July 22, 2004 - Internet phone service, known Voice Over IP or V-o-I-P for short, is going mainstream. Giant phone companies like AT&T are joining upstart companies like Vonage in enticing consumers with low-cost calling plans as an alternative to traditional phone service.
July 21, 2004 - Internet users typically flock to "peer to peer" networks like Kazaa to share music, movies, software and even pornography. A 2nd year student at St Johns School of Law in Queens has found a very different use for file-sharing. Thad Anderson is disseminating hard-to-find government and court documents on the Kazaa, Limewire and Soulseek networks. They include memos about the prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib; a Senate Intelligence Committee report on what the government knew about weapons of mass destruction before it invaded Iraq; and details of contracts awarded to Haliburton Corporation for the reconstruction of Iraq. Anderson is a Democrat but says file-sharing can be useful for people all political persuasions.
July 20, 2004 - This is Future Tense from American Public Media. I'm Jon Gordon. The release of a new version of the bloody, kill the monsters-from-hell game "Doom" is a major event in the world of computer gaming. Doom sets the standard for visually stunning games, and for hardcore violence. Doom 3 is due in stores the first week of August. Time Magazine says the makers of Doom are the "spiritual and technological fathers of the modern video game, and says about Doom 3: "There has never been a game that looks this good."
July 19, 2004 - Offhshoring is the export of U.S. Jobs overseas. It's firmly entrenched in the country's tech economy engine, Silicon Valley. That's according to a report from Stanford University and two San Francisco Bay area think tanks. The study was conducted by management consulting firm A.T. Kearney, which found that 94 percent of Silicon Valley companies in the semiconductor and software industries use overseas personnel.
July 16, 2004 - President Bush has signed a bill that increases penalties for identity theft, saying criminals who steal someone's name can now expect to go to jail. Bush says the cost to the US economy topped 50 billion dollars, and violators too often escape jail time.
July 15, 2004 - Hewlett-Packard and Dell have announced free programs to encourage US consumers to recycle computers and electronics. HP has teamed with Office Depot stores to offer free recycling for any make of computers, monitors, digital cameras, fax machines, cell phones and other electronics. Consumers can drop off electronics at any Office Depot store between July 18 and Labor Day.
July 14, 2004 - The company that makes The Roomba robotic vacuum cleaner is out with a new line of cleaners. The company says the new silver pizza-shaped machines clean longer between chargings; can seek out dirt; and pick up more of it.
July 13, 2004 - Thanks to the Internet, statistic-hungry baseball fans have more information at their fingertips than ever before. The official web site of Major League Baseball, MLB.com, is one of the most popular sports sites on the Internet, and actually makes a profit. Fans can listen to games, watch video highlights, check detailed box scores, and more. The most popular MLB.com product is "Gameday," a free service that lets fans follow any game in near real-time. They can see the location of every pitch, what happens to every ball that leaves the batters box, and get just about any stat imaginable.
December 31, 2003 - Enhance your engergy. Mortgage rates hit rock bottom. Get your valium online. We're all painfully familiar with these kinds of spammer come-on lines. Rather than stew about spam, a group of independent musicians, the band 15-16 Puzzle, recorded songs based on spam subject lines. MPR's Jon Gordon reports.
December 30, 2003 - In Scotland, open source software advocate Robert Kerr has managed to persuade most public libraries to place on their shelves CD's of OpenOffice. That's a free software package akin to Microsoft Office, containing a word processor, spreadsheet, and other tools. The idea, says Kerr, is to get important software into the hands of people who are unable or unwilling to pay for expensive commercial equivalents.