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While Netscape Navigator users may appreciate the convenience of their browser's search bar, their enjoyment may be undercut when they learn of its clandestine purposes. By typing in a topic into the URL or navigation window and pressing the search button, web users unwittingly provide Netscape with the search terms, their IP address and the date Navigator was installed on their computer, along with a unique identification number. The information is relayed to Netscape servers before it is used to send the user to his destination. Netscape officials defend the tracking as necessary for billing search engines for sending traffic their way. Critics assail the effort as an invasion of privacy, especially since the privacy policy on the Netscape does not mention the search engine-logging. Concerned users can keep Netscape out of the loop by typing in the search engine addresses into the navigation window.
Yahoo will charge for GeoCities services
Leading internet portal Yahoo is attempting to get users of its free GeoCities personal web pages to pay for services. One of the services is FTP, or file transfer protocol, the technology that allows people to upload material to a web site. Yahoo says that it will start charging for that particular service because people were abusing it. A new service, GeoCities Plus, offers users more storage, ad-free pages, free FTP use and extra bandwidth. GeoCities Plus costs $4.95 a month in addition to a $10 set-up toll. Another service, GeoCities Advantage, is aimed at professional or advanced internet publishers. Like GeoCities Plus, the Advantage package includes ad-free pages, but four times the extra storage and a domain name, for $19.95 a month with an initial $25 fee. As with most of its erstwhile free services, Yahoo is trying to get people to pay in order to supplement its falling advertising income.
Sept. 11 fading from list of top search terms
Words related to the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks have ceased to be among the most frequently sought on the web, or at least within the Terra Lycos network. Osama bin Laden and Afghanistan are no longer listed among the Lycos 50 compilation of 50 most popular search terms. Within a week of the attacks, the following terms were the 10 most popular Sept. 11 related words: Nostradamus, World Trade Center, Osama bin Laden, New York City, terrorism, American flag, Afghanistan, Pentagon, Red Cross and Taliban. But only "New York City" is still in the top 50, and Lycos officials say that the searches aren’t tied to Sept. 11. Osama bin Laden was in the Top 50 for 22 weeks, and World Trade Center remained there for 23 weeks. Lycos says the terms are still relatively popular, however.
Screen-saver project aids anthrax research
A cure for anthrax might not be that far off in the future, thanks to a distributed-computing project led by researchers at Oxford University. The project, much like alien-hunting program SETI@Home, puts people’s home computers to work when they’re not in use. Participants download a screen saver, which kicks on when the machine is idle, then uses the computer's processing power to analyze chemical compounds. The project so far has enlisted about a million PCs, and in the span of less than a couple months has helped scientists discover 12,000 chemical combinations that might be useful for fighting the bacterial disease. In the process, researchers have achieved what normally would have taken several years to do. While antibiotics such as Cipro are used to kill the actual bacteria, antibiotics can’t do anything about the poisons that anthrax bacteria release in the body. So scientists are trying to discover an antitoxin.
Defectors eye life in mostly make-believe Ladonia
Thousands of people want to pick up and move to the European nation of Ladonia. The trouble is that Ladonia exists mainly online and in the mind of its creator, Lars Vilks, and not one of its 6,000 registered citizens actually dwells there, although 30,000 people a year visit the site. Physically speaking, the Scandinavian country consists of half a square mile of rocky coastal property in the south of Sweden. The nation was established in 1996 when Vilks, an artist, more or less seceded because the Swedish government disapproved of two large abstract monuments he had created. According to Vilks, some 3,000 people from Pakistan have applied to become citizens. The "country" is receiving many requests for directions to the land itself and to its Pakistani embassy, which does not exist in reality. Vilks isn’t sure how word got around Pakistan about Ladonia, but he's less and less pleased by all the attention. At one point he took down from the site an application for citizenship. He has since reposted it but with the disclaimer that his nation offers neither employment nor shelter.
March 12, 2002 © 2002 Media Life
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