AT&T says no to Excite@Home’s broadband assets
Excite@Home has announced that it will cease to operate by the end of February. When it does, there will be little if any cash remaining to reimburse creditors. The announcement comes after AT&T reneged on its offer to buy the assets of the cable internet access provider. Thanks to weeks of acrimonious wrangling, AT&T will not buy the assets of the company, in which it held a majority stake. While AT&T had initially offered $307 million, Excite@Home’s creditors vehemently opposed the sale, believing that Excite@Home should hold out for more. Excite@Home filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection back in October. On Friday, a bankruptcy court gave Excite@Home permission to cut service to cable providers, such as AT&T and Cox Communications. As a result, Excite@Home abruptly shut down connections to some 850,000 AT&T cable subscribers. AT&T is scrambling to restore service to those subscribers via its own network; so far, about 500,000 have had their access restored.

Virulent ‘Goner’ worm strikes computers
Antivirus companies say that the latest computer virus, which is currently churning its way through email inboxes, might be the worst thing since the “Love Letter” virus. This one, a computer worm dubbed “Goner,” is noxious in part because it can delete antivirus software if deployed. Goner spreads through Microsoft Outlook just like most worms, and it can also spread through instant messaging services such as ICQ. The Goner worm is carried in an email bearing the simple subject line “Hi.” The message text reads, “How are you? When I saw this screen saver, I immediately thought about you I am in a harry [sic], I promise you will love it!” The payload is an attachment disguised as a screen saver. If a recipient clicks on it and launches it, it spreads to other users in the Outlook address book, shuts down any other software that’s open, and erases important files. Antivirus companies are on an ultra-high state of alert and are considering Goner an “outbreak,” the likes of which has not been seen since May 2000’s “Love Letter.” But despite its rapid spread in the U.S. and Europe, the virus appears to have been curtailed in Asia.

RealNetworks launches internet music venture
Months after the death of file-sharing pioneer Napster and the rise of alternatives like AudioGalaxy and Morpheus, RealNetworks yesterday announced the launch of its music download venture MusicNet. The undertaking, jointly owned by RealNetworks and the record labels EMI GroupPLC of Britain, Bertelsmann AG of Germany and AOL Time Warner Inc.'s Warner Music, will be available under a service called RealOne Music. It is an outgrowth of RealNetworks’ previous GoldPass offering, which the company claims brought in 400,000 paying customers. For the RealOne Music service, users will have to pony up $9.95 a month for 100 song "downloads," which expire after 30 days, and 100 "streams," good for one listen. For an additional $9.95 a month, a RealOne membership offers audio and video news and sports and entertainment programming from such sources as The Wall Street Journal Online, CBS Survivor Insider, and iFilm.

Plastic.com goes dark amid ‘upgrade’
Plastic.com, the online discussion site and community weblog operated by Suck founder Joey Anuff, has gone off-line entirely, at least for the time being. According to a note posted on its home page, the site is being moved to new servers. Its parent company, Automatic Media, went out of business back in June. The company was formed to put old-school content web sites including Feed Magazine, graphic-arts satire site Suck.com and online pop-culture lexicon Alt.culture under the umbrella of a single company, so that they could pool their ad sales staffs and other resources. Plastic was launched shortly after Automatic Media came into being early this year. But the ad slump and dot.com bomb took Automatic Media down. After Automatic’s demise, Plastic’s founders continued to operate it as a labor of love. The note on the site indicates that Plastic will be back, but it does not say when.

Internet research company Webnoize craters
Internet research company Webnoize, which offered online entertainment news and analysis in addition to conferences, has ceased operations for now. The firm says it plans to return to business sometime next year, after restructuring itself to offer new services and products. The company blames its woes upon the economic slowdown and severely depressed dot.com ad spending. Webnoize, like many dot.coms, had been in the throes of cost-cutting measures, reducing its staff from 25 to 15 in recent months. The company traditionally makes money off the conferences it hosts, but attendance was much lower than desired at its most recent conference in October. Perhaps Webnoize’s most widely disseminated research concerned the rise of music-swapping services such as Napster.

December 5, 2001 © 2001 Media Life


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