innovations
A new privacy-issues battle has erupted on the Internet over the use of a surreptitious yet invasive device called the “Web bug”, which allows online advertising companies to track your surfing habits without your knowledge. Unlike the more widely recognised “cookies”, which you can disable in your browser, the “Web bug” is virtually undetectable.
It works by embedding a link in a Web page to a single pixel transparent image. You’ll never notice that it was called up, but your location on the Net is registered and can be correlated with other databases that may have more of your details. Check out news.cnet.com/news/0- 1007-200-
2247960.html. Another major threat to the privacy of files on your own computer is documented at www.latimes.com/business/
updates/lat_scour000714.htm.
Netsurfer Digest has come up with a list of really cheap places to host your website. No, don’t think South African. BuyDomains.com ($17/year); www.joker. com ($12); www.directnic.com/ ($15); www. dotster.com/ ($15); www.123domains.com/ ($15 or less); www.easyhosting.com/ ($15 Canadian, or about $10). This writer’s recommendation: www. port5.com, a United Kingdom site which gives you 5 megabytes Web space free, without obliging you to carry any kind of ads on your page and which allows you to run your own CGI (interactive programming) scripts.
Whoa, hey, after many years, Apple has decided to put a forward delete key on the Apple Pro keyboard.
It now has 108 keys, 15 of them programmable so that single keystrokes can be used to launch applications. This comes along with the elegant new Apple Pro Mouse, which has no keys – the whole thing is rocked forward to click. The tension in the click pivot is user- adjustable. Like the latest offerings from Microsoft, it also uses an optical tracking mechanism, so it can be used on any non-reflective surface.
Internet audio portal http://Angrycoffee.com has just added an MP3 search engine that can access the Napster network from the Web. The Percolator is slightly faster than Napster because the Web-based interface allows only downloads.
There is no facility to allow other users to upload from your hard drive, which is bound to annoy the purists. To lessen charges that the site is merely piggybacking, the Percolator places tracks by unsigned, independent artists alongside each search result, and no fee is asked for any of the tracks.
The millennium Olympics do not start until September 15, but already there are clashes behind the scenes far fiercer than those which will be seen on track and field.
Aboriginal groups are calling for a boycott of the Games in support of their demands for greater autonomy.
Environmentalists are targeting individual sponsors (see www.
cokespotlight.org).
Even local residents are taking the opportunity to campaign for lower rents see www.rw.apana.org.au. The Anti-Olympic Alliance is trying to unite the different protest groups – there are at least 40 – and two independent media sites have been set up at http://sydney.indymedia.org
and www.samcentre.org.
If you feel all websites look the same, take a look at the kooky site at www.once-upon-a-forest.com. Is it Net art or just an elaborate hoax? Who cares, when it is done as beautifully as this? Equally bizarre is www.soulbath.com, the online plaything of Hi-Res, one of London’s trendiest Web development
agencies. It pretends to be an anti-banner site, but does this by producing some very pretty banners indeed.