Deja Com

Google Inc. took over Deja.com's Usenet discussion service, adding more than 500 million wide-ranging messages to one of the Web's most extensive search engines. Terms between the privately held companies were not disclosed. The deal is a coup for Mountain View, Calif.-based Google, a rising Web star, and spells the end for New York-based Deja, an online search pioneer that never found a way to make money from its popular service.

Google Inc. took over Deja.com's Usenet discussion service, adding more than 500 million wide-ranging messages to one of the Web's most extensive search engines. Terms between the privately held companies were not disclosed. The deal is a coup for Mountain View, Calif.-based Google, a rising Web star, and spells the end for New York-based Deja, an online search pioneer that never found a way to make money from its popular service.

The old Soviet arms-control motto, "doverai, no proverai"--trust, but verify--could aptly be applied to e-commerce. Every online merchant claims to warrant your trust, but the means for verifying those claims have been primitive, leading millions of consumers and businesses to shun online buying. Open Ratings, a start-up co-founded by Pattie Maes, one of the Web's most influential thinkers and a professor at MIT's Media Lab, suggests a new solution for the verification problem.

The old Soviet arms-control motto, "doverai, no proverai"--trust, but verify--could aptly be applied to e-commerce. Every online merchant claims to warrant your trust, but the means for verifying those claims have been primitive, leading millions of consumers and businesses to shun online buying. Open Ratings, a start-up co-founded by Pattie Maes, one of the Web's most influential thinkers and a professor at MIT's Media Lab, suggests a new solution for the verification problem.

Thinking globally about elections. While we wrestle with the issues and media onslaught of the current U.S. election campaign, the World Wide Web reminds us that ours is only one of many battles for voters being waged around the world. Klipsan Press, which publishes historical books on politics, provides a worldwide perspective at http://www.klipsan.com. From there, you can click on a guide to upcoming elections just about anywhere.

Epinions.com, the latest Web business based on the opinions of consumers, launches today with a site (http://www.epinions.com) that provides volunteer-supplied reviews of a wide range of consumer goods. In an adaptation of a model pioneered by Amazon.com, which appends consumer-provided reviews to its book descriptions, Epinions.com users can submit reviews of items ranging from computers to cars to sea cruises.

Internet search company Google Inc. has agreed to acquire Pyra Labs, the handful of Web developers who helped jump-start the personal publishing phenomenon known as blogging, Pyra's founder said. Word of the deal spread after Pyra Labs Chief Executive Evan Williams confirmed on his personal Weblog that his team of six developers would be joining Google.

Roger Ebert, Martha Stewart, Consumer Reports, Gallup polls and other product experts and professional pundits had better watch their backs. They've got a formidable new competitor: word-of-mouth recommendations by amateur critics that are flooding the Internet. Millions of neophyte critics and self-made pundits on the World Wide Web are suddenly reviewing and rating everything from vacation spots to books, sports stars to toaster ovens.

The soaps, cosmetics, vitamins and friendly neighborhood sales force that made Amway Corp. into a billion-dollar success story are now just a few computer keystrokes away. The direct-selling giant launched Quixtar, a new e-commerce site designed to sell its and other companies' products, on Sept. 1, but the change didn't come without some growing pains. The volume of people logging on to http://www.Quixtar.

Even before the newest entry in the "Star Wars" saga opened last week, a comic-book store clerk in Seattle had organized a group called the International Society for the Extermination of Jar Jar Binks and set up a Web site with an address that sounds like a battle cry: http://www.jarjarmustdie.com. From all indications, the digital animated character who debuted in "Star Wars: Episode I The Phantom Menace" is irritating moviegoers across North America.

I've had a love-hate relationship with Internet safety filters since I tried the first such program--SurfWatch--back in 1995. They certainly empower parents to take control over what their kids can see and do on the Net as an antidote to government censorship, but I also hate the idea of parents having to rely on technology to control their kids' behavior. Basically, there are two ways to filter your kids' Internet access.

There is a commonly held belief that pornography on the Internet represents a serious danger to children online--in fact, the serious danger. Although there is reason to be concerned about exposing kids to sexually explicit material, it's important to look beyond pornography when thinking about keeping kids safe on the Net. I worry more about the possibility, however remote, that a child could be physically harmed by someone he or she encounters online and later meets in person.