internet

I suppose "resurrected" is a bit harsh, since ActiveGrid never really died. More than anything else, ActiveGrid had a hard time explaining just what it was meant to do/be. I'm not very technical, so maybe it was just me, but I heard it explained as an application server and various other things. The true meaning never settled as an easy-to-explain elevator pitch for me.

Now ActiveGrid is back, but this time it's called WaveMaker and its mission is much clearer: help migrate noncompliant client/server applications to the Web. It also has a new CEO/management team, new technology, and a new market: Fortune 2000 developers.

This seems intuitively to be a Very Good Thing (applications are no longer resisting the Web's gravitational pull, and gravity always wins), but it becomes even more so when one considers some blog commentary from WaveMaker CEO Chris Keene:… Read more

The CNN article about the Aqua Dots product recall says:

U.S. safety officials have recalled about 4.2 million Chinese-made Aqua Dots bead toys that contain a chemical that has caused some children to vomit and become comatose after swallowing them.

We immediately did our own product recall, removing the unsafe toy from our house last night after our daughter went to bed. But how did this product get into our house in the first place?… Read more

As I have spent the past few years analyzing the differences between the Boomers and Gen X, a yawning chasm has developed between Gen X and the teens and twentysomethings behind us. Years from now I still think we'll be mulling over the cultural divide between people who came of age using MySpace and Facebook, and those who didn't.

While we geezers (aka parents in their thirties and forties) mull over the technological and privacy implications of social networking, the generation behind us is adopting it as a given, and pushing the frontiers of sharing.

Case in point: a start-up called Shoeboxed was launched last July by a group of Duke University undergrads and recent grads. At first glance, I could wrap my mind around Shoeboxed's main concept. The service allows you to input all your receipts in order to keep track of them in one place. Got it.

But then they added a strange social-networking spin. Users are encouraged to "flaunt" their purchases by sharing them publicly. And then other users are encouraged to "let out your inner Mean Girl and go nuts with our stereotyping feature. Using the mouse is almost as easy as real-life stereotyping!"

Because we all know that what the world needs is more stereotyping! The Shoeboxed labels include "ghetto fabulous, attention whore, trust fund baby, teenage mother, playa, playa-hater, white trash, techy geek dork"....you get the idea. The prominent butt shot of the "ghetto fabulous" icon stands out as being particularly gratuitous.… Read more

"No man is an island, entire of itself," wrote poet John Donne. But Microsoft apparently doesn't like poetry.

The company is currently mulling over whether to get in line with JavaScript standards for Internet Explorer, or whether to go it alone and crown itself a standard.

This is particularly tricky since every browser implements the JavaScript standard in different ways. So, the problem isn't exclusive to Microsoft.

It's more nettlesome with Microsoft, however, given its dominant browser market share. In some ways, it already is a standard unto itself. But I'm not sure the industry is ready for Microsoft to veer from the quasi-beaten path. According to an article posted Thursday on The Register:

Microsoft's browser is renowned as being a basket case on standards compliance, being less compliant than other leading standards in recent years according to the group monitoring this issue--The Web Standards Project (WASP).… Read more

Although most of the major tech news sites have been covering the impending ban on Internet tax for the next seven years, I'm a bit appalled at two facts that have emerged from this most recent bill: there has been very little "mainstream media" coverage and the curernt bill only calls for a ban for the next seven years.

To make matters worse, there's no end to this debacle in sight. An Internet that is tax free should be a mantra of this year's presidential candidates and should be covered on each and every news publication in the country. Why you ask? Because each and every person relies on the Internet, and if access fees jump for the sole purpose of paving roads or hiring more crooked bureaucrats, each and every person will bear that burden.

This is an important issue, folks.… Read more

Updated at 11:13 a.m. PDT: America's Internet access subscribers can breathe a sigh of relief: Congress isn't planning to allow taxes on your connection for another seven years.

With little debate, the U.S. House of Representatives on Tuesday voted 402-0 to pass an extension of an existing ban on Internet access taxes until 2014. The same proposal received unanimous approval in the Senate late last week.

The move comes just in the nick of time, as current law generally prohibiting state and local governments from levying the taxes was scheduled to expire Thursday.

The bill'… Read more

Webware is always happy to see new competitors challenge the status quo.

Jango attempts to combine Pandora's simple interface, Finetune's control over playlists, Facebook's ease with profiles, and the music community of Last.fm.

While this latest DIY Internet radio Web site doesn't open to public beta until November 12, we're sharing it with you now. It adds nice social-networking features in a simplistic way that others just don't have yet. (We've also managed to get some early invites to Jango for CNET readers before the site officially goes public.)

"What we … Read more

Scarcely a week before an existing ban on Internet access taxes is set to expire, the U.S. Senate late Thursday voted to let the prohibition live on for seven more years.

The compromise bill, which was approved by a voice vote, would prohibit state and local governments from taxing any service that enables users to connect to the Internet and some related services through 2014. That's three years longer than the version passed by the House of Representatives last week.

The bill won't go to the president's desk just yet. First, the House must approves the … Read more

Editor's note: Click here for Friday's update on the Senate's Internet access tax vote.

When the U.S. House of Representatives overwhelmingly passed a bill last week extending a ban on Internet access taxes, it may have opened up the possibility of previously forbidden taxes on paid e-mail and other Web services.

That's what a Congressional Research Service attorney concluded in a two-page memorandum (click here for a PDF) released on Thursday by Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), the author of the original tax ban in 1998. The CRS is a federally funded sort of "think … Read more