NewsScan Daily, 27 September 2004 ("Above The Fold")

NewsScan Daily, 27 September 2004 ("Above The Fold")
***********************************************************
NewsScan Daily is underwritten by RLG, a world-class organization making
significant and sustained contributions to the effective management and
appropriate use of information technology. NSD is written by John Gehl and
Suzanne Douglas, [email protected].
***********************************************************

"ABOVE THE FOLD"  
       IBM Tag Team
       Google Omits Results From Sites Banned by China
       iPods on the Hit List
       Microsoft Sues Spammers
       Say Goodbye to Broken Links

FEATURES           
       Flash Card
       Remember the Archives!
       Honorary Subscriber: Lydia Child

IBM TAG TEAM
     Microsoft will be hiring 1,000 new employees and spending $250 million
over five years to develop a new business unit to support products and
services related to radio tags and sensor networks for inventory management.
Radio tags can be read in groups, hold far more data than bar codes, and
show when and where particular items were made and where they're being
shipped to. They don't need batteries, because they receive enough energy to
communicate from signals sent by the reader. Analysts such as Navi Radjou of
Forrester Research think the challenge for IBM and other companies is to
provide a road map laying out small steps toward deployment of radio-tagging
and other sensor technologies, because "people won't do big-bang
implementations." (New York Times 27 Sep 2004)
<http://www.nytimes.com/2004/09/27/technology/27rfid.html>

GOOGLE OMITS RESULTS FROM SITES BANNED BY CHINA
     Google's news service in China omits results from Web sites blocked by
the government, according to Dynamic Internet Technology Inc., a research
firm fighting online censorship. Tests by Dynamic found that Google omits
results from the banned sites when search requests are made through
computers connecting to the Internet in China. Google acknowledges that its
Chinese language service is ignoring results from government-banned sites,
but says it does so in order to make its search engine efficient and to
shield computer users from clicking on links that lead nowhere. A Google
executive says, "Google has decided that in order to create the best
possible search experience for our mainland China users we will not include
sites whose content is not accessible." Forrester Research analyst Charlene
Li sympathizes with the company's predicament: "It's probably killing them
to leave some sites out of its index, but they have probably decided they
are doing greater good by providing access to all these other sites."
(AP/San Jose Mercury News 24 Sep 2004)
<http://www.siliconvalley.com/mld/siliconvalley/9753421.htm>

iPODS ON THE HIT LIST
     They're ubiquitous and have changed the way we listen to music but
iPods are proving to be a high-tech security risk. The Australian Department
of Defense has followed the lead of Britain's Ministry of Defense in banning
the use of iPods -- which have large storage capabilities and can be used to
siphon information from computers -- in specific defense areas. An
Australian government official explains, "The threat from iPods is
considered the same as for all other forms of easily portable storage media.
The use of such media and associated devices, or their presence within
defense areas, is strictly controlled and in some cases prohibited." In
July, Britain's Defense Ministry added the Apple music accessory to a list
of devices banned in most sections of its UK headquarters and offices
abroad. The fear is that devices with large storage capabilities and those
with a USB plug (universal serial bus) plug can be a useful tool for data
thieves. (The Age 25 Sep 2004) Rec''d from J. Lamp
<http://theage.com.au/articles/2004/09/24/1095961848693.html>

MICROSOFT SUES SPAMMERS
     Microsoft has filed nine new lawsuits against spammers, and is now
involved in more than 100 legal anti-spam cases throughout the world. The
latest lawsuit is against Web hosting company National Online Sales and its
owner Levon Gillespie, who offer "bulletproof" services for those seeking to
send marketing e-mail. Aaron Kornblum, an attorney for Microsoft, says:
"This is the first action against a Web host catering to spammers." His
rationale for the suit is that National Online Sales and Gillespie are
providing "a safe place for spammers to drive customers to." (Reuters/USA
Today 25 Sep 204) 
<http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/computersecurity/2004-09-25-ms-sues-spam-
host_x.htm>

SAY GOODBYE TO BROKEN LINKS
      Interns at IBM's UK unit have developed a tool called Peridot that's
designed to put an end to annoying broken links. It automatically maps and
stores key features of Web pages so it can detect when the content changes.
When deployed on a corporate intranet or Web site, it can then replace
outdated links with the new ones. Currently, most of this work is done
manually, which can result in work slowdowns or worse. Peridot's technical
mentor Andrew Flagg says, "Internally, you have users who are trying to do
their jobs and the intranet is there to facilitate that. If they can't get
the information they cannot do their job properly. Externally, you have
cases of companies that link to disreputable content which could seriously
damage their reputation." Although there are similar tools that simply
detect which links have been broken, Peridot's innovation is that it detects
more substantial changes and has adjustable levels of autonomy, allowing
staff to review changes before they're made or just allow the process to
proceed on autopilot. The Peridot prototype has been tweaked so that it runs
reliably over 100,000 pages, and intern James Bell predicts: "Peridot could
lead to a world where there are no more broken links." The tool is named for
the pale green gemstone which, according to legend, was used in ancient
cultures to help people find something they had lost. (BBC News 24 Sep 2004)
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/3666660.stm

*****

FLASH CARD
     "Whoso does not see that genuine life is a battle and a march has
poorly read his origin and his destiny." (Lydia Child)

REMEMBER THE ARCHIVES!
     This afternoon, instead of looking out the window, go into the NewsScan
archives and kick the tires (and, incidentally, if you search on the word
"tires" you'll get 15 hits). There are also specialized archives for our
Honorary Subscriber, Worth Thinking About, and Flash Card features. See
<http://www.newsscan.com/newsscan/index.html>

HONORARY SUBSCRIBER: LYDIA CHILD
     Today's Honorary Subscriber is the dedicated 19th century abolitionist
and author Lydia Maria Francis Child (1802-1880), who in 1833 wrote a book
called "An Appeal in Favor of That Class of Americans Called Africans,"
which related the history of slavery and denounced the inequality of
education and employment for blacks; it was the first such work published in
book form. 
     Reaction to the book was immediate and virulent. It was condemned as an
outrageous abolitionist document and Child suffered social ostracism, and
the popularity of her books fell off sharply. But Child herself was not
dissuaded in her support of abolition and participated in further
abolitionist efforts that included editing with her husband the National
Anti-Slavery Standard, a weekly newspaper published in New York City from
1841 to 1843. Later she published the transcribed recollections of slaves
who had been freed. In addition, her home became a station in the
Underground Railroad that aided escaping slaves.
     Child was born on in Medford, Massachusetts, where she received her
elementary education. Later she spent one year in a seminary but was
primarily influenced in her education by her brother, a Unitarian clergyman
and later a professor at the Harvard Divinity School. Her first two books
were popular novels. She ran a private school in Watertown, Massachusetts,
for three years before marrying David L. Child, a Boston lawyer and
abolitionist, who introduced her to the famous abolitionist William Lloyd
Garrison. Influenced by Garrison's arguments, she soon embraced the
abolitionist position.
     As an author Child did not confine herself to writing abolitionist
tracts. With varying success she kept at her other writing. She was not able
to keep alive The Juvenile Miscellany, the nation's first monthly magazine
for children, which she had founded in 1826, but her novel, "Philothea" was
well-received. Perhaps most satisfying was the many reprintings of "The
Frugal Housewife" -- her book of practical advice to women.
     In 1852 the Childs settled permanently on a farm in Wayland,
Massachusetts. They continued to contribute liberally, from a small income,
to the abolitionist movement. She also wrote a series of letters supporting
John Brown, after he led his historic raid at Harpers Ferry, Virginia, in
1859. Child died in Wayland in 1880.

See 
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0822319497/newsscancom/ref=nos
im for "A Lydia Maria Child Reader" -- or look for it in your favorite
library. Note: We donate all revenue from our book and media recommendations
to adult literacy programs.]

SUBSCRIPTION INFO FOR NEWSSCAN DAILY:
      To subscribe or unsubscribe to the text, html, or handheld versions of
NewsScan Daily, send the appropriate subscribe or unsubscribe messages
(i.e., with the word 'subscribe' or 'unsubscribe' in the subject line) to
the addresses shown below:
      Text version: Send message to [email protected]
      HTML version: Send mail to [email protected]
      NewsScan-To-Go: <http://www.newsscan.com/handheld/current.html>

TELL YOUR FRIENDS ABOUT NEWSSCAN DAILY! Send them our little frog:
<http://www.newsscan.com/newsscan/newscup.html

***********************************************************
Please visit the site of RLG, the great organization that makes NewsScan
Daily possible. (RLG has no influence over, nor any responsibility for, our
editorial content.) Created in 1974 as the Research Libraries Group, RLG is
a not-for-profit membership corporation of more than 160 universities,
national libraries, archives, museums -- and other institutions with
remarkable collections for research and learning. Its major initiatives are
long-term retention of digital materials, resource sharing among member
institutions, and improvement of researcher access to primary source
material. RLG supplies online research resources worldwide. Visit RLG at
http://www.rlg.org.

*********

To subscribe or unsubscribe to the TEXT version of NewsScan Daily, send an
e-mail message to [email protected] with 'subscribe' or 'unsubscribe' in
the subject line. To subscribe or unsubscribe to the HTML version of
NewsScan Daily, send mail to [email protected], with the word
'subscribe' or 'unsubscribe' as the subject. (Subscribing to the HTML
version won't automatically unsubscribe you from the text version; please
unsubscribe yourself as explained above.) PLEASE NOTE: To unsubscribe from
an account to which you no longer have access, send mail to at
[email protected].

*********

We call our news section "Above The Fold" to honor the tradition of the
great "broadsheet" newspapers in which editors must decide which news
stories are of such importance that they should be placed "above the fold"
on the front page. The NewsScan Credo: Be informative, have fun, and get to
the point! See http://www.newsscan.com/, and send us mail: John Gehl
([email protected]) and Suzanne Douglas ([email protected]), or call
770-704-7517.

*********

Get a free 6-week trial subscription to Innovation Weekly, an executive
summary of trends, strategies and innovations in business and technology.
Send mail to [email protected] with the word 'subscribe' in the
subject line.

What customized news and information services do you need for your company?
Get in touch with us at [email protected] or call 770-704-7517 to talk
over the possibilities.

Copyright 2004. NewsScan Daily (R) is a publication of NewsScan Inc.
***********************************************************