Information Services Industry

In recent months, some start-up technology companies have died or gone into comas after running out of money, a possible early sign that the resurgence in venture investment may be coming to an end. File123 is counting its days. Edgeio was edged out. TripUp has fallen. BrightSpot went dark. Firebrand flamed out and Ezmo is no more. Industry analysts say this year will bring a big wave of start-up deaths as the credit crisis gripping the financial markets makes investors cautious in other areas.

Authorities on Thursday removed the top editors of an investigative weekly that had tested the limits of censorship, banished them to a think tank and announced that the publication would be relaunched in a more compliant format next month. Action against Freezing Point and its editor, Li Datong, comes as overseas observers focus on whether Internet and technology firms such as Google Inc., Yahoo Inc., Microsoft Corp. and Cisco Systems Inc.

Kevin Harris found a way to get extra sleep and make more money: Stop dealing with computer programmers in India and Pakistan in favor of their counterparts in Mexico. Harris' firm, Silicon Space Inc., creates Web-based systems so companies can automate tedious tasks such as bookkeeping and develop ways to market their services online. In 2002, Harris, the company's chief operating officer and a minority shareholder, began tapping a new source of talent across the border.

Reinforcing its intent to expand beyond the Internet searching that made it a household name, Google Inc. today plans to launch software that pulls news stories, photographs, weather updates, stock quotes and other features onto a user's computer without opening a Web browser. The new application, Sidebar, highlights Google's efforts to become a ubiquitous gateway for online information. It also puts Google more squarely into competition with Microsoft Corp.

Elizabeth Rosen was plenty angry when ChoicePoint Inc. sent her a form letter acknowledging that crooks might have perused some of her most sensitive personal and financial data. But the Hollywood nurse was flabbergasted when the company, one of the nation's largest collectors of consumer records, also offered to sell her some of the same information so she could see what might have been compromised.

Watchers of Google Inc. soon will have something new to chat about -- and with. Continuing its rapid expansion into new product categories, the Internet search giant plans to launch an instant messaging program called Google Talk as early as Wednesday, according to people familiar with the service.

An ambitious new Google Inc. service will let anyone upload most anything to a publicly searchable database, potentially laying the groundwork for a push by the Internet juggernaut into classified advertising. The venture, Google Base, could also signal grander ambitions for the king of online search-related advertising.

In 1959, Fletcher Roseberry Jones, a marketing whiz, and Roy Nutt, a technical expert, quit their aerospace jobs, pooled together $100 in start-up capital and launched what would become a new industry. Nearly five decades later, Computer Sciences Corp. is one of the world's largest information technology firms, employing 78,000 people and generating $14 billion in annual revenue.

Finding a specific piece of information on the vast World Wide Web can be a true art. But a group of UCLA students is trying to make a science out of finding art--and other pictures, video and sound--on the Internet with a new search engine specifically designed to locate multimedia files. Instead of trying to sift through all 320 million pages of the Web, Scour.net zeros in on a much more manageable subset of sites that contain multimedia files.

A.J. Nadershahi's first day on the job as network administrator for international law firm Heller Ehrman White & McAuliffe set the tone for his future. One of the firm's partners had been stymied trying to configure a set of data. Nadershahi offered a suggestion, and it worked. "Right away I was a hero," recalled Nadershahi, 34. But Nadershahi needed more than just computer skills to advance to information systems manager two years later.