According to Jupiter Research, a market research firm, reported here, for every dollar that US consumers spend online, another five or six dollars are going to offline purchases influenced by online research.
Category Archives: Technology
Picking up the tab
One of the nicest things about modern browsers (like Safari and Firefox) is that they enable tabbed browsing — enabling you to open a tab on an existing page for a related link, rather than having to overwrite the page or open a new window. Like all great ideas, it’s astonishingly simple. But where did the idea of tabs originate? Ed Tenner (author of several thoughtful books on technology) has written a nice essay on the history of this great little idea. Sample:
The tabs story begins in the Middle Ages, when the only cards were gambling paraphernalia. Starting in the late 14th century, scribes began to leave pieces of leather at the edges of manuscripts for ready reference. But with the introduction of page numbering in the Renaissance, they went out of fashion.
The modern tab was an improvement on a momentous 19th-century innovation, the index card. Libraries had previously listed their books in bound ledgers. During the French Revolution, authorities divided the nationalized collections of monasteries and aristocrats among public institutions, using the backs of playing cards to record data about each volume.
Thanks to Lorcan Dempsey for the link.
Wikipedia: English version now > 500,000 articles
The virgin podcaster
Virgin Radio has become the first old-style broadcaster to produce Podcasts.
The Wikipedians
Nice piece in Wired News about the most active Wikipedia editors.
So who really wrote MS-DOS?
A new twist on an old story. The pivot is that Microsoft’s fortunes were originally founded on MS-DOS, the operating system the company produced for the IBM PC and its clones in 1981. The irony is that when IBM came calling to buy an operating system, Microsoft didn’t have one, but Bill Gates went round the corner to Seattle Computer Products, which had written a DOS for the Intel 8086 chip that was to power the new PC, and bought it outright for a piffling sum (I think it was $50k). It was called Seattle Computing Products DOS. One of the great stories in the industry is that the IBM guys had called first at Digital research, Gary Kildall’s company in California, which had produced the first real microcomputer operating system (CP/M) to see if he was interested in developing a 16-bit version for the PC. But when the suits called, Kildall was out flying his plane and his wife (who answered the door) refused to sign the Non Disclosure Agreement that the IBM guys insisted on before they would open the conversation.
So we have two ironies: 1. How Kildall missed the chance to hit the big time; and 2. How the brass-necked Gates, who didn’t have an operating system, acquired one double-quick and sold it to IBM while retaining the right to sell it to other computer manfacturers.
But there is a third strand, which is the question of how Seattle Computer Products DOS came to be written. In his book, They made America, Harry Evans told the story about Kildall and Gates and the Seattle DOS which he described as a “slapdash clone” and “rip-off” of Kildall’s CP/M operating system. Now Tim Paterson, the software’s main author, has sued Evans and his publisher (Random House) for defamation. Evans says he will vigorously contest the case. Stand by for the public laundering of some very interesting dirty linen.
A Web Retrospective
Interesting but eccentric attempt by Yahoo to summarise 10 years, 100 moments of the Web using technology developed by 10 X 10. Thanks to Michael O’Brien for the link.
Intel goes for wireless mesh
ZD Net is reporting that Intel has unveiled its first proposals for 802.11s, a new mesh wireless networking standard.
Although mesh networks are already in use for very large deployments in cities such as Taipei, and in some industry sectors, none of the systems interoperate or are suitable for domestic or office environments, [Steve] Conner [Intel’s wireless guru] claimed. The 802.11s group, which met for the first time in July 2004, has just issued its first call for proposals, and Intel is keen for the new standard to cover domestic and small business environments.
Intel’s proposals build on top of existing standards, such as 802.11a/b/g wireless transmission protocols and 802.11i security, and is compatible with them. It adds extra functions to allow wireless nodes to discover each other, authenticate and establish connections, and to work out the most efficient route for a particular task. This includes the concept of quality of service, so a broadband video stream might take a different route across a home environment than a Web connection, to achieve higher bandwidth. This level of self-configuration and environmental awareness not only creates efficient wireless networks, Conner said, but automates the entire process of installation and reconfiguration.
Quentin: fame at last
Fame is a funny thing. Some years ago I was walking through the centre of Cambridge and ran into George Steiner. He was looking blissfully happy. “What’s up, George?” I asked. “I have finally made it”, he replied, beaming. “You’ve won the Nobel Prize for literature?”. “No, better than that”, he replied, “I’ve been invited to go on Desert island Disks!”
Now, George is good at hyperbole, but anyone who lives in England will appreciate why he was so chuffed. An invitation onto DID is indeed a sign that one has finally made it. But there is one other sign of universal acceptance — a reference on The Archers, the venerable BBC soap opera about life in a fictional rural village. When he was a student, my friend Quentin Stafford-Fraser co-invented the Webcam. To his delight (and mine), his original webcam was mentioned in The Archers. The only remaining accolade available to him is now a MacArthur Genius Award! I’m working on the citation now.
The DNB and Wikipedia
The Observer | At £7,500 for the set, you’d think they’d get their facts right. Lovely article on how the stupendously expensive Oxford Dictionary of National Biography is full of errors. This brings to mind the ongoing state of denial about Wikipedia. As Cory Doctorow observes:
If these errors had appeared in Wikipedia entries, its likely that they would have been fixed in short order — and once they were discovered by the outraged experts quoted in this Observer article, they certainly would be fixed.