|
|
Yahoo and Compaq Computer Corp. are reaching out to railway commuter crowds by introducing a wireless service on trains. Under the terms of the new deal, some dining and coach cars on Amtrak trains on three routes will be equipped with Compaq iPAQ pocket PCs that have wireless internet access. The trains equipped with the service are the Acela Express, which runs from Washington, D.C., to Boston; the Capitols line, which goes from Sacramento to San José; and the Hiawatha, the Milwaukee-to-Chicago line. Yahoo says the gambit is an effort to show how convenient wireless web access is, so that potentially lucrative commuter types will jump onboard. The service will be free for at least half of the year. Previously, Yahoo has offered free wireless surfing on New York City taxi cabs and on Japanese commuter planes.
Los Angeles suburb banning new net cafes
Unless you're a bureaucrat in a repressive regime, you might not think of the internet cafe as a dangerous institution. But in Garden Grove, a suburb of Los Angeles, cybercafes have come to be associated with old-fashioned juvenile crime, leading the city council to institute a 45-day moratorium on the opening of new ones. A 20-year-old man was stabbed on the premises of one internet cafe, the latest in a number of violent and property crimes in cafe parking lots. Youths are treating the cafes as inexpensive video game parlors, evidently--use of a computer hooked up to a high-speed internet connection typically costs $2 an hour at the cafes, sparing people from having to feed game machines with quarters. The city council has declared that parents or guardians must accompany minors after 8 p.m. on weeknights. With this restriction, the cafes may now stay open until 2 a.m. instead of midnight.
Online auction fraud among top FTC complaints
Internet auction fraud made up a high percentage of consumer complaints directed to the Federal Trade Commission last year. Ten percent of all consumer fraud complaints related to internet auctions. Typically in such cases, consumers bid upon items and pay for them but never receive them. Seven percent of complaints centered around internet and computer services, 4 percent of the complaints concerned sweepstakes, and 4 percent concerned the work-at-home schemes so often advertised in spam emails. But the No. 1 complaint was identity theft. Forty-two percent of the complaints concerned theft of people’s identities, typically via credit card scams. The average victim of ID theft was bilked of $6,767, and a total of $100 million was taken from financial institutions in 2001 through the use of stolen IDs.
Is Hell freezing over? Amazon turns first profit.
Online retailer Amazon.com achieved the unexpected and turned a small profit in the fourth quarter, fueled by holiday sales. During the last three months of 2001, Amazon’s sales jumped 15 percent, leading to a net profit of $5.1 million, compared to a net loss of $545.1 million for the same period in 2000. Its total revenues that quarter reached $1.12 billion, up 15 percent from $972 million in the same period in 2000. That growth is three times faster than analysts had projected. Amazon fueled the sales growth by offering low prices, plus free shipping on orders of less than $99. Amazon is not the only e-tailer to proclaim fourth quarter profitability. 1-800-Flowers.com brought in a net profit of $1.8 million for the quarter, up from a loss of $10.5 million in the same quarter in 2000.
Dutch prince's online chat hampered by hackers
Sure, the upcoming marriage between the Dutch crown prince Willem-Alexander and his Argentinean fiancée has sparked interest in the Netherlands--but not enough to produce three billion hits in the first minute of the couple's online chat session on Tuesday. The royal couple-to-be was forced to abandon the session, as the overwhelming volume of viewers to the exchange froze screens all over the Netherlands. The network operator behind the chat, KPN, suspects hacker involvement, though it does not know whether the attack was politically motivated. One hundred people were picked by the Dutch government to take part in the discussion, with tens of thousands expected to join in as spectators. Some controversy has swirled around the impending marriage since it was revealed that fiancée Maxima Zorreguieta's father served as civilian minister in the military dictatorship in Argentina from 1976-83.
January 24, 2002 © 2002 Media Life
Printer-Friendly
Version | Send
to a Friend
Cover Page | Contact
Us
