Hip-Hop Anti-Barbie | # | Mattel is launching a line of hip hop fashion dolls -- 'Flavas' -- to appeal to older girls who no longer play with Barbie. The multi-ethnic dolls have an urban style and wear trendy clothing, flashy jewelry, and have larger heads. They are part of a strategy to compete with MGA's wildly popular Bratz, an edgy, big-headed 'doll with attitude' that is stealing Barbie's sales.
The RIAA's Jihad | # | The Recording Industry Association of America's attack on US culture has escalated at an alarming pace this week.
On Friday the lobby group that works on behalf of the large, mostly foreign-owned, music conglomerates that own the music copyrights and distribution channels confirmed that it was serving subpoenas at the rate of 75 a day on US citizens for the crime of sharing the music they love.
XML vs. EDI | # | Tight IT budgets make it tough for managers to stay at the cutting edge of technology, but in one area they may not have to bother. For now, electronic data interchange (EDI), the old system for exchanging business documents electronically, is at least as useful as its likely successor, and cheaper as well. Over the next five years, businesses would do well to hone their old systems while also preparing themselves for the new ones.
July 18, 2003
Learning from SARS | # | As world health officials struggle to defeat the latest global epidemic, they should be preparing for the next one
Making Friendsters in High Places | # | Friendster, the popular social-networking service that cleverly assimilates real-life social groups into a large virtual network, just keeps getting bigger. The service, which opened to the public in March and is still in beta, will hit 1 million users this week, and is expanding at a rate of 20 percent a week, according to the company.
Blogging for Bucks | # | Journalist Rafat Ali is an unusual beast: a laid-off dot-com reporter who's making money online writing about, well, making money online. Ali, a former reporter for Inside.com and an editor at the Silicon Alley Reporter, is making a comfortable living as an independent journalist-cum-blogger. Working out of his East London flat, Ali publishes PaidContent, a one-man trade newsletter about the business of online media.
July 17, 2003
Computer Program Detects Author Gender | # | A new computer program can tell whether a book was written by a man or a woman. The simple scan of key words and syntax is around 80% accurate on both fiction and non-fiction
Will Wi-Fi Revolutionize the Phone? | # | As Wi-Fi grows to envelop cities, 'Voice over Hot Spots' could replace cell services—and their profits.
The Dirty Little Secret About Spam | # | What J.P. Morgan Chase and Kraft want is exactly what the guys peddling porn and gambling want: free access to your inbox. That's why there's no easy solution to a problem that could soon make the world's email system crash and burn.
Digging for Googleholes | # | A Slate (owned by Microsoft) article detailing some issues with Google. Imagine that! But I do think the points are valid.
Mozilla Wants to Rumble With IE | # | Microsoft's Internet Explorer might have trounced the likes of Netscape Navigator, but the folks at Mozilla.org insist the browser wars aren't over.
