LEGAL RESEARCH - FREE ACCESS TO CALIFORNIA CASES
September 30, 2000 | | Findlaw.com has evolved into a very nice place to look for all things legal - research, directories of law firms and law-related organizations, legal news, directories of consultants and experts, and quite a lot more. Now it offers free access to California case law from 1934 to the present, with official citations and page numbers. There are advantages to using the dedicated research software from West and the other big companies, but this is a tempting alternative if you're on a budget. | | RETURN TO TOP | INTELLIGENT DISTRIBUTED COMPUTING
September 28, 2000 | | If you feel like stretching a bit, the editor of Red Herring magazine has taken a look at the implications of the technology behind Napster and Gnutella. It's intriguing and might turn out to be true. Here's the conclusion: "The first important application on the Internet was email; the second was the Web. But already the Web seems derisory, an anachronism; the third wave of Internet applications, which will exploit intelligent distributed computing, is what John Henson, the chief technology officer of OpenCola, calls X-to-X software. It's an ugly piece of jargon, but one gets his point: peer-to-peer isn't the half of it. With X-to-X software, any organization can use a network to solve problems that before only organizations that owned or could rent a supercomputer could solve; an individual can swap any kind of digital file with his or her peers; an individual can use the assets of a like-minded group; and one group can collaborate with another group. "Whatever we call it, this kind of intelligent distributed computing is an entirely new way of thinking about information processing, data storage, and retrieval. Like any really new technology, it will have many unforeseeable applications. It will create entirely new industries, and overturn existing ones."
Click here to read the entire article. | | RETURN TO TOP | NORTON ANTIVIRUS 2001
September 27, 2000 | | Norton Antivirus 2001 is on store shelves now. At some point Symantec will probably shut down your ability to update older versions of the program. Go buy the upgrade and keep your virus definitions up to date. Costco has it for only $19.99. | | RETURN TO TOP | WINDOWS ME PRODUCT-TYING
September 26, 2000 | | Brian Livingston is an author who's been writing about Microsoft and Windows for years. He makes an interesting argument that might help explain what Windows ME is all about. Windows Media Player 7 and Windows Movie Maker are installed as part of Windows ME. Microsoft provides no way for users to not install these products in the first place--or to uninstall them if desired. It's difficult for Microsoft to argue that their functions have to be integrated into the operating system for Windows to remain competitive with other operating systems. (I'm sympathetic to that argument regarding Internet functions, but it's a stretch here.) On the other hand, there are obviously competing products in the marketplace now. If Microsoft can knock them out and dominate delivery of streaming media, there's all kinds of opportunity for revenue in the future. Brian Livingston speculates that Microsoft released Windows Me in a bid to define the feature set of Windows going forward, just in case the Supreme Court does rule that the company should be broken up. "It would be very hard to recall a product such as Windows Me, so I think that Microsoft executives are taking this calculated risk," Brian said. "No one at Microsoft would ever go on record to say this, but the company is essentially releasing Windows Me to get a foot in the door, forcing users to use its software going forward." In other words, the Supreme Court would be unlikely to rule to split up any technology already present in Windows. If a technology is included now, as in the case of Windows Me, Microsoft has leeway to include and improve its features in the future.
Interesting and thought-provoking. Here's the complete text of the interview. | | RETURN TO TOP | GRATEFUL DEAD CONCERT ARCHIVES
September 26, 2000 | | Music is bubbling up from everywhere. I'm staggered by this archive of Grateful Dead concerts available for the asking in .mp3 format. There's hundreds of hours of music for the taking. Doors fans should take note that more than thirty hours of unreleased live material will be released over the next couple of years. Click here for details. Surf on over to Rhino Records Handmade division for a bunch of things you didn't know you could get. (Three hours of the Monkees in the studio recording the Headquarters LP! All of the recordings by Jack Webb, finally available!) All right, maybe you don't want any of them, but it's interesting to know about, anyway. Fun! | | RETURN TO TOP | MICROSOFT DOCUMENT MANAGEMENT PROJECT
September 22, 2000 | | Document management is difficult for small businesses and law firms. Once you've got more than a couple of thousand documents stored away, it becomes harder to find old documents or to recall where a current draft is stored. The risk increases that two people will be working on different drafts of the same document, getting out of sync with each other. Or a problem that has terrified a couple of my law clients - an early draft accidentally gets sent to court, instead of the final version. Document management programs are expensive and difficult to administer. More important, though, they tend to have uninteresting interfaces - too many choices, presented in an uncompelling way. Many offices decide that the transition to managed documents would be too tough. It's interesting to find out that Microsoft is working a project, code-named "Tahoe," that will add full-fledged document management to Exchange Server. Microsoft does a good job of putting a pretty front-end on established technology, and this might bring document management to life for businesses that have avoided it up to now. Details are sketchy - it will be described in more detail at a conference next month, and won't be available until next year. Here's an article with a bit of info. | | RETURN TO TOP | COMPUTER GAMES
September 22, 2000 | | The computer game industry is going through hard times. The best games reward your investment by delivering 40-60 hours of satisfying game play. Everyone else feels just like you do - there just isn't time. The Internet uses up all of the free time that most people are willing to spend in front of a computer monitor. Two other issues have been difficult for the gaming industry to handle: - Most people haven't understood the developments in video cards. Many games require "3D Acceleration," and folks just don't have a clue whether their system meets that requirement. Serious gamers understand perfectly, but that's a relatively small audience.
- Many games have incorporated online or multiplayer features. The hard-core gamers gather online and compete at a very high level. No one has found an effective way to let "regular" people play without being destroyed by the serious gamers. It's true regardless of whether the category is first-person shooters, flight simulators, or online poker. I've played shooting games for ten years, but I won't go online to play against people who are frighteningly good. It's not fun.
There are wonderful games out there. The game publishers haven't given up. I don't keep up with very many categories of game - I don't have any suggestions for sports games or flight simulators or real time combat. But here's three that I do know about: - The Sims is a best-seller this year, and it deserves all its success. Fun for all ages, wildly addictive. I can't describe it in a few words - click here for one review, or click here for another one, to get an idea of what it's about. Fairly demanding hardware requirements - best for a newer system.
- The "adventure" game category has been particularly hard hit - the ones where you move characters through a story, solving puzzles to advance the plot. (It all started with Adventure aka Colossal Cave and Zork, for you elderly computer users.) LucasArts released Grim Fandango a couple of years ago, a wonderful adventure game. Nobody cared. It sold poorly. Publishers abandoned the genre. Fortunately, LucasArts hasn't given up, and this fall will see another title in the Monkey Island series, Escape From Monkey Island. Marvelous, funny stuff.
- There will be a slew of shooters this Christmas, following the success of Unreal Tournament and Quake III Arena. There's only one that's caught my eye, though. American McGee's Alice looks like a truly twisted, unique release. It's a dark, surreal tour through a warped version of Alice In Wonderland. The graphics are top-notch, the focus is on single-play, and the concept is truly audacious. I've got my fingers crossed.
| | RETURN TO TOP | CABLE INTERNET ACCESS
September 20, 2000 | | I like to call the cable company once a year to inquire when cable Internet access will be available in Sonoma County. I don't know why - just too much free time and an impish sense of humor, I suppose. Last year AT&T acquired Century Cable. Their bill this month proudly announces a name-change to "AT&T Broadband," and the AT&T Broadband web site lovingly describes the thrills of high-speed Internet access. AT&T's cable Internet service is handled through AT&T@Home. But when I spoke to an @Home rep today, she couldn't find Santa Rosa, Sebastopol, or Rohnert Park (home of the AT&T Cable office) in the database. The local office, on the other hand, said, "Yeah, you bet we're going to roll out Internet access! Right after we install some other equipment related to cable TV for more channels and stuff. No, no idea what the timetable is. But gosh, it probably won't be long now, you bet, uh huh!" I'll check in next year at this time and give you an update. What do you want to bet that I'll be able to cut and paste from this item? | | RETURN TO TOP | MP3 PLAYERS
September 20, 2000 | | If you're considering new audio equipment, it still looks like .mp3 will be a standard audio format. You might want to watch for equipment that supports it. Two things have caught my eye: - CD players are turning up that can play .mp3 files that have been copied onto a CDR. That's roughly 10 hours of music on a single CD - and the players can frequently extract info from the file headers and display artist and song information on the front panel. I don't have a particular source to link to, but it's available now from several manufacturers for home stereos and for cars.
- Creative just released the first portable .mp3 player that has the right features. The players have been unappealing because they've only been able to hold a small amount of music. An .mp3 player that can only hold 30-60 minutes of songs isn't very tempting. The Creative Nomad Jukebox has a 6Gb hard drive built into it, which will hold lots and lots and lots of music. The price is out of sight - $499 - but there will be lots of competitors and prices will tumble within a few months.
Incidentally, digital cameras have taken longer than expected to become appealing to average people, in part because of the same issue - the storage space for photos has been so limited that picture quality is compromised. I think the next few months will bring a quantum leap in storage capacity, making digital cameras much more interesting. | | RETURN TO TOP | SMASHING PUMPKINS vs RECORD INDUSTRY
September 20, 2000 | | Here's an interesting development if you're watching the recording industry self-destruct. Smashing Pumpkins is a popular band that decided to stop recording - in part because they perceived a lack of support from their record label. They had twenty-five new songs to release, but no obligation to give them to the record company. So they privately pressed 25 copies of the songs on vinyl LPs and gave them to friends - with instructions to distribute the songs widely. Within a day, the songs could be downloaded from hundreds of places - Napster, the newsgroups, and lots of web sites. Here's some info and download sites. These songs will be far more widely heard than their last few regular releases. Which will probably cause a lot of people to get interested in the band. Hello! RIAA! Anybody home? Any signs of intelligent life there? | | RETURN TO TOP | COSTCO OFFERS FREE INTERNET ACCESS
September 20, 2000 | | If you're on a tight budget, Costco has partnered with Yahoo to offer dialup Internet access for free to Costco members. They claim it's less annoying than other "free" Internet services. I haven't looked at it, but I'm sure their software includes a Yahoo home page, Yahoo e-mail, and Yahoo instant messenger. Those aren't bad things. Just be aware that switching to Costco's free service involves more than just entering a new phone number and password into your computer. Here's the page with details. | | RETURN TO TOP | OKLAHOMA STUDENT MAY FACE MUSIC DOWNLOAD CHARGES
September 19, 2000 | | This is scary and awful. I'm starting to reserve a special place in my heart for the Recording Industry Association Of America. Big Brother invasions of privacy are not the way to save the music business. Here's the entire article. "September 18, 2000 - OKLAHOMA CITY (Reuters) - An Oklahoma State University student could face criminal charges of copyright infringement after police found as many as 1,000 Internet music files on his computer, campus police said Monday. "Police seized the personal computer and a CD recorder from the student's dorm room after university officials were notified by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), which is campaigning against the wide-spread practice of copying and moving music over the Internet. "University officials said the Washington D.C.-based RIAA, which represents big record companies, had notified the school that it had detected a high volume of music downloads to the campus computer network."
| | RETURN TO TOP | WINDOWS ME
September 17, 2000 | | For those of you struggling with Windows 98 instability, Windows ME has to be tempting. It's not a truly new operating system - it's the equivalent of a big service pack for Windows 98, with some bells and whistles. That's a good thing. For many people, Windows ME is well worth the $50, and it will be a relatively painless upgrade. (Your mileage may vary. Results are not guaranteed. Please refer to my disclaimer for further terms and conditions.) There are a few things to be aware of before you do the upgrade. - Support for older hardware is quite good, but not perfect. You may lose a device or two during the upgrade. Some manufacturers have drivers available for download but did not get them together in time to be included on the Windows ME CD. Check before you install!
- Some support for DOS programs has been removed, as part of making the system more stable. If you rely on an old DOS program, you can't be sure it will still work after the upgrade. There's ways to test it and find out, but it's getting to be time to move on from DOS, don't you think?
- Windows ME includes new features to keep your system healthy, even if some new bit of hardware or software mucks things up. Features like system file protection, system restore and integrated help center are great. Windows 98 has been notoriously unstable, so it can use the help. But those same safety belts murder performance. ETesting Labs (formerly ZDLabs) found that, with the heart of the safety system activated, benchmark system performance varied wildly. The same machine would see its overall speed drop by more than 30 percent from one run to the next with little rhyme or rhythm. That matches my experience with the GoBack program that's been shipping on Gateway systems for the last year or so, which does some of the same things - and has the same effect on performance. Here's an article that discusses some of the performance issues.
My conclusion? If you have a reasonably up to date system that's in good health, Windows ME offers some significant improvements. And the bells and whistles are actually quite nice. But if your system is older, your hard drive space is tight, performance is already a problem - well, Windows ME isn't the answer. Stretch out the life of your old system as long as you can, then buy a new system. And if you're buying a new system, it's as simple as this: Windows 2000 Professional is the best desktop operating system ever released. Period. | | RETURN TO TOP | AMAZON PRICES
September 7, 2000 | | Click here for a fascinating article about Amazon.com. Reportedly it is researching consumers' buying habits by arbitrarily changing the prices on DVDs (and perhaps other products), so that one customer might be charged as much as $10 more than other customers purchasing the same product at approximately the same time. Amazon's price for a limited-edition copy of the Men in Black DVD, for example, could differ depending on a number of factors, including which browser was being used, whether a consumer was a repeat or first-time customer and which Internet service provider address a customer was using. Amazon's spokesperson called it "testing," but declined to say how long these tests will last or what the criteria are for determining which customers will be charged higher prices than others. | | RETURN TO TOP | WINZIP INTERNET BROWSER ADD-ON
September 7, 2000 | | WinZip has released an add-on to WinZip 8.0 that might help you avoid some confusion. When you click on a .zip file using Microsoft Internet Explorer or Netscape Navigator/Communicator, the add-on will enable WinZip to take over when the download is completed. WinZip automatically moves the downloaded file to your download folder (initially set to c:\download) and then (optionally) opens the file. Click here for more information about the add-on. If you don't have WinZip installed already or you haven't upgraded to version 8.0, click here to download the latest version. | | RETURN TO TOP | OPERATIONAL SIGNIFICANT EVENT IMAGERY
August 27, 2000 | | Interesting web site! The title means, roughly, "cool photos of stuff happening on the planet." The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration runs this site, which "produces high-resolution, detailed imagery of significant environmental events." Dust storms, fires, floods, icebergs, storms, cyclones, volcanoes, and more. Click here for the OSEI home page, or click here for a particularly good shot of Northern Idaho and Montana's fires from a few days ago. The photos are big, by the way, so be prepared if you're not on a fast connection. | | RETURN TO TOP | WINDOWS 2000 INDEXING SERVICE
August 23, 2000 | | Windows 2000 includes an Indexing Service which is worth looking into. When it's turned on, it builds an index of all of the files on your hard drive, including the contents and properties of many kinds of files. Once it's turned on, it designed to run continuously and requires little, if any, maintenance. When you search for a file by name or by a word within a file, the search results are returned with lightning speed. In my experience it's been quirky - but so powerful that it's worth living with its quirks. To enable Indexing Services in the Search Assistant 1. Click Start, click Search, and select For Files and Folders. 2. Click Search Options. 3. If you see the message: Indexing Service is currently disabled, click the highlighted text Indexing Service. 4. As shown in the figure below, click Yes, enable Indexing Service and run when my computer is idle. Click OK. 
Enabling Indexing 5. Close the Search window.
It can be customized to include files on a company network, as well, if you poke at it hard enough. It does not index items in Outlook, however. For that, you need Personal Knowledge Portal or something like it. | | RETURN TO TOP | GETTING HOTMAIL IN OUTLOOK
August 23, 2000 | | It's a bit frustrating that Outlook can't receive Hotmail messages. But I ran across a bit of a cheat that's really likable. It's possible to set up a folder in Outlook that displays your Hotmail messages - because Outlook can display any web page within the Outlook framework. It's not just Hotmail - the same trick will work with Yahoo mail or any other web-based e-mail - and with any other web page that makes sense to display from within Outlook. Here's the instructions. | | RETURN TO TOP | STEPHEN KING, "THE PLANT"
July 24, 2000 | | The world will be transformed by the Internet. You've heard that, but it's sometimes hard to get a handle on what it means. Sometimes, though, a specific act or a specific new technology can symbolize a seismic shift that's going on right under our noses. Watch Napster. Its impact on the music industry (and, right behind it, the movie industry) can't be underestimated. Even if Napster is shut down, the distribution of music will never be the same. Watch Bluetooth. It might be the moving force behind an explosion of wireless devices that lies right around the corner - and the explosion is going to happen, even if the Bluetooth initiative falls apart. Watch for developments in electronic paper. Grab the current issue of Wired magazine, which has a long article about it. Basically, two or three labs are within striking distance of developing material that can display crystal clear text that can be changed or updated at will - and have that material be lightweight, foldable, and part of a package that can fit under your arm with the same ease as a newspaper. The newspaper publishers are projecting that the lifespan of conventional newspapers may be less than five years. The book publishing industry is insulated from all this to a small degree, because there are enormous advantages to books compared to many other ways of storing and retrieving words. But to a certain extent the industry is playing the same game as the music industry - attempting to preserve its existing business model instead of thinking up an innovative new business model that incorporates the web. So Stephen King's audacious slap in the face might presage a bigger shift that bypasses the conventional publishers and leaves them increasingly irrelevant. Stephen King has made the first installment of his latest novel available for download from his web site. Working on an honor system, King asks for one dollar per installment of the novel. (It's paid by clicking into Amazon's payment system. If you're already an Amazon customer, it just takes a second. The "honor" part is because you can download it without paying by promising to pay for it later.) King has promised to post the first two installments, then evaluate the results. If more than 75% of the downloaders have paid for their copies, he'll release more. He also tells his fans, "My friends, we have a chance to become Big Publishing's worst nightmare." It's a fascinating experiment. Not a bad read, either. | | RETURN TO TOP | MICROSOFT MEDIA PLAYER 7.0
July 24, 2000 | | Microsoft Media Player 7.0 is pretty awful. It uses up a huge amount of processor power. I don't like the interface for working with MP3s at all. And it's got a killer bug - if you're running Adaptec Direct CD/Easy CD Creator software on a Windows 2000 system, then there's a risk that installing Media Player 7.0 will kill the system. Dead. Flatline. Can't be brought back to life without a reformat. You really should look at Media Jukebox. It's got all the features, a clean interface, and nice people developing it. It's free, of course. If you're starting to take MP3s seriously, it's a great choice! | | RETURN TO TOP | MICROSOFT OFFICE TEMPLATES
July 21, 2000 | | Never saw this before. Microsoft has a Template Gallery with hundreds of templates and forms for Office 2000 or Office 97, in twelve different categories - marketing, legal, business forms, resumes and cover letters, and a lot more. Worth checking out! | | RETURN TO TOP | PERSONAL KNOWLEDGE PORTAL FOR OUTLOOK 98/2000
July 18, 2000 | | Personal Knowledge Portal is a quite wonderful addition to Microsoft Outlook. It adds a small pane to a customized version of Outlook Today, and allows you to do lightning-fast searches through all of your e-mail, contact, calendar, and public folder info. You can click on a contact name and instantly see all items in Outlook related to that contact. It's inexpensive - $29.95 for a single user - and highly recommended if information is starting to get buried in Outlook. Click here for information and a 14-day trial version. | | RETURN TO TOP | CREATIVE LIVEWARE 3.0 FOR WINDOWS 2000
July 18, 2000 | | Creative Labs finally released new drivers for Windows 2000 for the SoundBlaster Live! cards. The drivers are also part of a new release of LiveWare 3.0 for Windows 2000, the package of programs to tweak the sound, add special effects, do custom configurations for different speaker setups, and the like. I'm underwhelmed. I've always kinda disliked the Liveware software - I never felt the desire to make music sound as if it's being played in an auditorium or an alley or with psychedelic distortion, and the bar at the top of the screen that slides in and out is incredibly distracting. The new drivers don't seem to make any difference - there's a bit of controversy in the newsgroups about whether they do anything new at all. Yawn. Click here to download the drivers by themselves (4Mb - recommended), or click here for information about Liveware 3 for Windows 2000 (20Mb). | | RETURN TO TOP | NEW MICROSOFT RELEASES
July 18, 2000 | | Internet Explorer 5.5 There's not a lot that's new in this release, and it's a huge download. It has an improved Print Preview, and some new technology under the hood that isn't being widely used yet. I wouldn't worry about it unless you can install from CD. Eventually you'll get a new version of Windows that includes this release, but until then it's not essential. Click here to download the setup wizard (500K). Internet Explorer 5.01 SP1 Microsoft fixed the bug in the initial release of this service pack. If you run Windows 2000 and you downloaded the service pack between July 6 and July 11, there's a Critical Update that brings you up to date. Click here to download the setup wizard for the service pack (500K), or click here for the Windows 2000 Critical Update. Media Player 7 This is Microsoft's big step into the world of digital audio, taking on RealPlayer/RealJukebox and the other .MP3 players. It looks big and fluffy to me. There's some ability to display pictures and links that go with the music - the screen shots show a picture of Christine Aguilera and links to buy the CD and links to related web sites and the like. If that's what you want, this looks great. Not a bit appealing to me, but it's a personal preference. Click here for the download page (7Mb). | | RETURN TO TOP | WEB SERVICES
July 10,2000 | | Thousands of web sites are springing up offering interesting online services. Here's three that have crossed my radar lately. Etrieve.com is a free service that will send your e-mail to your cell phone and read it to you, and let you send replies in your own voice. PC Pitstop uses a small ActiveX control to analyze your hardware and software and report on all kinds of things. Gibson Research will probe your computer and report on any Internet security issues. | | RETURN TO TOP | NORTON ANTIVIRUS 6/30 UPDATE SNAFU
July 10, 2000 | | Norton Antivirus is getting on my nerves lately - although I still think it's the best antivirus program available. One client was experiencing enormous slowdowns when trying to access a large database. The vendor finally suggested changing a setting on Norton Antivirus - and bang! everything was back to normal speed. Interested? Configure NAV to scan programs and documents only, instead of all files. Then Symantec released an update to the program on June 30 that can crash computers with this exact configuration: Windows 2000, a Promise UltraATA 66 hard drive controller, and the NTFS file system on the hard drive. "There really aren't a lot of people with these configurations," commented a Symantec spokesman. Hello! I'm Bruce! That's my configuration! The update didn't crash my system, but it did break Norton Antivirus pretty effectively. The update has now been pulled. Here's an article with more details. | | RETURN TO TOP | MICROSOFT INTERNET EXPLORER 5.01 SP1 SNAFU
July 10, 2000 | | Microsoft has seriously mucked up its service releases lately. The latest fiasco involves a service pack for Internet Explorer 5.01. If you install it on a system running Office 2000, the Office 2K Help system will be broken on most Windows 98 systems and all Windows 2000 systems. Microsoft's control of operating systems and office suites is based on mind share, not unfair business practices - and this kind of numbskull lack of testing will blow holes in Microsoft's market share far more effectively than the Justice Department can. Here's an article with details. Although it describes a way to fix the problem, you'd be far better off to wait for a fixed release from Microsoft - or better yet, just grab Internet Explorer 5.5, which is only a few days away. Might want to wait a couple of weeks, though - it was more thoroughly tested, but wait and see anyway. | | RETURN TO TOP | BARNEY PLAYS PEEKABOO
July 7, 2000 | | Microsoft has thousands of technical notes in its Knowledge Base, covering a huge array of bugs, features and solutions for all of its products. I was amused to find one titled Computer Randomly Plays Classical Music, explaining why your computer might burst out into "Fur Elise" or "It's A Small World" at random moments. But it's even more surreal to discover a Microsoft technical note titled Sometimes Barney Starts Playing Peekaboo On His Own. It's a strange world, eh? | | RETURN TO TOP | NEW RELEASES
July 7, 2000 | | Been quiet, hasn't it? Here's some of the things on the horizon: Internet Explorer 5.5 is due any day now. No big changes, but web designers are ready to roll out more sophisticated experiences online that use the technology built into the newest browsers. Creative Labs will finally release LiveWare 3.0 for Windows 2000, the software for SoundBlaster Live! sound cards. The drivers for those cards in Windows 2000 have been buggy and fail to take advantage of many of the card's features. Should be released in the next few days, according to NTCompatible.com. Media Jukebox continues to be my preferred program for handling .MP3s. Version 5.0 is due out any day, and I have high hopes. If you have a video card from Nvidia (TNT, TNT2, or GeForce), new drivers have been appearing at a rapid clip, particularly for Windows 2000. Current drivers are 5.22 - if you haven't upgraded for a while, you'll experience improvements in all areas, especially Direct3D. Call me if you're not sure of how to proceed! This Voodoo Extreme drivers page keeps up to date links for the latest drivers for many brands of video and sound cards. | | RETURN TO TOP |
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