Sandy's blog

Inside sources say that media giant Time-Warner is seeking to sell all or part of their America Online division. While both Yahoo and Google have been mentioned as possible suitors for such a divestiture, it appears now that Microsoft has entered the arena. Such an acquisition would further consolidate Microsoft's bid to dominate the Internet, especially regarding their seriously flawed browser, Internet Explorer.

The United Nations and the European Union are pushing for international management of the Internet because critics are uncomfortable with -- and jealous of -- what is viewed as an American monopoly, when in fact, the U.S. does not control the Internet. It simply oversees it, but with very little input. And for good reason: the Department of Defense (not Al Gore) invented the Internet, and the Commerce Department assigned the nonprofit Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) to serve as the Web's technical coordinator.

Many people visit online forums and bulletin boards, looking for information on computers, baseball, real estate, music, and other topics. Registered members are often allowed to upload "avatars", thumbnail images used to enhance text or provide a laugh.

Eleven months of the year, hardly anything has a greater impact on our lives than politics (this being October, and World Series month, I get some arguments about this right now). Politics? More important than gas prices? ..than the stock market?

Indeed. Consider the recent Supreme Court decision that allows a businessman to take away your home if he can convince local authorities that he can generate more tax dollars with it than you can. Hmmm.

Some years ago, IBM invented the Personal Computer, and began a decades-long battle with Apple for market share. IBM decided early on to use Open Architecture, wherein the technical details of their hardware were made available to the public, while Apple opted to keep such details confidential.

One result was Apple, and later Macintosh, computers that ran beautifully, ostensibly because all hardware periperals and software packages were made by them, and matched perfectly.

One of the responsibilities of a major web design firm is keeping abreast of new technologies, not only in regard to how these may help clients, but also in regard to how rushing to embrace new technology may be disastrous.

Websites are largely a visual medium, so it is important that the visitor experience includes the elements of design: color schemes, high-quality graphics, and easily readable text, as well as usability and sensible navigation, all wrapped in a package that works equally well on different browsers.

If you use email, you know about spam. Some of it is legitimate, and includes a link to unsubscribe. You get that because you bought something online, and left checked the little box giving them permission to send you "special offers". Big mistake.

But the vast majority of the spam is not legitimate. The spammers use computer programs to make a list of every domain name in existence, then generate a list of every possible combination of 2-10 letters as usernames, and send email to all those combinations at every domain:

al@example.com
bob@example.com
bill@example.com

One of the hottest new buzzwords on the Internet today is "RSS", but what is it?

Despite what other sources may tell you, it is an acronym for "Really Simple Syndication", and was developed as a mechanism for sending textual data across the Internet, formatted as an XML string.

Uh-oh! So what is XML?

The most common customer service issue we have to deal with is email, and most of those problems would go away if customers had a better understanding of how it works. Internet email is a very complex issue, and the problem is exacerbated by companies like Microsoft trying to turn everything into a point-n-click solution. The fact that an article like this is necessary proves that some knowledge is necessary.