TELEVISION
Public Television Facilities Program Grants (NTIA)
TV Commercials Offer Too Much of a Good Thing, Again (NYT)
BSkyB to Launch Digital-TV Service In United Kingdom (WSJ)
ARTS
Office Webcams Provide Raw Material for Art Project (CyberTimes)
Fading Indian Rock Art Saved, at Least in Database (NYT)
INTERNET
What's Igniting Online Communities (ZDNet AnchorDesk)
Commerce Dept Expects to Receive Private Sector Proposal for
New Domain Name Corporation (NTIA)
Online Librarians Help Guide Students Around Net's Stacks (WSJ)
Microsoft's Web Browser Overtakes Netscape's (WP)
Microsoft to Offer More Local Versions Of Microsoft Network (WSJ)
MERGER
AT&T Is Holding Talks to Acquire IBM's Global Network Business (WSJ)
INFRASTRUCTURE
Global Crossing Plans Second Leg Of Fiber-Optic Link (WSJ)
LIFE STYLES
To Surf, Perchance to Dream (NYT)
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TELEVISION
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PUBLIC TELECOMMUNICATIONS FACILITIES PROGRAM GRANTS FOR FY 1998
Issue: Public Broadcasting
The Commerce Department's National Telecommunications and Information
Administration (NTIA) today
awarded $19.8 million in Public Telecommunications Facilities Program (PTFP)
grants to facilitate expansion of public broadcasting services to
communities across the country. The 115 grant recipients are noncommercial
telecommunications organizations in 41 states. "PTFP grants provide vital
support to the preservation and expansion of public television, public
radio, and distance learning," said Larry Irving, Assistant Secretary of
Commerce for Communications and Information and NTIA Administrator. "This
year PTFP was able to provide funding for the purchase of digital equipment
for public television stations. This will help these stations greatly in
making the transition to digital technologies."
[SOURCE: NTIA]
http://www.ntia.doc.gov/ntiahome/press/ptfp93098.htm
TV COMMERCIALS OFFER TOO MUCH OF A GOOD THING, AGAIN
Issue: Advertising
There's no truer truth, "they" say, than the fact that any popular
advertising style will be quickly overused and then discarded. Farrell's
advertising column looks at the "mockumentary." It started with those wacky
ESPN Sports Center commercials that give us a behind the scenes look at the
sports highlights show (wait, aren't these commercials an actual show now on
ABC?). But other advertisers soon adopted the style: the Energizer Battery
Bunny (EB) chasers and the EB track team, Nike's "people who run too fast
support group"..."It happens when something wins big and defines a new type
of execution," said an industry executive. "Everybody has figured the
formula out so perfectly that you can't figure out whose brand it is until
the logo appears. If we're that sick of it, it won't be long before
consumers are sick of it."
[SOURCE: New York Times (C5), AUTHOR: Greg Farrell]
http://www.nytimes.com/
BSKYB TO LAUNCH DIGITAL-TV SERVICE IN UNITED KINGDOM
Issue: Digital TV
A new satellite service begins today in the United Kingdom that opens that
country's era of digital television. Sky Digital, owned by British Sky
Broadcasting Group, will provide subscribers about 150 video and music
channels. The company's goal is 200,000 subscribers by the end of the year.
A competitor, Ondigital, plans to begin a similar service with terrestrial
delivery later this year. Video and audio quality are expected to be much
improved with digital television.
[SOURCE: Wall Street Journal (B12), AUTHOR: Steve Stecklow]
http://www.wsj.com/
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ARTS
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OFFICE WEBCAMS PROVIDE RAW MATERIAL FOR ART PROJECT
Issue: Arts
Elizabeth Diller and Ricardo Scofidio will launch a new art project today
called Refresh http://www.diacenter.org/dillerscofidio/. "We have been
intrigued by the whole notion of 'liveness,'" Diller said. "TV uses it all
the time. Whenever you see the word 'live' come up, you're that much more
engaged in it because you feel there's a communal relationship with an
ongoing event." Refresh adds short stories to "live" shots captured by
Webcams already installed in a dozen office spaces around the world. "The
stories are kind of innocuous," Diller acknowledged. "If you read them a
certain way, they could seem mysterious. If you read them through another
filter, they're just hyper-banal. There's always something that sort of
happens, but you're not really sure. But what we were mostly interested in
was the resonance in the relationship between the live image, which is
constantly refreshing, and those that are made up," she said. "On the one
hand, viewers know they're on the inside of an art project; on the other
hand, there is a disturbing feeling of not really knowing how much is
fiction here and how much is fact." [This online art stuff is pretty cool --
check out more by visiting OpenStudio: The Arts Online
http://www.openstudio.org/]
[SOURCE: New York Times (CyberTimes), AUTHOR: Matthew Mirapaul
mirapaul( at )nytimes.com]
http://www.nytimes.com/library/tech/98/10/cyber/artsatlarge/01artsatlarg...
FADING INDIAN ROCK ART SAVED, AT LEAST IN DATABASE
Issue: Art
Technology and art meet again. Rupestrian Cyber Services
www.infomagic.com/~rockart is creating a database that will be a permanent
record of American Indian rock art. "The United States has a marvelous
heritage of rock art," said Evelyn Billo, chief executive at Rupestrian,
"but unfortunately it's being destroyed at a phenomenal rate" by erosion and
vandalism. The database will be used to record, preserve and share
information about petroglyphs to members of the Eastern Shoshone and
Northern Arapho tribes. The software used was originally designed for use by
urban planners.
[SOURCE: New York Times (D10), AUTHOR: Mindy Sink]
http://www.nytimes.com/library/tech/98/10/circuits/articles/01indi.html
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INTERNET
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WHAT'S IGNITING ONLINE COMMUNITIES
Issue: Online Services
What makes an online community? Internet companies are spending big money to
find out. There appears to be six strategies for creating the core of
community. 1) Homesteads: Give people free websites and let them settle into
online neighborhoods. 2) Special Interests: attract users with common
interests (like the obscure field of telecommunications policy).3) Chat:
Make it easier for users to find like-minded people to talk to. 4)
Navigation: Portal sites. 5) Geography: Extend a real-life community into
Cyberspace (hmm, sounds like a community network). 6) Commerce: Gather
people through their favorite activity -- shopping. The idea is to gather a
critical mass of people and then "[t]hrough the phenomenon of "network
effects" -- the more people who belong to a network, the more people want to
belong, as in the fax network." One company's community creates a barrier to
other companies doing the same. They can then charge other companies for
access to the company a la AOL.
[SOURCE: ZDNet AnchorDesk]
http://www.zdnet.com/anchordesk/story/story_2598.html
COMMERCE DEPT EXPECTS TO RECEIVE PRIVATE SECTOR PROPOSAL FOR
NEW DOMAIN NAME CORPORATION
Issue: Infrastructure
The U.S. Department of Commerce announced today that the Internet
Corporation for
Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) has provided notice that it will submit a
proposal for an agreement with the Department to administer policy for the
development of competition in the Internet name and address space. The
Department expects to receive this proposal on October 1, 1998. The
Department understands that other proposals may be submitted as well. In
June, the United States government invited the global community of Internet
stakeholders to work together to form such a corporation to manage DNS
functions. The Statement of Policy issued by the Department of Commerce on
June 5 (the White Paper) indicated that the United States is prepared to
recognize, by entering into agreement with, and to seek international
support for a private corporation committed to operating the DNS system in a
manner that preserves the stability of the Internet, supports the
development of competition and greater consumer choice, preserves, as far as
possible, the bottom-up coordination characteristic of Internet operation,
and that reflects the functional and geographic diversity of the Internet
and its users. The plan is expected to include a list of individuals
proposed for the corporation's initial board of directors.
[SOURCE: NTIA]
http://www.ntia.doc.gov/ntiahome/press/dns93098.htm
ONLINE LIBRARIANS HELP GUIDE STUDENTS AROUND NET'S STACKS
Issue: Internet
Homework Central (www.homeworkcentral.com) seeks to be the ultimate Internet
guide for school children from kindergarten to college and beyond. Judy
Breck and her staff spend their days "helping kids with their assignments
and surfing the Internet for educational and informative Web sites and
cataloging them in a directory." Their searches on the Internet discard the
irrelevant and the pornographic before children get a chance to see the
information. The site is owned by Jumbo Inc. and sells space on its pages
to advertisers to support the service. Jumbo CEO Preston Bealle suggests
the service may be profitable by the end of October. The major complaint
about the site and similar ones is that they may be too helpful making it
too easy to find answers rather than promoting learning.
[SOURCE: Wall Street Journal (B10), AUTHOR: Rebecca Quick]
http://www.wsj.com/
MICROSOFT'S WEB BROWSER OVERTAKES NETSCAPE'S
Issue: Internet
A new survey gives Microsoft's Internet Explorer the edge in market share
over Netscape's Internet browser. The new figures have Netscape's
percentage decreasing in the past three years from 80% of the market to
41.5%. Microsoft's 43.8% share includes a special version used by the
America Online service. The Microsoft browser has been at the center of the
federal antitrust case against Microsoft since Internet Explorer is bundled
as part of the Windows operating system software.
[SOURCE: Washington Post (C2), AUTHOR: Rajiv Chandrasekaran & Elizabeth
Corcoran]
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/business/longterm/microsoft/micro.htm
MICROSOFT TO OFFER MORE LOCAL VERSIONS OF MICROSOFT NETWORK
Issue: Internet
Microsoft Corporation will create new network Internet sites and services in
24 additional countries before the end of the year. The sites will be in
nine different languages and will serve countries in Asia, South America and
Africa. The Microsoft network is now available in four languages and in
seven countries. The expansion is part of Microsoft's effort to recast
itself as a central destination site for worldwide Internet users.
[SOURCE: Wall Street Journal (B9), AUTHOR: Wall Street Journal Staff Reporter]
http://www.wsj.com/
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MERGERS
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AT&T IS HOLDING TALKS TO ACQUIRE IBM'S GLOBAL NETWORK BUSINESS
Issue: Mergers
AT&T Corporation is in preliminary talks to purchase IBM's Global Network
operation. For now the two groups have joined with Banc One Corporation in
an alliance to produce networking and computing services for the bank. The
IBM network, valued by some authorities at $4 billion, transmits corporate
data for some 30,000 customer facilities in 900 cities. IBM is trying to
shed noncore business and is actively looking for a buyer for the network.
While such a purchase would be in the AT&T pattern of expansion to business
customers, Global Network may also have other potential buyers.
[SOURCE: Wall Street Journal (B8), AUTHOR: Stephanie H. Mehta]
http://www.wsj.com/
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INFRASTRUCTURE
==============
GLOBAL CROSSING PLANS SECOND LEG OF FIBER-OPTIC LINK
Issue: Infrastructure
Global Crossing Limited is building a $700 million fiber-optic
telecommunications network to connect 18 European cities to the U.S., Asia
and Latin America. This network is the second step in Global's plan to
create a worldwide fiber optic network. The construction for this leg will
begin immediately. The company plans to begin operations on the network in
late 1999. The company is supported by Deutsche Telekom, Qwest Communications
and others and began service with fiber optic connectivity between the U.S. and
the United Kingdom. Other legs are planned to link the U.S. and the Pacific
area and to link the U.S. and Caribbean and Central American countries.
[SOURCE: Wall Street Journal (B9), AUTHOR: Stacy Kravetz]
http://www.wsj.com/
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LIFE STYLES
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TO SURF, PERCHANCE TO DREAM
Issue: Lifestyles!
As the hours in front of computers pile up, the technology is starting to
sneak into people's dreams. People are posting their dreams to online dream
journals, Web rings and newsgroups and computers seem to play starring roles
at time although therapists are not reporting a flood of computer-related
dreams. "American society wants faster food and shortcuts, and a computer
can embody that," one therapist said. "Sometimes we lose our own identity.
It's really about the individual's sense of not being in control." So, what
about you...do dream in digital? See also "Dream Analysis: Meaning of the
Monitor"
http://www.nytimes.com/library/tech/98/10/circuits/articles/01sdre.html;
Dream Page
http://www.cs.washington.edu/homes/raj/dream/archives/arch11.html,
Electric Dreams http://www.dreamgate.com/electric-dreams, The Psychology
of Cyberspace http://www1.rider.edu/~suler/psycyber/psycyber.html and the
Online Dream Journal http://www.willa.com/dreams/dream197.htm.
[SOURCE: New York Times (D1), AUTHOR: Tina Kelley]
http://www.nytimes.com/library/tech/98/10/circuits/articles/01drea.html
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