NewsScan Daily, 16 June 2003 ("Above The Fold")

NewsScan Daily, 16 June 2003 ("Above The Fold")
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"ABOVE THE FOLD"
        Microsoft Discontinues New Versions of IE for Macs
        Nokia, Kodak Ink Cell Phone Photograpy Deal
        New Twist on Digital Music
        Search Engines Gaining as Advertising Strategy
        Spammers Target Users' PCs

FEATURES
        Flash Card
        Census Update
        Worth Thinking About: Youth (and Beyond)

MICROSOFT DISCONTINUES NEW VERSIONS OF IE FOR MACS
Microsoft says it will stop making future versions of Internet Explorer for 
Macintosh computers, although it may continue to provide security and 
performance updates for existing software. The company says it feels Mac 
users are better served by Apple's own Safari browser. Apple has tested 
several versions of Safari, but the final 1.0 version has yet to be 
released. Overall, Microsoft's Internet Explorer claims 95% of the browser 
market, followed by Netscape with somewhere between 3% and4%. (CNet 
News.com 13 Jun 2003)
http://news.com.com/2100-1045_3-1017126.html?tag=fd_top

NOKIA, KODAK INK CELL PHONE PHOTOGRAPY DEAL
Nokia and Eastman Kodak have announced a collaboration that will make it 
easier for Nokia handsets to store, print and share digital pictures using 
the Kodak Picture Center Online service. The two companies will jointly 
develop kiosk printing services to enable Nokia cell phone users to easily 
print their pictures. The online service will debut in Europe this week and 
will launch in Asia later this year. A similar service operated by Kodak 
called Ofoto is already in place in this country. (AP 16 Jun 2003)
http://apnews.excite.com/article/20030616/D7RMR63O1.html

NEW TWIST ON DIGITAL MUSIC
A California startup, launched by veterans of the company that created 
Gnutella file-sharing software, is promoting a compromise solution on 
digital music that it hopes will appease both the record labels and geeks. 
"The goal here is to get the Linux hacker community to support the music 
community," says Mediacode CEO Robert Lord. Mediacode's Muse.Net service 
enables music enthusiasts with broadband connections to listen to the music 
on their computers from any other computer online. That remote control 
capability isn't built into any of the other popular programs for playing 
music on a PC. Apple briefly included a similar feature on its iTunes 
software, but dropped it after some users adapted it for illegal 
file-sharing. Key to the success of Muse.Net is the emergence of technical 
standards that would enable services to work with each other automatically. 
Another vital component involves persuading copyright holders to buy into 
the concept -- a potential sticking point because so far, the labels and 
Hollywood have preferred electronic locks that don't work with the virtual 
collection concept. Instead of locking up content, Muse.Net users create an 
online jukebox, using the software to combine files and songs scattered on 
various devices into an online collection that's accessible from any PC as 
well as some handheld computers. The software allows only one person at a 
time access to the songs and is not designed to copy songs from one machine 
to another. About 150,000 people use Muse.Net, which debuted earlier this 
year. (Los Angeles Times 16 Jun 2003)
http://www.latimes.com/technology/la-fi-muse16jun16224416,1,3891789.story?coll=la-headlines-technology

SEARCH ENGINES GAINING AS ADVERTISING STRATEGY
Why bombard users with ads for your product when you can reach prospective 
customers by ensuring that your Web site pops up in a list of search engine 
results? "The difference between this and any other form of advertising is 
the customer is looking for you," says one Internet content specialist. 
"That makes them twice as likely to buy from you," compared with customers 
reached through traditional unsolicited e-mail methods. Results like that 
are fueling rapid growth in the search-engine advertising industry, with 
spending on paid listings and paid including more than doubling from $419 
million in 2001 to $1.19 billion last year, according to U.S. Bancorp Piper 
Jaffray, which predicts 48% growth to $1.77 billion this year. Globally, 
such spending is expected to reach about $7 billion a year by 2007. (Wall 
Street Journal 16 Jun 2003)
http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB10551923093794900.djm,00.html (sub req'd)

SPAMMERS TARGET USERS' PCs
Security experts at UK firm MessageLabs say that a "trojan virus" mailed to 
up to 1 million computer users last week was designed to exploit a 
vulnerability on Windows PCs that would enable the perpetrator to use the 
recipients' PCs to distribute ads for Web sites carrying incest 
pornography. Internet security experts have suspected for some time that 
spammers would use viruses to access third-party computers, but MessageLabs 
says their investigation offers the first conclusive proof. "This is a 
massive discovery. It completely undermines the spammers' claim that they 
are legitimate marketers and shows that they are nasty insidious hijackers 
who drive me and the vast majority of computer users nuts," says 
MessageLabs senior technologist Matt Sergeant. The virus targeted a feature 
known as open proxy, which is often installed by software companies as the 
default setting on home PCs. Proxy servers are designed to allow the 
machine to link to the Internet through a local network, but if left open, 
they provide a back door for computer crackers to hijack the machine. The 
incident last week targeted customers of Outblaze, a Hong Kong-based 
webmail company that has about 30 million customers worldwide and owns 
domain names such as usa.com. "Open proxies are becoming the spammers' 
lifeline so they are always looking for more. Now we know how they are 
going about it," says Sergeant. (The Guardian 13 Jun 2003)
http://www.guardian.co.uk/online/news/0,12597,976377,00.html

*****

FLASH CARD
      "Irresponsibility is part of the pleasure of all art; it is the part 
the schools cannot recognize." (James Joyce)

CENSUS UPDATE
      It'll be quite awhile before we get through all the mail you sent us, 
but in due time we'll read every message we've received. The major fact 
that's emerged so far is not surprising to us in the least: NewsScan 
subscribers are a very classy bunch of people.

WORTH THINKING ABOUT: YOUTH (AND BEYOND)
      Put politics and preconceived ideas aside (no matter what they happen 
to be) as you read the following profile of Tony Blair --  a portrait 
excerpted from an article in the current Atlantic Monthly magazine. Think 
of it as simply as an interesting, charming, and perhaps surprising 
character sketch:
      "Over the past few months, while much of the world has been watching 
Tony Blair the world statesman, I've been thinking about Tony Blair the 
young rock-concert promoter. In 1971 the future Prime Minister had just 
graduated from the elite Scottish prep school Fettes; a year later he was 
to attend St. John's College at Oxford. During the interim he went to 
London, grew his hair shoulder-length, wore a modish fur coat, and hung out 
with a crowd of hard-partying rich kids, trying to discover the next 
Rolling Stones.
      "Blair bought a van, gathered some stray musicians into a band called 
Jaded, set about booking it into pubs, and cruised teen gathering spots 
handing out leaflets for gigs. He met a man named Norman Burt, who owned 
two semidetached houses in London; Burt let students live in one of them, 
and he lived in the other. Blair quickly wheedled his way into a room. He 
wasn't in the raucous youths' house, however; he lived in the quieter Burt 
house, and he helped Burt, who was something of a God-squadder, as a 
volunteer at Christian youth groups. The funny thing is, Blair never used 
drugs. Three years ago 'The Spectator' and the 'Mail on Sunday' 
investigated his activities during that year, a year largely missing from 
Blair biographies. People they interviewed recalled that Blair could do a 
mean Mick Jagger impersonation; they all said he didn't indulge in the pot 
and acid that were all around..."
      Although in many ways Blair has lived in a quintessential Baby 
Boomer's life, there is an air of loneliness and detachment about him. 
Imagine him as an eighteen-year-old that year in London -- wearing the 
right clothes, apparently popular with the ladies, but passing the bong 
without ever taking a hit. Picture him handing out concert flyers on 
Saturday night, which was a fashionable activity, and handing out church 
announcements on Sunday morning, which was not."
                                  ***
See http://www.atlanticmonthly.com for the Atlantic Monthly magazine's Web 
site. The David Brooks article "The Transformer," from which the above 
excerpt was taken, is not yet on the site, but will be posted there in due 
course.

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