Digital Village Radio

Digital Village Archives

Digital Village Radio
April - July 1998 Programs

7/25/98 Darcy DiNucci. Our guest today was Darcy DiNucci, co-author of Elements of Web Design. In addition to newcomers to web design, the book also hopes to talk to those readers who already have some design experience and would like to bring their skills to the web. Now with it's second edition on the stands, the book is updated for HTML v4.0 and all the new goodies like Dynamic HTML and Cascading Style Sheets.

In the news:
The Hubble Telescope may be the ultimate portal - Ooooohhhhh... it was an Engineered Educational Event! Others just call it FRAUD!!! - A whole bunch of questionable bills pass the Senate will little fanfare - New recommendations for individual Health Identification Numbers draws intense fire from privacy advocates - Domain name agreement may happen soon - Now it's Real Networks vs Microsoft - 13 year old boy to advice Haitian Government on computers - Swedes may shut down their nuke plants on 1-1-00
7/18/98 Star Trek Conquers Planet Earth. You don't have to be a Trekker before you realize that Star Trek has had an enormous impact on our culture. But you may not have know the impact the TV (and motion picture) series has had around the globe. Jeff Greenwald journeyed (once again) around the world, this time to talk to people from diverse cultures about their interest in the crew of the Enterprise, Voyager and Deep Space 9. His book, Future Perfect: How Star Trek Conquered the Planet Earth includes interviews with Arthur C Clarke, Kurt Vonnegut, the Dalai Lhama (!) and others. Perhaps most surprising to Jeff is how these diverse cultures all see Star Trek as their own. So whether it's Buddhist monks who see it as prophesy or Japanese who see Commander Data as a metaphor for their economy, the program is often seen more as a mirror, rather than a window.

In the news:
Mike and Diane want to screw everybody - ZAP is buying the smut shack - Commerce committee approves copyright bill 41-0 - Hatch will hold another hearing next week to look at Microsoft - DES cracked in 2.3 days by EFF and friends - Banks have to keep Y2K results to themselves
7/11/98 Jeannie Novak and Pete Markiewicz. What does it take to create a truly effective web site? To help answer that question, we turned to two of the Web's pioneers. Jeannie Novak and Pete Markiewicz were creating groundbreaking web pages before most of us knew what an <HTML> tag was (their site, kspace.com, was the seventh commercial web site on the Internet). Their books include Creating Internet Entertainment and Maintaining and Updating Dynamic Web Sites (with a new book on live webcasting due this September).

Among other things, Jeannie and Pete stress the importance of advance planning and targeting your intended audience. Remember that "interactivity" means communicating with another person, not just pushing a graphic button. This is something that is often forgotten by today's web page designers. Jeannie asserts that the Web is not a mass media, but rather a sort of cult or niche media with many specialized groups of interested people. The effective web site is the one which knows it's audience and uses the appropriate techniques to bring them in. Don't use bells and whistles just because you can, but rather because they are the best way to convey the message.

In the news:
Professor Junger loses his case, vows to appeal if he can afford it - ISPs ordered to release user names - Email death threats are a hoax, of course - Merrill Lynch study sez Maybe the Y2K thing won't be so bad - MacWorld move from Beantown to the Big Apple - Disney's Blast will give Mac owners a chance to spend their money
6/27/98 Windows 98 Bible. With this week's release of Windows 98, we took a look at the upgrade with Kip Crosby, co-author of The Windows 98 Bible. Kip says that this is much more than just a collection of bug fixes and cosmetic changes. Sure, you'll probably upgrade again in 2 years to Windows NT, but why not take advantage of the new system until then.

In the news:
New mother Elizabeth may be wanted for bad check writing - Muy Cool, it's Yahoo! en Español - WITI announces it's annual Pioneers in Technology award winners - Y2Kwatch: Spooks spook the Spooks & UN passes Y2K appeal - Will Linux take over the World? Some think so - Microsoft wins appeal on temporary injunction - Orren Hatch loves Microsoft... Not! - Microsoft signs up with TrustE - Dept. of Commerce hearing casts doubt on self-regulation of privacy matters by businesses - ATT to buy TCI - AOL closes Koran parody site
6/20/98 Create a Store on the Web. What does it take to bring a business on the Internet? Our guest today was Ben Sawyer, one of the authors of Create a Store on the Web. The book takes a comprehensive look at what a person needs to consider before going online with a business.

In the news:
Nearly a million watch the web birth of baby Sean - The 1998 World Cup is on the Web - The Russian Atomic Energy commission say's "Why worry now?" when it comes to the Y2K problem - The FBI releases the, um, real X-Files - Commerce Department to hold Privacy Summit next week - Senate may soon consider Internet Censorship Bills - The Copyright Bill passed by a House subcommittee despite questions over fair use - Senate pushes forward with E-Privacy Bill while a coalition of groups align against it - Some people think the new Spam Bill will actually cause more unwanted mail!! - Disney buys a bunch of Infoseek - NBC buys a bit of C|Net and Snap! - ATT isn't buying AOL (which wants to stay independent), but they will charge $.93 per month to residents to fund the ERate
6/13/98 Brewster Kahle. As if helping to create the world's first massively parallel computer or the inventing the Wide Area Information Server aren't enough, Brewster Kahle then went on to Archive the Internet a few years ago, thus helping preserve this new media in it's relatively nascent form. Now he's gone on to use this archive at Alexa Internet, where they've developed a free tool to help better inform web-surfers about the sites they are visiting, and to suggest alternatives.

In the news:
A Cybersex Poll shows that people like sex both online and offline - Live Web Birth this Tuesday morning at 3am - Congress passes Internet Pedophile Bill 416 to 0 - The Department of Commerce proposes privacy guidelines - White House conference on digital media and kids held in LA last week - GEOCities agrees to consent order re:privacy and such - Hi-Tech CEOs go to Washington, D.C. to argue in favor of strong encryption - US, Russia, meet on Y2K - Master Chief Petty Officer Timothy R. McVeigh settles his privacy case with the Navy, on his own terms - FTC votes to sue Intel - OLGA, we hardly knew ya
6/6/98 Lynda & William Weinman After years of educating webmasters on the importance of design and color considerations, Lynda Weinman has teamed up with her brother Bill Weinman to write Creative HTML Design. The book is a combination of tutorial and reference that is geared toward HTML 4.0 and the practice of writing good code.

In the news:
NEWS FLASH!! Bob Hope is still alive! - Don't count on the web for a speedy divorce - You can find election results and related link online - The US will get out of the way with domain names - FCC in hotseat over new phone tax - The FTC is concerned about sites that gather your personal information online - India's Nuke site gets hacked, twice
5/30/98 Jon Katz. With the Internet becoming mainstream, we face new problems as we begin to communicate in new ways. Our guest today was Jon Katz, columnist at HotWired and author of several books, including Virtuous Reality - How America surrendered discussion of moral values to opportunists, nitwits and blockheads like William Bennett.

In the news:
Livermore library sued over 'net porn - Ex-Compuserve exec convicted in Germany - AOL & Netscape help China with filtered content - Mr. Gates has a party with his peers - Microsoft must love government, they give so much - Streetlamps may broadcast Internet traffic over power lines
5/23/98 Danny Hillis. When it came time to name the first Disney Fellow, they chose Danny Hillis, and with good reason. This is a person who once built a computer out of 10,000 Tinkertoy parts and is now building a clock to last 10,000 years. In-between he was revolutionized computing with such inventions as the massively parallel Connection Machine he built with Brewster Kahle and others. Danny has lately been talking about time, long periods of time, and how humanity should plan for those years.

In the news:
Viagra is a big seller over the Northern border - XPics: Easy to sign up, a bit more difficult to sign off - Prudence sez it's okay to spy on your kids - Galaxy 4 gets a new spin and the Internet is used as a backup - Will P3P be enough for privacy? - White house: More talk about Cyberterrorism - MS and DOJ next in court September 8 - Yes, you can get Windows98 early, if you really want it
5/16/98 Spring Pledge Drive. This was one of the weeks every three or four months in which we ask you to pledge your support to the station and our program. And once again, a BIG! thanks goes out to all of you who called and helped us reach our goal.

In the news:
Microsoft delays Windows 98 a day, but talks with The DOJ and States break down and lawsuits go ahead - The White House has a privacy plan, but there's no privacy conference until June - That Copyright thingy passes Senate 99-0, critics wonder if public information will remain public - Anti-slammin'/anti-spammin' bill passes Senate, critics say it may legalize Spam - A study by The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities sez ban on 'net taxes will hurt the poor - ACP is ready to go on the offensive if the The White House doesn't change it's encryption policy - Minnesota court ruling says Internet gambling may not be such a good bet -Macromedia wants VisualXTC to stop Flashing - Sanford Wallace may have gone over to the other side!
5/9/98 More Open Phones! Since this was the last program before next week's Pledge Drive, we thought we would open the phones once again to listener phone calls.

In the news:
Kurt Vonnegut will give a graduation address (really!) - Advance Publications' Condé Nast Publications unit will buy WiReD Magazine for $75,000,000 or more - The FCC will combine three Internet subsidy programs into one - The FTC plans to update its advertising rules to better include Web sites - White House will release its Domain Name plan soon - Spam No, but $pam yes - Auto dealer gets picketed for sending spam - The Digital Freedom Network publishes banned documents - Another Online Everest attempt is being made right now
5/2/98 Larry Wall & Perl. Whether it's a Practical extraction & reporting language or a Pathologically eclectic rubbish lister, the extremely popular Perl computer language is responsible for keeping large parts of the Internet running. Our guests today were Larry Wall, author of Perl, and Gina Blaber, Director of the Software Products Group at O-Reilly and Associates, whose titles include the famous Camel book. One of the great strengths of Perl is it's huge base of users and developers, who are drawn to the language's flexibility and power. Also, and significantly, Perl is freeware, which encourages it's users to share both files and ideas. It's CPAN library is a huge repository of freely available perl scripts. And, as if it's own Republic isn't enough, there are a number of newsgroups devoted to the language and Webmonkey has a number of good tutorials.

In the news:
Proposed law bans using Internet to target children for sexual purposes - Industry Execs Ask DOJ To Back Off Windows 98 - Congress retroactivly approves "Domain Name tax" - Man arrested for murder after online support-group confession - The InterNic thinks a certain mushroom is too obscene to have it's own domain name - NAACP, Jewish ADL & others register domains based on racial slurs
4/25/98 Celia Pearce. Ten years before the Web was born, Celia Pearce was designing high-tech interactive exhibits for museums and other public places. Since then she has continually refined her ideas on what make for an effective interactive experience. In The Interactive Book: a guide to the interactive revolution she documents her observations of the social, cultural and psychological impact of interactive media.

In the news:
Microsoft talks to The Three Judge Panel - Judge Bork joins Bob Dole and others against Microsoft - Peter Junger has a day in Court - It's PETA (or is that PETA?) vs Ringling Bros (or is that Ringling Bros?) in the latest battle of The Domain Name War - The CIA asks: Hey Kids! Wanna be a spy? - Filtering in libraries is to be held to the highest standard - AOL isn't liable for libel, but Matt Drudge still may be
4/18/98 Web.Builder Update This last week found the folks at Builder.com putting on their annual Web.Builder conference in San Francisco. Our guest today was Dan Schafer, web guru and one of the people most responsible for the conference. There was a lot of talk this year about open software and how "free" software like Linux, Apache, Perl and Mozilla are sweeping the Internet community. To test the waters, Dan has committed to spending the entire month of May working in an open-software environment, including many pieces of GNU software. We be sure and check back with him to see how it goes.

In the news:
Happy Geek Pride Day! - The Environmental Defense Fund launches site identifying toxic waste sources - The Utah Education Network discovers kids are interested in sex! - Intel's CPU is ruled an "essential facility" by an Alabama court - Microsoft faces a big week ahead as a 3 judge panel decides of IE4 should be unbundled and if Lawrence Lessig is a worthy Special Master - Microsoft backs out of California School deal - Microsoft says there are some Y2K problems with 24 of their products - Dennis Toeppen is ordered to stop collecting domain names
4/11/98 ArtsEdNet. As the budgets for Arts education in K-12 schools decreases, the Getty realized that a void was being created that needed to be filled. To help with accomplish this, they created ArtsEdNet. It's goal is to provide resources to educators and their students. Today we spoke with Candace Borland, a program manager at the Getty and the person responsible for the ArtsEdNet Website.

In the news:
Details emerge on White House Privacy Summit - White House needs to preserve digital records as digital records - Microsoft proposes misleading the public with "spontaneous" testimonials from paid consultants - Microsoft meets with the Feds, but nobody's talking - Microsoft backs off exclusive IE deal with content providers - Microsoft to buy Firefly, what does that mean for privacy and for Netscape? - Sanford Wallace wants to cut a deal on spam - The Knitting Factory holds a CyberSeder
4/4/98 Surprise Open Phones #2. Eeks! Once again, we found ourselves opening the phones to our terrific listeners. This time it was because of a mixup when our scheduled guest, the otherwise wonderful Brewster Kahle of the Internet Archive and Alexa, was unavailable.

In the news:
30th anniversary of the assasination Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. remembered on the 'net - Kenneth Starr wants to look at Monica Lewinsky's recent book purchases - Paul Allen is sued for sexual harrassment by a former employee - Judge strikes down law banning fake kiddie porn - The kinder, gentler Internal Revenue Service wants your money electronically - FCC might tax Internet-based telcos just to be fair to the rest - More meaningless stats: Bill Gates is worth $50,000,000,000 - Universal Studio wants to produce a Digital Frankenstein before the year 2000 - Netscape releases their Communicator source code - Marc Andreessen thinks Linux and Mozilla will take over the Web and you know, if more people try it, he might just be right
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