Focus On: Broadband

When we first built our newsblog, existing blogging software was dumb and ugly. So we wrote our own blogware in Python, using Zope as the platform. It was beyond state-of-the-art. But blogging software grew up with lots of exciting features, while simply maintaining our custom-built platform became more and more painful for our guy with more important things to do. In the end, we gained a lot, and lost a little.

Should a small town offer free mobile municipal wireless? A midwestern city confronted with the question digs through the possibilities. The second meeting of our Wireless Task Force reveals that robust private efforts are already under way. A question is emerging: How far should a city go to bridge the digital divide?

Groups who despise the US-based Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) have organized an email campaign to let the US National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) know what they think of its continuing effort to privatize coordination and management of Internet Domain Names and DNS. So how's it going? Email Battles shows how the mysterious power of the Web reveals all.

Pay-per-click fraud. First, Google was on the hook. Now it's Yahoo's turn. The plaintiffs charge Yahoo enabled all manner of it. Anybody can file a lawsuit. But to assess Yahoo's chances of getting off, you need to see who they're up against. After taking a look at each of these battle-hardened class-action litigators, you'll probably conclude that Yahoo's going to be writing a real big check.

The Microsoft ISA Server Team says the firewall lets IPv6 traffic pass through the system regardless of your firewall policy settings. The only solution offered: Disable IPv6 traffic entirely. For those who require IPv6 solutions, Email Battles serves up a study list of vendors offering a broad array of IPv6-ready firewalls. Warning: Most of the current IPv6 implementations depend on Linux or BSD.