NewsScan Daily, 1 November 2004 ("Above The Fold")

NewsScan Daily, 1 November 2004 ("Above The Fold")
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"ABOVE THE FOLD"
        Spyware Epidemic Threatens to Stall Computer Industry
        Internet Music Rewrites Industry Rules
        Comparison Shop Your Local Mall from Home
        Do-It-All Gadgets Do Too Much
        'Robotiquette' for Robots

FEATURES
        Flash Card
        Honorary Subscriber: Christopher Morley

SPYWARE EPIDEMIC THREATENS TO STALL COMPUTER INDUSTRY
      Computer makers say that their technical support lines are lit up by 
consumers frustrated over sluggish performance and increasingly they're 
tracing the problems back to one culprit: spyware. Companies are concerned 
about the cost of the calls, but they're even more worried that that 
customers will wrongly blame them for performance deficiencies. Russ 
Cooper, senior scientist with TruSecure Corp., says now that spyware has 
become epidemic, it's time for Microsoft and other technology companies to 
launch a public education campaign along the lines of the old "Only *you* 
can prevent forest fires" concept. The industry's incentive is pure 
survival, says Cooper. Microsoft officials blame rogue software for up to a 
third of applications crashes on Windows XP computers and AOL estimates 
that just three such programs together cause about 300,000 Internet 
disconnections per day. Forrester Research analyst Jonathan Penn says 
spyware-related customer support can cost $15 to $45 per phone call, but 
it's worth it. "Security is a component of loyalty. People, they want all 
these various services, but they expect security to come with it." (AP 31 
Oct 2004)
<http://apnews.excite.com/article/20041031/D862JARG0.html>

INTERNET MUSIC REWRITES INDUSTRY RULES
      While the music industry has been focusing on music piracy, another 
phenomenon is slowly emerging -- the Web as venture capital source. 
Chart-topping rockers The Darkness have sold enough downloads, T-shirts and 
other fan-abilia to finance their next album, and British band Marillion 
has used its site to raise funds for its last two albums -- before they 
recorded them. "The Internet is our savior. Without it, we wouldn't be what 
we are today. It's really turned the business around," says Marillion's 
marketing manager. Meanwhile, Universal Music has begun using the Web as a 
testing/breeding ground for new acts, signing them to a "digital rights" 
contract before committing serious money to their promotion. "It acts as an 
incubation label, if you will," says Universal Music UK new media services 
director Rob Wells. "It's the Marillion concept." (Reuters/CNet 31 Oct 2004)
<http://news.com.com/iTunes+aside%2C+Web+is+changing+the+music+industry/2100-1027_3-5433891.html>

COMPARISON SHOP YOUR LOCAL MALL FROM HOME
      Three new online companies -- Cairo.com, ShopLocal.com and StepUp.com 
-- are offering comparison shopping services aimed at saving users from the 
tedium of physically trudging from store to store to compare prices. The 
companies scan the Web sites of national merchants to cull sales data from 
the retailers' weekly circulars. Consumers then enter their zip code and 
can search the database for particular items or arrange to receive an 
e-mail message when the price of an item drops. "A lot of people just need 
a good camera and need it today and want a good deal," says Cairo.com CEO 
Andy Moss. The timing may be just right for these new services, says 
Dieringer analyst Thomas E. Miller, who notes that many more consumers are 
doing research on the Web before shopping offline anyway. "These sites are 
a good fit with where shoppers are right now." And while the pricing 
information to be gleaned from circulars is limited, newspapers may boost 
that availability by putting more information online through companies like 
CrossMedia Services, which was recently acquired by Gannett, Knight Ridder 
and Tribune Co. CrossMedia has since created ShopLocal.com, which is 
featured in local newspapers as a service for local readers to find 
bargains. CrossMedia chief marketing officer Dave Hamel says more than 70 
national merchants already forward information on upcoming sales to the 
company and local companies are jumping on the bandwagon. "Chicago is ready 
to feed us 600 retailers a week," says Hamel. (New York Times 1 Nov 2004)
<http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/01/business/01ecom.html>

DO-IT-ALL GADGETS DO TOO MUCH
      Most Europeans are not impressed by gadgets jam-packed with features 
that enable users to listen to music, watch videos, play video games and 
keep track of appointments, all on one machine. In a survey of 5,000 
consumers from the U.K., Germany, France, Sweden, Spain and Italy, 27% of 
respondents were interested in a device that plays music only and 13% were 
interested in a portable video-only player, while only 5% preferred the 
idea of a gadget that plays both. Seven percent expressed a preference for 
a device that plays video games and has a video playback feature. The 
problem with the do-it-all devices is they are too bulky, too expensive and 
there's not enough content to make them desirable, says Ian Fogg, an 
analyst for Jupiter Research, which conducted the survey. The results do 
not bode well for Microsoft and Apple, which are concentrating on adding 
more bells and whistles to their digital devices. (Reuters/Washington Post 
1 Nov 2004)
<http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A15544-2004Nov1.html>

'ROBOTIQUETTE' FOR ROBOTS
      A team of researchers at the University of Hertfordshire in the U.K. 
is developing a behavioral code for how future robot companions should 
react in social situations. "We are assuming a situation in which a useful 
human companion robot already exists," says project leader professor 
Kerstin Dautenhahn. "Our mission is to look at how such a robot should be 
programmed to respect personal spaces of humans… Without such studies, you 
will build robots which might not respect the fact that humans are 
individuals, have preferences and come from different cultural backgrounds. 
And I want robots to treat humans as human beings, and not like other 
robots." (BBC News 28 Oct 2004)
<http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/1/hi/technology/3962699.stm>

*****

FLASH CARD
      "One of the lessons of the Web is that if people have access to 
information, they will consume it, whether they are hungry or not." (Lee Gomes)

HONORARY SUBSCRIBER: CHRISTOPHER MORLEY
      Today's Honorary Subscriber is the American man of letters 
Christopher Morley (1890-1957), who was a prominent literary personage in 
the first half of the 20th century.
      Morley was a writer's writer, just as interested in promoting the 
works of other writers as he was of his own. His long tenure on the staff 
of the Saturday Review of Literature gave him a prominent podium for 
promoting the literary culture that he considered so important to living 
life to the full. He vigorously promoted the works of Joseph Conrad, 
Sherwood Anderson, Walt Whitman, Robert Louis Stevenson, George Santayana 
and the many other writers whose works, in his opinion, deserved wider 
public exposure. As a long serving judge for the Book-of-the-Month Club, 
Morley was delighted to be in a position to influence a generation of 
Americans' reading habits.
      Morley was born in Haverford, Pennsylvania, where his father was a 
professor of mathematics at Haverford College. Ten years later the family 
the family moved to Baltimore, Maryland, because Morley's father joined the 
faculty at Johns Hopkins. Morley returned to attend Haverford College, and 
then spent three years at Oxford's New College as a Rhodes scholar. While 
at Oxford he published "The Eighth Sin," a book of verses inspired by Helen 
Booth Fairchild, fellow American student and the woman he would marry a few 
years later. After Oxford, Morley went to work as a book reader and sales 
publicist for the publisher F.N. Doubleday. Success in this job did not 
keep him from taking a job as editor of The Ladies Home Journal in 
Pennsylvania. Later he got to write his own column at the Philadelphia 
Evening Public Ledger. While in Philadelphia, Morley wrote his first novel 
"Parnassus on Wheels," which described the adventures of a traveling 
bookseller.
      Once launched into his journalist's career, Morley enjoyed literary 
success in many venues. He wrote popular columns for the New York Evening 
Post and the Saturday Review of Literature. He published novels including 
"Thunder on the Left," "Human Being," and the best-selling "Kitty Foyle." 
He also published collections of his columns, essays, and poems, and took 
on the job of editing two major revisions of Bartlett's Familiar Quotations.
      Another noteworthy accomplishment was his work in co-founding the 
Hoboken Theatrical Company in an old New Jersey warehouse, turned into a 
sort of off off-Broadway playhouse for producing a series of successful 
revivals along with several of Morley's own plays. An enthusiastic fan of 
Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes, Morley helped found the Baker Street 
Irregulars, an organization of true Holmes devotees.
      Morley died in 1957 following several debilitating strokes in the 
preceding five years. As a journalist, he belonged to a small, elite band 
of literary columnists that once included writers like Don Marquis and 
Franklin P. Adams, now no longer visible on the journalistic landscape.

[To find a library copy of Morley's novel "Parnassus on Wheels," visit 
RLG's RedLightGreen.com: 
<http://www.redlightgreen.com/ucwprod/servlet/ucw.servlets.UCWController?ACTION=EDITION&WORKID=19614649&> 
-- or to purchase a copy go to: 
<http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1888173564/qid=1099317823/newsscancom/ref=nosim>. 
Note: We donate all revenue from our book recommendations to adult literacy 
programs.]

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