Stories by: Mark Gibbs

Last week I suggested that the IT world, particularly when it comes to marketing, is crazy, and I cited as evidence Microsoft's recently announced US$10 million plan to use comedian Jerry Seinfeld to hawk Vista.

Building Web applications that are robust and perform well is hard, but trying to promote them, build a market for them, and then make money from them is far harder. And harder still is when you're launching a Web service that competes with an established brand in the same market.

By and large we have all gotten used to spam and unsolicited commercial e-mail (UCE). Even if you buy or build the best filters, if you are at all active online you're going to get at least a few spam messages every day. It has become one of those things that you can't avoid, like death and taxes only more irritating.

If you missed the recent news it appears that Google has gone, in effect, head to head with Wikipedia, but with differences.

Every now and then you come across a product that is, what's the word I'm looking for, compelling? intriguing? Way cool? Today's topic is a product that is all of those things. It is the US$99.95 Eye-Fi Secure Digital (SD) memory card for your camera that has built-in wireless networking. Once configured, the card will log on to your Wi-Fi network and automatically upload images to one of a number of popular photo management tools or storage services such as Flickr and Picasa.

The Merriam-Webster Online dictionary defines slavery as "submission to a dominating influence," while Wikipedia notes that "slaves -- are ... compelled to perform labour or services." I mention these definitions because I believe we have become enslaved by badly designed Web-based user interfaces.

Last week in I began to relate my quest for an online e-commerce solution, a saga that makes "War and Peace" seem short and pithy.

Recently a retired AT&T employee named Mark Klein announced at a Capitol Hill press conference that he had evidence that "An exact copy of all Internet traffic that flowed through critical AT&T cables ... was being diverted to equipment inside the secret room."

Skype and Vonage illustrate what is wrong with user communications: They are "closed" and not standards based. These strategies support business models that are not in line with 21st century wants and needs. They have to go!

No matter how fast search engines get we always want them to be faster. Browster's eponymous product addresses the issue of accelerating searching not at the server end but at the browser.