Slashdot | Google’s Library Up and Running
“It seems that Google Print results are beginning to appear on searches. For those who don’t know, Google has been scanning from libraries from some of the world’s greatest universities in order to compile a freely accessible online library. An easy way to turn up these results is to simply type “book”, and then whatever you want to search for. For instance, book origin of species will turn up the full text of Charles Darwin’s controversial treatise.“
A Look at Novell’s Hula
Doing the Hula : Page 1
“At its core, Hula is a mail and calendar server, but the idea behind Hula is much broader. Instead of trying to position itself as the next thing in “groupware,” the Novell-backed Hula team has set out to create a solution that people actually want to use — a solution that, given the choice, a user would want to use over any other available products. That’s not to say that Hula won’t have the features of a robust groupware product — out of the box, it is an e-mail (POP3, IMAP, SMTP) server with a rich client web interface, calendar, mailing lists and virus protection. The possibilities, it seems, are endless.“
Of note here is that Hula appears to be based on an open sourced version of Novell Netmail
Westlaw To Restrict Access To Social Security Numbers
InformationWeek > Privacy > Westlaw To Restrict Subscriber Access To Social Security Numbers > March 17, 2005
“Westlaw, an online legal-research service, will sharply limit subscriber access to Social Security numbers in its database, a move announced after its top executives met Wednesday night with Sen. Charles Schumer, D.-N.Y., a sponsor of one of several bills before Congress addressing identity theft.“
3rd Party VOIP to Get Dissed?
PBS | I, Cringely . The Best days of Voice-over-IP Telephone Service May Already Have Passed
“These are heady days for Voice-over-IP (VoIP) phone services. From Vonage to Packet8 to Skype and a hundred more besides, several million people around the world are enjoying really cheap phone calls that are carried primarily over the Internet. But that fun may be diminishing soon because the big Internet service providers, which is to say the big telephone and cable TV companies, are about to start taking back that third-party VoIP traffic, leaving Vonage and the others at a distinct disadvantage.“
The argument is that cable and telco broadband providers will tag their VOIP packets to guarantee a higher level of service and leave the Vonages of the world with ‘best effort’ service resulting in things like dropped calls and bad audio quality. There is no evidence of this yet, but with Comcast just announcing the availabilty of VOIP in metro Atlanta, it will be interesting to see if soemthing like this develops.
Dave’s New Directory Handles Text
Scripting News: 3/19/2005
“My new directory displayer now handles passages of text, so you can write little documents directly in the directory.“
This cool. One of the things about the directories built using Frontier/Manilla/Radio that has bugged me is the lack of text support. No real way to have a chunk of explanatory verbage to explain what is going on. Looks like that is about to be possible.
Selling Linux
Firefox Up, IE Down
Internet Week > > Firefox Eats More Microsoft Market Share > March 18, 2005
“Firefox continues to steal market share from Microsoft Internet Explorer, according to Net Applications, a maker of Web-monitoring software. According to the company’s February figures, use of Firefox rose to 6.17% from 5.59% in January.Firefox’s gain comes at the expense of Internet Explorer, which dropped to 89.04% market share, from 90.31% in December. Net Applications reports that other browsers maintained their user base.“
CALI is seeing this shift. Our IE share is down to 93%, off from about 98% last fall. Of course that’s still a huge domination of the market.
EBay Spawns Drop off Stores
Internet Week > EBay Spawns Niche Market > EBay Spawns Niche Market > March 18, 2005
“With the explosive success of EBay, it’s not surprising that several companies are jumping on the bandwagon to help people sell their unwanted items on the Internet auction giant.In this growing niche, companies like ISold It, AuctionDrop, NuMarkets, QuikDrop, and Snappy Auctions are providing convenient locations where sellers can leave their wares and let the vendors handle the rest for a fee.“
There is money to be made here, but there are a lot of issues to deal with. A franchise is probably the way to go for an individual interested in this sort of thing. Stuff to consider: storage space for sales items; minimum value of merchandise; not becoming an unwitting fence; developing expertise in pricing and/or spotting value; dealing with customers looking to unload junk. See, lots of work.
Programmer Alleges GPL Violations
Open-source programmer alleges Linux misuse | Tech News on ZDNet
“An open-source programmer stopped by the CeBit trade show in Hannover, Germany, this week to tell Motorola and 12 other companies he believes they’re using Linux in violation of the license that governs the software.Harald Welte said the companies have embedded Linux in their products but haven’t released the underlying source code, as required by the General Public License, or GPL, that governs the operating system. He tried to notify 13 companies of his complaint at the sprawling trade show, but three companies refused to accept it, he said in an e-mail interview.“
Boston College, Calif. State University computers hacked
Boston College, Calif. State University computers hacked – Computerworld
“The break-in at BC is the second such incident to be reported this week by a university. On Monday, officials at California State University in Chico disclosed that hackers had broken into a housing and food service system containing personal information — including the names and Social Security numbers — of about 59,000 current, former and prospective students, faculty and staff.“
Colleges and universities will certainly be spending more on security going forward.