RealAudio or MP3

In the December issue of Wired, contributing editor Noah Shachtman tells the story of Daniel Varo, one of three people shot to death by a friend in Tacoma, Washington. The group of friends had socialized in the real world and traded messages on the social networking site MySpace. The murder victims, and the killer, lived their lives surrounded by drugs and run-ins with the law.

Here's how Shachtman describes his story in an e-mail sent to friends and colleagues:

"When Varo died, his far-flung collection of relatives and friends gathered on MySpace, to console each other, to plan his memorial, and to vent their rage over his murder. People who had never met face-to-face suddenly became the most trusted of confidants. And along the way, they discovered that Varo didn't completely disappear when he died. Varo had had spent so much time online that scraps of his life lingered on the Web -- a ghost in the networked machines."

Here's a longer version of my interview with Shachtman.

RealAudio or MP3

iPod owners can easily spend more on accessories than the player itself. Docking stations play iPods through external speakers while charging them. There are iPod car adapters, alarm clocks, FM transmitters, microphones, and hundreds of other add-ons. Jeremy Horwitz, executive editor of the iPod news and review site iLounge, says one category of accessories stands above all others when it comes to increasing your iPod pleasure: headphones.

I recently tested two replacements for the earbuds that came with my iPod. Both will run you somewhere between $85 and $100.

Shure E2C: Rich sound, but I couldn't get them to fit in my ears right, even with all the different size attachments included. The E2C isolated sound very effectively -- I couldn't hear anything but the music. The headphone cord was a little thick and heavy, causing a noticeable pull downward. Another beef: The E2C comes in one of those nearly-impossible-to-open plastic cases. I had to use a knife to pry the headphones loose, and I thought there was a real risk I would severely cut myself in the process.

Westone UM1. Fantastic sound. I heard bits of music I would not hear with the Apple earbuds (the newer generation of which aren't half bad). Good sound isolation. The cord is lighter than the E2C, which is great. But again, fit is an issue. The foam tips lost their structural integrity after a few uses in the gym.

Julio Ojeda-Zapata writes about a possible solution to the problems I had getting earbuds to fit: custom molds.

RealAudio or MP3

Responding to the growing trend of government-sponsored Internet censorship in many countries, researchers at the University of Toronto have created a new tool to help citizens in restrictive countries circumvent censors. Psiphon is a program to help people living in censorship regimes access Western news sites, blogs, religious sites, health information and other forbidden content on the Web.

Ronald Deibert, who directs the University of Toronto's Citizen Lab, which monitors global Internet censorship, says the Lab created Psiphon to help fulfill the early promise of the Internet to advance human rights.

RealAudio or MP3

Twin Cities-based Curbly is a new company that seeks to capitalize on our enthusiasm for creating better-looking living spaces. Users can post photos of their homes, blog about design ideas, and get help with interior design projects from other users. Curbly was built with an open source software tool called Ruby on Rails, which lets developers create Web companies quickly and with fewer people.

RealAudio or MP3

Traditional news media has been in flux over the past several years largely because of the Internet which has been blamed for smashing newspaper profits. Online interactivity is playing a bigger role than ever as news agencies look for new ways to connect with their audience.

And gaming is part of this new frontier.

Take this MSNBC game on baggage screening. It came out a few years ago as part of the network's coverage of airline safety. The game uses attributes like scoring, time limits, right answer, wrong answer.

Nora Paul is Director of the Institute for New Media Studies at the University of Minnesota's Journalism Department. She calls the MSNBC game a beautiful example of what some of the possibilities are for news organizations to create real, experiential content. She says gaming is a direction traditional news media should consider heading.

RealAudio or MP3

In the competitive travel industry, many airlines are figuring out that technology can set them apart. United, Continental, Delta, and KLM are among the airlines that have signed on with Apple to offer iPod connections on their airplanes. Passengers should start seeing iPod connections on their flights by mid 2007.

RealAudio or MP3

An MIT spinoff company is taking information and transforming it into a glowing orb. What's an orb, you ask? It's a round, frosted-glass lamp that's about the size of a softball. Inside it are LEDs which can glow any color of the rainbow.

Ambient Devices created the orb. CEO David Rose says the orb tells you anything you want to know by tuning into a wireless network.

RealAudio or MP3

Remember 35 mm. film cameras? You know the ones. They require that rolled up spool of plastic, the kind that becomes a negative that you print your photos from? Yeah, those film cameras, with F-stops and shutterspeeds... It's a fuzzy memory for lots of us.

That's because digital cameras are fast replacing them.

Major manufacturers like Nikon have stopped making 35 mm. film cameras except for those at the very high end. And Minolta has stopped making them altogether.

That's got Andy Howard worried. Howard is a photographer and professor of art at Wheaton College in Norton, Massachussetts. He wants his students to know how to use film cameras, so he's calling for donations.

If you dislike spending $70 on a drab product like antivirus software or bristle at the intrusiveness of security software suites, this story's for you.

Washington Post personal technology columnist Rob Pegoraro has just reviewed the major security packages from the likes of McAfee, Symantec, and Trend Micro, and he doesn't really like any of them. He finds the antivirus-spyware-phishing-firewall suites expensive, too taxing on your computer, and sometime ineffective.

Pegoraro says the better solution is to mix and match free security tools you can get through Windows or on the Internet. These include Windows Defender, AVG, Avast, and the firewall built into Windows XP.

RealAudio or MP3

The next generation of Windows for consumers is due January 30th -- a fact that will soon be unavoidable as Microsoft prepares a massive PR campaign to persuade users that Vista is a must-buy product.

Should you upgrade your existing PC to Windows Vista? Future Tense technology analyst Dwight Silverman offers his advice.

RealAudio or MP3

Declan McCullagh of CNET News.com says with the Democrats now controlling both the Senate and the House, you can expect some changes in technology policy. Republicans have narrowly defeated an attempt to pass an Internet neutrality bill, but McCullagh says the picture is changing.

RealAudio or MP3

Cisco Systems makes equipment that runs the Internet. Now it wants to get into the baseball stadium business.

Cisco is sitting on a big piece of land just north of Silicon Valley, in the growing city of Fremont, California. It's looking more likely that Cisco will sell the acreage to the Oakland A's for a new stadium complex, and Cisco will get naming rights to the new ballpark. A's owner Lew Wolff is pitching a high tech stadium featuring Cisco technology, about 25 miles south of the A's current home.

Wolff envisions fans buying tickets on their cell phones, then swiping them at the gate for admission. Fans would have access to instant replays on their laptops. Digital advertising displays would switch images based on the buying habits of the people walking by through data embedded in their mobile phones. Fans could buy pictures of themselves from dozens of cameras positioned around the stadium. They could pay to have themselves shown on a giant screen.

But do tradition-bound baseball and technology go together? Philip J. Lowry of Minneapolis is author of Green Cathedrals: The Ultimate Celebrations of All 273 Major League and Negro League Ballparks Past and Present. Lowry says technology has a place in baseball stadiums if it's done correctly.

RealAudio or MP3

The majority of judicial decisions are based on case law. But some judges are starting to look to legal blogs to help form their opinions.

The hundreds of legal blogs on the Web range from "a day in the life of a lawyer" to scholarly legal research.

Recent law school grad and legal blog taxonomer Ian Best from Ohio has created a legal blog taxonomy on his Web site 3L Ephiphany. Best says he has found 27 cases where judges have cited legal blogs in their rulings.

One of the most often cited blogs is Sentencing Law and Policy by Doug Berman, Professor at the Moritz College of Law at Ohio State University.

RealAudio or MP3

Readers of Consumer Reports say online merchants and independent local stores are the best places to buy digital cameras, printers, mobile phones, MP3 players and other electronics. Consumer Reports surveyed 20,000 of its subscribers.

Consumer Reports secret shoppers, who buy $850,000 worth of electronics every year, say the worst time to shop in stores is the lunch period. They also advise against buying extended warranties.

RealAudio or MP3

Internet videos may have played a part in the defeat, or apparent defeat, of several prominent candidates, including Senators George Allen of Virginia and Conrad Burns of Montana.

Allen's now famous "Macaca" comment got lots of play on video site YouTube, as did clips of Burns napping during a congressional hearing and making some controversial comments linking taxi drivers with terrorism. Then there's the video of John Kerry's botched joke about college students getting stuck in Iraq if they didn't study hard.

Phil Noble with the consulting firm Politics Online says YouTube is the top story this year in the world of Internet politics.

RealAudio or MP3

Millions of Americans will cast votes today on machines that critics say are subject to malfunction and hacking.

Cryptographer David Chaum has invented a new voting system that he says provides citizens with proof their vote was properly counted. Chaum's Punchscan combines elements of older-style paper ballots with an optical scanning machine. It allows voters to take a piece of the ballot home with them as a receipt. Punchscan has already been used to collect and tabulate votes in a student election on a college campus, and Chaum says it can work for other elections, too.

RealAudio or MP3

This election season, video Websites are breathing new life into political campaign commercials whether politicians like it or not.

Probably the most famous ad is from Tennessee. The Republican National Committee created the ad against Democratic Senate Candidate Harold Ford, Jr. Republicans later pulled it from television after complaints it played to racist fears. Harold Ford, Jr. Is African American.

But the ad lives on and on and on since it made its way onto YouTube. The grassroots video sharing Website has become so popular that Google just bought it for $1.65 billion.

Julie Barko Germany is Deputy Director for the Institute for Politics, Democracy and the Internet at George Washington University. She says this election season, online video is hot and YouTube has become the go-to site for the good, the bad, and the ugly of political campaign commercials.

RealAudio or MP3

The smallest iPod yet is now on sale. The new iPod Shuffle goes for$79. It's about the size of a book of matches, and comes with a built-in clip for attaching to your clothes. The Shuffle will hold about 240 songs, and will play music for up to 12 hours between charges. Analysts say it should be a hot seller, possibly at the expense of the more capable iPod Nano, which starts at $149.

Jeremy Horwitz, editor-in-chief of iLounge, a news and review site dedicated to the iPod and related products, says the new Shuffle has the same limitation as the old one: no screen and no ability to choose a specific song.

RealAudio or MP3

Google is expanding again. It's just announced a new e-mail service for mobile phones, and has acquired a California startup that develops online collaboration tools known as wikis. Wikis let users create, modify and even delete information on items that others in a group have produced.

Google is still known for search, but it has dozens of products and services, including an online calendar, a shopping comparison service, an instant messaging program, a spreadsheet application, and a Web-based word processor. Each new Google tool generates buzz, but many of them languish in relative obscurity after they're unveiled.

That's not a problem for Google, according to Bill Wise, CEO of search engine marketing firm Did-It.

RealAudio or MP3

Allison Fine believes Americans are being kept out of the political process by complex voter registration rules, on-the-move polling places and unreliable information on candidates. Fine, author Momentum: Igniting Social Change in the Connected Age, says it's been another depressing election season where candidates treat voters like ATMs, and politcal commentators will once again bemoan low turnout among young voters.

Fine, a senior fellow Demos, wants to ditch much of the current system and replace it with a government-run Internet portal where citizens can read legislative voting histories, discuss issues with other citizens, arrange political meet-ups, find out where candidates are getting their money, and most importantly, vote. She'd like to see the system in place by 2020.