August 27, 2004 - It's called "Really Simple Syndication," or RSS for short. It's a method for reading web sites without actually visiting them, or having to subscribe to newsletters that deliver content through e-mail. You can subscribe to many major news sites with RSS, and most major blogs, too. You can even get some of your favorite comic strips.
August 25, 2004 - About two years ago, the recording industry and 43 states settled a lawsuit that accused record companies of inflating the cost of CDs by requiring retailers to sell them at or above a set price in order to qualify for advertising funding. As part of the the $144 million settlement, the companies agreed to provide more than $5 million worth of CDs to public libraries.
August 24, 2004 - People collect all sorts of things, but banner ads are extremely unusual. Tari Akpodiete has 17,000 of them saved to her computer. Website ads for movies, books, porngraphy sites, and lots more. She display them at BannerReport.com, a site that has become a resource for people who design ads, and a bit of an Internet museum. Seeing an ad that caught her fancy one day, Ackpodiete saved it to her hard drive. One thing led to another, and an obsession was born.
August 23, 2004 - In his new book "We the Media Grassroots Journalism by the People, for the People," Dan Gillmor describes how Weblogs, digital cameras, e-mail lists and other technologies are making it possible for average people to take the news into their own hands. Gillmor says journalism is becoming more of a conversation and less of a lecture, with the line between news producer and consumer growing increasingly fuzzy.
August 20, 2004 - Frustrated by the worldwide digital divide, a researcher at Carnegie Mellon University has created a combination computer/television/DVD player/videophone designed for the billions of people who make less than two thousand dollars per year.
August 19, 2004 - A new study says for the first time, more Americans are using fast cable or DSL connections to access the internet than dial-up accounts. Broadband makes for much faster music and video downloads. For example, a three minute song that might take a half hour to download over dial-up will take only a few minutes over broadband.
August 18, 2004 - Most publications use a capital "I" to begin the word "internet." Technology news and culture site Wired News capitalized Internet, "Web" and "net" until Monday. No more, says copy chief Tony Long. He says there never was a good reason to capitalize Internet.
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.
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.
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.