and former employees of AT&T Corp. (now owned by SBC) was stolen from the vehicle of a consultant working for the company.

The other incident involved a similarly unprotected laptop at Maryland's Department of the Environment. As with the AT&T compromise, no details were released on how many people might have been affected by that theft, which involved a computer containing personally identifiable information on individuals who had been issued licenses by four separate state agencies.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...083101138.html





Load and lock

Seagate's New Drives: 250GB Notebook, Hardware Encrypted Desktop
Jon Stokes

Seagate has announced two new drives today: one for the desktop and another for portables. The new desktop drive, the 1TB 7200 rpm Barracuda FDE, is the first drive of its size to contain an embedded encryption processor that encrypts all the data on the drive as it's written. In other words, it does something similar to Microsoft's BitLocker and Apple's FileVault but in hardware at a level beneath the operating system.

The Barracuda FDE's DriveTrust encryption requires the user to enter a password prior to the boot-up stage so that the drive can decrypt the user's data, which has been encrypted by AES. This boot password can be paired with other pre-boot, hardware-based security measures, like biometrics and smartcards. Because the drive is unlocked prior to boot and remains accessible in the clear while the machine is powered on, this technology isn't quite yet suited for portables. The aforementioned BitLocker and FileVault solutions are aimed at portable users who worry about having their laptops stolen, and don't want hackers to have access to their data on waking the machine from sleep.

Seagate says that there's a DriveTrust SDK that software vendors can use "to build DriveTrust Technology-enabled applications such as access controls needed to manage encryption keys, passwords and other forms of authentication for large deployments," but this still doesn't suggest to me that the drive's encryption functionality could be readily integrated with a post-boot, login-based solution like FileVault. It's not a stretch to imagine that another revision of DriveTrust aimed at portables is on its way, however, and that it will feature such functionality.

For my part, I can already envision this drive as the basis for a new generation of consumer NAS devices that have a side-panel keypad for unlocking the device's drives on boot. Infrant, are you listening? Because I worry enough about thieves breaking into my home and walking out with my handily portable ReadyNAS NV+ that I jumped through hoops with OS X and various third-party apps to make sure that my nightly backups over my LAN are secure.

250GB of notebook storage ought to be enough for anybody

At 2.5" and 5400RPM the Momentus 5400.4 packs 250GB of storage into a very small space, but that particular combination of density and storage capacity is by no means a first. All the usual suspects (Wester Digital, Hitachi, Fujitsu, Samsung) have already introduced 2.5" drives this size or larger. But Seagate claims this new drive is the first notebook drive to use perpendicular recording, which cuts down on platter surface area to improve power efficiency and failure rates.

Note that Hitachi actually has a 250GB notebook drive with a similar encryption option as the Seagate 1TB desktop drive described above: the Hitachi Travelstar 7K200. Does anyone know if this thing's encryption functionality works in a MacBook Pro? If it does then I want one. I had problems with FileVault and had to disable it.

The Momentus will ship in the fourth quarter of this year, and the Barracuda FDE will ship in early 2008. There's no word on pricing at this time.
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post...d-desktop.html





Romancing the Flat Pack: Ikea, Repurposed
Penelope Green

Winnie Lam was thinking about food when she made her Chocolate Sundae Toppings footstool, fashioned from a few bags of cotton pompoms hot-glued to an Ikea stool. “It came from staring into a bowl of ice cream one day,” said Ms. Lam, 31, who lives in Mountain View, Calif., and is a product manager at Google. “I’m a chocolate lover, but I’d rather look at it than eat it.”

Alex Csiky, a 43-year-old guitar maker in Windsor, Ontario, was focused, as he always is, on blowing a raspberry at the guitar-making industry while at the same time making a great sound when he built his sleek blond electric guitar from an Ikea pine tabletop.

Meanwhile, Christine Domanic, 28, an artist who was living at the time in Philadelphia, found the inspiration for her rolling bench in the sex ads in the back of city magazines. Her endearing Wiener Bench — a wooden bench festooned with fat pink crocheted tubes — was made from an old Ikea side table, the yarn from 60 used sweaters and the stuffing from a sofa left on her street on trash day.

Ms. Lam, Mr. Csiky and Ms. Domanic have never met but they are nonetheless related, connected by a global (and totally unofficial) collective known as the Ikea Hackers. Do-it-yourselfers and technogeeks, tinkerers, artists, crafters and product and furniture designers, the hackers are united only by their perspective, which looks upon an Ikea Billy bookcase or Lack table and sees not a finished object but raw material: a clean palette yearning to be embellished or repurposed. They make a subset of an expanding global D.I.Y. movement, itself a huge tent of philosophies and manifestoes including but not confined to anticonsumerism, antiglobalism, environmentalism and all-purpose iconoclasm.

“I think there is a movement around looking at all the products that are available — this global stream of stuff — and realizing you can tinker with them and rebuild them,” said Michael F. Zbyszynski, 36, the assistant director of music composition and pedagogy at the Center for New Music and Audio Technologies at the University of California, Berkeley, whose own hack is a speaker array made from red plastic Ikea salad bowls, and who has made other musical objects from PVC plastic and coffee cans that “live in the zone of the hack,” he said.

“It’s all about not accepting what’s presented for sale as it is,” Mr. Zbyszynski said, “about not just doing a ‘paint by numbers’ of your life.”

The hackers have lately gained a salonnière in Mei Mei Yap, a 37-year-old Malaysian copywriter who lives in Kuala Lumpur and works for an advertising agency there. Ms. Yap, who calls herself Jules, for the Ikea chair she loves, and who has no affiliation with the mammoth Swedish furniture maker that makes it, is not, she said by phone from her apartment, particularly handy, but with her year-old blog, ikeahacker.blogspot.com, she has created a forum for those who are very handy indeed. With a keen eye and an open heart, Ms. Yap has built an encyclopedia of hacks by trawling craft and design Web sites and by inviting personal submissions.

Ms. Yap said she lives with a family of rapidly reproducing guppies and lots of Ikea furniture, but hardly any hacks. “Well, there are maybe three,” she said, describing a tower of wall cabinets, a side table made into a mobile home office unit, and a bathroom cabinet she added doors to. “But they don’t even qualify for my site.”

She presents hacks that are kitschy-useful, like Sara Madole’s bright green rolling cat litter box (Ikea hackers seem to be overwhelmingly cat people), which Ms. Madole, a 27-year-old law school graduate who lives in Houston, said she built from two Ikea Snack boxes. Ms. Yap also collects hacks that are meta in both concept and design, like the Nata Vintage chair — made by Anatomic Factory, a design collective in Florence, Italy — a Duchampian object that marries a walking cane with an Ikea chair.

“Nata vintage” — meaning, roughly, born vintage — “stems from a reflection on the eternal return of the ‘old’ as a recurrent tendency of the market,” Marco Popolo, one of the object’s designers, explained by e-mail. “Therefore let us make a provocation: what better way to sell a vintage chair than to borrow a walking stick (stereotype of the old) to replace a leg of a classic, stereotyped Ikea chair?”

Mr. Popolo wrote that he has been following Ms. Yap’s blog, which he called a “very interesting big container rich with ingenious and original ideas,” since its inception, drawn to the fact that it’s about “stuff made by common people” — as opposed to designers — who are trying to customize their lives. “This is a very contemporary phenomenon,” he said.

More prosaically, Ms. Yap said: “I think Ikea just makes it easy to D.I.Y. because it already has a system in place of mixing and matching this frame with that cabinet and those knobs. Hacking just takes it a little further, repurposing it to fit your needs. And maybe the geek-nerd in us hackers feels a buzz having outsmarted the Ikea system by creating something of our own.”

Some of the most ingenious hacks are as simple as a $6.99 Ikea desk lamp reimagined as a wall sconce, or stainless steel shelving reworked as a coffee table. The word hack is filched, as Shoshana Berger, editor in chief of ReadyMade magazine put it, from computer parlance, as in, “hacking into the mainframe.”

“The idea is you’re getting in through the backdoor,” Ms. Berger said, “and reinventing what’s there.”

In the 1990s, when Ms. Berger was a “cool hunter” at Y&R, the branding, marketing and advertising agency, “we used to call this ‘post-purchase product alteration, ’ ” she said, noting that Ikea hackers’ predecessors can be found in fashion, with the deconstruction movement fomented by the Belgians in the late ’80s, and in architecture.

“There is a long history of hacking industrial artifacts or found objects and turning them into high design,” she said, drawing a straight line from Buckminster Fuller to Lot-Ek, the Manhattan architectural firm that has played with cargo containers, industrial sinks and truck tanks. “But to my knowledge Ikea is the only company that is appealing to the do-it-yourselfer.”

Why Ikea, the 60-year-old megabrand whose perky Swedish style has homogenized living rooms from Europe to Malaysia (it now has 265 stores in 35 countries), should be so hackable has everything to do with its price point and, perhaps, its benign-seeming blondness.

There are hackers who have upended and truly subverted the happy Ikea message, like Guy Ben-Ner, an Israeli video artist who made a treehouse of Ikea furniture and an instructional video featuring a man who is a combination Robinson Crusoe, Jewish settler and Ikea salesman. The piece, which he showed at the 2005 Venice Biennial, was all about “the illusion of creating” that comes from the sort of D.I.Y. that regular Ikea shoppers practice, along with an attendant illusion of individuality. The Ikea-D.I.Y. promise is that “we shall all have, eventually, the same ‘private’ homes,” Mr. Ben-Ner said.

But most of the hackers Ms. Yap has collected aren’t perpetrating truly subversive acts. They are more focused on the pleasures of reinvention, and on modifying Ikea’s wares to suit their homes and personalities.

Mona Liss, director of public relations for Ikea in the United States, took her first look at Ms. Yap’s blog a few weeks ago, pointed there by this reporter. “I could spend all day looking at this,” she said, and then opined that what compels an Ikea hacker to hack, in addition to what she called Ikea’s clean palette, “is this invisible aura of Ikea, something in our DNA that is inviting and unspoken.”

“Being an Ikea worker,” she continued with animation, “I can tell you we’re a culture that’s asked to challenge conformity, to speak outside the box.”

Or outside the flat pack, as the company’s special packaging is called.

Ikea hacking reminded Ann Mack, 31, director of trend-spotting at JWT, the blue-chip advertising agency once known as J. Walter Thompson, of the way ad campaigns are spoofed on YouTube. “Customization is so huge for a demographic that’s skewing younger and younger,” she said. “They don’t want to be told by ‘the man’ what they should consume and how exactly they should consume it. That’s boring. They can make their own playlist. They can take a product and make it truly their own.”

In any case ReadyMade, Ms. Berger’s magazine, which she started in December 2001 and comes out every other month, was designed for hackers of all stripes. It’s a hybrid, part Martha Stewart, part Mrs. Beeton, for a reader who listens to the Silver Jews, reworks ads to display on YouTube and might turn rubbings of manhole covers into backlighted mandalas or repurpose an Ikea Billy shelf into a bed, following instructions that ran in the magazine in 2005 in an article called “Ikea Your Way.”

The magazine itself was a D.I.Y. project until last fall, when it was bought by the Meredith Corporation. Its success — it now has a circulation of 250,000 — has resulted in large part from the mind-set of a generation that came of age in the late 1980s and early ’90s with self-authoring tools, Ms. Berger said, “like editing their own movies and photos on their computers, blogging, creating their own Web sites.”

“They feel very capable and resourceful,” she said.

The rise of the computer culture, as resourceful as it is, means that “we are no longer a tactile culture,” Ms. Berger continued, “so there is this yearning for things that are hands-on and handmade.”

ReadyMade is part of a universe of D.I.Y. media and forums where Ikea hacks appear and are then found by Ms. Yap, who links her blog to them. It’s a universe that includes Make magazine (more science than design-geeky, for the handmade-robot set) and Web sites like instructables.com, which was created by M.I.T. Media Lab alumni as a forum for its users to share knowledge about how to make or do practically anything, including, as a glance at the home page the other day revealed, a quick banana nut bread and “hacking a toilet for free water.” Mr. Zbyszynski’s speaker array, with its goofy “Lost in Space” aesthetic, first appeared there.

The do-it-yourselfer’s agora is the two-year-old Etsy (etsy.com), run out of a 7,000-square-foot warehouse in Brooklyn by Robert Kalin, 27. He founded the site — an online community of 400,000 members, including crafters, designers and, inevitably, Ikea hackers — as an old-fashioned bazaar to sell handmade objects and promote “human-to-human contact,” as he described it. In July, Mr. Kalin said, Etsy sold its millionth item. “I don’t know if it’s anachronistic or ambitious,” he said, “but I just want to make everything I own.”

Mr. Kalin said that to him and his fellows at Etsy, Ikea is a natural resource. “We don’t look to a forest for wood,” he said. “We don’t want to use ‘new’ wood. We look at a Dumpster or an Ikea store as a place to go harvest ‘raw’ materials. It’s a very urban phenomenon: we have the resources we need and we have become expert at repurposing them, like taking these broken Ikea chairs and making them into a table.”

Mr. Kalin is big on “upcycling,” a process whose name was coined by William McDonough, an architect, and Michael Braungart, a chemist, in their 2002 book, “Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the Way We Make Things.” They used the term to describe the process of taking something that’s essentially waste and moving it up the consumer-goods chain. “I love upcycling,” Mr. Kalin said. “I love this idea of bringing something from lower down and elevating it.”

Etsy held an upcycling contest last spring, inviting its users to make something of value out of materials that would otherwise end up on the trash heap. Christine Domanic’s Wiener Bench won first place. Last month, Ms. Domanic joined the Etsy staff as a marketplace coordinator, helping Mr. Kalin restructure the site. She has donated her bench to the Etsy lab.

“Anyone can come and see it,” she said. “It’s really comfortable and fun to scoot around the floor on.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/06/garden/06hackers.html





FEC Resolved Two Matters Involving Internet Activity; Applies Media Exemption to Political Blogs
Press Release

WASHINGTON – The Federal Election Commission announced today that it has unanimously resolved two complaints alleging that Internet blog activity is subject to Commission regulation, finding that the activity is exempt from regulation under the media or volunteer exemption.

In Matter Under Review (MUR) 5928, the Commission determined that Kos Media, L.L.C., which operates the website DailyKos, did not violate the Federal Election Campaign Act. The Commission rejected allegations that the site should be regulated as a political committee because it charges a fee to place advertising on its website and it provides “a gift of free advertising and candidate media services” by posting blog entries that support candidates. The Commission determined that the website falls squarely within the media exemption and is therefore not subject to federal regulation under the Act.

Since 1974, media activity has been explicitly exempted from federal campaign finance regulation. In March 2006, the Commission made clear that this exemption extends to online media publications and that “costs incurred in covering or carrying a news story, commentary, or editorial by any broadcasting station. . . , Web site, newspaper, magazine, or other periodical publication, including any Internet or electronic publication,” are not a contribution or expenditure unless the facility is owned by a political party, committee, or candidate. With respect to MUR 5928, the FEC found that Kos Media meets the definition of a media entity and that the activity described in the complaint falls within the media exemption. Thus, activity on the DailyKos website does not constitute a contribution or expenditure that would trigger political committee status. The Commission therefore found no reason to believe Kos Media, DailyKos.com, or Markos Moulitsas Zuniga violated federal campaign finance law.

In MUR 5853, the Commission rejected allegations that Michael L. Grace made unreported expenditures when he leased space on a computer server to create a “blog” which advocated the defeat of Representative Mary Bono in the November 2006 election. The Commission also rejected allegations that Grace coordinated these expenditures with Bono’s opponent in the race, David Roth, and found that no in-kind contributions to Roth’s campaign resulted from Grace’s blogging activity. The Commission also found that the respondent did not fraudulently misrepresent himself in violation of 2U.S.C. § 441h.

The Act exempts from regulation volunteer activity by individuals. In the FEC’s Internet regulations, the Commission clarified that an individual’s use, without compensation, of equipment and personal services for blogging, creating, or hosting a website for the purpose of influencing a Federal election are not expenditures subject to the restrictions of campaign finance law. Even if there were some costs or value associated with Mr. Grace’s blog, these costs are exempt from Commission regulations. The FEC therefore found no reason to believe Mr. Grace or the Roth campaign violated federal campaign finance law.

Additional information regarding MURs can be found on the FEC website at http://www.fec.gov/em/mur.shtml.
http://www.fec.gov/press/press2007/20070904murs.shtml





Bat Boy Collapses in Checkout Lane!
Thomas Vinciguerra

It’s probably safe to say that no other newspaper in the annals of journalism scored as many shocking scoops as The Weekly World News.

Remember the story about Hillary Clinton’s affair with an outer-space alien? The African tribe that worships Barbra Streisand’s nose? Heaven being photographed by the Hubble Space Telescope?

Such was the grist of The News, “The World’s Only Reliable Newspaper,” which at its peak in the 1980s had a circulation of 1.2 million. For 28 years, until its final issue last Monday, no other tabloid was plucked from supermarket checkout lanes with such guffaws, disbelief and glee, though its editors say there were plenty of believers, too.

And no Weekly World News story was more enduring than the saga of Bat Boy, the half-human, half-bat who first appeared in 1992. “Discovered” in a cave in West Virginia and distinguished by his fangs, pointed ears and bulging eyes, Bat Boy became a pop culture icon. He inspired a well-received Off Broadway musical. A Weekly World News anthology published in 2005 was titled “Bat Boy Lives!” When The News folded, a deal was under way to produce Bat Boy action figures.

Why such interest?

Perhaps it was because Bat Boy was preposterous, but not so outrageous as to be completely unbelievable.

“What made a great Weekly World News story is that it’s got to start with verisimilitude,” said Paul Kupperberg, the paper’s last executive editor.

“We’ve all seen weird-looking people in the world,” he said. “I was with my son at Coney Island a few weeks ago and I saw a sideshow guy who looked like a wolf. So it’s possible.”

Stan Sinberg, a former Weekly World News writer, offered a similar analysis.

“I have a Bat Boy T-shirt that I wear around, especially overseas,” he said. “People ask me if it’s real. It’s one of those things that is so ludicrous that it’s grotesquely appealing.”

Bat Boy was also a sympathetic character. Since society didn’t understand him (Was he a mutant? Was he evil?), it feared him. The government repeatedly imprisoned him. Happily, he always managed to escape.

“A lot of the Weekly World News stock in trade was government conspiracies,” Mr. Kupperberg said. “You take a cute, cuddly, I-want-to-be-left-alone character like Bat Boy and sic the government on him, and you have a story.”

In 2004, The News spun him into a comic strip in the paper written and drawn by Peter Bagge. “I had Bat Boy running for president, Bat Boy going to the moon,” Mr. Bagge said.

Alas, for all his powers, Bat Boy could not save the tabloid that made him a household name. Last year, American Media Inc., The News’s parent company, suffered a net loss of $160 million, and the paper’s circulation fell to 83,000, according to filings at the Securities and Exchange Commission. In a media world populated by The Onion, The Daily Show and other cutting-edge satire, Bat Boy’s adventures seemed passé.

Mr. Bagge has another explanation for the decline of The Weekly World News. “What was killing them was advertising,” Mr. Bagge said. “I said to my editor, Garry Messick, ‘Where did all the advertisers go?’ And he said, ‘They’re the same people who spam you all day. Why should they advertise?’ ”

Mr. Sinberg said that when the average number of stories per issue dropped from about 50 to 25, readers simply gave up.

“Even though they’re not the most intelligent audience in the world,” Mr. Sinberg said, “they knew they were getting less for their money.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/02/we...w/02basic.html





Vanity press

Murdoch Company to Distribute China Book
AP

A travel book published by China's military will be distributed around the world by a publishing arm of Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. in time for the 2008 Beijing Olympics, the People's Liberation Army Daily said.

The official newspaper of the world's largest military said Friday that "Travel Around China" would be distributed in 25 languages by HarperCollins Publishers, a subsidiary of News Corp., in an agreement signed at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing.

The military newspaper said the travel book had been published by the Blue Sky Publishing House belonging to the People's Liberation Army Air Force.

"Selling the copyright to the largest publisher in the world is part of the 'going global' strategy of the Blue Sky Publishing House," the newspaper said.

It quoted unidentified sources as saying HarperCollins would donate 2,000 copies of the English version of the book to the organizers of the Beijing Olympics in the hope it would be designated "an official travel guide for the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games."
A HarperCollins statement posted Friday on its Web site did not mention the travel book, but said the company had signed several cooperative initiatives in China.

It said they include a deal with the People's Literature Publishing House to initially publish "five Chinese classic titles" in English. It did not identify the titles.

Murdoch's pursuit of business in China and perceived willingness to kill projects likely to rankle the government have raised concerns in media and human rights circles about his $5 billion purchase of Dow Jones, the parent company of The Wall Street Journal.

The Journal has won two Pulitzer Prizes over the past seven years for its often-critical coverage of the government's economic and social measures.

A handful of reporters from The Journal's Beijing bureau this year urged Dow Jones in an open letter to reject Murdoch's takeover bid over concerns that he would meddle in the newspaper's China coverage.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...090100494.html





A Space for Us
Pagan Kennedy

I first ventured onto MySpace this winter. After a few minutes of exploring, I clicked into a profile posted by a girl smashed on vodka. Her photo showed her slumped across her desk, blond hair fanning over her laptop. Here’s the most disturbing part of the story: I had found this kid by searching on my own name. She’d listed one of my novels, “The Exes,” as a favorite book. My God, was this my target audience? And if I set up a profile on MySpace, could I ask a booze-addled 17-year-old to be my friend? Or would I come off as a pedophile?

I’d jumped into the social-networking site after a fellow author told me I absolutely had to use MySpace to promote my forthcoming book. “I’d try it myself, but I feel too old to be on that thing,” she said. So here I was navigating though pages of Hello Kitty wallpaper and frat brothers wearing chicken heads. Supposedly, thousands of writers had migrated onto MySpace, but where were they? Eventually, through trial and error, I discovered the best way to find them: if you type the right word into the site’s search engine — say, “Foucault” or “Kafka” — you will tumble through the rabbit hole into MySpace’s literary scene.

Imagine a version of Studio 54 where Jane Austen, wearing nothing but gold panties, vomits all over Harold Bloom’s shoes while infomercials for debut novels flash on the walls. In literary MySpace, most people are cruising: they’re hoping to find cute nerds, to hype a memoir or to indulge some bookworm fetish. Pranksters pretending to be Oscar Wilde, Gertrude Stein and Ovid rub elbows with authors masquerading as their own characters. Of course, many of the profiles are just glorified advertising pages. And yet, amid all the craziness, readers have formed dozens of groups — for instance, Ladies and Lads of Library Land — to engage in serious bibliophilic conversation.

And, much to my relief, I discovered that the drunken girl was an anomaly. People read my books sober! I spied on dozens of my fans’ pages and found out weirdly intimate data about them: what they eat (vegan peanut-butter-cream-frosted cupcakes), what imaginary businesses they’ve started (a magazine called Stupid American) and what they collect (miter saws, leg warmers, “cartes de visite with good mustaches on them,” tattoos). I even started reading their blogs. One reader reports having a job involving releasing 1,000 white flounder into a river for experimental purposes. Why do these people even bother with my books, when they’ve got stories of their own like that? And so I have become my readers’ reader, and something about the reciprocity of this delights and scares me.

Usually, writers don’t interact much with their readers. Even at bookstore appearances, we may not run into the hard-core fans, who often are suspicious of group activities and would rather just meet on the page. When we write, we’re alone. We stare at the computer screen, picturing our imaginary audience as we type. Mine look like this: a horde of faceless yet well-educated drones sitting in rows of acrylic chairs in an all-white lecture room that resembles one of the sets in the old TV show “Space: 1999.”

In this way, we’re the opposite of musicians, who know their audiences intimately. A drummer in an indie band might gig five nights a week. Afterward, whether he’s in Cleveland or Culpeper, he sticks around in the bar with local friends, then crashes on a sofa supplied by a fan. For bands, social networking started long before the Internet.

But for authors and readers, MySpace offers something entirely new: a forum where we can finally meet and get to know one another — or even collaborate in literary games. For instance, soon after the novelist Matt Haig put up a MySpace profile to promote his book “The Dead Fathers Club,” he received a message that would make any writer’s heart thump. Someone wanted to “friend” him, and that someone was none other than ... William Shakespeare. Shakespeare “sent a message telling me how much he enjoyed my work,” Haig explained to me (via MySpace mail). “I returned the compliment and told him ‘King Lear’ was pretty good, too, and that I’m sure he has a solid career ahead of him.”

Haig said that readers are not always so gentle. A few have told him what they want changed in his novels or what he should write next. “In the old days, the author-reader relationship was the equivalent of someone who couldn’t listen, talking to someone who couldn’t speak,” Haig said. “But MySpace ... places the writer and reader on an equal footing within the same network.”

Neal Pollack, author of the memoir “Alternadad,” agrees that the site shakes up the literary hierarchy. “If nothing else, MySpace will show nonauthors how pathetic and lonely most writers really are. Of course we’ll respond to messages. It’s not like we have more important work. Anything that can lift away the author-as-god veil is all right by me,” Pollack said (again, via MySpace mail). After I got his message, I couldn’t stop thinking, Author as god? Do other authors feel like gods?

Certainly the novelist Laura Zigman does not. She created her first MySpace profile in a bid to win approval from her teenage stepdaughter. Zigman, who describes herself as “desperate to be loved by teenagers,” posted a picture of a Scooby Doo Chia Pet on her page. Nothing came of this. Later, when she returned to MySpace to promote her books, she found herself becoming den mother to her readers, including one girl who had dropped out of college and needed a lot of bucking up.

Meanwhile, Marcy Dermansky, whose most recent novel is “Twins,” went onto the site in a mad dash to recruit new readers from among the millions of profiles. At one point, she spent hours a day on MySpace, searching for people who shared the names of her characters and trying to make them her friends. “I ran searches for the harder ones, the Smitas and Yumikos and Kendras, and then I wrote e-mails,” she said. “A lot of the Yumikos and Smitas and Sues and Lisas and Chloes like to read; they bought my book after I contacted them.” Who knew you could boost sales just by reaching out to Yumikos?

As for me, I’m still grappling with the revelation that my readers are carrying on lives in places like Brooklyn, Oakland and Portland. Somehow I had imagined that they slept in beehive-like pods in a space station just past the moon; they awakened only when I needed them to file into the antiseptic room to hear my story. These readers, however, turn out to be just the opposite of the drones of my imagination. They sell broccoli-themed greeting cards; they carve their own rubber stamps; they are pioneering new methods of fortune-telling that involve Smarties candies. And more than a few of them have ventures of their own to promote. In fact, if you want to buy Shakespeare-themed thong underwear, I know a guy who can hook you up.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/02/bo...tml?ref=review





Are Books Passé? Web Giants Envision the Next Chapter
Brad Stone

Technology evangelists have predicted the emergence of electronic books for as long as they have envisioned flying cars and video phones. It is an idea that has never caught on with mainstream book buyers.

Two new offerings this fall are set to test whether consumers really want to replace a technology that has reliably served humankind for hundreds of years: the paper book.

In October, the online retailer Amazon.com will unveil the Kindle, an electronic book reader that has been the subject of industry speculation for a year, according to several people who have tried the device and are familiar with Amazon’s plans. The Kindle will be priced at $400 to $500 and will wirelessly connect to an e-book store on Amazon’s site.

That is a significant advance over older e-book devices, which must be connected to a computer to download books or articles.

Also this fall, Google plans to start charging users for full online access to the digital copies of some books in its database, according to people with knowledge of its plans. Publishers will set the prices for their own books and share the revenue with Google. So far, Google has made only limited excerpts of copyrighted books available to its users.

Amazon and Google would not comment on their plans, and neither offering is expected to carve out immediately a significant piece of the $35-billion-a-year book business. But these new services, from two Internet heavyweights, may help to answer the question of whether consumers are ready to read books on digital screens instead of on processed wood pulp.

“Books represent a pretty good value for consumers. They can display them and pass them to friends, and they understand the business model,” said Michael Gartenberg, research director at Jupiter Research, who is skeptical that a profitable e-book market will emerge anytime soon.

“We have had dedicated e-book devices on the market for more than a decade, and the payoff always seems to be just a few years away,” he said.

That disappointing history goes back to the late 1990s, when Silicon Valley start-ups created the RocketBook and SoftBook Reader, two bulky, battery-challenged devices that suffered from lackluster sales and a limited selection of material. The best selling e-books at the time, tellingly, were “Star Trek” novels.

Hopes for e-books began to revive last year with the introduction of the widely marketed Sony Reader. Sony’s $300 gadget, the size of a trade paperback, has a six-inch screen, enough memory to hold 80 books and a battery that lasts for 7,500 page turns, according to the company. It uses screen display technology from E Ink, a company based in Cambridge, Mass., that emerged from the Media Lab at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and creates power-efficient digital screens that uncannily mimic the appearance of paper.

Sony will not say how many it has sold, but the Reader has apparently done well enough that Sony recently increased its advertising for the device in several major American cities.

“Digital readers are not a replacement for a print book; they are a replacement for a stack of print books,” said Ron Hawkins, vice president for portable reader systems at Sony. “That is where we see people, on the go, in the subway and in airports, with our device.”

Book publishers also seem to be preparing for the kind of disruption that hit the music business when Apple introduced the symbiotic combination of the iPod and its iTunes online service. This year, with Sony’s Reader drawing some attention and Amazon’s imminent e-book device on their radar, most major publishers have accelerated the conversion of their titles into electronic formats.

“There has been an awful lot of energy around e-books in the last six to 12 months, and we are now making a lot more titles available,” said Matt Shatz, vice president for digital at Random House, which plans to have around 6,500 e-books available by 2008. It has had about 3,500 available for the last few years.

Amazon has been showing the Kindle to book publishers for the last year and has delayed its introduction several times. Last fall, a photograph of the device, and some of its specifications, leaked onto the Web when the company filed an application with the Federal Communications Commission to get approval for its wireless modem, which will operate over a high-speed EVDO network.

Several people who have seen the Kindle say this is where the device’s central innovation lies — in its ability to download books and periodicals, and browse the Web, without connecting to a computer. They also say Amazon will pack some free offerings onto the device, like reference books, and offer customers a choice of subscriptions to feeds from major newspapers like The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and the French newspaper Le Monde.

The device also has a keyboard, so its users can take notes when reading or navigate the Web to look something up. A scroll wheel and a progress indicator next to the main screen, will help users navigate Web pages and texts on the device.

People familiar with the Kindle also have a few complaints. The device has a Web browser, but using it is a poor experience, because the Kindle’s screen, also from E Ink, does not display animation or color.

Some also complain about the fact that Amazon is using a proprietary e-book format from Mobipocket, a French company that Amazon bought in 2005, instead of supporting the open e-book standard backed by most major publishers and high-tech companies like Adobe. That means owners of other digital book devices, like the Sony Reader, will not be able to use books purchased on Amazon.com.

Nevertheless, many publishing executives see Amazon’s entrance into the e-book world as a major test for the long-held notion that books and newspapers may one day be consumed on a digital device.

“This is not your grandfather’s e-book,” said one publishing executive who did not want to be named because Amazon makes its partners sign nondisclosure agreements. “If these guys can’t make it work, I see no hope.”

For its part, Google has no plans to introduce an electronic device for reading books. Its new offering will allow users to pay some portion of a book’s cover price to read its text online. For the last two years, as part of the Google Book Search Partner Program, some publishers have been contributing electronic versions of their books to the Google database, with the promise that the future revenue would be shared.

The service could be especially useful to students and researchers who find information they need through a Google search, but it is also likely to include material suited for leisure reading. It will be separate from an effort called the Google Book Search Library Project, which is digitizing the collections of some libraries. That program has angered publishers and led to several pending lawsuits over copyright issues.

Both the programs of Google and Amazon are drawing attention, and some skepticism, from traditional book retailers. Barnes & Noble, the largest bookseller in the United States, once invested in early e-book creator NuvoMedia and sold its RocketBook in stores before getting out of the business in 2003.

Stephen Riggio, chief executive at Barnes & Noble, argues that for most people the value of traditional paper books will never be replicated in digital form. Nevertheless, he plans to compete with Google and Amazon. Mr. Riggio said in an interview that the full texts of many books will become available on the company’s Web site over the next year to 18 months. He also said that Barnes & Noble was considering introducing its own electronic book reader — but only when it can sell one at a low price.

“If an affordable device can come to the market, sure we’d love to bring it to our customers, and we will,” Mr. Riggio said. “But right now we don’t see an affordable device in the immediate future.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/06/te.../06amazon.html





Starting Over
Jennifer Schuessler

THE WORLD WITHOUT US

By Alan Weisman.

Illustrated. 324 pp. Thomas Dunne Books/St. Martin’s Press. $24.95.

When Rachel Carson’s “Silent Spring” was published in 1963, the chemical giant Monsanto struck back with a parody called “Desolate Spring” that envisioned an America laid waste not by pesticides but by insects: “The bugs were everywhere. Unseen. Unheard. Unbelievably universal. ... On or under every square foot of land, every square yard, every acre, and county, and state and region in the entire sweep of the United States. In every home and barn and apartment house and chicken coop, and in their timbers and foundations and furnishings. Beneath the ground, beneath the waters, on and in limbs and twigs and stalks, under rocks, inside trees and animals and other insects — and yes, inside man.”

To Alan Weisman, this nightmare scenario would be merely a promising start. In his morbidly fascinating nonfiction eco-thriller, “The World Without Us,” Weisman imagines what would happen if the earth’s most invasive species — ourselves — were suddenly and completely wiped out. Writers from Carson to Al Gore have invoked the threat of environmental collapse in an effort to persuade us to change our careless ways. With similar intentions but a more devilish sense of entertainment values, Weisman turns the destruction of our civilization and the subsequent rewilding of the planet into a Hollywood-worthy, slow-motion disaster spectacular and feel-good movie rolled into one.

A journalist and author of three previous books, Weisman travels from Europe’s last remnant of primeval forest to the horse latitudes of the Pacific, interviewing everyone from evolutionary biologists and materials scientists to archaeologists and art conservators in his effort to sketch out the planet’s post-human future. In even the most heavily fortified corners of the settled world, the rot would set in quickly. With no one left to run the pumps, New York’s subway tunnels would fill with water in two days. Within 20 years, Lexington Avenue would be a river. Fire- and wind-ravaged skyscrapers would eventually fall like giant trees. Within weeks of our disappearance, the world’s 441 nuclear plants would melt down into radioactive blobs, while our petrochemical plants, “ticking time bombs” even on a normal day, would become flaming geysers spewing toxins for decades to come. Outside of these hot spots, Weisman depicts a world slowly turning back into wilderness. After about 100,000 years, carbon dioxide would return to prehuman levels. Domesticated species from cattle to carrots would revert back to their wild ancestors. And on every dehabitated continent, forests and grasslands would reclaim our farms and parking lots as animals began a slow parade back to Eden.

A million years from now, a collection of mysterious artifacts would remain to puzzle whatever alien beings might stumble upon them: the flooded tunnel under the English Channel; bank vaults full of mildewed money; obelisks warning of buried atomic waste (as current law requires) in seven long-obsolete human languages, with pictures. The faces on Mount Rushmore might provoke Ozymandian wonder for about 7.2 million more years. (Lincoln would probably fare better on the pre-1982 penny, cast in durable bronze.) But it’s hard to imagine an alien archaeologist finding poetry in the remote Pacific atolls awash in virtually unbiodegradable plastic bottles, bags and Q-tip shafts, or in the quadrillions of nurdles, microscopic plastic bits in the oceans — they currently outweigh all the plankton by a factor of six — that would continue to cycle uncorrupted through the guts of sea creatures until an enterprising microbe evolved to break them down.

As for the creatures who made this mess, the only residue of our own surprisingly negligible biomass — according to the biologist E. O. Wilson, the six billion-plus humans currently wreaking planetary havoc could all be neatly tucked away in one branch of the Grand Canyon — would be the odd fossil, mingling perhaps with the limbs of Barbie dolls.

Weisman knows from the work of environmental historians that humans have been shaping the natural world since long before the industrial age. His inner Deep Ecologist may dream of Earth saying good riddance to us, but he finds some causes for hope amid the general run of man-bites-planet bad news. At Amboseli National Park in Kenya, he takes comfort in the spectacle of Masai herdsmen living in carefully managed harmony with predators and grazers alike. In the 30-kilometer-radius “Zone of Alienation” around the Chernobyl nuclear plant, where some bridges remain too hot to cross 20 years after the 1986 meltdown, he finds eerie peace in the forests full of moose, lynx and radioactive deer. Watching from inside his protective suit as barn swallows buzz around the reactor, Weisman writes: “You want them to fly away, fast and far. At the same time, it’s mesmerizing that they’re here. It seems so normal, as if apocalypse has turned out to be not so bad after all. The worst happens, and life still goes on.”

So could we ourselves really simply fly away, leaving the rest of nature to slowly clean up our mess? Doomsday rhetoric aside, the fact is that nothing is likely to wipe us out completely, at least not without taking a good chunk of the rest of creation with us. (Even a virus with a 99.99 percent kill rate would still leave more than half a million naturally immune survivors who could fully repopulate the earth to current levels in a mere 50,000 years.) Not that some people aren’t trying to take matters into their own hands. Weisman checks in with Les Knight, the founder of the Voluntary Human Extinction Movement, which advocates gradually putting our species to sleep by collective refusal to procreate. After an initial panic, we would look around and see that the world was actually getting better: “With no more resource conflicts, I doubt we’d be wasting each other’s lives in combat,” Knight says. “The last humans could enjoy their final sunsets peacefully, knowing they have returned the planet as close as possible to the Garden of Eden.” (Apparently he never saw “Children of Men.”)

Weisman has his own flirtation with religious language, his occasionally portentous impassivity giving way to the familiar rhetoric of eco-hellfire as he imagines the earth’s most “narcissistic” species cleansed from the earth as punishment for its “overindulged lifestyle.” But Weisman stops short of calling for our full green burial, arguing instead for a universal “one child per human mother” policy. It would take until 2100 to dwindle to a global population of 1.6 billion, a level last seen in the 19th century, before leaping advances in energy, medicine and food production, but well before then we’d experience “the growing joy of watching the world daily become more wonderful.” And the evidence, Weisman writes, “wouldn’t hide in statistics. It would be outside every human’s window, where refreshed air would fill each season with more birdsong.”

Even readers who vaguely agree that there are “too many of us” (or is it too many of them?) may not all share Weisman’s brisk certainty that trading a sibling for more birdsong is a good bargain, just as those who applaud the reintroduction of the North American wolf may not quite buy the claim by Dave Foreman, a founder of Earth First!, that filling the New World’s empty über-predator niche with African lions and cheetahs is our best chance to avoid what Weisman calls “the black hole into which we’re shoving the rest of nature.” In the end, it’s the cold facts and cooler heads that drive Weisman’s cautionary message powerfully home. When it comes to mass extinctions, one expert tells him, “the only real prediction you can make is that life will go on. And that it will be interesting.” Weisman’s gripping fantasy will make most readers hope that at least some of us can stick around long enough to see how it all turns out.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/02/bo...uessler-t.html





‘Bringing the Ocean to the World,’ in High-Tech
William Yardley

Thousands of miles of fiber-optic cables are strung across the world’s oceans, connecting continents like so many tin cans in this age of critical global communication. So the fact that about 800 more miles of fiber-optic cable will soon thread the sea floor off the coast of the Pacific Northwest might not seem particularly revolutionary. Until you meet John R. Delaney, part oceanographer, part oracle.

“This is a mission to Planet Ocean,” said Mr. Delaney, a professor at the University of Washington. “This is a NASA-scale mission to basically enter the Inner Space, and to be there perpetually. What we’re doing is bringing the ocean to the world.”

Under a $331 million program long dreamed of by oceanographers and being financed by the National Science Foundation, Professor Delaney and a team of scientists from several other institutions are leading the new Ocean Observatories Initiative, a multifaceted effort to study the ocean — in the ocean — through a combination of Internet-linked cables, buoys atop submerged data collection devices, robots and high-definition cameras. The first equipment is expected to be in place by 2009.

A central goal, say those involved, is to better understand how oceans affect life on land, including their role in storing carbon and in climate change; the causes of tsunamis; the future of fish populations; and the effect of ocean temperature on growing seasons. Oceanographers also hope to engage other scientists and the public more deeply with ocean issues by making them more immediate. Instead of spending weeks or months on a boat gathering data, then returning to labs to make sense of it, oceanographers say they expect to be able to order up specific requests from their desktops and download the results.

Researchers will be able, for example, to assemble a year’s worth of daily data on deep ocean temperatures in the Atlantic or track changes in currents as a hurricane nears the Gulf of Mexico. And schoolchildren accustomed to dated graphics and grainy shark videos will only have to boot up to dive deep in high definition. “It’ll all go on the Internet and in as real time as possible,” said Alexandra Isern, the program director for ocean technology at the National Science Foundation. “This is really going to transform not only the way scientists do science but also the way the public can be involved.”

The program has three main parts, two of which involve placing a range of sensors in the oceans and one that connects through the Internet all the information gathered, so that the public and scientists can have access to it.

A “coastal/global” program will include stand-alone deep-water data-gathering stations far offshore, mostly in the higher latitudes of the Atlantic and Pacific, where cold, rough conditions have made ship-based oceanography difficult.

In American waters, observation systems are planned on both coasts. In the Pacific, off the Oregon coast, the system will study the upwelling of cold water that has led to repeated “dead zones” of marine life in recent summers. In the East, off Martha’s Vineyard, a coastal observation system is planned along the continental shelf, gathering information at the surface, subsurface and on the sea floor, where warm Gulf Stream currents confront colder water from off the coast of Canada.

“That mixing affects surface productivity, weather, carbon cycling,” said Robert S. Detrick, a senior scientist at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution.

In August, the Joint Oceanographic Institutions, which is administering the Ocean Observatories Initiative for the National Science Foundation, chose Woods Hole to lead the offshore buoy and coastal program. Woods Hole, which will receive about $98 million of the total cost, will partner with the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California, San Diego, and Oregon State University’s College of Oceanic and Atmospheric Sciences.

In the Northwest, about $130 million of the initiative’s cost is being dedicated to build a regional observatory, a series of underwater cables that will crisscross the tectonic plate named for the explorer Juan de Fuca. Rather than provide an information superhighway that bypasses the ocean, this new network is being put in place to take its pulse. Professor Delaney, whose specialty is underwater volcanoes that form at the seams between tectonic plates and the surprising life those seams support, is among those who have been pursuing the cable network for more than a decade, overcoming hurdles of money, technology and skepticism.

Some scientists have suggested that the Juan de Fuca is an imperfect laboratory, that it is small and lacks some features, like the most intense El Niño fluctuations, that might reveal more about how that phenomenon affects conditions at sea and on land. But Professor Delaney says the Juan de Fuca plate is well-suited for the program precisely because it is self-contained, just offshore and rich with seafloor activity, complicated current patterns and abundant fish and marine mammals. The new network shares many similarities with a plan called Neptune that Professor Delaney and others began pushing for in the 1990s. As part of an earlier effort related to that project, Canada is moving forward with its own cabled network off the coast of British Columbia.

“For the first three or four years, people just laughed when I said we’re going to turn Juan de Fuca Plate into a national laboratory,” Professor Delaney said. “Now they’re not laughing.”

Many oceanographers say the program will transform their field. Oscar Schofield, a biological oceanographer at Rutgers University, has spent nearly a decade helping piece together a small-scale coastal observatory in the Atlantic using a combination of radar, remote-controlled underwater gliders and a 15-kilometer underwater cable. The program, called the Coastal Ocean Observation Lab, which he runs with Scott Glenn, also a professor at Rutgers, has a Web site where outsiders can track currents, water temperatures and salinity levels in parts of the Atlantic. They can also follow measuring instruments guided remotely from the New Jersey coast to south of the Chesapeake Bay.

Professor Schofield said that the data gathered already had upended some of what he was taught in graduate school, from the way rivers flow into the ocean to the complexity of surface currents.

“When there’s a hurricane, when all the ships are running for cover, I’m flying my gliders into the hurricane,” using his office computer, Professor Schofield said. “Then I’m sitting at home drinking a beer watching the ocean respond to a hurricane.”

He added: “What’s great about oceanography is we’re still in the phase of just basic exploration. We’ve discovered things off one of the most populated coasts in the United States that we didn’t know yet. O.O.I. will take us one level beyond that, to where any scientist in the world will be able to explore any ocean.”

Several scientists involved in the project cited improved technology — from increased bandwidth to the ability to provide constant power to instruments at sea by underwater cables or solar or wind power — as critical to making the new program possible. They also say that increased concern about global warming, storms and fisheries has brought new attention to their field.

Some experts say they wish the project included more money for, say, placing buoys in the Indian Ocean, where monsoons and other events make for rich ocean activity. But John A. Orcutt, a professor at Scripps who is directing the effort to link the new research to the Internet, said being able to provide constant new data to scientists around the world, or even to teenagers surfing YouTube, will help build support for expanding the project in the future.

“We want to get the oceans and the sea floor in front of the public now,” Professor Orcutt said, “so they can understand the need for more.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/04/science/04ocea.html





Madeleine L’Engle, Children’s Writer, Is Dead
Douglas Martin

Madeleine L’Engle, who in writing more than 60 books, including childhood fables, religious meditations and science fiction, weaved emotional tapestries transcending genre and generation, died Thursday in Connecticut. She was 88.

Her death, of natural causes, was announced today by her publisher, Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

Ms. L’Engle (pronounced LENG-el) was best known for her children’s classic, “A Wrinkle in Time,” which won the John Newbery Award as the best children’s book of 1963. By 2004, it had sold more than 6 million copies, was in its 67th printing and was still selling 15,000 copies a year.

Her works — poetry, plays, autobiography and books on prayer — were deeply, quixotically personal. But it was in her vivid children’s characters that readers most clearly glimpsed her passionate search for the questions that mattered most. She sometimes spoke of her writing as if she were taking dictation from her subconscious.

“Of course I’m Meg,” Ms. L’Engle said about the beloved protagonist of “A Wrinkle in Time.”

The “St. James Guide to Children’s Writers” called Ms. L’Engle “one of the truly important writers of juvenile fiction in recent decades.” Such accolades did not come from pulling punches: “Wrinkle” is one of the most banned books because of its treatment of the deity.

“It was a dark and stormy night,” it begins, repeating the line of a 19th- century novelist Edward George Bulwer-Lytton, and presaging the immortal sentence that Snoopy, the inspiration-challenged beagle of the Peanuts cartoon, would type again and again. After the opening, “Wrinkle,” quite literally, takes off. Meg Murray, with help from her psychic baby brother, uses time travel and extrasensory perception to rescue her father, a gifted scientist, from a planet controlled by the Dark Thing. She does so through the power of love.

The book used concepts that Ms. L’Engle said she had plucked from Einstein’s theory of relativity and Planck’s quantum theory, almost flaunting her frequent assertion that children’s literature is literature too difficult for adults to understand. She also characterized the book as her refutation of ideas of German theologians.

In the “Dictionary of Literary Biography,” Marygail G. Parker notes “a peculiar splendor” in Ms. L’Engle’s oeuvre, and some of that splendor is sheer literary range. “Wrinkle” is part of her “Time Fantasy” series of children’s books, which includes “A Wind in the Door,” “A Swiftly Tilting Planet,” “Many Waters” and “An Acceptable Time.” The series combines elements of science fiction with insights into love and moral purpose that pervade Ms. L’Engle’s writing.

Ms. L’Engle’s other famous series of books concerned another family. The first installment, “Meet the Austins,” which appeared in 1960, portrayed an affectionate family whose members displayed enough warts to make them interesting. (Perhaps not enough for The Times Literary Supplement in London, though; it called the Austins “too good to be real.”)

By the fourth of the five Austin books, “A Ring of Endless Light,” any hint of Pollyanna was gone. Named a Newbery Honor Book in 1981, it told of a 16-year-old girl’s first experience with death. Telepathic communication with dolphins eventually helps the girl, Vicky, achieve a new understanding of things.

“The cosmic battle between light and darkness, good and evil, love and indifference, personified in the mythic fantasies of the ‘Wrinkle in Time’ series, here is waged compellingly in its rightful place: within ourselves,” Carol Van Strum wrote in The Washington Post in 1980.

Madeleine L’Engle Camp was born in Manhattan on the snowy night of Nov. 29, 1918. The only child of Madeleine Hall Barnett and Charles Wadsworth Camp, she was named for her great-grandmother, who was also named Madeleine L’Engle.

Young Madeleine’s mother came from Jacksonville, Fla., society and was a fine pianist; her father was a World War I veteran who worked as a foreign correspondent and later as drama and music critic for The New York Sun. He also knocked out potboiler novels.

The family lived on the Upper East Side of Manhattan; her parents had artistic friends, Madeleine an English nanny. She felt unpopular at school. She recalled that an elementary school teacher – Miss Pepper or Miss Salt, she couldn’t remember which — treated her as if she were stupid.

She had written her first story at 5 and retreated into writing. When she won a poetry contest in the fifth grade, her teacher accused her of plagiarizing. Her mother intervened to prove her innocence, lugging a stack of her stories from home.

When she was 12, she was sent to a boarding school in Switzerland, Chatelard, and at 15 to Ashley Hall, a boarding school in Charleston, S.C. She graduated from Smith College with honors in English. (She took no science, often a surprise to readers impressed with her science fiction.)

Returning to New York, Ms. L’Engle began to get small acting parts. She wrote her first novel, “The Small Rain,” in 1945 and had several plays she wrote produced.

She met the actor Hugh Franklin when both were appearing in a production of Chekhov’s “The Cherry Orchard.” They married in 1946, and their daughter Josephine was born the next year. In 1951, when Ms. L’Engle became pregnant again, they moved to the small town of Goshen, Conn., where they bought and ran a general store. Their son, Bion, was born in 1952, and in 1956 they adopted another daughter, Maria.

Mr. Franklin died in 1986 and Bion in 1999. Ms. L’Engle is survived by her daughters, Josephine F. Jones and Maria Rooney; five grandchildren; and five great-grandchildren.

Ms. L’Engle’s writing career was going so badly in her 30s that she claimed she almost quit writing at 40. But then “Meet the Austins” was published in 1960, and she was already deeply into “Wrinkle.” The inspiration came to her during a 10-week family camping trip.

That was just the start. She once described herself as a French peasant cook who drops a carrot in one pot, a piece of potato in another and an onion and a piece of meat in another.

“At dinnertime, you look and see which pot smells best and pull it forward,” she was quoted as saying in a 2001 book, “Madeleine L’Engle (Herself): Reflections on a Writing Life,” compiled by Carole F. Chase.

“The same is true with writing,” she continued. “There are several pots on my backburners.”

Her deeper thoughts on writing were deliciously mysterious. She believed that experience and knowledge are subservient to the subconscious and perhaps larger, spiritual influences.

“I think that fantasy must possess the author and simply use him,” she said in an interview with Horn Book magazine in 1983. “I know that is true of ‘A Wrinkle in Time.’ I cannot possibly tell you how I came to write it. It was simply a book I had to write. I had no choice.

“It was only after it was written that I realized what some of it meant.”

What turned out to be her masterpiece was rejected by 26 publishers. Editors at Farrar, Straus and Giroux loved it enough to publish it, but told her that she should not be disappointed if it failed.

The family moved back to New York, where Hugh Franklin won fame as Dr. Charles Taylor on the popular soap opera “All My Children.” For more than three decades, starting in 1966, Ms. L’Engle served as librarian and writer-in-residence at the Cathedral Church of St. John the Divine. One or two of her dogs often accompanied her to the cathedral library.

Much of her later work was autobiographical, although sometimes a bit idealized; she often said that her real truths were in her fiction. Indeed, she discussed her made-up stories the way a newspaper reporter might discuss his latest article about a crime.

When her son, then 10, protested the death of Joshua in “The Arms of the Starfish” (1965), she insisted that she could not change the tale, which was still unpublished at the time.

“I didn’t want Joshua to die, either,” Ms. L’Engle said in 1987 in a speech accepting the Margaret Edwards Award from the American Library Association for lifetime achievement in writing young adult literature, one of scores of awards she received.

“But that’s what happened. If I tried to change it, I’d be deviating from the truth of the story.”

Her characters continued living their lives even if she hadn’t mentioned them for decades. She had gotten word that Polly O’Keefe, who appeared in three books of the “Time Fantasy” series, was in medical school, she said a few months before the library speech.

A woman wrote her to say that she herself was a first-year medical student at Yale and that she would love to have Polly in her class. Ms. L’Engle said fine, and the student went to the registrar’s office to sign up Polly as an “official” Yale medical student.

“Why does anybody tell a story?” Ms. L’Engle once asked, even though she knew the answer.

“It does indeed have something to do with faith,” she said, “faith that the universe has meaning, that our little human lives are not irrelevant, that what we choose or say or do matters, matters cosmically.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/08/bo...nd-lengle.html





Before Models Can Turn Around, Knockoffs Fly
Eric Wilson

Buyers from the nation’s leading department stores will sift through the work of hundreds of designers as another Fashion Week begins today in New York, seeking the looks that shoppers will want to wear next spring. Seema Anand will be looking for the ones they want right now.

Ms. Anand, who will be following the catwalk shows through photographs posted instantly on the Web, is a designer few would recognize, even though she has dressed more people than most of the famous designers exhibiting a few blocks from her garment district studio, under the tents in Bryant Park.

“If I see something on Style.com, all I have to do is e-mail the picture to my factory and say, ‘I want something similar, or a silhouette made just like this,’ ” Ms. Anand said. The factory, in Jaipur, India, can deliver stores a knockoff months before the designer version.

Ms. Anand compared a gold sequined tunic she created with a nearly identical one by the designer Tory Burch. Bloomingdale’s had asked her to make several hundred of the dresses for its private label Aqua, she said.

The Tory Burch dress sells for $750; Ms. Anand’s is $260.

Ms. Anand’s company, Simonia Fashions, is one of hundreds that make less expensive clothes inspired by other designers’ runway looks, for trendy stores like Forever 21 and retail behemoths like Macy’s and Bloomingdale’s.

A debate is raging in the American fashion industry over such designs. Copying, which has always existed in fashion, has become so pervasive in the Internet era it is now the No. 1 priority of the Council of Fashion Designers of America, which is lobbying Congress to extend copyright protection to clothing. Nine senators introduced a bill last month to support the designers. An expert working with the designers’ trade group estimates that knockoffs represent a minimum of 5 percent of the $181 billion American apparel market.

Outlawing them is certainly an uphill battle, since many shoppers see nothing wrong with knockoffs, especially as prices for designer goods skyrocket. Critics of the designers’ group even argue that copies are good for fashion because they encourage designers to continuously invent new wares to stay ahead.

Designers say that is pre-Internet thinking.

“For me, this is not simply about copying,” said Anna Sui, one of more than 20 designers who have filed lawsuits against Forever 21, one of the country’s fastest-growing clothing chains, for selling what they claim are copies of their apparel. “The issue is also timing. These copies are hitting the market before the original versions do.”

The designers seek to outlaw clothing that looks very similar to their originals but is sold under someone else’s label. They want to extend laws that already ban counterfeit handbags and sunglasses with designer logos, which reportedly account for as much as $12 billion of sales. A reliable estimate of knockoffs cannot be determined because designers and retailers disagree on which clothes are copies and which are merely “inspired” by a trend, a normal part of the fashion food chain.

Ms. Anand agreed to offer a rare look at a side of fashion that exists parallel to Seventh Avenue’s celebrity designers, though all but unknown to the public. Interviews with executives at a number of companies that specialize in designing for the private labels of department stores and other chains reveal a highly competitive network of factories, which use the latest technology to reproduce designer looks with the impunity and speed of Robin Hood. Their copies do not violate existing law.

“This is the requirement of the market,” Ms. Anand said. “If a buyer tells us, ‘This is what I need,’ we’ll make it for them. This is our business.”

Her mother, Shashi Anand, founded their company, Simonia Fashions, in 1980, five years after she moved to New York from New Delhi. Shashi Anand has won awards for her success as an Asian businesswoman, including one presented in 1998 by Bill and Hillary Clinton, whose pictures are framed on her office wall.

The company, with 10 employees in the showroom, has sales of $20 million, about 80 percent of which is for clothes sold under the private labels of stores like Bloomingdale’s and Macy’s, and for specialty chains like Forever 21, Rampage and Urban Outfitters. They also design their own line, Blue Plate.

Most of their designs are original, or partly inspired by market trends, the women said; but some look like direct copies, and some of those are made at the specific request of retailers.

At the factory in Jaipur the company contracts with 2,000 workers who specialize in pattern making, design and tailoring, and are equipped with computer programs that approximate the design of a garment from a Web image without the need to pull apart the seams.

The factory can return finished samples within 14 days. Sometimes the results are awful, “and sometimes it looks so great you’re just shocked,” Ms. Anand said. “They’ve done a better job than the designer.”

The spring collections shown this week will not arrive in stores until February, typical of the decades-old industry cycle developed when Fashion Week was a trade event. But now that the news media and the Internet disseminate runway looks instantly, fashion followers are primed to seek them out earlier. Ms. Anand’s factory can deliver her version of runway styles to stores four to six weeks after an order.

Ms. Burch, who will show her collection on Sept. 11, said she was aware that her designs had been singled out by copiers. In March, she filed a lawsuit against several stores, including the Strawberry chain, for selling ballerina flats with an insignia she thought was too close to hers. As for the sequined dress Ms. Anand made for Bloomingdale’s, similar to one of Ms. Burch’s, Frank Doroff, a senior executive vice president of the store, said he was unaware of the order.

“It is our policy not to knock off existing resources,” he said, noting that Bloomingdale’s carries the Tory Burch collection. “Does it happen sometimes? I assume it does, but that is not the way we like to do business.”

The cut or details of a garment cannot be copyrighted under existing law, although logos and original prints can be protected. Anna Sui’s suit against Forever 21, which has 400 stores and sales estimated at more than $1 billion, claims it has infringed against her prints on 26 occasions.

“It seems to be their business model to find things that are popular in the marketplace by other designers and copy them,” said Marya Lenn Yee, a lawyer for Ms. Sui.

A spokeswoman for Forever 21, Meghan Bryan, had no comment on the lawsuit. “In working with our enormous vendor base, regularly buying items from hundreds of vendors, it is extremely difficult to be certain of the origin of each item, on each and every occasion,” she said in an e-mail message.

Of several shoppers polled outside a Forever 21 branch in Herald Square in Manhattan recently, none said that knowing a design was copied would stop them from buying it.

“Some people don’t want to spend $300 on a pair of jeans just because of the name,” said Siovhan McGearey, 16, from London. “They may look nice, but why pay $300 when you can go down the street to Forever 21 and get jeans that are $30 that look exactly the same?”

Designers counter that if the knockoffs continue unabated, their businesses will be in jeopardy.

Ms. Anand maintained that her reproductions of designer styles have been changed enough that they do not violate a designer’s intellectual property. “We don’t copy anything,” she said. “We tweak it. We get inspired before we create it.”

She sees her work meeting the needs of the vast majority of consumers who cannot afford designer prices. “Especially the younger girls do not have so much money,” Ms. Anand said, “but they want to wear fashionable clothes.”

“They want to look fabulous,” she said. “It’s their right to look fabulous.”

Paula Schwartz contributed reporting.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/04/us/04fashion.html





Catching the Bouquet, in a Dress You Bought Online
Elizabeth Olson

IS that polyester lavender number still hanging way in the back of the closet? Or the lumpy pink chiffon? Or the fussy flowered frock that cost a small fortune?

Fortunately, the cringe-inducing bridesmaid dress — unwearable in the real world — is being supplanted by chic, even snazzy, garb that doesn’t evoke pity when women walk down the aisle ahead of the bride.

The Internet is helping to drive the shift to fashionable bridal attendant wear. Web sites of companies like Ann Taylor, J. Crew, Target and Disney are offering a broad choice of styles and fabrics, ease of purchase and, when necessary, returns. Most online vendors also offer accessories, including shoes, clutches and sashes.

“You can do gown research online, take a group vote, then order from home,” said Kathleen A. Murray, deputy editor of TheKnot.com, a wedding site.

Two-thirds of bridal and bridesmaids dresses are still custom-ordered in a local bridal salon, according to research by Condé Nast Bridal Group. And a majority of attendants still wear identical outfits — a custom that began in medieval times, said Millie Martini Bratten, editor in chief of Condé Nast Brides magazine. “Those closest to the bride dressed up identically to confuse evil spirits and protect the bride,” she said.

But more brides are taking their cues from the latest on Hollywood’s red carpet, and bridesmaids are becoming more fashion-conscious, too.

“Dresses are more fashion-forward,” said Theresa DiMasi, editor in chief of brides.com, another wedding site. “It’s not the one-size-fits-all cookie-cutter wedding anymore.”

Many clothing retailers have posted lower sales this summer, but one segment is bucking the trend: weddings. At Ann Taylor, whose overall sales dipped in the second quarter this year, it is full speed ahead in the bridal area.

“It’s been double-digit growth,” said Maria Sceppaguercio, a company spokeswoman.

The company, which had $2.3 billion in overall sales in the fiscal year ended in February, does not release numbers for online or bridal sales, she said.

Trish Donnelly, head of direct merchandising at J. Crew, said the company responded to customer demand by introducing four bridesmaid styles online in February 2004.

“We found there was a great void out there for a classic timeless dress,” she said. “And it just took off.”

The company now offers bridal and bridesmaid collections in the spring and fall, and updates both online and by catalog. The company can keep prices relatively low, she said, because it contracts directly for the gowns to be made in Asia.

In April, the Disney Company unveiled wedding apparel inspired by characters including Cinderella, Snow White and Ariel. In November, it will begin selling its fairy-tale bridesmaid dresses on disneybridal.com, with 23 offerings priced from $200 to $450, said Sherri A. Lombra, vice president for finance at Disney Consumer Products.

Three months ago, Target joined the fray, introducing a Web-only bridal line — its first — designed by Isaac Mizrahi, who has been creating clothing for the retailer since 2003.

He is offering three designs, including a figure-hugging silk cowl dress, for $89.99 to $159.99, aimed at brides who want a good look but don’t want to break the bank. The same idea goes for the bridesmaids, who can select from dozens of dresses, at prices that start at $39.99 — plus the accessories.

The average bridal gown now costs $800, and bridesmaids — a typical number per wedding these days is five — spend about $140 each, according to Condé Nast figures.

While more designers are zipping bridesmaids as well as brides into more fashionable looks, many couples are also looking to cut costs for their attendants.

“I couldn’t justify asking my girls, who are all in different life stages — single, married, kids — but who are all watching their wallets for good reason, to cough up $275 for a bridesmaid dress they will wear once, primarily for my amusement,” said Megan Ferington, 27, who works for a Cleveland greeting card company and plans to marry in November.

“Ultimately, price was the deciding factor for me,” she said. “Our wedding isn’t about putting anyone in debt, except maybe us.”

Her first choice, she said, was J. Crew, which offers many options for $165 to $425. To save money, she canvassed the site’s clearance section at the end of last season to find less expensive dresses.

But even with help from J. Crew phone consultants, she couldn’t find four of the $100 dresses she wanted. So Ms. Ferington checked Ann Taylor, whose Celebrations collection had knee-length dresses in an espresso color to match her autumn-themed nuptials. With a coupon for 20 percent off, the price was $150 each.

But price isn’t the only consideration in shopping online, said Ms. Ferington, who is doing almost all her wedding planning on the Internet. Another factor is the ease and convenience of being able to clip dress images and send them to her far-flung attendants in California, upstate New York and Manhattan to get their opinions on the silhouette, neckline, length and fabric, she said.

Michelle R. Colbert, a magazine editor in Austin, Tex., had a similar experience. She e-mailed images of dresses she liked to her six bridesmaids.

“We did instant-messaging, and, lickety-split, the decision was made,” she said. That was easier than trying to convene her friends, near and far, for an afternoon at a local bridal salon.

For her March 2008 wedding, she decided to go with J. Crew because she found the prices to be reasonable, and because “they offer a timeless, classic cut” that was different, she said, from the “big, taffeta, it’s-1986-all-over-again look I was seeing” at various brick-and- mortar stores.

Online purchases do come with a downside: there are no alterations; those are the buyer’s responsibility. But J. Crew and Ann Taylor executives note that anyone can go into their stores and try on a dress for size.

Ease of return is also important, said Ms. Ferington, noting that one of her chosen bridesmaids had to bow out because of a family problem: “She returned the dress without any penalty — which is different from a salon where things are custom-ordered and there are no returns.”

Above all, shopping online helps the bridesmaids avoid what can sometimes be an arduous and disappointing experience.

“I tried on 30 dresses for my sister’s wedding in February,” said Erin Ryder, 27, who will also be a bridesmaid for Ms. Ferington. “But for Megan’s, she showed us what she wanted online. I bought it, it arrived on my doorstep and it fits close to perfectly.”

“Because it’s such a great color, I can wear it again to some other weddings this fall,” said Ms. Ryder, a television producer based in Los Angeles. “It won’t be sitting in my closet like the others I’ve accumulated.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/02/bu...02dresses.html





Getting The Picture
Matt Mendelsohn

When he was a photo-journalist, "wedding photographer" sounded like the punch line of a joke. Then he went soft and discovered that taking photographs of the most important moment in people's lives actually is funny. Also moving, sad, scary and profound.

IT WAS 10:15 P.M., AND THE BAND WAS HALFWAY THROUGH GLORIA GAYNOR'S "I WILL SURVIVE," a song I've heard so many hundreds of times in the past nine years that I think I should start earning some sort of secret ASCAP royalty, when the tiny phone in my pocket began to vibrate.

My cellphone, like any good wedding photographer will tell you, is always on vibrate, even when I'm not at a wedding. Just one of those silly things, really, but I don't take any chances. I never trust traffic on the Beltway, even on a weekend. I don't eat strange foods on Friday, lest I become sick on Saturday. And I absolutely cringe at the thought of my phone going off during a wedding.

I cringe because it's my job as the photographer to document the nuptial events unfolding in front of me -- from the hushed nave of St. Matthew's Cathedral downtown to the Potomac overlook at George Washington's River Farm -- not become part of them. I'm hired, of course, to chronicle, but after nine years and some 400 weddings -- think Bill Murray in "Groundhog Day," but with a lot more salmon -- one can't help just plain observing. And so, here is observation Number One: On average these days, one and a half guests will receive a phone call during a wedding, often smack during the vows, the inevitable tinny strains of Beethoven's Ninth emanating, just as I'm sure Beethoven himself would have wanted, from the circuit board of a Motorola RAZR.

One and a half guests. Welcome to my world. This is what I've become after all these years, a deranged comic book character: mild-mannered wedding photographer by night, captive observer of the human condition by day. Who could pretend not to notice, after all, when a mother's very first words upon seeing her daughter in a wedding dress are: "Your earring is crooked." And who could look the other way when a priest tosses the couple he's married only three minutes earlier out of a warm and dry church and into the pouring rain because he has a confessional schedule to maintain? (Though not Christian myself, I've heard Paul's letter to the Corinthians about charity -- the one with the noisy gongs and clanging cymbals -- enough to appreciate the rich irony.) Or when an orthopedic surgeon, minutes away from his own marriage, takes time to treat the leg of one of the waitstaff who, while setting up tables, has slipped on a wet floor and happens to speak not a word of English.

I witness acts of incredible tenderness -- a bride quietly pinning a photo of her mother who died of breast cancer into her dress; acts of incredible joy -- just about any father dancing with his daughter; and acts of questionable sanity -- a group of adult groomsmen allowing an 8-year-old to pilot a golf cart into a lake comes to mind. And each Sunday morning around 2 o'clock, as I collapse into bed after another wedding, I'm convinced that I must be part of some kind of clinical trial, with no end date in sight.

And so, on this particular June night, it wasn't until a few more songs had whizzed by -- I can't be sure if it was "Mustang Sally," "Shout" and then "Love Shack" or, more likely, "Love Shack," "Shout" and, finally, "Mustang Sally" -- that I had a chance to look at the flashing display on my phone, a strange number with a strange area code. I put down my cameras, walked outside to the patio of Vienna's Meadowlark Botanical Gardens and dialed in the dark.

"Hi, this is Matt Mendelsohn. Did someone call this number?"

Wedding photographer.

What is it about those two words together that seems to evoke so much pity? No one thinks twice if you say that you're an architectural photographer, or a photographer who shoots nudes, or a globe-trotting photojournalist. Friends will feign interest, at least, on the architectural front; be really excited about the nudes; and ask you again and again if you've ever been shot at as a news photographer. In fact, for years when I was a photojournalist, I went to parties where I was the only non-attorney out of 30 guests -- attorneys making a jillion dollars a year more than I -- only to be told that I had the coolest job. You've shot Michael Jordan?!?!

What was Nicole Kidman like?

How long were you in the Gulf War? Have you ever been shot at?

Wedding photographers, needless to say, have never inspired such levels of envy. Instead, they reside in a category usually reserved for car salesmen and stamp enthusiasts, a little bit of Willy Loman with a pinch of Charlie Brown. Adam Sandler already made the movie about the wedding singer. Is there any doubt that the movie about the wedding photographer would star anyone but Albert Brooks? It's the reason that, even today, when the guy sitting next to me on the Delta Shuttle asks what kind of photography I do, I have a tendency to say, "Well, I worked for USA Today for 10 years, and now I have my own business." Move along; nothing to see here.

Then again, maybe I'm just missing something. In the past few years, a whole new breed of wedding photographers has emerged, particularly on the West Coast, determined to give the musty reputation a makeover. They share ideas on message boards ("Show us your cake pictures!!"), pat one another on the back ("You're a rock star of photography!!") and spend much of their time hawking seminars as if they're selling Herbalife products. They also conveniently sidestep the fact that shooting a wedding is a bit like taking an SAT in which you've been given all the answers in advance. I feel certain James Nachtwey, the legendary war photographer, would find life much easier if he knew where the bad guys were going to start shooting week in and week out.

This is why none of this was supposed to happen. Like all good young photojournalists, I was raised to mock wedding photography and all that it represented. I wanted to be a photojournalist, not some dork schmoozing up Aunt Alice. "I don't shoot weddings," the standard response of any self-respecting White House news photographer, was always more mantra than simple statement of fact. And in the late 1980s, when I was establishing myself here in Washington as a photographer, first at United Press International, with its constant going-out-of-business sales ("No, Pat Robertson was last week's buyer; this week it's the Saudis"), and then at USA Today, it was a badge of honor not to shoot weddings, and, by golly, I wasn't about to let the side down.

All of this was understood those many years ago. My photographic dreams lay in the desert, as in Kuwait, not in dessert, as in chocolate-covered strawberries. And I was well on my way to fulfilling them. I was five feet from Rodney King when he stammered, "Can't we all get along?"; 150 feet from President Bill Clinton as Yasser Arafat and Yitzhak Rabin shook hands; and 27,000 feet above Earth, lying on my belly in a flying gas tank, photographing one stealth fighter after another as they refueled en route to the Persian Gulf. I was shooting cool things and loving every minute of it.

By the mid-'90s, I had crawled around newly discovered tombs in Egypt, photographed huge celebrities in tiny hotel rooms and been splattered with blood -- curiously, something that is a badge of honor in photojournalistic circles -- while covering boxing title fights in Las Vegas. Everything seemed to be going according to plan, though as the years went by, little by little, I began to feel pangs of ambivalence.

Where you once asked a band for permission to photograph a concert, now you navigated a phalanx of lawyers. A one-on-one shoot with Jennifer Aniston in a hotel room had become a one-on-eight shoot, if I were to include all the publicists, with their little black dresses and walkie-talkies, breathing down my neck (and repeating the words "Three minutes, three minutes!" within the first 33 seconds). And, lastly, and perhaps most important, I began to grow tired of chasing people.

Chasing people is a staple of a news photographer's diet -- you can't claim conscientious objector status and elect to shoot the pet of the week instead. I spent a lot time chasing people (though "chase" is a misnomer because the actual act involves mostly walking backward, throwing elbows and focusing at the same time) at courthouses around the country: U.S. District Court (Marion Barry, Ollie North); the U.S. Supreme Court (pick an abortion case); Simi Valley (the LAPD/Rodney King trial); Los Angeles (O.J. Simpson); and, though she had no court to call her own, the chase of all chases, Monica Lewinsky.

For weeks and weeks in 1998, as that scandal broke, I chased Lewinsky for USA Today, with limited success, if one can even use that word. Though tame by Hollywood paparazzi standards, my Lewinsky chases became increasingly fraught with doubt and regret. Then, one Sunday morning, while walking with my wife and my dog in Georgetown, I found myself, sans camera, holding the door for Lewinsky at Starbucks on M Street -- like a hunter accidentally bumping into the stag he's been stalking for days. As she brushed by me, balancing a couple of lattes, she smiled and said, "Thanks so much!" and I said, "Soy-tinly!" -- for some odd reason playfully playing up my New York accent. And I thought to myself, What am I doing chasing this poor woman?

Perhaps it was coincidence, or maybe kismet, but the more the journalism ennui began to set in, the more it seemed people were asking me to shoot their weddings. Like a parent who is asked by his 9-year-old "Are we there yet?" 900 times, I couldn't seem to shake this damn question. And none of these people were looking for a dork in a tux: They wanted me to cover their weddings no differently than if I were covering a White House event or a rally on the Mall. With each wedding I photographed, I realized that there actually existed events in which people wanted you to take their pictures, where there was no yellow police tape and where the only lawyers present were the ones getting married.

And that's when I did it. There came a day several years back when, with reckless abandon, I decided to leave the noble pursuit of journalism, with its Page One budget meetings filled with smart people discussing Saddam Hussein or the latest North Korean standoff, not to mention the not-so-noble pursuit of, well, pursuits. I was ready to throw myself down a most unusual rabbit hole, reemerging into the bizarro world of Weddings, where family relationships can often be broken into the in-laws and the outlaws, where self-absorption can be raised to an art form, where a Jewish guy can recite the entire Catholic Mass by heart, as well as reel off, like an idiot savant, the date of every Saturday for the next year and a half.

"MATT, IT'S MISSY LANGERT, YOUR NEIGHBOR JOEL'S DAUGHTER, CALLING FROM DALLAS. Mom's had a massive heart attack while attending a wedding here, and Dad is home all alone. He didn't come out for the wedding. Is there any way you can go over and sit with him? He's all by himself."

Taken by surprise, I tried to process all of this information in a room filled with happy people having a wonderful time. She was at a wedding in Texas. I was at a wedding in Virginia. And Joel was all by himself.

My 85-year-old neighbor Joel Langert is one of my favorite people, a curmudgeon's curmudgeon with a soft spot he guards fiercely. One minute he's grumbling about how movies used to be two for a nickel, and the next he's leaving a beautiful orchid -- a phalaenopsis or perhaps a paphiopedilum, a lady-slipper, grown lovingly in his backyard greenhouse -- on my kitchen counter. He just walks in, puts down the flower and berates me later for leaving the front door of my house unlocked. Without asking, he once planted a fig tree on my front lawn, a tree that now yields succulent fruit by the hundreds and a tree that I adore. And he'll often ask me to buy him packs -- he doesn't drive anymore -- of his favorite Dutch cigarillos, Schimmelpenninck, even though he knows he shouldn't be smoking them. When I took him to his first Nationals game, Joel didn't stop complaining about the noise -- the constant stream of musical snippets aimed at inciting the crowd -- for the first eight innings (we didn't make it to the ninth). I asked him when was the last time he was at a baseball game, and he replied, "Lou Gehrig was playing at Yankee Stadium."

Joel and his wife, Eileen, had been married for 55 years, 11 longer than I've been alive, and enjoyed a beautiful relationship. "It was love at first sight," he remembered of their meeting at the Gertz department store on Long Island where they both worked. "I wrote up a petition that she should marry me, and I took it to everyone in the store to sign." After their wedding in New York, on January 29, 1950 -- "I remember the church was candlelit" -- the newlyweds drove with another couple down to Fort Lauderdale. Joel laughed as he recalled the two songs that played on the car radio nonstop that trip: "Ghost Riders in the Sky," a cowboy's lament, and "Sixteen Tons," a depressing number about the perils of coal mining. Not exactly the most romantic driving music. (I laughed, of course, because Gloria Gaynor was only 4 months old at the time, and it could have been much worse.)

But it was a fitting start, as driving and travel would play a huge part in their lives, on trips over the years from Finland to Singapore, and in cars such as their 1956 pink T-Bird, the 1957 Jaguar Mark VII Saloon ("It looked like a Bentley," Joel says), the 1972 E-Type Jaguar ("Eileen was never into the shifting thing") and, finally, the S-Type he bought Eileen for Christmas in 2002, parked in the driveway with a big red bow tied to the front.

After decades in advertising with the Hecht Co., Joel now spends much of his retirement tending to his beloved plants. Eileen, on the other hand, was always abuzz with activity, always off, it seemed, on one of the many trips for senior citizens she organized and chaperoned for Arlington County. When a mutual neighbor on our block gave birth to triplets, several of us chipped in for a night nurse for a couple of evenings. We felt rather proud of our gift, not realizing that, for months and months, Eileen was baking the family fully prepared dinners with no fanfare.

Despite Joel's faux crankiness, his most endearing trait, it was easy to see how much he loved Eileen, and how proud he was of her. I asked him recently what made his love for Eileen so special, and without even a second to ponder, he replied, "She was two-thirds of me." Two-thirds of me. I tried to soak that one up. "We never once said no to each other," and then, reverting back to prime Joel form, "except the time I wanted to pull up the grass and replace it with those small paving pebbles."

So now, as I stood in the darkness, the band's music coming through the windows in that muffled way, where you only hear the bass, I knew I had to act quickly. I collected my cameras, two Canon EOS1 Mark IIs, my bag filled with lenses and my very sweaty suit coat, and headed for the parking lot. I would have left in half an hour anyway, and I had already taken more than 1,500 images that day, starting with the "getting ready," as it's referred to in wedding speak -- the ceremony, the family pictures, the dancing, the cake-cutting. I tucked my little pouch filled with identical, neatly stacked 2-gigabyte memory cards -- memory cards, how apt, I always think -- into the bag and headed back to Arlington.

MY OWN BEST MAN DIDN'T SHOW UP FOR MY WEDDING.

Nine years ago, my younger brother, Eric, was directing his best friend and unknown actress, Edie Falco, in a tiny independent film he wrote specifically for her. Filming was scheduled for the day of my wedding, and Eric bowed out. I was devastated, having shared a room with him for 16 years while growing up on Long

Island. My older brother Daniel, an esteemed critic and classics scholar, came to the rescue, with a lengthy toast about the differences between ancient Greek -- my wife, Maya, is Greek -- and ancient Jewish traditions. Given that I had rarely been inside a synagogue, except for weddings, since I was 13 and am decidedly non-religious, the toast struck me as wonderfully intellectual and, not surprisingly, impersonal.

Eric went on to win best director at Sundance the next year, and Edie went on to become the most famous mob wife in television history as Carmela Soprano, and all was long forgotten years ago. Truth be told, we don't really discuss it very much, and that seems to work pretty well. We all serve some kind of penance, and maybe mine is having to listen to touching best man speeches every week of my life. Ironically, it would be Daniel, with whom I was never close growing up -- he, spending much of our childhood reading about pharaohs and Greek gods; me, worrying how the Mets could possibly survive without Tom Seaver -- with whom I would, years later, travel all over the world, tracking down Holocaust survivors for a memoir he was writing. The Week in Review is edited and published by Jack Spratts. The emptiness that I felt during his stand-in toast -- I kept hoping for some funny little anecdote about me, until I realized that my own brother didn't know me well enough to have any funny little anecdotes -- would be replaced by the camaraderie of many, many long trips together, from Australia to Ukraine, just me and Daniel on very long plane rides.

This is why we all love weddings so much -- decades of family history rushing to the surface, like a submarine after nine months under the ocean. Of course, it's usually just minutes after that spectacular arrival that you want to run for cover yelling, "Dive! Dive! Dive!" A tug of war between a bride and her mom over something as simple as where to place the headpiece can get to Defcon 1 remarkably quickly, as this exchange I recall hearing at a Georgetown church illustrates:

"Mom, it should go here."

"Well, I just think it should be back a bit."

"Mom, please let the hairdresser do her job. She knows best."

"I know. It's just that I think it should it go back a little."

"Mom, please! You're making me really stressed out. Please don't say another word, and let the hairdresser do her job!"

(Dead silence in the room. Now, count to 10.)

"Fine. It's just that I thought it should go back a little."

These are the things I witness weekly. No catastrophes, no disasters, just little glimpses into family life, 2007. Without a doubt, the question I'm asked most often is, "What's the worst thing that ever happened at a wedding?" It's also the one that always makes me laugh, because it precludes the obvious converse, that is, what's the best thing that's ever happened at a wedding? In all these years, no one ever has asked me that one, despite the fact that, last I checked, and with the possible exception of a handful of dour church ladies I've come across, weddings are tremendously happy events. But let's face it: We watch NASCAR for the crashes, despite our protestations to the contrary, and we follow celebrity romances so that we can get to the celebrity breakups.

And, of course, it would be overly simplistic to single out mothers and daughters as the source of all wedding drama, my favorite fake Freud quotation notwithstanding: "If it's not one thing, it's your mother." More often than not, the drama that we all expect to see played out at weddings is just a byproduct of the bridal-industrial complex, a perfectly evocative moniker bequeathed to me by a bride many years ago.

Weddings long ago migrated from traditional daytime affairs -- where the men looked dashing in their morning coats, the women had dresses with (gasp!) straps, and the nonstop giggling of flower girls could be heard wafting though the air -- into lavish evening extravaganzas, where children are not even invited. They've gone from the simplicity (and, to be fair, dullness) of the "chicken or the beef?" into menus that boast medallions of veal with a port peppercorn reduction. Today's weddings have price tags the size of a small mortgage (something for which I clearly share responsibility), time schedules that would make a railroad proud, golf outings, spa retreats and 19-seat minibuses taking bridal parties on magical mystery tours around Washington. Things have gotten so bloated that I was actually taken aback when a bride once said to me, "I'm so excited to be marrying Derek today."

Between the countless reality shows with names such as "The Real Wedding Crashers" and "Bridezillas," (Episode 10: When Kristina's sisters show up late for a nail appointment, the bride is furious!), it's no wonder people focus on the negative -- or bizarre, or just irritating -- aspects of weddings. The myriad wedding magazines on the newsstands, and the thousands of wedding blogs, don't help much. Consider this easy-to-follow advice from aboutWeddings.com: "Transition of color in the wedding is 'hot.' The color and theme of a wedding is first seen with the save-the-date card. At the ceremony, the colors are different than what was seen in the save-the-date card/invitation. At the cocktail reception, the colors are different from the ceremony. At the dinner reception, the colors are a combination of all colors previously seen. More than just two colors and no matchy-matchy!"

See? Simple.

Luckily, that kind of silliness isn't ever enough to trump the genuine moments of love and the celebrations of great happiness I'm often privileged to witness: I cried like a baby when a 5-year-old flower girl, blinded by the brain tumor growing inside her head, was led down the aisle by the little ring bearer at St. Aloysius years ago. But I must admit that the moment is annoyingly linked in my memory with the posting, around that same time, on theknot.com, a wedding message board ("Driving Brides Crazy Since 1996!"), by a bride who sought advice on what to do about one of her bridesmaids who, as a result of a worsening muscular disease, was now in a wheelchair, something that would potentially ruin her wedding photos.

(The Knot can be a great source of amusement. My sister, Jennifer, a "Knottie" herself, once related to me an e-mail exchange she had with a woman who had been told, as a Jew, not to use Mendelssohn's "Wedding March," because the composer had famously converted from Judaism. She had instead settled on Bach's "Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring." When Jennifer, with tongue in cheek, suggested that perhaps -- just perhaps -- that one wasn't exactly kosher either, the woman responded, "Why? It's about Jesu, not Jesus!")

At first I was afraid I was petrified/

Kept thinkin' I could never live without

you by my side.

As I sat across from Joel on that June night, I realized the song I had come to hate so much, the song that, perhaps more than any other, constantly reminds me that I have become a wedding photographer, shooting the same thing week in and week out, was now racing through my groggy brain. This time, though, it was reminding me of why I am a wedding photographer. My years of downplaying what I did for a living seemed silly as I sat on Joel's sofa. How bad could it be to be around people who are desperately in love, all the while surrounded by friends and family who love them desperately. Yeah, big deal, they all go crazy when "I Will Survive" or "YMCA" starts playing, but they haven't heard those songs thousands of times; I have. And when I think that I could be tallying billable hours, or working in a cubicle in E Ring, or selling widgets, I think my life is pretty darn okay.

Just the other day, I received an e-mail from a photographer looking for an internship. His short note almost brought me to tears: "I come from Sarajevo, Bosnia, and my life has put me though many challenges. I am saying this because I have had the chance to see the worst in humans and was lucky enough to survive it. Since then, I have made it my goal to help people record their happiest moments, because those moments are rare and precious, and one never has too many of them."

I kept Joel company for hours, long into the next morning, information coming in very slowly, and me, still in my sweaty wedding clothes, nodding off occasionally. Around 4:30 a.m., the phone rang, and I could hear the voice through the receiver telling my neighbor and friend that the woman he had been married to for 55 years didn't make it.

I felt so out of place, so not the person who should have been there at that terrible moment. But looking back, two years later, it almost seems as if Eileen was just being her usual giving self, not just allowing me to see how much she was adored, but allowing me to see marriage in its barest and most naked form. For nine hours that day -- nine years, really -- I had watched a marriage begin, and, now, for nine hours, I would watch one end. I wanted to turn away as Joel shook uncontrollably. I tried so hard to soothe him, but I knew there was nothing I could really say. Though I was in the presence of profound loss, all I could feel was love. This wasn't about linens and party favors, or caviar stations and big bands. There were no toasts and no blessings, no Bible readings, no clanging gongs or blaring trumpets. At long last, I was seeing the embodiment of marriage itself, the very reason man and woman have been wed from the beginning of time. True love.

Something else floated through my brain, this time decidedly more literary than Gloria Gaynor. In my days as an English major, some 20 years ago, the book that had the most profound effect on me was Thomas Wolfe's Look Homeward, Angel, a tattered paperback edition of which is never far from my grasp. Now I could hear my favorite line, the book's second sentence, coming through: "Each of us is all the sums he has not counted. Subtract us into nakedness and night again, and you shall see begin in Crete four thousand years ago the love that ended yesterday in Texas."

It was 8 a.m. when the little cellphone in my pocket began to vibrate. My wife was calling, and I told her the news. I gave Joel a hug, grabbed my jacket and my cameras, and walked across the street and into my house, where, unable to sleep, I went downstairs and began to download, with newfound respect, memory cards from the previous night's wedding.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...082902031.html





Wistful Over Lost Dreams at Summer of Love Fest
Adam Tanner

Some of the biggest musical stars of the 1960s counterculture gathered in San Francisco on Sunday for a concert to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the Summer of Love, yet backstage many voiced disappointment about the era's unfulfilled ideals.

The Summer of Love of 1967 made San Francisco a magnet for youth who wanted to experiment with sex, drugs, rock and roll and an alternative hippie lifestyle.

"We thought, this is it, we're going to change the world, actually we're going to become the Christian world of love," Ray Manzarek, 68, keyboardist for The Doors, told Reuters. "Of course, it didn't happen. Here we are 40 years later and we are still at war."

"It was a great disappointment," said Manzarek, who attended the famed San Francisco January 1967 "Human Be-In," credited with drawing young people to the city, with Doors singer Jim Morrison and other bandmates.

The '60s lived again as Manzarek, Jefferson Starship and other legends performed, thousands of fans donned tie-die shirts and bell bottom pants and the smell of marijuana wafted through the air. Two women wandered through the crowd in Golden Gate Park offering free hugs.

In keeping with the spirit of those times, the concert was free.

'I Feel Betrayed'

In the 1960s, many in the counterculture felt they could change the world by removing societal constraints and ending the Vietnam War.

Fito De La Parra, drummer for the band Canned Heat, said his generation never lived up to its ideals.

"On the whole, I feel betrayed," he said backstage after playing before what organizers estimated was 40,000 fans. "I feel that a lot of the ideals that we held valuable in the 1960s were betrayed by their own people, by their own hippies. Many of them betrayed themselves because they went for the buck, and they became rich yuppies and Republicans."

Barry Melton, best known by his nickname "The Fish" and his partnership with Country Joe McDonald, said the 1960s social movements deserve credit for advancing issues such as women's and gay rights and environmental consciousness, but the youth of the day went overboard with drugs.

"There are things I cringe about," said Melton, now a public defender criminal lawyer. "For one thing we had an absolute benign attitude about drugs that was pretty naive. We made some significant mistakes."

Manzarek said unrestrained use of drugs proved a disaster.

"Excessive was Jim Morrison dying of alcohol poisoning, Jimi Hendrix dying in his own vomit," he said.

The inability to achieve unending love and friendship was evidenced by the many bands long since broken up, often acrimoniously.

James Gurley, 67, played with Big Brother and the Holding Company, whose lead singer Janis Joplin died of a drug overdose. For the past decade Gurley said he had not spoken with his fellow band guitarist after a falling out.

"I expected we'd all be friends later," he said. "My disappointment is in myself. My assessments were off base; I mis-assessed human nature."
http://www.reuters.com/article/domes...27235420070903





What They Did This Summer
Jack



Using 1000s of post-its, Illegal Art put up "To Do" signs all over town. This one is on East Street in Manhattan.

Click for slide-show.





Whiting Out the Ads, But at What Cost?
Noam Cohen

MORE white space.

I sent an e-mail message to a friend telling him about Adblock Plus, an easy-to-use free addition to the Firefox Internet browser that deletes advertisements from Web sites. That subject line of his reply summed it up quite nicely.

What happens when the advertisements are wiped clean from a Web site? There is a contented feeling similar to what happens when you watch a recorded half-hour network TV show on DVD in 22 minutes, or when a blizzard hits Times Square and for a few hours, the streets are quiet and unhurried, until the plows come to clear away all that white space.

But when a blizzard hits Times Square, the news reports will focus on the millions of dollars of business lost, not the cross-country skiing opportunities gained.

Likewise, in the larger scheme of things, Adblock Plus — while still a niche product for a niche browser — is potentially a huge development in the online world, and not because it simplifies Web sites cluttered with advertisements.

The larger importance of Adblock is its potential for extreme menace to the online-advertising business model. After an installation that takes but a minute or two, Adblock usually makes all commercial communication disappear. No flashing whack-a-mole banners. No Google ads based on the search terms you have entered.

From that perspective, the program is an unwelcome arrival after years of worry that there might never be an online advertising business model to support the expense of creating entertainment programming or journalism, or sophisticated search engines, for that matter.

For now, however, the big players have decided to ignore the phenomenon. Neither Google nor CNN.com, for example, would comment on ad-blocking programs, which can also be added to Microsoft’s Internet Explorer 7. (The Internet Explorer add-ons are not necessarily free and do not necessarily work as seamlessly as Adblock Plus working with the open-source Firefox browser.)

Wladimir Palant, developer of the open-source Adblock Plus project, wrote in an e-mail message that he had not heard anything from large companies like Google, because, he suspects, the program “isn’t popular enough yet. Attacking it would be a waste of time for these companies.” He estimated there were 2.5 million users of Adblock Plus around the world.

“The numbers are rising steadily,” he wrote, adding that his figures do not “show exponential growth any more (luckily, the server has limited traffic), but there are still 300,000 to 400,000 new users each month.”

Mr. Palant, a 27-year-old programmer in Cologne, Germany, is not an ideological opponent of online advertising. For example, he counts himself a fan of the ads that show up with a Google search, saying they are useful and unobtrusive. That does not mean Adblock will not block Google’s ads, however. It means Mr. Palant has to customize his own version of the program to allow them in.

But if enough people rally to Adblock and similar services, they could be considered the TiVo for the computer, but without any expensive equipment or service charges. And perhaps most critically, as an open-source project, Adblock is the hands of anyone who wants to contribute. So no one can decide to make a deal with prominent Web sites to change the way the program operates. (As things turned out, TiVo and a rival, ReplayTV, opted not to include an automatic service to skip ads after vociferous objections by the television industry.)

For now, the opposition to Adblock Plus has been led by small Web sites who want all Firefox users blocked from Internet sites in retaliation. One such advocacy site, whyfirefoxisblocked.com, taunts a Firefox user with the headline, “You’ve reached this page because the site you were trying to visit now blocks the Firefox browser.”

The page includes the following argument: “While blanket ad blocking in general is still theft, the real problem is Adblock Plus’s unwillingness to allow individual site owners the freedom to block people using their plug-in. Blocking Firefox is the only alternative.”

Mr. Palant, writing on a blog related to the project (adblockplus.org/blog/), lashed out at those kinds of arguments.

“There is only one reliable way to make sure your ads aren’t blocked — make sure the users don’t want to block them,” he wrote. “Don’t forget about the users. Use ads in a way that doesn’t degrade their experience.”

For now, these issues will be debated on the fringes of the Internet. The first stage of a corporate response would be technological, not legal, said Randal C. Picker, a law professor at the University of Chicago who has studied the copyright issues related to TiVo. Television networks could not change their signals to thwart TiVo the way Web sites can use technology to complicate the process of filtering out ads, he said.

One response by Web sites would be for them “to serve ads from their own servers,” Mr. Palant wrote in an e-mail message. “For them, this has the advantage that they will probably escape common filter rules, which are usually targeted at large advertising servers.”

He said, however, that “the most annoying ads usually find their way to popular filter lists.”

The only large player willing to comment was Microsoft, which is in an interesting position: it produces the dominant browser that is being challenged by Firefox, but it is also in the online ad business through its MSN portal and search functions.

In a statement, Microsoft spoke of its success in permitting third-party developers to “add value to the browser experience through the creation of add-ons.” The statement continues: “The range of add-ons available does include ad blocking software. It would not be appropriate for Microsoft to comment on the merits or demerits of a specific add-on, or group of add-ons. Provided they have not been designed with malicious intent and do not compromise a user’s privacy or security, Microsoft is pleased to see new add-ons that add to the range of options that users have for customizing their browsing experience.”

It’s nice of Microsoft to recognize that there will always be people who delight in the white space. Given the decentralized nature of the Internet, the user’s experience has to come first — for now.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/03/te...gy/03link.html





1,300 Unopened Rebate Applications Found In Dumpster
Dean Takahashi

I know that Shu Wong of San Jose hasn't received the $3.50 mail-in rebate for a Vastech computer networking USB hub purchased at a Fry's Electronics in May. Richard Louie of Austin, Olivia Sattaypiwat of Saratoga and Buu Duong of San Jose haven't received their rebates, either.

I know this because they told me so, and because I am staring at more than 1,300 rebate requests sent to Vastech on Bonaventura Drive in San Jose. The envelopes were tossed - unopened - into a garbage dumpster near Vastech. I have two boxes of envelopes that were thrown out without being processed. In all of my years of reporting, I have never encountered such outrageous behavior against consumers.

An employee of nearby Dominion Enterprises found the letters, along with hundreds of others addressed to Vastech, at his company's dumpster. He turned them over to his boss, Joel Schwartz, who gave them to me. All of the letters were addressed to UR-04 Rebate or some variation of the product name at the Vastech address.

Vastech is a small computer accessories company owned by Weizhen Tan, who goes by William. I didn't get a response when I sent e-mails as directed by Vastech's Web site. And the company's voice mail was always full. But he was there at the small office at 63 Bonaventura Drive in San Jose when I came calling, letters in hand.

`Bad employee'

In his cramped office, Tan acknowledged that his 4-year-old company was behind on processing rebates that it had offered to consumers from February to May. He said he wanted to apologize to his customers.

When I asked why rebate letters were tossed out, he initially said it was due to a "bad employee." Later, he said that it was probably done by a friend of the family who was not a formal employee but was supposed to be helping out. That person, he said, probably threw the letters out because of "laziness." He said the person no longer does any work for the company.

Tan acknowledged receiving a lot of complaints, some filtered through Fry's Electronics, which he said was the only chain that offered the Vastech products with rebates. He promised to respond quickly to complaints lodged at the company's voice mail at (408) 786-7699, or its e-mail address at support@vastechinc.com.

"If we do rebates in the future, we will put in place a better system for tracking them," he said, promising that his company would be caught up on rebate processing this month. "It's unfortunate this happened. We will take responsibility for them and handle it better."

At best, you can chalk this up to a small company getting stretched too thin when it offered a good rebate deal that consumers couldn't pass up. But there is a bigger problem: The whole rebate system.

"They don't make it easy for you," said Vastech customer Richard Louie. "It's a lot of work. When it's a small amount of money, I don't keep track of it. For the bigger ones, I do keep track and sometimes I have to call them to complain."

This is why current rebate practices should end. Fry's Electronics, which has 34 superstores in nine states, and other reputable chains like Best Buy and Circuit City, should have nothing to do with them.

From the start, the deck is stacked against consumers to discourage them from ever redeeming the rebates. Depending on the rebate's value, anywhere from 5 percent to 80 percent of customers apply for them. Rebates are often used to get consumers into stores by touting a low price like "$39 after rebate." Manufacturers use them to cut prices after a product is in the market and to get a better idea of who their customers are.

Manuel Valerio, a spokesman for Fry's in San Jose, confirmed that Fry's had received complaints about Vastech's rebates and that Fry's had assisted some customers in getting paid. He said the store didn't know rebate letters had been dumped, adding that Fry's would likely not sell products from companies that engaged in such practices.

But Fry's has no plans to ban rebates.

"We certainly know there are many people who are no fans of rebates, and we are not the greatest fans of rebates as well, but the reality is they are out there," he said. "So long as manufacturers and other retailers offer them, Fry's will continue to do so because we don't want to be at a disadvantage vis-a-vis other competitors in the retail industry."

False advertising

The Federal Trade Commission has taken action for false advertising against a number of companies that have abused the rebate system, said Matthew Gold, a staff attorney for the FTC in San Francisco. The companies must pay the consumers. Retailers can be held liable if the manufacturers don't pay as promised. In some cases, states have brought criminal fraud actions against companies.

The Better Business Bureau of Silicon Valley reports that it has processed 51 complaints about Vastech since February 2006. Of those, 49 went unanswered by the company in the past year. The BBB considers that an unsatisfactory record.

"We tried contacting Vastech a few times with no success," said BBB spokesman Zach Vander Meeden.

This is a ridiculous system that invites abuse. All the discarded letters I looked at were postmarked around May and were found in the garbage just days after being sent. It makes you wonder how often this happens.

I certainly don't trust Vastech at this point, even though Tan offered to sign rebate checks in front of me and requested the unprocessed rebate forms, which I plan to return to him. And I think Fry's Electronics should take care of their customers if Vastech doesn't. Imagine the surprise that Shu Wong got when I called and said he wasn't likely to get his rebate check. "It's only $3.50," he said. "But that's wrong."
http://www.mercurynews.com/ci_6814729?nclick_check=1





DivX Requests Federal Court Affirmation of DMCA Protection for Stage6
Press release

DivX, Inc. DIVX announced today that it has filed a lawsuit in Federal District Court to protect its Stage6 online video hosting service from unreasonable threats and demands made by Universal Music Group ("UMG"). DivX seeks the court's affirmation that UMG's claims of copyright infringement are without merit and that DivX is in full compliance with the requirements of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act ("DMCA"). The DMCA was enacted in 1998 to update U.S. copyright law for the digital age and offers, among other things, a safe harbor from such claims for services such as Stage6.

"We are taking this legal step to protect Stage6 from groundless claims and unreasonable threats brought by UMG. UMG's pattern of attacking innovative online service providers is discouraging and will ultimately hinder innovation and the development of new technologies," said David Richter, Executive Vice President, Corporate Development and Legal.
http://news.moneycentral.msn.com/pro...906&ID=7431951





UMG Carries Out Threat To Sue Veoh For Copyright Violations
David Kaplan

As expected, Universal Music Group has thoroughly ignored video site Veoh‘s attempts to prevent the record label from suing it and has filed a complaint in federal court accusing the Michael Eisner-backed company of copyright infringement, according to Bloomberg.

In its suit, filed in U.S. District Court for California’s Northern District in San Jose, UMG said Veoh is following in the “ignominious footsteps of other recent mass infringers such as Napster” and that the only way to stop its alleged violations is to hold the individuals who run the site financially responsible.

As we noted early last month, UMG informed Veoh that it was considering a suit because of the “massive” copyright infringement taking place by the site’s users. UMG did not specifically refer to any unauthorized material.

In response, Bloomberg added, Veoh asked the same federal court to block any forthcoming UMG suit, saying it was preventing illegal activity by barring access or taking down copyrighted content. Veoh also claimed that because of its policing efforts, federal law protects internet service providers from infringement charges.

Aside from its battle with UMG, Veoh is due back in federal court on Friday to face similar infringement charges from adult content purveyor IO Group, which sued the video site last year.
http://www.forbes.com/technology/200...idcontent.html





Colorado Police Link Rise in Violence to Music
Dan Frosch

The D.J. puts on the popular song “No Problem” by Lil Scrappy, and a sea of young men and women rush the dance floor.

As the party anthem bursts through the speakers and Lil Scrappy drawls, “But you don’t want no problem, problem,” the crowd swerves in a sweaty, liquor-soaked rhythm. The scene, heavy with the sweet smoke of cigarillos and exploding with hip-hop’s unmistakable pounding bass, could be almost anywhere: New York, Chicago, Memphis, Oakland, Calif.

The only sign that this is Colorado Springs is that two churches sit adjacent to the club, La Zona Roja, in an empty strip mall.

The club is part of a thriving hip-hop community that has grown as Colorado Springs, known for its military installations and evangelical groups, has grown. But not everyone is happy that hip-hop has taken root here.

After a spate of shootings, and with a rising murder rate, the police here are saying gangsta rap is contributing to the violence, luring gang members and criminal activity to nightclubs. The police publicly condemned the music in a news release after a killing in July and are warning nightclub owners that their places might not be safe if they play gangsta rap.

“We don’t want to broad-brush hip-hop music altogether,” said Lt. Skip Arms, a police spokesman, “but we’re looking at a subcomponent that typically glorifies, promotes criminal behavior and demeans women.”

The actions of the police have angered the hip-hop community here, mostly blacks and Latinos, many of whom live in this city because of ties to the Army and Air Force bases here.

“If we were talking about a rock bar or a country bar here, none of this would be happening,” said James Baldrick, who runs a local hip-hop promotions company, Dirty Limelight.

“This city wants to shut down hip-hop,” said Mike Cross, 26, who was outside Eden Nite Club, a popular downtown venue that plays hip-hop, with a group of friends on a recent night. “They don’t want it to survive.”

Calling the police’s approach ignorant, a group of club promoters and rappers in Colorado Springs organized a night of hip-hop performances and music at La Zona Roja last month, seeking to prove that such events could occur without incident.

“When two cowboys got into an argument at a saloon, went outside and had a draw, nobody blamed the music that was playing at the saloon,” said a local rapper known as B. Serious, who performed at the event.

But with 19 homicides already this year, compared with 15 in 2006, the police insist on a correlation between gangsta rap and violence, and point to three recent shootings.

On April 17, a stray bullet killed a taxi driver during a fight between two groups who had left Eden Nite Club. After a fight at a concert at a local park on Memorial Day, a man was shot to death in a nearby liquor store parking lot. On July 9, a former high school football star, Diontea Jackson-Forrest, was shot and killed. The authorities said the suspect was involved in an altercation at Eden before the shooting.

Two days after Mr. Jackson-Forrest’s death, the police issued a news release blaming the violence on gangsta rap. The release mentioned an event planned at Eden, called a “Pimp, Thug and Ho Party,” as the “type of behavior that causes concern.” The club’s owners called off the party.

Mr. Baldrick noted that the shooting after the Memorial Day concert, which his company sponsored, occurred two hours after the event, yet the police linked the two. He said that since the authorities began speaking out against gangsta rap, there had been a drop in attendance at events promoted by Dirty Limelight, down to 200 from about 700 per event.

But Lt. Thomas Harris, who leads a unit that deals with gangs, drugs and guns, insisted there was a link between the violence and the music.

“When you have music that says it’s basically O.K. to treat women poorly, to steal things and to confront and shoot police officers,” said Lt. Harris, “you’ll attract a small percentage of the population that wants to lead the thug life.”

Others here say the police are focusing on hip-hop instead of addressing the growing pains of this largely white, conservative city, home to the evangelical groups Focus on the Family and New Life Church.

Since 1990, the metropolitan area of Colorado Springs, which sits south of Denver, has swollen to nearly half a million from 397,000. Though outright racial tensions, which led to marches here in the 1970s and ’80s, are largely of the past, there remains a sense of benign neglect toward minorities, said Dr. José J. Barrera, former director of ethnic studies at the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs. That neglect has translated into a chasm between the city and its minority youth, Dr. Barrera said.
“If you examine the history of ethnic and race relations in this community, you will detect a pattern of ignorance of minority cultures and problems,” Dr. Barrera said. “No serious observer believes that current manifestations of youth culture and pop culture actually fuel criminal activity.”

At the recent hip-hop showcase at La Zona Roja, the genre’s positive side eclipsed all else.

After the show, the crowd tumbled out of the club. Young men politely chatted up a group of women. A couple tried to coordinate a ride home. Two men exchanged solemn stories of prison.

The only sign of trouble was a flat tire on someone’s customized sedan.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/03/us/03hiphop.html





From the Poor Product Naming Department: 'i.Beat Blaxx'
pixie

German company TrekStor had a bit of an "oops" moment last week when they released the next generation of their i.Beat MP3 player, a sleek, slim, black model that was titled, well, i.Beat blaxx.

The best part is, initial comments on the announcement page mostly focus on how it looks like an iPod Nano, rather than the fact that it has a ridiculously, hilariously racist name.

Surely not as flashy as the gilded i.Beat organix seen at last year's CeBIT, TrekStor's i.Beat blaxx still looks mighty fine in its own right. Debuting at IFA, this diminutive player weighs in at just 26-grams and features a 1.3-inch 160 x 128 resolution display, MP3 / WMA / OGG / WAV / SMV file support, a built-in FM tuner, line-in port, a rechargeable Li-ion, and USB connectivity. The units arrive in both 2GB and 4GB flavors and come bundled with a set of Sennheiser headphones, and while the least capacious iteration will ring up at €119.99 ($162), you can double the storage space for just €30 ($41) more.

When writing this up, they forgot something: it's called i.Beat Blaxx!! And some people might just think"gee, that sounds kind of awkward and possibly racist...." even if they know damned well that was not remotely the intent.

Since the unveiling of the new player, I guess someone at TrekStor got the memo that the new name was a bit "off," and they have since simply changed it to TrekStor blaxx, dropping the "i.Beat" part.

The company sent the following press release out after realizing people [like me] are kind of jerks and laugh at things like a product named "i.Beat blaxx."


Dear Gizmodo,

TrekStor is shocked by the way our new MP3 player's name "TrekStor i.Beat blaxx" is perceived. Of course the word "Beat" is not meant as a verb, but refers to the beats of the music you are listening to. More than 4 years ago, TrekStor introduced the i.Beat MP3 player series that today consists of more than 25 different players - all named individually. "blaxx" was chosen, because the player is designed with an elegant black piano finish. As a reaction to the bad connotation of the name, TrekStor decided to rename the product "TrekStor blaxx" - effective immediately. We sincerely apologize to everybody whom we offended by the initial name of this product and want to emphasize that TrekStor condemns violence and any form of racism.

Mit freundlichen Grüßen,
Best regards,
Gil Szmigiel Vice President / CTO

I'm actually bummed about the name change, if only because if the player had kept its original name and on the off chance a race war started and someone beat up a black guy using it as a weapon, or if someone was trying to buy one in a store where the clerk was hard of hearing [ever been to a Radio Shak? This is entirely possible] and had to keep saying, progressively louder, the name of the player they wanted. " I'd like an i.Beat blaxx, please."

"Wha? Sonny?"

"i.Beat blaxx!

"Speak up, young man..."

"i.Beat BLAXX! i.Beat BLAXX"

You know eventually, that would end hilariously [for us] and poorly [for the guy trying to buy the player.]

Anyway, all we're trying to figure out is when they re-named they player they didn't go for something like, I don't know... the i.Beat Toby or something. It's just catchier.
http://www.shoutmouth.com/index.php/news/26201





Wacky Jacky Subpoenas George W. Bush
Stephany

Jack Thompson has filed documents with a federal court in Florida requesting to subpoena President George W. Bush for a deposition to retain Thompson’s license to practice law. Thompson, the bane of gamers everywhere, is in the midst of two ethic complaints which were filed by the Florida Bar and will face a court appointed mediator on November 26th. Wacky Jacky is currently suing the mediator, Judge Dava Tunis, along with the Florida Supreme Court and the Florida Bar.

Thompson’s reasons for subpoenaing The President are a bit esoteric and would make great fodder for an X-Files episode or anything else in the realm of conspiracy theories and Science Fiction. This bit of paranoia stems from the “nefarious” Blank Rome law firm, which represents the defendants in the Strickland vs. Sony lawsuit where an 18-year old in Alabama was allegedly under the influence of Grand Theft Auto when he murdered two police officers and a police dispatcher in 2004. Apparently, the “evil” Blank Rome firm are lobbyists as well as Republican donors and Thompson believes that the law firm was the main culprit in having him thrown off the case by an Alabama Circuit Court judge in November, 2005.

The Bar complaints filed by Judge Tunis are in relation to this case and Thompson’s conduct when he failed to have Bully declared a public nuisance last October.

In the document filed yesterday with the U.S. District Court, Thompson stated:

“I have already sent the George and Jeb Bush subpoenas to Referee Tunis for her signature. She may run on this, but she can’t hide. She must sign the subpoenas, as her filing [of the Thompson Bar complaints] with the federal court has made the testimony I seek in the depositions of both men highly relevant to my Bar defense. If the President’s position is that I do not get to depose him while he is in office, then I would note that Paula Jones’ lawyers were able to convince a federal judge otherwise. If President Bush is successful is convincing the court that I must wait until he leaves office, that’s something I am prepared to do.”

If indeed Thompson has to wait until President Bush leaves office in January 2009, Thompson would be able to get a dig in at the Florida Bar by making them wait to voice their complaints. But, does he actually think that President Bush would actually appear? In his own demented fantasy world, he may actually think this, but it is not very likely. Thompson is also seeking a subpoena for President Bush’s brother Jeb, the former governor of Florida - who’s next? Bush’s dogs Barney and Miss Beazley?
http://news.filefront.com/wacky-jack...george-w-bush/





Microsoft Blames WGA Meltdown on Human Error
Gregg Keizer

Microsoft Corp. last week blamed “human error” on the part of its IT staff for a server problem that caused the company’s Windows Genuine Advantage (WGA) validation service to incorrectly tag legitimate users of Windows XP and Windows Vista as software pirates.

The software vendor also promised that internal changes are being made to avoid a repeat of the glitch, which affected users for nearly 20 hours on Aug. 24 and 25. Users whose copies of Windows erroneously failed WGA’s antipiracy tests were prevented from downloading most software from Microsoft’s Web site. And those with Vista were unable to use some of the operating system’s features.

Alex Kochis, Microsoft’s senior WGA product manager, wrote in a blog posting that the troubles began after “preproduction code” was installed on live servers.

Those systems had yet to be upgraded with another code change designed to enable stronger encryption and decryption of product keys, Kochis added. As a result, “the production servers declined activation and validation requests that should have passed,” he wrote.

A quick code rollback fixed the problem on the product-activation servers within 30 minutes, according to Kochis. But it didn’t reset the validation servers, which handle legitimacy checks on downloads and other transactions.

“We now realize that we didn’t have the right monitoring in place to be sure the fixes had the intended effect,” Kochis wrote. He also said that Microsoft is taking steps “such as increasing the speed of escalations and adding checkpoints before changes can be made to production servers.”

Earlier last week, Microsoft said that fewer than 12,000 systems were affected worldwide. But users lit up the company’s support forums with more than 450 messages about the snafu.

“A system that’s not totally reliable really should not be so punitive,” said Gartner Inc. analyst Michael Silver.

Michael Cherry, an analyst at Directions on Microsoft in Kirkland, Wash., said he was surprised that it was even possible to accidentally load the wrong code onto live servers. “It just begs the question of, what other things have they not done?” Cherry said.
http://www.computerworld.com/action/...&intsrc=kc_top





First Impressions: Opera 9.5 Alpha a Worthy Contender
Jeremy Reimer

Opera has always defied conventional wisdom: in the past, the company was able to survive by selling web browsers when Microsoft and Netscape were giving them away. More recently, the company shifted to giving away its desktop browser, pulling revenue from sales in the mobile arena and affiliate deals integrated into the browser. The company has proven to be rugged and focused on quality.
Opera releases 9.2 browser, adds "Speed Dial"
Feature Wiiview: The Opera Browser

Now, the company has released alpha builds of the latest version of their desktop product, Opera 9.5 (code-named Kestrel). While it doesn't quite add enough features to justify a full version number bump, it is a welcome update for any Opera fan and may well get users of more popular browsers to take a second look. Despite being an "alpha" release, we've found a solid improvement to an already very strong browser.

Opera 9.5's Speed Dials.

Opera claims that the latest version is faster than ever before, and our experience bears this out. When running various JavaScript speed tests, Opera 9.5 scored slightly higher (281ms) than the previous released version, 9.23 (546ms). And Opera 9.x, let it be known, smacks silly the likes of Firefox and Internet Explorer, which tend to have results in the 900-1500ms range on this test machine (a 1.8 GHz Core 2 Duo with 2GB RAM). Opera was 50 percent faster on average than Firefox, and 100 percent faster than IE7 on Windows Vista, for instance. (In all versions, the speed of the test depends on how many tabs are open, so your results may vary. In our experience, Opera always came out on top.)

Opera also claims that the user interface itself also received significant optimizations for speed, and while it's tough to accurately benchmark this, the new alpha does feel slightly "snappier" than its predecessor. While this is still an alpha and there are undoubtedly still bugs present, Kestrel on Windows XP was stable and did not crash once during testing. The Macintosh version, unfortunately, had some serious UI display problems running under Panther on my PPC iBook, likely due to the new skinning code that is in this version.

Performance enhancements aren't limited to browsing speed, either. The integrated BitTorrent client (first introduced in 9.0) has been reworked, and support for Peer Exchange should make torrent downloads faster. While still not as full-featured as a standalone BitTorrent client, being able to download torrents with a single click on a web page is an extremely useful feature and is one that I use all the time.

Speed isn't the only thing that Opera has addressed with 9.5. Plenty of refinements have been added to make things more convenient. For example, the Zoom mode in previous versions was a great way to magnify not just text but entire web pages. Kestrel makes the magnification control immediately available in the bottom-right corner of the status bar, along with a toggle to view/hide images. Like most controls in the Opera user interface, these can be removed or repositioned if desired.

One of the neatest new features is My Opera Synchronization. For those of us who are often surfing from multiple computers or mobile devices while on the go, the synchronization feature lets you instantly import your bookmarks and Speed Dial sites. You create an account (mercifully, this does not require going to any web site but is integrated directly into the Synchronization dialog box in Opera) and then you can log in from any other platform and synchronize. I tried this on my aging iBook, and after only a couple of seconds, it had imported all my bookmarks and Speed Dial settings, although unfortunately not any other custom GUI configurations. This feature will be invaluable for mobile users.

Another nifty addition is that when you start typing in a URL or search term, Opera will not only auto-fill a dropdown list of previously visited pages starting with the letters you have typed, but it also searches the contents of web pages in your history and displays those matching results as well. So you can just type, say, "apple" in the URL and it will pick up not only www.apple.com but any recently visited web pages mentioning that particular fruit.

Overall, the new Opera raises the bar yet again for web surfing, and it remains my browser of choice. While many will still prefer Firefox for its plethora of third-party extensions, Opera remains a light and fast browser that still manages to cram in more features than clowns in a Volkswagen and is just as much fun to use.
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post...9-5-alpha.html





BCG: How 100 Top Companies from Rapidly Developing Economies are Changing the World
Cem Basman

New Twist In The Globalizing Economy’s Competitive Landscape: Emerging Global Companies Home-Grown In China, India And Other Rapidly Developing Economies (RDE’S): Boston Consulting Group (BCG) Research Identifies Hundreds of Companies Based in RDE’s With Clear Advantages not Only in their Fast-Expanding Home Markets, but also in Global Competition and Markets Around the World; Cutting Teeth in Tough Economies Breeds Smarts, Nimbleness and Extreme Cost and Labor Advantages, According to New BCG Report, Which Identifies and Tracks 100 RDE-Based “Global Challengers”.

Established multinational companies are, at various levels of effectiveness, sourcing, manufacturing and selling in rapidly developing economies (RDEs) like China and India in their fight to stay competitive in the globalizing economy. But are they coming to terms with an increasingly important, but less apparent, competitive threat: emerging global competitors based in RDEs? A new report from The Boston Consulting Group (BCG) delineates the new challenge for established companies and analyzes the advantages, strategies and impact of 100 of the many hundreds of RDE-based companies whose role in global competition is increasing quickly.

“Until recently, only a dozen or so companies based in rapidly developing countries could be described as emerging global challengers. Today there are hundreds, which is in line with the expectation that by 2050 China and India will be two of the world’s three largest superpowers,” said David Michael, BCG senior vice president and co-author of The New Global Challengers: How 100 Top Companies from Rapidly Developing Economies are Changing the World .

“Established companies must quickly become comfortable with, and envision their priorities in an environment inhabited by RDE-based challengers. The new competitors have low costs, ambitious leaders, appealing products and modern facilities. Incumbents will need to learn how to compete head on, partner and/or create their own ‘challenger’ via a subsidiary,” Michael said.

For the report, BCG used a screening process to select 100 companies –dubbed the RDE 100 – that exemplify the crop of global competitors now emerging from RDEs. The RDE 100 have $715 billion in combined revenue and are growing at rate of 24% a year. They currently derive 28% of revenue from international (non home-country) operations, and that portion will probably jump to 40% by 2010, according to the report.

Companies in the RDE 100 are in nearly all sectors: industrial goods (auto equipment, basic materials, engineered products); consumer durables (household appliances and consumer electronics); resource extraction; technology and business services. Seventy are from Asia (44 from China and 21 from India ), and 18 are from Latin America . The rest are from such countries as Russia and Turkey . Some examples are:

• BYD (China ), world’s largest manufacturer of nickel-cadmium batteries; has 23% share of mobile-handset battery market
• Bharat Forge (India ), the world’s second largest forging company
• Embraer (Brazil ), surpassed Bombardier as market leader in regional jets
• Chunlan Group Corp. (China ), has a 25% share of Italy ’s air-conditioner market
• Johnson Electric (China ), the world’s leading manufacturer of small electric motors
• Wipro (India ), the world’s largest third-party engineering services company
• Pearl River Piano Group (China ), the global volume leader in Piano manufacturing
• Ranbaxy Pharmaceuticals (India ), among the world’s top-10 generic pharmaceutical players

The RDE 100 are growing 10 times faster than the U.S. ’s GDP, 24 times faster than Japan ’s and 34 times faster than Germany ’s. They earned $145 billion in operating profits, equivalent to a 20% margin over sales. That compares with 16% for U.S. S&P 500 companies, 10% for Japanese Nikkei companies and 9% for German DAX companies.

The RDE 100’s total shareholder return (TSR) from January 2000 to March 2006 increased more than 150%, while the TSR of S&P 500 companies declined. RDE 100 companies’ portfolios contain $520 billion in fixed assets, and, in 2004, they employed 4.6 million people and had a payroll of $20 billion. They purchase $200 billion a year in raw materials and energy, $50 billion in parts and components and $40 billion in services.

RDE 100: Why They’re Going Global and Why They’re Good at it
Emerging global companies from RDE’s are going global because they’re focused on organic growth but find that their home markets either don’t have the scale or the resources to allow them to deliver the levels of shareholder value and competitive advantage they want to achieve, according to the report.

They aim globally to tap into new profit pools or gain long-term access to raw materials. Eighty-eight of the RDE 100 are seeking the former, 12 the latter. For instance, Baosteel, China’s biggest steel maker ($19.5 billion), is focused solely on the China market and has operating margins well above the industry average; its international expansion is designed to secure stable iron-ore supplies. Hence its purchase of part of CVRD’s Auga Limpa complex in Brazil .

Emerging companies from RDEs are good at international expansion in part because of the discipline they attained succeeding in their difficult home markets, according to the report. They learned to sell profitably to low-income customers; deal with immature logistics and distribution environments; navigate ambiguous legal situations; handle rapid external change and manage despite shortages of management talent. They also learned from foreign-based multinationals operating in their markets. “A company that has addressed these challenges in their home market will have the advantage when seeking to grow in similar markets abroad,” said Hal Sirkin, BCG senior vice president and co-author of the report.

RDE-Based Companies’ Hidden Advantages

While established players may have competitive advantages in terms of traditions of innovation, brand, intellectual property and distribution channels, RDE-based global players have a leg up in other, sustainable ways. “The RDE challengers are cash rich, and they’re aware of their advantages and know how to use them,” said Sirkin.

RDE player advantages include:

Low-cost resources: RDE-based labor is 10 to 20 times less than in highly developed markets, translating to up to 40% savings in the cost of end products; setting up a manufacturing site costs 60% of the price of a comparable facility in a developed country; equipment costs are up to 60% less
Making and selling products that appeal to price-conscious consumers: The market for low-cost products is the fastest-expanding one in the global marketplace
Modern and efficient plants and equipment, i.e., strong operating platforms: The average age of assets for Chinese companies is 7.2 years, compared with 16.9 for U.S. companies; production systems in RDEs are often more efficient and flexible because they often use labor instead of machinery
Access to huge talent pools: By 2010, China will graduate 800,000 engineers, mathematicians, technicians and scientists, and India will graduate 600,000. Together, this is 12 times the output of the U.S. university system
Home-market environment advantages: RDE companies’ home markets are huge and among the fastest-growing: In China, for instance, steel consumption is 2.3 times that of the U.S. RDE players have more know-how and connections in these environments, and thus greater potential to lead.
Further, government incentives and other variables lower their cost of capital

How RDE Challengers Will Grow

The RDE 100 has achieved 80% of its total growth organically, through exporting products to new markets and/or setting up international operations. The rest of the growth has been through small acquisitions –many of them international– with narrowly focused objectives. “The organic emphasis will continue, but we will see more acquisitions, as these emerging challengers’ desire to grow will exceed their ability to develop the necessary capabilities in house,” said Arindam Bhattacharya, BCG vice president and co-author of the report.
http://basman.wordpress.com/2006/06/...ing-the-world/





Software Via the Internet: Microsoft in ‘Cloud’ Computing
John Markoff

In 1995, Microsoft added a free Web browser to its operating system in an attempt to fend off new rivals, an effort ultimately blocked by the courts.

This week, it plans to turn that strategy upside down, making available free software that connects its Windows operating system to software services delivered on the Internet, a practice increasingly referred to as “cloud” computing. The initiative is part of an effort to connect Windows more seamlessly to a growing array of Internet services.

The strategy is a major departure for Microsoft, which primarily sells packaged software for personal computers. With this new approach, Microsoft hopes to shield its hundreds of millions of software customers from competitors like Google and Salesforce.com, which already offer software applications through the Internet.

Microsoft’s new Windows Live software suite includes an updated electronic mail program, a photo-sharing application and a writing tool designed for people who keep Web logs.

The new service is an indication that Microsoft plans to compete head-on against archrival Google and others, and not only in the search-engine business where it is at a significant disadvantage. Instead, Microsoft will try to outmaneuver its challengers by becoming the dominant digital curator of all a user’s information, whether it is stored on a PC, a mobile device or on the Internet, industry executives and analysts said.

Millions of PC users already rely on Web applications that either provide a service or store data. For instance, Yahoo and Google do their own forms of cloud computing, offering popular e-mail programs and photo-sharing sites that are accessible through a Web browser. The photos or the e-mail messages are stored on those companies’ servers. The data is accessible from any PC anywhere.

Hundreds of companies in Silicon Valley are offering every imaginable service, from writing tools to elaborate dating and social networking systems, all of which require only a Web browser and each potentially undermining Microsoft’s desktop monopoly.

Google, the most visible example, took cloud computing a step further last October and directly challenged Microsoft by offering a suite of free word-processing and spreadsheet software over a browser.

“To the extent that the industry is moving toward an on-demand business model, it poses a threat to Microsoft,” said Kenneth Wasch, president of the Software and Information Industry Association and a longtime Microsoft adversary.

Microsoft is a late entrant to a set of businesses that are largely defined as Web 2.0, but the company is counting on its ability to exploit its vast installed base of more than one billion Windows-based personal computers. It plans to give away some of its services, like photo-sharing and disk storage, while charging for others like its computer security service and a series of business-oriented services aimed at small and medium-size organizations.

“I think Microsoft is going beyond search to a more sophisticated set of services,” said Shane Robison, executive vice president and chief strategy and technology officer at Hewlett-Packard. “It will be a race, and who knows who will get there first?”

Brian Hall, general manager for Microsoft’s Windows Live services, said, “We’re taking the communications and sharing components and creating a set of services that become what we believe is the one suite of services and applications for personal and community use across the PC, the Web and the phone.”

He said the software would be the first full release of Windows Live that is intended to produce a “relatively seamless” experience between the different services and applications.

The Windows Live service — which will be found at www.live.com — includes new versions of the company’s Hotmail and Messenger communications services as well as Internet storage components. Microsoft executives said there were roughly 300 million active users each on the Hotmail and Messenger services, with some overlap.

The software release will offer PC users the option of downloading a set of the services with a single Unified Installer program, or as separate components. The individual services are Windows Live Photo Gallery, Windows Live Mail, Windows Live Messenger 8.5 and Windows Live OneCare Family Safety, a computer security program.

The release, though it includes the Windows Live Writer blogging application, carefully avoids cannibalizing two of Microsoft’s mainstays, the Word and Excel programs.

Windows Live services also underscore Microsoft’s desire to become the manager for a user’s data wherever it is located. Although they will not be included in the initial test release, the company’s recently announced SkyDrive online data storage service and its FolderShare service are being folded into Windows Live. SkyDrive currently gives test users 500 megabytes of free Internet storage, while FolderShare makes it possible to synchronize between multiple computers — including Apple’s Macintosh computers.

“When you think storage, think Windows Live,” Bill Gates said in an interview this summer. Microsoft is moving to create an experience that will divorce a user’s information from the particular device the person is working with at any moment, he said.

Microsoft’s new approach is in many ways a mirror image of the strategy used during the 1990s in defeating Netscape Communications when the start-up threatened Microsoft’s desktop dominance. Microsoft tried to tie the Internet to Windows by bundling its Internet Explorer Web browser as an integral part of its desktop operating system. The company lost an antitrust lawsuit in 2000 brought by the Justice Department in response to this bundling strategy.

Today, that strategy has been flipped with the growing array of Web services that are connected to Windows. But the new approach, which the company refers to as “software plus services,” is once again beginning to draw industry charges of unfair competition from competitors.

To head off that challenge, Microsoft has been participating in various international organizations that are setting standards over a wide range of services: from those aimed at consumers, like blog-editing and photo-sharing applications, to automated business processes like Web-based customer relationship management systems for sales staff and automatic ordering and logistics applications.

Last week, for example, Microsoft executives were put on the defensive after the company’s efforts to gain international adoption for a Microsoft-designed document format known as Open Office XML, led to charges of vote-buying in an international standards vote in Sweden.

After the charges received international publicity during the week, the Swedish Standards Institute reversed its position and decided to abstain on the issue, and a Microsoft executive apologized publicly for the gaffe.

On Wednesday, Jason Matusow, Microsoft’s senior director for intellectual property and interoperability, wrote on his Web site: “I understand the concern raised by this error in judgment by an MS employee. The only thing I can say is that the right things were done as the issue was identified. The process and vote at S.I.S. were not affected.” Microsoft did not specify what actually had transpired.

While the industry dispute over document formats was visible last week, several Microsoft competitors were quietly pointing to another standards issue that may prove to be a significant advantage for software giant in the future.

A set of Web services standards that have emerged from the World Wide Web Consortium might give Microsoft a performance advantage, according to industry executives at three companies, who declined to be identified because they are Microsoft business partners.

Microsoft’s standards efforts have angered its competitors because four years ago the software publisher argued publicly against adding compression features that are designed to improve performance to industry Web services standards. Now, however, Microsoft has developed its own compression standards that will potentially make its versions of Web services perform better than those of their competitors.

“They’re playing the game right,” said a rival. “The idea is to offer a solution that works better in an all-Microsoft environment.”

On Friday, a spokesman for Microsoft said that services that take advantage of the Web standards effort like Silverlight, a new system for displaying multimedia content via a Web browser that competes with Adobe’s Flash media player, would not be included in the first release of Windows Live, but would be added in the future.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/03/te...y/03cloud.html





Entire City of Vista Users Can't Access the Internet

There's a kind of hush

PEOPLE in the city of Lund in Sweden that use the Microsoft Vista OS can't connect to the Internet.

According to this local newspaper, the reason is because Lund is a Linux city which has a a Linux server that doesn't like Vista.

Lundis Energi blamed Microsoft because Vista has got a bug and it isn't going to change the configuration of the server just to cope with the flaw.

A local Microsoft rep said it could probably fix the problem if Lundis Energi got in touch with it.
http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=42043





NZ Rejects Microsoft OOXML, Sweden Confused
Tom Espiner

New Zealand last week voted to reject Microsoft OOXML as an international standard while the Swedish Standards Institute invalidated its own vote after discovering irregularities.

New Zealand has voted "no" to OOXML being fast-tracked for ISO certification at present.

Grant Thomas, chief operating officer, Standards New Zealand, said in a statement: "Stakeholders raised several philosophical concerns, and identified technical omissions, errors and inconsistencies within the draft Standard. We believe that voting 'no' with comments allows these issues to be addressed."

The Swedish Standards Institute (SIS) declared its vote invalid after it revealed on Thursday that a participant voted more than once. The move follows criticism of SIS's earlier decision to vote "yes" to Office Open XML (OOXML) by the Free Software Foundation Europe, which accused Microsoft of ballot rigging.

"The SIS has information that indicates that one of the participants in the workgroup participated in the ballot with more than a vote," said the SIS in a statement. "Such a procedure is not compatible with the SIS's rules, which state that each [member] only has one vote."

The decision means that the SIS will take the decision not to vote if it is unable to take a new ballot before 2 September, when the global balloting process ends, according to Lars Flink, SIS chief executive.

Microsoft has admitted encouraging partners to join the national bodies deciding whether to recommend OOXML for fast-track ISO (International Organization for Standardization) certification.

If OOXML receives ISO certification, it could pave the way for OOXML to be accepted by governments as a document standard. The Free Software Foundation has argued that OOXML contains proprietary components.
http://www.builderau.com.au/news/soa...9281682,00.htm





Brazil Votes Against Open XML
Luiza Dalmazo, Tais Fuoco and Camila Fusco

The Brazilian organization in charge of technical standards has decided to vote "no, with conditions" to Microsoft Corp.'s Office Open XML document format during an International Organization for Standardization (ISO) meeting on Sunday.

The Brazilian Technical Standards Association, or ABNT in Portuguese, voted unanimously against Open XML, pointing out 63 issues related to the document format during a final meeting last week prior to the ISO session.

The ABNT position was also supported by local government organizations, ministries, commissions and advisory boards. The vote was taken after a clarifying speech made by ABNT Director Eugenio Guilherme Tolstoy De Simone.

Among the issues cited are lack of compatibility with the Gregorian calendar, lack of support for languages such as Chinese, Japanese and Korean, and security issues including the possibility of password breaches and vulnerability to viruses.

The decision of "no, with conditions" means Brazil can change its vote if these issues are solved. Those involved in the process consider that unlikely.

"Microsoft Brazil believes the technical agreement effectively represents an opportunity of evolution in the standard," the company said in a statement responding to the decision. The company pledged to "interact with society, private companies, corporate associations, universities and federal local government in order to develop Open XML."

IBM Corp. also weighed in on the matter. "Our impression is Open XML is a standard done in a hurry", said Cezar Taurion, new technologies manager at IBM Brazil. "Open XML is not mature enough and we think it is worth to be outlined again, since we already have an ISO standard which does not exclude any technology."

Open XML, which is the default format in the Office 2007 suite, competes with the OpenDocument Format for XML, or ODF, which is an ISO standard.

Besides Brazil, a technical committee in India last week unanimously voted to reject the format ahead of the ISO meeting. Although the U.S. representative organization to the upcoming meeting had said that it would vote no as well, it since has signaled an intention to vote "yes, with comments."

The executive board of the International Committee for Information Technology Standards (INCITS), based in Washington, D.C., is scheduled to meet again on Wednesday and take up the proposal one more time before submitting its final vote to the ISO.
http://www.itworldcanada.com/a/News/...26ca1b1d4.html





French Blow for Microsoft's Office Open XML

France says no to standard, Australia abstains
Peter Sayer

France has voted against the adoption of Microsoft's document format Office Open XML as an international standard, while Australia has decided to abstain.

Microsoft offered its OOXML specification to standards body ECMA last year, paving the way for the file format to be fast-tracked through the International Organization for Standardization's approvals process.

If enough other national standards bodies have voted the same way as those of France, India and Brazil, and OOXML is not approved as an international standard, Microsoft could miss out on revenue from the lucrative government market.

A number of governments, worried that the need for access to electronic archives in proprietary formats leaves them hostage to their software vendor, have mandated the use of document formats that comply with open international standards.

Others are considering such a move, which could put Microsoft at a double disadvantage to open-source products such as OpenOffice.org, which not only store files in the standardised Open Document Format, but are free.

The French Association for Standardization, Afnor, announced on Monday that it had informed the International Organization for Standardization of its 'no' vote on the proposal to make Microsoft's OOXML format an ISO standard.

ISO had asked national standards bodies around the world to give their verdict on OOXML by September 2, and is in the process of counting the votes submitted. It will announce the result by Wednesday, officials say. Afnor had declined to announce its decision until ISO had received all votes.

Standards Australia, the Australian national standards body, announced on Monday that it had abstained from the vote, after its members failed to reach a consensus.

The Swedish body last week annulled its vote in favour of adoption of the standard when it transpired that a Microsoft employee had pressured partners of the company to vote to support it. The US standards body INCITS, however, has voted in favour of adopting OOXML as a standard.
http://www.pcadvisor.co.uk/news/index.cfm?newsid=10605





Microsoft Favored to Win Open Document Vote
Kevin J. O’Brien

Amid intense lobbying, Microsoft is expected to squeak out a victory this week to have its open document format, Office Open XML, recognized as an international standard, people tracking the vote said Monday.

The move would help Microsoft, the world’s largest software maker, maintain its competitive advantage in the expanding field of open document formats.

“After what basically has amounted to unprecedented lobbying, I think that Microsoft’s standard is going to get the necessary amount of support,” said Pieter Hintjens, president of Foundation for a Free Information Infrastructure, a Brussels group that led the opposition.

The underlying code of an “open” document is public, allowing developers to improve and derive new products without having to pay royalties. The first open format to become an international standard, in May 2006, was OpenDocument Format, developed by a group led by International Business Machines.

Microsoft sought a similar status for Office Open XML so it could also sell software with open characteristics, which are increasingly being demanded by national and local governments in Belgium, France, Germany, the Netherlands and Brazil, as well as by Massachusetts in the United States.

Member countries in two global standards bodies, the International Organization for Standardization, known as I.S.O., and the International Electrotechnical Commission, or I.E.C., both based in Geneva, have been casting votes since April on whether to designate Office Open XML as a global standard.

The issue has split the groups, with some members asserting that the I.S.O. and I.E.C. should not be endorsing the commercial product of a single company.

Others say a standards designation would reflect reality, because more than 90 percent of electronic documents are in Microsoft format.

Electronic voting closed Sunday. Roger Frost, an I.S.O. spokesman in Geneva, said his organization was tallying the votes and expected to announce the results on Tuesday or Wednesday.

The European Computer Manufacturers Association, known as E.C.M.A., a standards group based in Geneva, endorsed Office Open XML as a European standard last December.

According to Mr. Hintjens, whose group has been tallying the votes of participants, countries including Japan, Canada, India, China, Brazil, France and Britain voted against Microsoft’s proposal. France and Britain made their votes conditional, meaning they could later change them to yes, should Microsoft alter its 6,500-page standard to allay technical and liability concerns.

Switzerland, the United States, Portugal and Germany supported Microsoft’s bid, Mr. Hintjens said, as did some smaller countries like Trinidad and Tobago, Kenya and Ivory Coast, some of whom became active late in the voting at Microsoft’s urging.

To win passage, Microsoft’s standard must gain support from at least two-thirds of 37 countries on an information technology panel of the I.S.O. and I.E.C. called the Joint Technical Committee 1, and cannot be opposed by more than 25 percent of all countries casting ballots.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/04/te...gy/04soft.html





Microsoft Loses Key U.S. OpenXML Vote

INCITS' executive committee was one vote shy of approving Microsoft's OpenXML as a standard, dealing a setback to the company's efforts to compete with ODF
Robert McMillan

Microsoft has lost a key vote in its quest to develop an alternative to the Open Document Format standard, backed by the open-source community.

The executive committee of the International Committee for Information Technology Standards (INCITS) fell one vote shy of the nine required to approve Microsoft's Open XML standard. It voted 8 to 7 in favor of approval with one abstention, the group announced Thursday.

The vote is a setback in a long-running battle between Microsoft and those who are seeking to dislodge Microsoft's monopoly hold on the desktop with internationally approved standards for office documents. The battle has pitted Microsoft against open-source backers like Sun and IBM, whose rival ODF (Open Document Format for XML) has gained some support among government users.

Open XML is the default file format used by Microsoft's Office 2007.

ODF was approved as an ISO (International Organization for Standardization) standard last year, a sign that it could gain traction with organizations that give preference to standards-based technology.

But recently, Microsoft has been pushing to get Open XML blessed by the ISO -- seeking to have it approved by the Joint Technical Committee 1 (JTC-1), which sets technical standards for both the ISO and the International Electrotechnical Commission. Standards groups like INCITS, which is examining the question in the U.S., have been debating whether or not to back this effort.

"This is going on all over the world right now in a very bitterly contested country-by-country battle," said Andrew Updegrove, an open-source advocate and attorney with Gesmer Updegrove in Boston. Microsoft's public relations agency did not return calls seeking comment Friday.

INCITS has until Sept. 2 to decide whether it will support Open XML within the JTC-1, but this week's vote shows that this will not happen unless Microsoft can swing some voters.

Committee representatives from Microsoft, Apple, Intel, Sony, EMC, Hewlett-Packard, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, and the Electronic Industries Alliance supported Microsoft's standard. Against it were IBM, Oracle, Lexmark, the U.S. Department of Defense, the National Institute of Standards and Technology, GS1 U.S., and Farance. The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) abstained due to "the divergent viewpoints of key IEEE members."
http://www.infoworld.com/article/07/...ML-vote_1.html





Blindsided by science

OUP Wants Me to Pay for My Own Open Access Article

I have been dismayed (previous post: “Open Access”) at the lack of commitment to OA by mainstream (primarily toll-access (TA)) publishers and have described this as a “systemic failure” of the industry. Here is another unacceptable lack of clarity and commitment from an Open Access journal from a major publisher. I had been investigating OUP’s site for another reason (PRISM: Open Letter to Oxford University Press) and since I had published with them thought I would have a look at papers I had written (”I” and “my” include co-authors). This is what I found (screenshot):

The electronic article is accompanied by a sidebar with “request permissions”. I followed this and the result is shown above. The journal wishes to charge me 48 USD to:

• USE MY OWN ARTICLE
• ON WHICH I HOLD COPYRIGHT
• FOR NON-COMMERCIAL PURPOSES (TEACHING)

The journal is therefore

• SELLING MY INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY
• WITHOUT MY PERMISSION
• AGAINST THE TERMS OF THE LICENCE (NO COMMERCIAL USE)

I am lost for words…

… the only charitable conclusion I can draw is that the publisher ritually attaches the awful Rightslink page to every article automatically and that this is a genuine mistake. I have found such “genuine mistakes” with other publishers in their hybrid journals (i.e. where only some of the papers are OA, the majority being toll-access TA). But this is a fully OA journal - all papers are OA - I assume CC-NC. There is no excuse for including the Rightslink page on ANY OA paper, let alone every one on a journal.

If this is - as I desperately hope - a genuine mistake then my criticism might seem harsh. But it is actually part of the systemic failure of the industry to promote Open Access. And I hope that OUP can and will clarify and rectify the position. If, however, it is deliberate and that the publisher actually intends to charge readers and users for Open Access articles I shall reserve comment.

This is not a trivial point. The normal reader of a journal who wishes to re-use material has to navigate copyright constraints and restrictions on an all-too-frequent basis. Such a reader, especially if they were relatively unaware of Open Access could easily pay the journal for “permission to use an Open Access article for teaching”. (Note that other charges are higher - to include my own article in a book I write would cost nearly 350 USD).

It is all indicative of an industry that simply isn’t trying hard enough.

RECOMMENDATION:

OPEN ACCESS ARTICLES ON PUBLISHERS’ WEB PAGES SHOULD NEVER BE ACCOMPANIED BY RIGHTSLINK OR OTHER PERMISSION MATERIAL. INSTEAD THE PUBLISHER SHOULD PRO-ACTIVELY POINT OUT THE NATURE OF OA AND ENSURE THAT THE READER AND RE-USER IS FULLY AWARE OF THEIR RIGHTS.

After all, the author has paid for this…
http://wwmm.ch.cam.ac.uk/blogs/murrayrust/?p=529





Code to Unlock iPhone Cracked

A group of anonymous software developers said they will soon start selling a program that will allow iPhone owners to use the hugely popular device on cell phone systems around the world and not just with AT&T.

Apple's iPhone, released in the United States two months ago, was engineered to operate for the first two years only on the AT&T system through an exclusive arrangement between Apple and AT&T. It has not yet been sold outside of the U.S.

Los Angeles software consultant Brett Schulte, who is not affiliated with the developers, demonstrated the software for CNN Friday evening.

An iPhone that had the new software appeared to work on the T-Mobile system just seconds after Schulte replaced the AT&T SIM card with a T-Mobile SIM card.

"It's completely software hacked," Schulte said. "There's no case opening required. It's not required to do any kind of disassembly." It took Schulte about two minutes to unlock the iPhone.

The developers would not give CNN their last names, saying "We don't want to be hounded."

The said they would start selling the software, which they haven't yet priced, as soon as their online payment and customer service systems are ready. They're also waiting for more information from their lawyers.

Apple spokeswoman Jennifer Bowcock told CNN her company has no comment.

AT&T spokesman Mark Siegel said he couldn't speculate on the legality of unlocking the phone, but he added, "When you sign up, you're signing a two-year contract. You're obligated to pay the bill."

"When people buy the iPhone it's clear from our materials it's designed to operate exclusively on AT&T," Siegel said.

Schulte, however, said it is possible to buy an iPhone without being contractually obligated to AT&T.

The developers recently created a Web site -- iPhoneSIMfree.com -- but there is very little information on it and no direct way for anyone to purchase the software. Internet records showed they bought the domain name less than two weeks ago.

Two members of the group, who identified themselves only as "John" and "Liu," told CNN in a phone interview that a core group of six people on three continents worked to unlock the iPhone as a hobby.

They said they are fans of Apple products who thought the iPhone should be made accessible to people who cannot use AT&T.

"I'm not in America and I can't use it," said Liu, who would not reveal the country in which he lives. "It's not fair."

Asked if he thought modifying the iPhone was legal, he said "That's a very good question. I truly believe it is."

John and Liu said they have not been contacted by either Apple or AT&T, but said that could change the moment their software goes on sale.

Earlier this month, a teenager figured out a way to unlock the iPhone, but his method required disassembly of the unit.
http://www.cnn.com/2007/TECH/09/01/a...one/index.html





Cell Phones Can Trigger Medical Equipment Failure, Problem Could Get Worse
John Timmer

As people become increasingly comfortable with the use of cellphones, they're beginning to chafe at the remaining restrictions on their use (as anyone who has boarded an airplane recently can attest). The tension over wireless limitations is even more complex in the medical world, where not only do patients and their families want to stay in touch, but wireless connectivity can enable better patient care. A Open Access study that was released today points out yet another complication: wireless technology is a moving target, and what's safe today may not remain so.

The work follows up on an earlier study that suggested that not all cellular technology might be equal when it comes to interference with medical equipment. GSM networks can handle data from two generations of transmission technology: UMTS, and the higher-powered GPRS. The original study suggested that, although UMTS devices were generally safe to have around medical equipment, GPRS-based phones had the potential to interfere with their function.

The new study focuses on what could be considered "worst case" interference. Instead of using typical operating power, the authors reasoned that a hospital environment, which is often deep within a building and subject to a variety of sources of interference, is likely to force phones to operate at their maximal power limits (in the case of GPRS devices, 2 watts). So, they set up both GPRS and UMTS antennae 500cm away from medical devices, and gradually moved them closer while checking the device's function. Problems were classified as light when they simply interfered with monitoring the device, significant when they required intervention, and hazardous when they created a health risk for the patient. Devices included various pumps, monitoring equipment, defibrillators, and pacemakers.

All told, the authors witnessed 48 events, affecting 26 of the 61 medical devices tested. The good news is that cellular devices typically had to be on top of equipment before causing a problem; the mean distance at which signs of trouble appeared was only 3cm. Still, at least one hazardous event occurred out at 300cm (nearly 10 feet), and five happened at 25cm. The key result, however, is the clear relationship between signal power and problems. The UMTS signal, which operates at 10 percent of the power of GPRS devices, caused only 17 percent of the trouble. A low-frequency GPRS signal produced 31 percent of the incidents, while a high frequency version caused about half of the problems. The severity of the problems broke down along similar lines.

The authors note that the existing safety standards of the Netherlands, where the studfy took place, limits cell phones to a distance of over a meter from medical devices, and they suggest this standard is reasonable. But the more notable message is one the authors didn't mention: those standards are clearly going to need to be reevaluated as wireless devices evolve in the future.
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post...t-failure.html





Gadget Maker or Service Provider? Firms Start to Overlap
Eric Pfanner

Nokia used to be just a cellphone maker. Google used to be just an Internet company.

Now Nokia wants to be an Internet company and Google, according to rampant speculation among bloggers and technology analysts, may be about to enter the mobile phone fray.

“Devices alone are not enough anymore,” Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo, chief executive of Nokia, said last week in London as the company announced plans for a digital music store, a game service, social networking links and other mobile Internet initiatives, grouped under a new brand, Ovi. “People want more; they want the complete experience.”

Meanwhile, a Google spokesman declined to comment on reports that a “Google phone,” or “G-phone,” was imminent. Such a device would take the Internet company into a business that has long been dominated by Nokia, but that has been shaken up by the recent introduction of a high-profile newcomer, Apple’s iPhone.

Apple is also expected to make news this week, having scheduled a product announcement for Wednesday with the teasing line, “the beat goes on.”

Analysts say Apple may introduce anything from upgraded iPod music players to a deal to sell Beatles music on the iTunes digital music store.

As the likes of Apple, Nokia and, perhaps, Google move to give mobile users “the complete experience,” they are bound to overlap more and more not just with each other, but with others in the mobile business.

“This is the downside of convergence,” said Paul Jackson, an analyst at Forrester Research. “All of these players want a bit of everyone else’s market — device makers, network operators, content owners.

“They can’t dictate to a consumer when they should consume a content product,” Mr. Jackson said. “But if they control more of the end-to-end experience, they can benefit from these decisions.”

The eagerness of all these companies to increase their involvement in mobile media may seem surprising, given that it remains a relatively small market. Music sold directly to wireless devices, rather than downloaded first to a PC, accounted for about $1 billion in revenue last year, according to the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry, but much of that was concentrated in a few Asian markets. And ring tones, rather than full-track song downloads, still make up a substantial portion of those sales.

Still, analysts see potential for rapid growth as mobile content gains traction in other areas.

EMarketer, a research firm, says mobile advertising in Europe will grow to nearly $3 billion in 2011 from less than $400 million in 2006.

That helps explain the interest of Google, whose online business is based on advertising. Google already has partnerships with a number of mobile operators to provide cellular access to its search portal, map service and other features. But by making a phone, Google could make it even easier for users to get to these services, analysts say, enhancing its ability to sell mobile advertising.

Nokia’s decision to start a mobile music store could increase pressure on Apple to follow suit, analysts say.

When asked about plans for a wireless iTunes, Apple said only that it was “looking forward to bringing iPhone to Europe later this year.”

Microsoft’s Zune music player already allows wireless sharing of songs, at least those without digital copy protection between devices. How long, some analysts ask, before the company also decides to produce a Zunephone?

Another phone maker, Sony Ericsson, is planning a series of announcements in the coming months related to the “user experience,” said Merran Wrigley, a spokeswoman.

In other words, Sony Ericsson is looking beyond the devices themselves to the software and services that could make mobile content more appealing. Many wireless operators continue to refine their own mobile portals and content services, even if these have generally had only limited success.

So even as everyone talks about simplicity, user experiences and end-to-end offerings, it seems that the options are about to proliferate.

“I pity the poor consumer,” said Mark Newman, chief research officer at Informa Telecoms & Media. “From a consumer perspective, it’s very confusing to figure out where to go.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/03/te...y/03Nokia.html





The Hunt for Gotta-Have-It Gadgets
Peter Wayner

JON WESTFALL remembers well the time he wired $1,000 to a man in Dubai whom he had never met. His contact had an iMate, a small hybrid of a cellphone and a P.D.A., that was not available in the United States.

“He told me, ‘There’s no reason for you to trust me, but if you really want one, Western Union me $1,000 and I’ll send you one.’ ” Mr. Westfall, a contributing editor for PocketPCTHoughts.com who lives in Marblehead, Ohio, had to have one. “It was the first model they ever released. This one was just the Cadillac of PocketPCs,” he said. “I don’t know what I was thinking, but about three or four weeks later he was able to get me one because they were pretty scarce, even over there.”

Anyone who has ever wanted the smallest, quickest, slickest or simply the newest gadget knows the feeling. The solution had been to search the world, wade into the riskiest online bazaars, grapple with manuals written in foreign languages, and live with the lack of manufacturer’s support.

This is still true today, but the first adopters willing to pay a premium for the exotic notebook computers, cellphones and tech toys can turn to any number of businesses that specialize in finding objects that are not sold in the big-box store near their home.

“We love to have the newest thing that no one else has,” said Eric Ralls, the president of RedOrbit.com, a space exploration Web site that sells electronics from around the world.

His products are found by Dynamism.com, another importer of the unavailable. One of the pioneers in the segment, Dynamism has agents in Japan, South Korea and Europe who watch the stores for new products from the local manufacturers, large and small, that are not being exported to the United States.

Douglas Krone, Dynamism’s chief executive, said the company not only imported the products, but also customized them by translating manuals and installing local versions of the software if it existed. If there are problems, Dynamism offers a “rescue warranty” that pays for unlimited support and overnight shipping for repairs.

The manufacturers, for a variety of reasons, decide a product is not worth shipping overseas. It may be that its size or sensibility is not quite right for foreigners. (American consumers tend to favor ever-larger laptops, while Japanese are fascinated with the smallest ones.) “Sony is a Japanese company, and Japan comes first for them,” Mr. Ralls said.

The product may be a limited edition, made in numbers too small to justify export, or perhaps all the bugs have not been worked out. Often, companies simply conclude that there is not a mass market for the product in the United States.

EBay continues to be a popular source of the hard-to-get products. Mr. Westfall, for instance, said he had his eye on the HTC Kaiser, a new smartphone with a hidden keyboard and the ability to connect to almost every major wireless network using Wi-Fi. He hoped to find one on eBay.

“You look for someone who’s traveling in Europe who’s looking to make some money on eBay,” Mr. Westfall said. “You can go to some of these Web sites that are based over in Europe, but it’s a crapshoot to whether they’ll actually ship to you or if they have the capacity to do the custom forms.”

There are risks, as there are with many things you buy on the big auction site. “You can buy from eBay for cheaper than you buy it from us, but if it breaks you may have a very difficult time getting service,” Mr. Krone said.

Frequent travelers are good sources for phones and information about them because they are often forced to become experts in the various worldwide standards. Jonathan Zuck, a lobbyist who travels monthly to Brussels, said he needed a phone that can work in both the United States and Europe. On trips, he swaps out the small SIM card inside his cellphone with one he buys there in order to have a local number and pay local — and much cheaper — rates.

Mr. Zuck picked up his latest phone, an HTC Touch, in Europe. In the past, he has tried to order products only to find that customs forms can often be daunting for some foreign retailers even when items are shipped. “I often just buy the stuff overseas and bring it home,” he said.

He has his eye on the TZ90, a slim 2.26-pound laptop from Sony — “Bordeaux colored” — that Dynamism is importing.

The risk in this business — for the customer and the vendor alike — is that the overseas manufacturer may decide that the coveted product is indeed worthy of export, destroying its exclusivity. For instance, Sony recently introduced a line of the TZ-model notebooks, all with dual-core processors, at prices that range from $2,200 to $3,000. Now Mr. Zuck is torn whether to buy what anyone can get here or go for the model Dynamism sells. He said he might make his decision based upon the service.

Opinions vary on whether the gadget gap between America and the rest of the world is closing, but Mr. Krone said that Dynamism’s window of opportunity was always small. “Most of the products we’re selling do get mass-marketed here, and we discontinue them,” he said.

While much of the focus is on computers and cellphones, the Web sites also offer a wide variety of other gadgets. Ty Liotta, a senior merchandiser for the online emporium ThinkGeek.com, said his site tried to be highly inclusive by importing goods from Britain, India, China, Japan and elsewhere. “We’ve got a section called Japan Fan, which is all Japanese things,” he said. “We have this radio-controlled R2-D2 action figure.”

The section also includes a Godzilla Marble Blaster and radio-controlled sumo wrestlers.

Dynamism also stocks a few imported gimmicks like a small laser pointer that projects the time, and the Nabaztag/tag, a plastic bunny with ears that move that is networked over the Internet to other bunnies. “That Japanese cute sensibility, that’s the focus of a lot of our gadgets,” Mr. Krone said.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/06/te...sics.html?8dpc





Googzilla

Japan to Fight Google Search Dominance
Mariko Sanchanta and Richard Waters

Tokyo, alarmed by the global dominance of Google and other foreign internet services, is spearheading a project to try to seize the lead in new search technologies for electronic devices.

The push has been sparked by concerns in Japan that the country’s pre-eminence in consumer electronics has faded and value in the technology industry is moving away from hardware.

As South Korean and Taiwanese electronics companies churn out products nearly identical to those of the Japanese majors, there are fears in Tokyo that the country’s manufacturers are falling behind in innovation.

“The question is how Japanese companies like Sharp and Matsushita can be encouraged to provide services. They clearly have the know-how to build things,” says Toshihide Yahiro, director of the information service industry division at the ministry of trade. “The key to Japan’s competitiveness has been our core technology but we need to create a new value-added service that is personalised.”

The shift of focus away from hardware echoes attempts by some of the biggest personal technology companies to become stronger in software and services. In one of the most prominent examples, Nokia last week outlined plans for an online music store and other services.

Tokyo hopes to use Japan’s strength in developing devices, such as mobile phones and car navigation systems, to create proprietary search and information retrieval functions. But some question whether a state-led project is capable of overhauling Google.
The Japanese project is comprised of 10 partnerships, each tasked with a specific next-generation search function. For example, the government has matched NTT Data with Toyota InfoTechnology Center and Toyota Mapmaster to create an interactive, personalised car navigation system. Other partnerships involve NEC, Hitachi and Sony Computer Science Laboratories. The ministry of trade has allocated Y14bn-Y15bn (€89m-€95m) to the project.

“Seventy per cent of car navigation systems are made in Japan. There is scope for more personalization,” says Mr Yahiro. “There is a need for car navigation systems that are capable of searching for which bathrooms are equipped with baby-changing stations and other necessities.”

Some blame Japan’s copyright laws for holding back the development of web services. Services such as Google hold copies of other companies’ web pages on their servers. Because Japanese law forbids the duplication of copyrighted works without the rights holders’ permission, Yahoo Japan, Google Japan and other search engines offered in Japan operate from US-based servers.

The specific focus on search reflects the prominence that this service has achieved since the rise of Google, while also reflecting broader international concerns about US dominance of an important information business.

France and Germany launched a plan of their own to seed development of a “next generation” European search engine nearly two years ago, though Germany pulled out of the plan.
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/b3046d5c-5...0779fd2ac.html





House Passes Patent Overhaul Bill
Grant Gross

The U.S. House of Representatives on Friday passed a bill to overhaul the nation's patent system, overcoming objections by many Republicans, small inventors and some labor unions.

The Patent Reform Act, supported by several large tech vendors including Microsoft Corp. and IBM Corp., would allow courts to change they way they assess damages in patent infringement cases. Currently, courts generally consider the value of the entire product when a small piece of the product infringes a patent; the bill would allow, but not require, courts to base damages only on the value of the infringing piece.

The bill would also allow a new way to challenge patents within one year after they've been granted.

The House passed the Patent Reform Act by a vote of 225-175. The Senate has not yet acted on a similar piece of legislation.

However, the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) issued a statement on Thursday saying it opposes the bill. It said that the changes in assessment of damages would "introduce new complications and risks reducing incentives to innovate." The OMB objections raise the possibility that President George Bush could veto the legislation.

Large tech vendors have been pushing for patent reform for close to five years. The Software & Information Industry Association (SIIA), the Business Software Alliance, and the Computing Technology Industry Association, all praised the House for passing the bill.

House passage is a "significant step toward improving our patent system," said Mark Bohannon, SIIA's senior vice president of public policy.

Asked about the OMB's opposition to the bill, Bohannon said recent changes have addressed many concerns. Apportionment of damages, one of the OMB's major concerns, needs to change, he added. "If we don't address the problem, we're not going to improve the system," he said.

Many Democrats and some Republicans argued the bill is needed because patent infringement lawsuits have gotten out of hand. It's too easy for patent holders to sue and collect huge damage awards when a small piece of a tech product is found to infringe, supporters argued.

The patent system "is getting near broken," said Representative Howard Berman, a California Democrat and primary sponsor of the bill. "Doing nothing is not a good answer for a Congress that wants the economy strong."

Opponents argued the bill favors tech giants at the expense of small inventors. "The legislation ... helps a small group of powerful people," said Representative Dana Rohrabacher, a California Republican.

Representative Marcy Kaptur, an Ohio Democrat, noted that between 1993 and 2005, four major tech vendors supporting the bill paid out US$3.5 billion in patent infringement settlements. But those same unnamed tech vendors had revenues of $1.4 trillion during that time period, she said.

Tech vendors want to reduce patent infringement costs "not by changing their obviously unfair and often illegal business practices, but by persuading Congress and the Supreme Court to weaken U.S. patent protections," she said. "We ought to stand up for American inventors."

The bill also sets into motion a change in the way patents are awarded, from the first-to-invent system unique to the U.S. to the first-to-file system used by the rest of the world.
http://www.itworld.com/Man/2687/070907patent/index.html





Breakthrough Revolutionises Microchip Patterning

US research engineers claim to have developed a low-cost technique for patterning microchips.

The Princeton University boffins said that the new process allows them to create ultra-small grooves on microchips as easily as "making a sandwich".

The "simple, low-cost" technique results in the self-formation of periodic lines, or gratings, separated by as little as 60nm, or less than one ten-thousandth of a millimetre.

Features of this size have many uses in optical, biological and electronic devices, including the alignment of liquid crystals in displays.

The new 'fracture-induced structuring' process starts when a thin polymer film is painted onto a rigid plate, such as a silicon wafer.

A second plate is then placed on top, creating a polymer 'sandwich' that is heated to ensure adhesion. Finally, the two plates are prised apart.

As the film fractures, it automatically breaks into two complementary sets of nanoscale gratings, one on each plate. The distance between the lines, called the period, is four times the film thickness.

"It is like magic," said electrical engineer Stephen Chou, the Joseph C. Elgin Professor of Engineering at Princeton. "This is a fundamentally different way of making nano-patterns."

The ease of creating the lines is in marked contrast to traditional fabrication methods, which typically use a beam of electrons, ions or a mechanical tip to 'draw' the lines into a surface.

The fracture-induced structuring technique is not only simple and fast, but enables patterning over a much larger area.

The researchers have already created gratings over several square centimetres, and the patterning of much large areas should be possible with further optimisation of the technique.

"It is remarkable, and counterintuitive, that fracturing creates these regular patterns," said William Russel, a chemical engineering professor and dean of Princeton's graduate school.

Russel and graduate student Leonard Pease III teamed with Chou and graduate students Paru Deshpande and Ying Wang to develop the technique.

A patent application has been filed on the process, which the researchers say is economically feasible for large-scale use in industry.

The researchers will publish their findings in the online version of Nature Nanotechnology.
http://www.itnews.com.au/News/60477,...atterning.aspx





Sharp Announces New System LCD with Embedded Optical Sensors; Provides Input Capabilities Including Touch Screen and Scanner Functions
Press Release

Sharp Corporation has successfully developed a new System LCD equipped with touch screen and scanner functions. An optical sensor is built into each pixel of the LCD panel, eliminating the need to bond a film to the panel for touch screen functions, and providing beautiful images without losing display image quality.

Today, touch screen functions are becoming indispensable on displays for mobile devices such as smartphones, digital cameras, PDAs[1], and UMPCs[2]. However, conventional methods to provide such functions mainly involve laminating or bonding a film on top of the LCD panel, leading to problems with reduced display image quality and increased thickness for the display section.

In this light, Sharp developed its proprietary System LCD technology to successfully embed an optical sensor used in devices like scanners in each pixel of the LCD panel. This technology eliminates the need for films, resulting in a thinner, beautifully clear screen display compared to conventional touch screens. In addition, tactile recognition based on simultaneously touching multiple points on the screen is now possible, a feature previously difficult to implement. For example, users can easily tap the screen with two fingers to enlarge or reduce a displayed map. Also, the scanner function can be used to scan in a business card placed on top of the screen, and further improvements to this function are expected to enable fingerprint authentication in the future.

Sample shipments will begin in September of this year, with volume production slated to start next spring.
http://www.japancorp.net/Article.Asp?Art_ID=15247





What's Wrong With Lithium-Ion Batteries?

The announcement last month that 46 million Nokia-branded lithium-ion (Li-ion) batteries made by Matsushita Battery Industrial could potentially short circuit and overheat was just the latest in a spate of product advisories and recalls of the technology over the past two years.

But it’s not as if Li-ion batteries are at the early point in their life cycle when you would expect these sorts of problems to crop up. Sony invented the technology back in 1990. So why is it failing now?

The theories behind the technology’s recent spotty performance are complex and varied, which makes fixing the problem a perplexing engineering challenge.

A Constantly Evolving Technology

“You can’t really say that for the first ten years the battery makers got it right and now they’re screwing it up,” says Jim Miller, Manager of Argonne National Lab’s Electrochemical Technology Program. Funded by the U.S. Department of Energy, his group’s research is directed at developing new materials for Li-ion batteries and addressing some of the major issues in scaling up the technology.

Miller points out that Li-ion battery technology is not just a single design or composition, but rather it’s an entire family of chemistries that is constantly evolving. “When Sony invented it in 1990, it was lithium cobalt oxide. But cobalt is expensive and so engineers started replacing it with nickel, which costs less. And then as time went on engineers found that they could substitute cheaper nickel manganese alloys for the nickel.”

Cost reduction isn’t the only driving force behind the evolutionary march of Li-ion batteries. The desire to extend battery life, achieve higher energy densities and faster charging times, and improve reliability has led to a constant tinkering of the technology. Energy densities are double what they were five years ago, for example, and new surface coatings are being applied to make the batteries more stable and reduce their reactivity rates.

Ever-Increasing Demands, More Trade-offs

The trade-offs inherent in these often mutually exclusive goals make for a diabolical design challenge: You can make a Li-ion battery that has high performance, for example, but the trade-off is a shorter life. And as every design engineer knows, making the right trade-offs and getting everything right takes time, experience, and a bit of finesse.

“A problem doesn’t necessarily pop up during the first generation of cells,” says Miller. “Things may look fine in the lab and then when you go to production you find that the technology behaves in a slightly different way, which means things can and do go wrong.”

Something certainly went wrong at Sony last year, resulting in the recall of millions of its Li-ion laptop batteries. As for what exactly led to the short-circuiting problem that posed a risk of fire and in one case caused a Dell notebook to burst into flames, Sony Spokesperson Rick Clancy says that there were different conclusions at different levels.

“When you produce lithium ion batteries, the objective is to either have zero metal contaminants or at least as few of them as possible and surround them by a protective shell or layer so that they cannot penetrate the separator,” explains Clancy. The separator in a Li-ion battery keeps the anodes and cathodes from touching each other and causing a short circuit.

Clancy says that Sony engineers discovered that there was a greater frequency of these metal particles escaping from one part of the cell and entering the other part. They’ve addressed the issue at a product level by designing in a stronger lining, he notes.

But there were other findings at a systems level, specifically relating to variances in configurations and specifications for battery packs from the PC makers, says Clancy. “They are doing the most they can to optimize their products and make them as competitive as possible, which is putting more demands on the power supply as it relates to the battery.”

He adds that some manufacturers’ charging systems are more aggressive than others, which could have had the effect of either vibrating or shaking the batteries more aggressively, a phenomenon that may have played a role in the short circuiting problem. He says engineering teams from Sony and the PC manufacturers are working closely together to better understand and more effectively manage these systems issues.

A representative of Matsushita Battery Industrial (MBI), the company that manufactured the 46 million Li-ion batteries named in the recent Nokia product advisory told Electronics Weekly in a phone interview that the company is still investigating the cause of 100 incidences of batteries overheating.

But he too pointed to the ever-increasing demands on Li-ion batteries. “Generally speaking the batteries are getting smaller and smaller, and at the same time they are being required to deliver more power and capacity. The engineering challenge for us is to maintain the same degree of reliability throughout,” he says.

Although he ruled out any possibility of process-related problems, the manufacturing landscape has widened since the Japanese developed the technology in the 1990s.

The cells for the batteries implicated in the Nokia advisory, for example, were manufactured by MBI in Japan and shipped to a factory in China where they were assembled into battery packs.

The batteries involved in the Sony recall carried labels marked “Made in Japan,” “Made in China,” or “Battery Cell Made in Japan Assembled in China.” Sony produces Li-ion cells in plants in Japan and China, assembles some battery packs at a Sony plant in China, and in some cases sells Li-ion cells to third party makers of battery packs. Sony says that off-shoring was not a factor in last year’s recall.

But Don Sadoway, a professor of Materials Chemistry at MIT who is an expert in advanced battery technologies, worries about off-shoring of a chemistry he asserts “needs to be treated with respect.”

“I have 100% confidence in the Japanese battery manufacturers,” he says. “And my guess is that they never had the problems they’re seeing now when the same batteries were manufactured from start to finish in Japan.”

He notes that one of the challenges with Li-ion batteries in particular is that it is very difficult to verify that the manufacturing and assembly is being performed according to specifications. That’s because once it’s assembled into a battery pack, the device cannot be inspected from the outside nor can it be easily tested.

Sadoway points to the separator material between the electrodes as an example. Acting like a kind of fuse, it is designed to soften and collapse at a specific temperature, causing the battery to essentially go into an open circuit condition and die.

In fact, he wonders why that didn’t happen in the case of the Dell laptop that burst into flames last year.

“You could think you are specifying a porous polypropylene material for the separator, but once the thing is packaged up you would have no way of knowing what you actually got. Even under the best of circumstances, you can get screwed by your own job shop. What if the workers took a short cut and substituted the original material with cardboard?”

In at least one case, it’s suspected that battery manufacturers were supplied with counterfeit raw materials.

Argonne’s Miller agrees that is very difficult and expensive to test and verify Li-ion batteries, adding to the cost that manufacturers presumably hoped to reduce by off-shoring assembly in the first place. But he says that quality assurance can be engineered into the battery design, and that he believes suppliers of cell phones and laptops are tightening up the process. “They are getting more precise in the materials they are using and in their cell designs,” he says.

Still, Sadowy believes that much more rigorous oversight and stringent quality assurance is required, especially as Li-ion batteries scale up. The technology is expected to hit the road in the next few years in electric vehicles under development such as the GM Volt.

“If your MP3 player fries, it’s not a big deal, you don’t get to listen to your favourite tunes,” says Sadoway. “I have real worries when we try to build a large format Li-ion battery with 100X the capacity and put it out there on the highway.”
http://www.electronicsweekly.com/blo...mion-ba-1.html





Conversion Central: 101 Tools to Convert Video, Music, Images, PDF and More
Yoav Ezer

Few things are more irritating than having to deal with a format that is incompatible with what you need it to do. It doesn’t matter if it’s a media file, document, or shoe size; it’s just plain frustrating. To make your life easier, check out this list of 101 tools that will allow you to convert just about anything.
http://www.cogniview.com/convert-pdf...-pdf-and-more/





Schools Roll Out Hosted Online Storage 'Lockers'

Reduces need for portable storage; opens server space for students, teachers
Brian Fonseca

Monte Cassino School's decision to give its seventh and eighth grade students a new Tablet PC forced Nancy Stutsman, director of technology, to quickly tackle two issues -- tight server space and the lack of an easy way to store and retrieve files when away from the Tulsa, Okla.-based school's campus.

Stutsman selected the School Web Lockers hosted online storage system from San Diego-based Networld Solutions Inc. to provide each of the students with 100MB of storage. The service will also be used to provide Monte Cassino faculty members with and school administrators with 1GB of storage, Stutsman said. She estimated the cost of the service at $1 per user per year.

"We have server storage problems all the time, so we wanted an alternative place to [store] and back up files," said Stutsman. In the past, she said, students were only allotted 10MB of server space on the school's network.

"We knew this year [students] would be creating movies and doing other things, [so] they needed a lot more space," she said. The hosted offering "resonated with me as easy to manage," Stutsman said, adding that "we had problems with kids' files disappearing a lot last year. [The new system] would relieve a lot of that."

School Web Lockers also includes chat, calendaring and collaboration capabilities, she noted. In addition, the hosted system lets school administrators monitor and track all files uploaded to the system and enables them to lock out individuals for misuse.
The system also includes password access that students must share with their parents, she said. The system also scans all files uploaded to School Web Lockers servers for potential viruses using Sophos PLC's security software and default controls, said Kelly Agrelius, marketing associate for School Web Lockers.

Agrelius said that all School Web Lockers disk drives are mirrored and that backup tapes are filled every 24 hours or so. Currently, the online storage system is used by 25 school districts with 159 schools and over 125,000 end users.

This week, Ernie Nevares, director of instructional technology at Santee School District in Santee, Calif., plans to begin implementing the hosted service through the district's nine member schools.

Nevares said students have often voiced frustration at the district's lack of storage capacity, which forced them to finish tasks in one sitting or risk losing data.

The school system ran a pilot program using the service last year, which convinced school officials that hosted storage could be a boon for the organization. Just during the test phase, Nevares said, "it virtually eliminated the need for flash drives, disks, all of those things, which also helps security-wise to help keep bad things out of our system"

The next version of the hosted service, due by the end of this year, will add a new "markup" feature, Agrelius said, which will allow teachers to open assignments in Microsoft Word and send them back to students with any changes or comments applied.

Later, she said, the service will add more fine-tuned restrictions for access to specific areas of the online system and a "Parent Portal" that will grant parents personal identification numbers so a password can't be inadvertently or willingly changed by students.
http://www.computerworld.com/action/...&intsrc=kc_top






A Facebook for the Few
Ruth La Ferla

If more proof were needed that the rich are different, it could be found on aSmallWorld.net, an invitation-only social networking site.

“I need to rent 20 very luxury sports cars for an event in Switzerland on the 6th September,” a member wrote recently on the Forum, aSmallWorld’s popular nucleus. “The cars should be: Maserati — Ferrari — Lamborghini — Aston Martin ONLY!”

Another announced: “If anyone is looking for a private island, I now have one available for purchase in Fiji.”

Founded four years ago, the site, promoted as a Facebook for the social elite, has grown from about 500 members to about 150,000 registered users. At a time when Christina Aguilera has 466,550 MySpace friends, aSmallWorld has attempted to create an Internet niche by cultivating an air of exclusivity.

The site functions much like an inscrutable co-op board: its members, who pay no fee, induct newcomers on the basis of education, profession and most important, their network of personal contacts. Sleeker than MySpace or Facebook, aSmallWorld.net is not the type of site where one is likely to come across videos of amateur motorcycle stunts or girls in bikinis.

Users are mostly young — 32 on average. Many have graduate degrees and a taste for living extravagantly on more than one continent. Sixty-five percent are from Europe, 20 percent from the United States and the rest scattered around the globe.

“We have put together a platform where a definitive group of people are separated by only three degrees,” Erik Wachtmeister, aSmallWorld’s founder, says often and loudly.

Advertisers were scarce at first. But in the last six months, luxury brands have come on board after a push from investors, including the movie mogul Harvey Weinstein.

The site drew a flurry of media attention last year, when Mr. Weinstein purchased a minority stake through the Weinstein Company, projecting that aSmallWorld’s membership could grow to a million within a year or two. SmallWorld is his sole investment in an Internet property.

Mr. Weinstein, who is diversifying beyond the film industry and recently acquired the fashion house Halston, would not say how much he paid, but he is the largest single investor in aSmallWorld. (Other minority investors include the film director Renny Harlin, the media executive Robert W. Pittman, and Alexander Von Furstenberg, an entrepreneur and the son of the designer Diane Von Furstenberg, an early advertiser on the site.)

The draw, Mr. Weinstein said without a shred of irony, is “direct access to some of the world’s most influential tastemakers,” a community he sees as early adopters and a natural market for his films, books and fashions.

“We’re dealing with a group of people that moves in social migration around the planet,” said Joe Robinson, the new chief executive. “From the point of view of a Mercedes-Benz or a Piaget, that makes this an enormous marketing opportunity.”

The Weinstein Company introduced Mr. Robinson, a former advertising executive with Fox Interactive Media, the owner of MySpace, to court advertisers like Lufthansa, Land Rover, Credit Suisse, Moët & Chandon and Burberry. Olivier Stip, the vice president of marketing for Cartier North America, said that an advertisement placed in June generated lively traffic for the jeweler’s Love collection.

Advertising rates are competitive with those of Forbes.com and Style.com, Mr. Robinson said. On average, clients spend $20,000 to $50,000 a month, he said. The company also arranges dinners and tastings where members can sample advertisers’ products. For one recent gathering, Rémy Martin supplied 4,000 bottles of its premium Cognac, valued at $200 each.

But the presence of advertisers raises questions about just whom they are reaching and whether this business model works.

Mr. Robinson said 35 percent of aSmallWorld members log in every day. But Andrew Lipsman, a senior analyst at comScore Network, a company that rates online usage, said that it is hard to track the number of unique visitors because the site is relatively small. “If there are a couple of hundred thousand registered users,” he said, “probably only a fraction are visiting the site regularly.” Compare that with Facebook, which in July had 30.6 million unique visitors, a number that has doubled since last year, Mr. Lipsman said.

Charlene Li, an analyst at Forrester Research in Foster City, Calif., said that for advertisers trying to concentrate on a group of influential people, a special-interest publication makes sense. “I liken advertising on aSmallWorld to advertising in the Harvard Business School alumni report,” she said. “For luxury advertisers, the online options are fairly limited.”

Skeptics are not sure just who is getting the message. “For truly wealthy consumers, time is the ultimate luxury,” said Pam Danziger of Unity Marketing, which researches luxury brands. “These people are not going to waste it hanging about on a social networking site.”

Those who do hang about often use the site to billboard themselves, advertising unabashedly pretentious tastes. A journalist in Vienna shared the news that her favorite Champagne was Henri Giraud — “I particularly like the 95 Grand Cru,” she wrote on the Forum. Another member recommended Eclipse, a bar on Walton Street in London, for its watermelon martini, “a tour de force.”

In reply to a query from a comely young woman searching for a hairdresser in Singapore, a Procter & Gamble executive there responded with a thinly veiled proposition: “I have two bottles of Nice n’ Easy in the cupboard. I’ll do it for free.”

The company does not publish members’ income or net worth, so their actual spending power is difficult to gauge. Hollywood strivers, fashion models, financiers and minor European royalty have been admitted inside its virtual velvet rope. But users also include publicists and party promoters who use the site as a personal database. In theory, they are just a few clicks away from Mr. Weinstein, a member, or boldface names like Naomi Campbell, Quentin Tarantino and Frédéric Fekkai. (Sycophants beware: members who engage in cyber-social climbing may find themselves exiled to the chilly Siberia of a Big World, aSmallWorld’s less-exclusive sister site.)

The site has drawn enough notice to breed its share of copycats. Milton Pedraza of the Luxury Institute, a New York research group, plans to introduce Luxury Ratings.com early next year as an advertising-free, gated online community; members will pay an annual subscribers’ fee of $250. He says members will each have a net worth in the millions or tens of millions. “They are not only resilient,” he said, “they are nearly immune to a housing or stock market downturn.”

Small World loyalists seem content. Laura Rubin, a brand consultant and fashion publicist in New York, uses her personal network of about 170 members to build her business. “It’s like a Rolodex,” she said. Last month she combed that base for guests to attend a fashion party in the glass-enclosed penthouse of Hotel on Rivington on the Lower East Side.

Etienne Deyans, a party promoter from Zaire, mines his network of contacts to toss together weekly galas with international themes in the cavelike basement of Amalia, a restaurant in Midtown. “It’s a civilized way to have people meet,” Mr. Deyans said. “Here, I tell myself, there will be no rudeness at the door.”


Kibum Kim contributed reporting.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/06/fa...mallworld.html





Like Many Before It, Drive-In Near Buffalo Reaches ‘The End’
Ken Belson


Samantha Boyd, 6, waited to see “The
Simpsons Movie” on Thursday at the
Buffalo Drive-In.

Steve Valentine, owner of the Buffalo Drive-In, has seen them come and go over the years: The legions of kids in pajamas buying candy; the teenagers sneaking in inside car trunks; the young lovers he had to remind to leave after the last movie; and once, “the machete man,” who menaced customers with a long blade during one of the “Rocky” films.

“Everything has its time, and now it’s time to draw the final curtain,” said Mr. Valentine, who will shut the 58-year-old theater after tonight’s closing credits. “It’s a fun business, but it’s very difficult, because you have a six-month business and 12 months of expenses.”

Closings are nothing new around Buffalo, where steel mills were shuttered years ago and the streets are pockmarked with boarded-up churches and shops. But the last picture show at Buffalo’s last drive-in is notably bittersweet because the weather-beaten theater evokes a much happier and prosperous time before the city became known as a symbol of urban decay.

There were once about a dozen drive-ins in and around Buffalo, back when the city had twice its current population of 290,000 and roller derby and hula hoops were the rage.

In the days before cable television, Netflix and home theaters, families regularly piled into station wagons to catch a double feature and munch on Twizzlers and Milk Duds, and drive-ins were where people of all ages went on dates.

Sometimes, those worlds collided, as when Don Spasiano, now 57, took his “hot date” to a drive-in decades ago. As they got comfortable under a sandy beach blanket with their cold drinks, Mr. Spasiano saw a familiar car out the side window. In it was his grandfather, but not with his grandmother.

“Being the good Catholic that I am, I went to confession the next day,” said Mr. Spasiano, who also vividly recalls seeing “Cleopatra” starring Elizabeth Taylor, “although to this day, I’m not quite sure why I went to confession. I wasn’t the one cheating.”

Drive-ins have been disappearing for decades, declining to about 400 today from a peak of more than 4,000 in 1958, largely because of rising property prices and changing movie-going habits. After today, there will be 30 or so scattered across New York State, two in Connecticut, and just one, the Delsea in Vineland, in all of New Jersey, the state where drive-ins were born in 1933.

That first drive-in theater, opened in Pennsauken, near Camden, was the brainchild of Richard Hollingshead, who was inspired by drive-in restaurants, where waitresses served customers in their cars. The second theater, Shankweilers, near Allentown, Pa., opened in 1934 and is now the oldest drive-in.

In the decades after World War II, thousands more drive-ins opened as car ownership jumped and new highways made it easier to get to theaters, many of which were built on farmland. Technology improved as well, with car speakers replacing loudspeakers.

By the 1970s, however, theaters were being enveloped by the suburbs. Many owners sold to developers who coveted the theaters’ vast parking lots for shopping malls and housing divisions.

“The land bought back in the 1950s and 1960s all of a sudden became an ideal spot for a Wal-Mart and Home Depot in the 1970s and 1980s,” said Jennifer Sherer Janisch, the chief executive of Drive-Ins.com, which tracks the industry. “As land prices skyrocketed, the feasibility of operating just at night didn’t make sense.”

Here in Cheektowaga, a suburb about 10 miles east of the Peace Bridge between Buffalo and Canada, the 18-acre Buffalo Drive-In is also located on a former farm.

Late last year, Mr. Valentine sold the property to a developer, who plans a complex of five medical office buildings, which will abut several cemeteries and a neighborhood of low-slung homes.

Mr. Valentine, whose family has owned the drive-in since 1964, said that contrary to the image of the theaters as places to see a “naughty nurse movie,” most of them play family-oriented films. This final weekend, his three screens are filled with triple features that include “Shrek the Third,” “The Simpsons Movie” and “Transformers.”

The drive-in has been running special promotions this summer, including “carload night” (the winner stuffed 17 people into a Volvo station wagon) and $2 tickets on Tuesdays (the regular price was $7.50).

Customers listen to the movie’s audio track by tuning into an FM channel on their car radios. Some people who sit on lawn chairs next to their cars use boom boxes so as not to drain the car battery. (Over the years, Mr. Valentine has given many drivers jump starts.)

Thursday night, the sparse crowd included longtime customers Jeffrey and Kellie Boyd, who brought their children, Devon, 12, and Samantha, 6, for one last ride down memory lane.

Their sport utility vehicle was packed with the essentials: A cooler full of drinks, chips and popcorn, sleeping bags, a bunch of pillows and Samantha’s Bart Simpson doll.

“When I first got my license, it was the first place I came to,” said Mr. Boyd, 45, a few minutes before “The Simpsons Movie” began. “It was the place to be.”

Generations of moviegoers, the Boyds included, loved the drive-in because it was casual and the prices were modest. And since the kids could sleep in the back seat, there was no need to call a baby sitter. They could sit in lawn chairs, stretch their legs, and smoke and drink without being bothered. Some customers even ordered pizza to be delivered to their cars.

Costumes appeared for some pictures. Several girls came dressed as pirates when Johnny Depp’s latest “Pirates of the Caribbean” was playing.

Mr. Valentine’s drive-in has also attracted its fair share of eccentrics. One man arrived every spring in a hearse, while another creepy customer drove a van with the license plate “vampire.” And the police took away the machete man.

Tim Isch, a jack-of-all trades at the theater for 13 years, caught kids hiding in trunks and jumping over fences.

It was Mr. Isch’s voice that people heard when they called to find out what was playing and when.

“Last night, I did the last one, and I got a little choked up,” he said. “I’m going to miss this place.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/02/ny...rivein.html?hp

















Until next week,

- js.



















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