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Think of a pay-for-performance search engine, and the first name that comes to mind is Overture Services, nee GoTo.com. Rival site FindWhat.com wants to be the premier pay-for-results site and is challenging Overture’s claim to patented technology. Both companies use a system that’s different from that of most search engines. Would-be advertisers must bid on how high in the list of search results the links to their sites appear. Overture Services patented the technology back in July and accused FindWhat of infringing on its patent. FindWhat has accused Overture of not filing the patent paperwork in a timely fashion and is seeking to invalidate the patent in U.S. District Court. A ruling favorable to FindWhat would mean that it would not have to pay licensing fees to Overture.
Grandson fined for citing Nazi grandfather online
Wolf Andreas Hess, the grandson of Adolf Hitler’s assistant Rudolf Hess, has been fined for citing the words of his deceased grandfather on a web site. The 23-year-old student must pay $1,184 for public incitement. Generally, any sort of racist or pro-Nazi speech is prohibited in Germany and other European nations. The Rudolf Hess quotes denied that the Nazis had gas chambers at the Dachau concentration camp, which is near Munich, asserting that the Americans put them there post-war to frighten visitors. Defenders of the younger Hess say he was not denying the occurrence of the Holocaust but rather was trying to compile historical material about his grandfather. Rudolf Hess, who spent the remainder of his life after the war in prison, is known for, among other misdeeds, having taken dictation for Hitler when he wrote his tract “Mein Kampf.”
Golden Globes pump up EOnline.com traffic
Evidently, television-watching web surfers love nothing so much as a Hollywood love fest. Enthusiasm over the 59th Golden Globes broadcast helped boost traffic to Eonline.com, the web site of E! the cable network, by 71 percent during the week ending Jan. 20. Some 1.2 million unique visitors logged onto the celebrity-studded site, versus 708,000 the week before. In all, 11.9 million page views were generated, up 77 percent from 6.7 million page views during the week ending Jan. 13. One-third of site visitors logged onto a page listing Golden Globe nominees. About 23 percent of the visitors visited links featuring material about rising stars. As much as 47 percent of traffic to the site was to E!'s AOL channel, aol.eonline.com.
UK group: Stay off the web for a day
A United Kingdom-based group asked people to take their lives back from the net for a day. DoBe.org, a nonprofit that normally tries to get people to interact with one another online by offering free off-line meeting places and activities for web surfers, sponsored International Internet Free Day yesterday. The philosophy behind the get-off-the-web event was that people spend too much time online to the detriment of their social lives, which in turn has a negative impact upon their overall well-being. The organization set up alternative activities to web surfing, such as theater, poetry, music, and strolls on London’s South Bank. Additionally, DoBe asked people to make lists of possible activities they don’t normally do. No figures on how many people participated in the daylong web boycott are available.
Yes, even email death threats are illegal
Though it might seem satisfying to send a nasty flame by email to a prickly source of frustration, it would be better to take a deep breath and count to ten instead. Laura Moerke might agree, since she lost her job and now faces criminal charges for sending death threats by email. The 23-year-old Twin Cities Public Television customer-service worker sent death threats laced with obscenities to a public television viewer who had previously made several complaints that Moerke insisted were rude. Last October Moerke sent him three messages from her private Hotmail account. The notes described how she would torture the recipient and the joy she would feel upon reading his obituary. "If I had my way I would have you killed," read one e-mail message, according to the complaint. "I know where you live your pathetic little life and if I were you I would lock your doors at night." Moerke claims she only intended to scare him.
January 28, 2002 © 2002 Media Life
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