Web Shorts

Angry spammer-turned-spammee goes to court
A notorious spammer has filed a lawsuit against the guy who’s spamming him. After one too many emails promising the ability to shed pounds fast, Ellicott City, Md.’s Francis Uy began posting offending spammers’ addresses and phone numbers in chat rooms around the net and on his web site. But one of Uy’s targets, Linthicum, Md.’s George Allen Moore Jr., claims that this amounts to harassment. He’s gotten a restraining order against Uy, alleging that the posting of his address has resulted in 70 unwanted packages and 200 unordered magazines appearing at his house. He also says he has received phone messages such as “We are watching you” or “Don’t start your car.” Moore, better known as “Dr. Fatburn,” owns a company that sells products like Extreme Colon Cleanser and FAT-N-EMY, as well as anti-virus software. He claims that because other companies actually market his merchandise, he is not a spammer. Spamhaus.org says differently. The worldwide directory of such offenders brands Moore a prolific offender.

In precursor to Google break, Yahoo revamps
Yahoo hasn’t broken with Google yet, but their partnership became even more tenuous on Monday when Yahoo introduced a revamped search site. The web portal’s improved elements will highlight paid listings and make other searches easier. Google still powers the search options, but there’s speculation that Yahoo will replace the search giant with Inktomi, the Japanese company Yahoo acquired last year. The new features allow registered users the Google-esque ability to filter for adult content and foreign languages. Boxed text ads will appear on the right side of the page, also much like Google. The new format will be more intuitive. Users who want to search Yahoo News can add “news” into any query to pull up results. Typing a city name and “weather” will give forecasts for that location. A universal search bar also will be added to the top of all Yahoo pages. Some features still being tested won’t debut for another few weeks.

At-work and at-home news traffic levels off
After two weeks of increasing readership, online news sites showed some decline for the week ending March 30, according to Nielsen//NetRatings data. USAToday.com’s audience dropped 16 percent among home users and 17 percent among work users compared to the previous week. CNN.com and MSNBC.com also saw decreases of 16 percent at home. Washingtonpost.com dipped 11 percent at home but only 5 percent at work. NYTimes.com stayed steady at home and dropped a slight 2 percent at work. The New York Post’s readership actually rose 9 percent among at-home users and 48 percent among at-work.

At London's Heathrow, flyers become WiFi-ers
WiFi has landed. The new technology, short for wireless fidelity, debuted at London’s Heathrow Airport Monday, where a new zone allows commuters high-speed access to wireless connections. Various towns and retail shops here and abroad already have been experimenting with WiFi. Special transmitters were placed at Heathrow especially for laptop users. Intel hopes that the number of WiFi “hotspots” in the U.K. will more than double to 2,000 by the end of the year. Britain currently ranks behind Scandinavia in number of European WiFi marketplaces. The United States ranks first in the world. Heathrow’s Terminal One was the second European airport to become WiFi-ed this month. Paris’ Charles De Gaulle Airport became wired last week and Frankfurt Airport is scheduled to get WiFi in May.

Bronx bomber enters online belly hall of fame
Erratic Yankee David Wells may not make it to Cooperstown, but he now has been enshrined in at least one hall of fame. The roly-poly pitcher leads the list of 2003 inductees into Brian’s Belly Heavyweight Hall of Fame, part of the irreverent web site BriansBelly.com. Brian’s Belly honors “men of stature who have gone forth and shown society that it’s OK to be a big dude, a loveable lush or a fat funny guy.” Wells certainly showed all three, perhaps minus the loveable, in his recently published book, in which he claims to have been drunk while pitching his perfect game. The rest of the class of 2003 consists of actors John Candy and Jackie Gleason and wrestler Andre the Giant.

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