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Produced and hosted by Jon Gordon, Future Tense brings you the latest technology topics in daily five-minute capsules. From electronic privacy and digital democracy to spam and computer worms, Future Tense keeps you up to date on the rapidly changing world of technology.
Future Tense is heard in the United States during broadcasts of the CBC's As It Happens.
Follow Jon Gordon's daily technology blog.
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Three brokerage firms recently raised their target prices for Apple Computer. Merrill Lynch and UBS issued rosy analyses of Apple yesterday, a week after Piper Jaffray raised its target from $52 to $100.
The move by Piper Jaffray is based in part on its recent survey of 200 iPod users.
Guest: Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster
Jon's daily tech news links:
BBC: China accused of blocking access to Google News
NPR: Verizon seeks to block Philly's wi-fi network
The free, open source Web browser Firefox is chipping away at Microsoft Internet Explorer, in part because it includes unique features such as "tabbed browsing." That allows you to open many web pages at once in a single window, and easily switch from one page to the next.
Microsoft hasn't improved its browser in several years, and a major upgrade isn't coming any time soon. But Dwight Silverman says if you prefer to stick with Internet Explorer, you can take matters in your own hands. With apologies to the MTV car improvement show "Pimp My Ride", it's a process Dwight calls "Pimp My Browser."
(Image courtesy of Avant)
Pimp your browser:
Jon's daily tech news links:
Newsweek: 4 more years to get e-voting right
TV industry analyst Phil Swann is out with his annual predictions for the coming year. Swann paints a good outlook for digital video recorders, but says Tivo will continue to struggle.
Jon's daily tech news links:
AP: Tivo pop-up ads raise concerns
Business Week: TV tech today and tomorrow
New York Times: eBay sellers face holiday crunch
The Minneapolis-based National Institute on Media and the Family has just released its annual video game report card in Washington. The group criticized games in which players shoot rival gang members, watch bare-breasted women and recreate the assassination of President Kennedy. It singled out popular games such as Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas.
The Institute and two sympathetic lawmakers, Connecticut Senator Joe Lieberman and Minnesota congresswoman Betty McCollum, are urging the industry to educate parents better about ratings and asking retailers not to sell such games to younger teenagers.
Institute president David Walsh unveiled a new public service TV ad, which features a young boy talking excitedly about playing a favorite game.
Walsh cited a survey his organization conducted last month, a secret shopper sting operation in which half of underage boys (but only 8 percent of girls) who tried were allowed to buy M-rated games.
The Interactive Entertainment Merchants Association, a trade group that represents game retailers, says it's premature to criticize stores.
Doug Lowenstein, president of Entertainment Software Association, said all the games on the institute's objectionable list are rated M, which he said shows the industry is doing its job.
Spammers do their best to stay in the shadows, but investigative reporter Brian McWilliams exposes many of them in his new book, Spam Kings: The Real Story Behind the High-Rolling Hucksters Pushing Porn, Pills, and @*#&% Enlargements.
McWilliams tells the tale of Davis Hawke, an intelligent but troubled young man who was once an Internet-savvy Neo-Nazi activist before rivals discovered him to be Jewish, ending that phase of his life.
McWilliams says it wasn't long before Hawke made millions of dollars online.
Jon's daily tech news links:
News.com: Hot for the holidays
Business Week: Shopper's survival guide to HDTV
New York Times: New tools help patients reclaim lost senses
Wired News reporter Leander Kahney has collected the stories of the most fanatical Macintosh fans in his new coffee table book, The Cult of Mac.
Jon's daily tech news links:
USA Today: In-person tech support is Apple's secret weapon
The federal government is promising that within a few years anyone with a computer will be able to see and search millions of newspaper pages from 1836 to 1922.
To see the same material right now, you have to pore through microfilm at the Library of Congress, local libraries and newspaper archives.
The first images should be ready by 2006.
The National Digital Newspaper Program is a joint project by the Library of Congress and the National Endowment for the Humanities to improve our understanding of American history.
Guest: Bruce Cole, chairman of the NEH
Jon's daily tech news links:
Reuters: Taipei to cloak city in world's largest Wi-fi grid
USA Today: U2 sees iPod ad as synergy, not sellout
Slate: How to steal Wi-fi (and prevent neighbors from stealing yours)
In a widely-linked and discussed Weblog posting this week, Cardozo School of Law professor Susan Crawford wrote that the Federal Communications Commission appears to be asserting a stunning range of authority over all electronic communications.
Her alarm arises from a legal brief that the FCC filed this month in an ongoing challenge to its authority to limit how consumers will be able to use digital television signals. The so-called "broadcast flag" is meant to head off copying and Internet distribution of digital programs, which the government believes would kill digital TV before it really takes off. The government wants consumers to convert to digital so it can sell the analog frequencies being used by tv broadcasters now.
Crawford says the FCC appears to be using the broadcast flag issue to expand its powers over the 'Net.
Jon's daily tech news links:
Wired: FCC crackdown could spread
AP: 30 million newspaper pages to go on 'Net
BBC: Pandas benefit from wireless net
Industry Standard: New Google search tool aimed at scholars
AP: AOL packaging new security features
Wired: Wilco's Jeff Tweedy talks file-sharing
USA Today: Ads to pop up when Tivo users skip commercials
Blogging is the practice of writing about events and issues in a reverse-chronological, Web-based journal. Political bloggers have garnered the most attention, but increasingly, businesses are replacing their static Web pages with blogs to communicate with customers.
Guests: Charlene Li, Forrester Research analyst; Leif Knecht, Knecht's Nurseries and Landscaping
Jon's daily tech news links:
Business Week: Online advertising growing at sizzling rate
New York Times: Some Texas schools track students like livestock
Slate: AOL kills maverick software company
Peer-to-peer company Grokster has been one of the main targets of the recording industry's legal campaign to crush downloading. But now Grokster is teaming up with a Silicon Valley startup to offer a music streaming service, in which users can listen to but not download and save music.
Grokster will promote a co-branded service with Mercora. Users can search for and listen to music that's located on the computers of other users on the system.
Because no downloading is involved, Grokster and Mercora executives believe it is entirely legal.
Srivats Sampath is CEO, president and co-founder of Mercora.
SAMPATH: Radio was the ultimate discovery medium for new music. But over the last 20 years radio has been on the decline as far as bringing new music to peoples' ears. That's the reason a lot of people were going to peer to peer, discovering new music then going to buy the CD. But unfortunately the act of downloading is illegal. So we said look, why don't we figure out a way by which we can provide the same discovery aspect you get in peer to peer but instead of downloading you provide it as a stream. And streaming is legal under
copyright law.
GORDON: And your company pays a fee, right?
SAMPATH: Yes, Tto the songwriters and the people who own the music. So every week we write a check to ASCAP and BMI. And we write a check to Sound Exchange.
GORDON: One thing that is raising eyebrows is your new association with Grokster, which is a company whose software has enabled many people to illegally downloand music on the Internet. So why go with Grokster?
SAMPATH: Look, they have a user base that likes music. Today they are downloading illegally. If we can move that base from doing downloads to streaming, then the artists are compenated, the record lables are compensated.
Technology industry analyst Robe Enderle says Mercora could give Grokster a path out of legal trouble.
ENDERLE: What this does is provide Grokster with a potential end game. At some particular point the record industry wins. If Grokster doesn't have a way to deal with the situation in a legal fashion, they'll go the same way the first Napster did. So I think this is a way for them to hedge and transition into a legal property.
Jon's daily tech news links:
CNET News.com: Man's cross-country Segway journey nears end
Wired: Senate may ram copyright bill
Business Week: Betting on tools that power blogs
New York times: Fired flight attendant finds blogs can backfire
San Francisco Chronicle: Traffic light senses, punishes speeders
In the current issue of The Nation, writer Micah Sifry heralds the rise of something called "open source politics." It's a classic case of techno-jargon seeping out into the wider world; "open source," of course, is a term more familiar to computer programmers than political junkies.
Sifry is executive editor of a new site called PersonalDemocracy.com, where he's trying to put these ideas into action. He also recommends The Daily Kos and RedState.org as two good examples of nascent open source politics (on each side of the aisle). Jeff Horwich guest-hosts.
Jeff's daily tech news links:
CNET's News.com: Tiny antennas to keep tabs on U.S. drugs
Int'l Herald Tribune: Microsoft ends to end Apple's sprint on music
Yeald.com: Investors say Microsoft search can't edge out Google and Yahoo
Microsoft has released the first public version of its new search engine. In the tech world, this is huge -- the world's biggest technology company jumping into one of the most hotly contested areas of the internet.
I talked to a couple of search engine experts to see what they think. Chris Sherman is associate editor of SearchEngineWatch.com. He says at this point the battle is not about whether one engine does better or worse with a basic search. It's about the extra bells and whistles -- he calls it the search engine's "personality."
I heard similar thoughts from Loren Baker, the director of search marketing at WebAdvantage.net and editor of the Search Engine Journal. He likes how Microsoft is using its breadth as a company to strengthen the search results.
Google struck back at Microsoft almost immediately, announcing it had doubled the number of indexed pages on its system to eight billion -- three billion more than Microsoft. Jeff Horwich guest-hosts.
Jeff's daily tech news links:
Reuters: Microsoft's search encounters glitches on first day
USA Today: Boeing, Northrop Grumman to team up to build next NASA spacecraft
You can hardly talk about technology without paying attention to Best Buy, the biggest electronics retailer on the continent. Best Buy has been thinking about its customers lately -- specifically, which ones it wants and which ones it doesn't. (Composite Image: APM)
The company has labeled a small minority of customers "devils." These folks -- maybe up to 20% or all customers -- actually cost Best Buy money when they walk through the door. To be fair, targeting the devils is part of a broader strategy to define its different customer segments -- even going so far as to give them names like Barry (the middle-aged technophile), Jill (the suburban technophobe), and Buzz (the young tech geek).
The company did not return a call from Future Tense to talk about this. But Gary McWilliams wrote an article this week in the Wall Street Journal about Best Buy's effort to cull the bad seeds. Jeff Horwich guest-hosts.
Jeff's daily tech news links:
NewScientist.com: Revolutionary plane plans to set new record at 10 times the speed of sound
Scotsman.com: European spacecraft to research moon colonies
Newsday: Microsoft rolls out new search engine (watch for this topic in tomorrow's Future Tense -- JH)
Yesterday, we had probably the biggest opening day in the history of entertainment. It wasn't a movie, it was a $50 video game.
In "Halo 2," you are a super-soldier of the future, defending humankind from an axis of aliens known as The Covenant. It is only available for the Microsoft Xbox. The first Halo was so good it is essentially credited with keeping the Xbox alive as a viable alternative to Sony's Playstation2. (At left: The first copies of Halo 2 from a St. Paul game store. APM Photo: Jeff Horwich)
First-day Halo 2 sales were looking to top $100 million. By comparison, the movie The Incredibles opened at number one this weekend, and made $70 million. For the weekend.
Halo 2 went on sale in select stores at 12:01 Tuesday morning. We always talk to experts on this show. So, for this topic I bundled up, stayed up late, and went to where the experts were. Jeff Horwich guest-hosts.
Jeff's daily tech news links:
London Free Press: Halo 2 devilishly good
TechNews World: Microsoft getting ready to roll out its search engine
At an awards ceremony tomorrow in Silicon Valley, the Tech Museum of Innovation recognizes organizations that have developed technologies to improve the lives of people around the world.
The 2004 Tech Museum Awards honor projects that make better wheelchairs for the third world, bring handheld computers to doctors in Africa, and provide software to help citizens keep tabs on developing democracies.
Past winners include a foot-powered irrigation pump and real-time television subtitling technology to increase literacy in rural India.
The non-profit Fritz Institute will receive an award for logistics software to streamline disaster relief.
Seattle's Grameen Foundation will receive a Tech Award for providing "microloans" to African farmers and business people so they can buy cell phones.
This week in Silicon Valley, the Tech Museum of Innovation recognizes organizations developing technologies that improve the lives of people around the world.
The 2004 Tech Museum Awards honor projects that make drinking water safer, boost access to information technology in impoverished countries, and improve technology for safely clearing landmines in war-torn countries.
In the health award category, the non-profit group Satellife will accept an award for its project that delivers hand-held computers to doctors and nurses in poor countries such as Uganda.
Whirlwind Wheelchair International, based at San Francisco State University, will receive an award for designing chairs that are better suited to third-world countries.
Critics of touch-screen voting say even though this week's elections seemed to avoid catastrophe, it's still possible there were large numbers of lost votes or even hacker attacks which could have affected the outcome.
They point to hundreds of reports of minor problems, from slow-to-boot-up machines to ballots that were filled in before voters got the chance to make their choices, as reason for further investigation.
Still, e-voting vendors and the industry group that represents them say the election was a complete success.
Guest: Dan Selligson with the non-partisan Election Reform Information Project
Jon's daily tech news links:
AP: E-vote glitch inflates Bush total in Ohio
Business Week: Is Google stock too expensive?
Later this month or early next, the New York Times will run a full-page ad for a free, open source Web browser called Firefox, which continues to make inroads against Microsoft's Internet Explorer.
A product of the Mozilla Foundation, Forefox's lineage can be traced to the pioneering Netscape browser. It commands only a three percent market share, but is growing rapidly. It's popular among the techno elite.
Firefox is believed to be much more secure than IE, which is plagued by scores of security holes that can lead to compromised computers.
The Times ad is the result of an effort led by Rob Davis, a public relations man who started the campaign as a volunteer while unemployed, and continues the work in his new job at a Minneapolis public relations firm.
He started soliciting contributions to buy a full-page ad after a computer meltdown.
Jon's daily tech news links:
The Register: AOL lost 2 million customers last year
Industry Standard: E-voting backers see success
AP: Two guilty in first felony spam case
AP: Film studios prepare to sue file sharers
New York Times: Indians outsourcing companies cheer Bush victory
For four years, professor Stuart Shulman of the University of Pittsburgh has been talking with federal agencies like the EPA to determine the impact of organized e-mail campaigns that are meant to influence the making of laws at the agency level.
In the process known as "rulemaking," federal agencies like the Federal Communications Commission work out the details of broad mandates given to them by Congress. The agencies are required to consider public comments before making many new rules.
In one example, the EPA has received 700,000 comments for a proposed rule dealing with allowable levels of mercury in the air. Shulman says almost 200,000 of those comments were generated by a Web site run by the advocacy group MoveOn.
He says these campaigns sometimes help catch the attention of Congress or the media, but usually fail to influence rulemakers.
Jon's daily tech news links:
CNET News.com: Netflix reduces monthly fee
eWeek: Internet Explorer takes another market share hit
Industry Standard: Many meds, no cures for online identity theft
With most states reporting massive new voter registrations and observers worrying about how voting machines will perform, My Polling Place is a new site that aims to ease voter confusion.
Plug in your home address and zip code, and you can see where to vote tomorrow, what kind of machine you'll encounter, and how to use that machine.
The site comes from the People for the American Way Foundation, a group that has worked to boost voters' rights since the contested election in Florida in 2000.
Ralph G. Neas, president of the People for the American Way Foundation
Elsewhere:
Business Week: Tech buying guide
CNET News.com: How tech is shaping 2004 elections
AP: Tech support traces many problems to spyware
Wired: Music inspired by old video games
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