BRUCEB NEWS
How eBay Prevented Me From Starting A Life Of Crime
I was going to sell collectible books on eBay. I've got first editions and small press limited editions. I know how to pack books so they arrive safely, and I intended to price things just below market so people feel they're treated fairly.Fortunately eBay saw right...
WAL-MART TAKES OVER THE WORLD
Every so often some business kowtows to Wal-Mart by changing the cover of a book or magazine or releasing an alternate version of a CD with family-friendly lyrics or the like....
TIME MATTERS 5.0
Time Matters and Amicus are the market leaders for law office case management. Time Matters just rolled out its first new version in two years, version 5.0, along with a new...
HARDWARE WARS
Dell continues to dominate the computer market, of course. Here’s what some of the other players are doing. Sony just announced its summer lineup, loaded with multimedia...
HISTORY LESSON
Mark Minasi occasionally writes a column for a newsletter from Windows & .NET Magazine. Today he makes an interesting point to support his contention that Windows NT 4.0...
THE MATRIX RELOADED
You can read the conversation between Neo and the Architect here, in case you missed anything the first time. (For goodness’ sake, don’t read it if you haven’t seen the movie...
THE GREAT REBATE SCAM
Like most people, I’ve never liked rebates, but I take it seriously - I will pay more if that’s what it takes to avoid a rebate. Slate has a good article about the rebate game –...
COREL ACQUIRED BY VECTOR CAPITAL
Corel announced today that it has agreed to a takeover bid by Vector Capital, a San Francisco-based company that already owns a substantial stake in the company. At $1.06 per...
FIBER TO YOUR HOME, AND OTHER PIPE DREAMS
The phone companies – Baby Bells and Verizon – got a lot of press today for their announcement that they’ve agreed on a “standard” for rolling out fiber to your homes, enabling...
MEDIA MONOPOLIES
I was looking for this the other day - here’s a list of the companies owned by AOL Time Warner. It’s extraordinary. You can get similarly chilling information about other media...
ADOBE ACROBAT READER 6
Adobe released Acrobat 6 today, including a new version of the free Acrobat Reader. Download Acrobat Reader 6 here. Acrobat PDF format is starting to be used everywhere – you...
DOWNLOAD CAPS ON CABLE BROADBAND
Time Warner has begun tiered pricing for cable Internet access in a few areas. The idea is that a cable subscriber chooses a monthly download limit – 40Gb, for example. If you go...
AMAZON, APPLE, AND MUSIC
Amazon has been eyeing the market for downloadable music for years, wondering how to jump in. The issue isn’t technology, it’s the business model, availability of content and...
BROADBAND SERIES PRESERVED FOR FUTURE GENERATIONS
I wrote some notes a couple of weeks ago about choices for broadband access in rural Sonoma County. It’s scrolling off the news page now, but it’s such stunningly lucid prose...
MICROSOFT TO PAY AOL $750 MILLION
You might have seen the news that Microsoft will pay AOL $750 million to settle AOL’s antitrust lawsuit. AOL acquired Netscape in 1998 and sued Microsoft in early 2002 for...
KAZAA SECURITY UPDATE
There will be an important update for Kazaa within the next 24 hours. They’ve identified a security vulnerability and they’re urging users to patch their systems quickly. Here’s...