July 13, 2004 - Thanks to the Internet, statistic-hungry baseball fans have more information at their fingertips than ever before. The official web site of Major League Baseball, MLB.com, is one of the most popular sports sites on the Internet, and actually makes a profit. Fans can listen to games, watch video highlights, check detailed box scores, and more. The most popular MLB.com product is "Gameday," a free service that lets fans follow any game in near real-time. They can see the location of every pitch, what happens to every ball that leaves the batters box, and get just about any stat imaginable.
December 31, 2003 - Enhance your engergy. Mortgage rates hit rock bottom. Get your valium online. We're all painfully familiar with these kinds of spammer come-on lines. Rather than stew about spam, a group of independent musicians, the band 15-16 Puzzle, recorded songs based on spam subject lines. MPR's Jon Gordon reports.
December 30, 2003 - In Scotland, open source software advocate Robert Kerr has managed to persuade most public libraries to place on their shelves CD's of OpenOffice. That's a free software package akin to Microsoft Office, containing a word processor, spreadsheet, and other tools. The idea, says Kerr, is to get important software into the hands of people who are unable or unwilling to pay for expensive commercial equivalents.
December 29, 2003 - Children's Hospitals and Clinics of Minneapolis and St. Paul have created a Web-based organizer for medical information. You can, for free, keep track of your family's medical conditions, immunizations, medications, insurance information, and more. You can enter, and access, the information from any Internet-connected computer. Jim Levin is a pediatric infectious disease consultant and medical director of Informatics for Childrens' Hospitals and Clinics in Minneapolis and St. Paul. He is creator of the Children's Medical Organizer. The idea behind the organizer, he says, is to reduce hassle and stress for parents.
December 26, 2003 - A veteran of the new economy, Yahoo executive Tim Sanders, says the new economy is causing millions of Americans to become anxious, isolated, lonely, fatigued and sleep-deprived. He's even coined a phrase for it New Economy Depression Syndrome, or "NEDS." Sanders recently teamed with Heartmath, a company that advises businesses on ways to reduce workplace stress, to survey Americans who use a lot of technology in their jobs.
December 24, 2003 - All the flavors of e-commerce, from banking to auctions to music downloads, are the fastest growing activities online, according to a new survey from the Pew Internet and American Life Project.
December 23, 2003 - The hacker hero known as "DVD Jon" is cleared -- again. In another blow to the entertainment industry, an appeals court in Norway has upheld the acquittal of a Norwegian man charged with piracy for releasing a program that could crack DVD security codes. Prosecutors had appealed Jon Johansen's January acquittal of charges that he violated Norway's data break-in laws. The prosecution wanted a 90-day suspended jail sentence, confiscation of computer equipment and a $3,000 fine. Cindy Cohn is legal director for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, an American legal advocacy group that backs Johansen.
December 22, 2003 - How do you keep track of Web sites, e-mails, files, and other electronic information? Researchers at the University of Washington have been studying the problem of information overload. The "Keeping Found Things Found" project is looking at how people find their way back to Web sites long after they've identified them. The ultimate goal of the project, which is funded by the National Science Foundation, is to develop better information organization tools.
December 19, 2003 - Children and their parents complain about school Internet access. Billions of our tax dollars have gone to wire public schools for the Internet. But a new survey reveals strong dissatisfaction about going online in the classroom. The Children, Families and the Internet report from research and consulting firm Grunwald Associates surveyed thousands of children and parents. Two major complaints emerged, according to Peter Grunwald
December 18, 2003 - Next month marks the 20th anniversary of the Apple Macintosh. Many people believe the groundbreaking Mac, with its graphical user interface and mouse, had the greatest impact. Our Dwight Silverman recently posted his list of the top ten personal computers.