July 15, 2004 - MPR’s Toni Randolph reports on shortage of Hmong funeral homes in the Twin Cities. A traditional Hmong funeral is a ceremony full of rituals, scheduled on weekends and lasting for days. Families now often have to wait weeks before burying their loved ones. A couple of new Hmong funeral homes will be opening, though they won't open for more than a year.
July 20, 2004 - This is Future Tense from American Public Media. I'm Jon Gordon. The release of a new version of the bloody, kill the monsters-from-hell game "Doom" is a major event in the world of computer gaming. Doom sets the standard for visually stunning games, and for hardcore violence. Doom 3 is due in stores the first week of August. Time Magazine says the makers of Doom are the "spiritual and technological fathers of the modern video game, and says about Doom 3: "There has never been a game that looks this good."
July 21, 2004 - Internet users typically flock to "peer to peer" networks like Kazaa to share music, movies, software and even pornography. A 2nd year student at St Johns School of Law in Queens has found a very different use for file-sharing. Thad Anderson is disseminating hard-to-find government and court documents on the Kazaa, Limewire and Soulseek networks. They include memos about the prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib; a Senate Intelligence Committee report on what the government knew about weapons of mass destruction before it invaded Iraq; and details of contracts awarded to Haliburton Corporation for the reconstruction of Iraq. Anderson is a Democrat but says file-sharing can be useful for people all political persuasions.
July 22, 2004 - Internet phone service, known Voice Over IP or V-o-I-P for short, is going mainstream. Giant phone companies like AT&T are joining upstart companies like Vonage in enticing consumers with low-cost calling plans as an alternative to traditional phone service.
July 27, 2004 - Software like "Adobe Photoshop" makes it easy to alter digital photographs. Even the moderately skilled person can make a fake image that looks real. Associate professor of computer science at Dartmouth College, Hany Farid, has developed several algorhithms that detect subtle changes to digital images. These techniques could help guarantee the authenticity of news photos, crime scene photos, spy satellite images and political propaganda.
July 29, 2004 - Declan McCullagh with CNET News.com has examined Federal Election Commission records to see who Silicon Valley big-wigs are supporting in the presidential campaign. FEC rules limit individual contributions to $2,000. Michael Dell of Dell Computers gave his two grand to President Bush, as did eBay's Meg Whitman. Walter Hewlett, of Hewlett-Packard fame, has thrown his support to John Kerry. Ditto for former Intel CEO Andy Grove.
July 30, 2004 - By employing an unusual technique called a "Dutch Auction" to price its initial public offering, Google could be making the process too difficult for the small investor, according to some critics. The Google Dutch Auction works like this: The company and its advisors set a price range for a share of stock. That part has already happened. Tom Taulli with IPO research site CurrentOfferings.com takes it from here.
August 2, 2004 - A new short film on the Internet turns on its head the classic going-off-to-war song "Danny Boy." Frank Lesser, who's fresh out of Brown University film school and working as a writer in New York, wrote and directed the film "Danny Bot." Frank Lesser is writer and director of "Danny Bot," which you can watch at dannybot-dot-com.
August 5, 2004 - Seems like you can find anything with Google. Great, right? Not so great, when you can find your own credit card number. CNET, the technology news site, found it's disturbingly easy to pull up personal financial information using the world's most popular search engine. CNET staff writer Rob Lemos did the story.
August 10, 2004 - Digital video recorders, DVRs for short, can record hundreds of hours of television programs without bulky tapes. They're easier to program than VCRs, and let you skip through commercials more efficiently than programs recorded on tape. Tivo's devoted customers praise its elegant, easy-to-use software. But the company has always struggled, because consumer adoption has been slower than hoped.