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Issue Numero Uno, December 6, 1999
Denver, Colorado, USA

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Have you canceled your newspaper   subscription?

Source:  New York Times, July 31.

On July 30, 1999, Hotalings Newsstand closed its stand on 42nd Street in New York which it had run since 1926.  It leaves its street location, and has regrouped in a smaller capacity inside the tourist information center on Broadway.  Hotalings is a family-run store founded in 1905 by the present owners' grandfather.

Hotalings sells papers and magazines from around the world to immigrants and tourists wanting to read about home, locals wanting to read job want ads in other cities, states, and countries, and many regulars who just liked to stay informed on international news. 

The beginning of the end

According to an employee, the beginning of the end was when the San Jose Mercury News began publishing online.  That was when they first noticed sales for that paper declining, and certain regular visitors quit stopping by.  As online newspaper sites grew, sales continued to decline.

Earlier this year, the store cut staff and reduced operating hours.  Then, they cut back on the number of publications they sold.   Then, they moved to the information center kiosk.  Even with the cutbacks though, Hotalings still carries papers from 225 US cities, and 1,000 overseas publications.  There is not room at the kiosk for all of them, so many are stored in a warehouse, making impulse purchases and browsing impossible.

Newspapers Under Siege

American Journalism Review has two articles discussing whether print newspapers are facing extinction because of the Web.

http://ajr.newslink.org/special/12-1.html
http://ajr.newslink.org/special/12-2.html

AJR also has links to "more than 9,000" newspapers, magazines, radio/tv.  Browse the directories or search for a paper name, city, or country.  Search magazines by subject or name.

We hate to see a long-term family business having difficulty, but it's not difficult to see why.  Many newspapers have gone on line to compete with job ad sites like Monsterboard.com and to save their classifieds, which are their bread and butter. Others went online because it just seemed like the thing to do.

If you are looking for news, some sites to visit are:

http://www.world-wide-news.net
They say they link to 5,000 news services.  Not articles, but hard news sites. No People Magazine here!  In addition to your selected country's online papers, they kindly give you a picture of the flag and a map of the area.  There are thousands of newspapers, but 11 magazines. The best features here are the audio and video links.  You can click on anything from ABC News to BBC - focus on East Africa, to Radio Canada, and your RealPlayer will come up with that feed.  Clicking on CNN will take you to CNN's site to choose what you want. The video selections take you to news sites that offer video feeds.

www.worldnews.com
Possibly a better site, but without the audio and video.  Search for articles by language or subject, and search for news sources by country. This site is not just hard news; they include fashion, film, sports, health and more.

www.thepaperboy.com advertises 3,245 newspapers from 119 countries.  Search by country, and listen to a few audio outlets.  Has a link to magazines at the bottom, which includes Aviation, Electronics, Sports, Travel and more.

www.newsindex.com does not link to news sites, but instead searches current news for articles from an index of 300 worldwide papers.  Uses GoTo.com to also search Web sites for the news topic you searched for.  Does not keep an archive, just current news.

www.news365.com has links to "10,000" news media sites covering 300 topics.  Browse news, sports, business and entertainment. Lists links to classifieds of major papers.

The globally popular San Jose Mercury News reporting on Silicon Valley.

-Translation Service-
If you stumble onto a paper in a language you can't read, if it's English, French, German, Italian, Portuguese, or Spanish, and you read one of them, you can translate the site by typing in the address (http://www.etc.com) at http://babelfish.altavista.com/

Technology Review keeps archives of past issues, and is an interesting place to stop by.  Archived articles include an interview with Bill Gates about open source software (May/June)

and a young man who walks around with Internet-connected computers in his clothes.

Echelon Surveillance Project

It has been reported from various reputable sources (links below for the whole story), that the US National Security Agency has joined forces with similar offices in England, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, and is operating a sophisticated surveillance system which captures satellite, microwave, cellular and data communications of citizens.

The reports say that the global electronic surveillance system, code named Echelon, is intercepting everyday communications including faxes, telephone, and e-mail transmissions, and scanning them for certain keywords - perhaps "revolt,"  "manifesto," "bomb," "militia," and the names of Presidents, country leaders, and their families.

Privacy activists including the ACLU are on alert, and WebStreetStudios will try to keep informed as this story continues.  According to Wired.com, no US agency has admitted the existence of Echelon, "but Australia's Defense Signals Directorate recently admitted the existence of UKUSA, an agreement between the 5 national communication agencies that reportedly govern the system."

You think you've just been watching too many X-Files episodes, but then an elected official, and former CIA official, Robert Barr (R-Georgia), accuses the US NSA of conducting a "dragnet" of communication and "invading the privacy of American citizens." (Wired.com, Nov. 17.)  It has been said that Barr's interest will ensure that Congress holds hearings on the issue next year.

Echelon article from Time Mag's Digital Daily

Wired News article quoting Barr and the Australian Defense Signals Directorate (Nov. 17, 1999)

Echelon Watch from the ACLU
(Start with the faqs link)

Congressman Robert Barr has a brief paragraph on his Web site regarding Echelon.

Australia confirms Echelon exists

Excite News has a brief article Dec. 3, 199

Just as we had flower power and Hippies in the 60s, continued war protests and Women's lib in the 70s, Yuppies and the "me decade" of the 80s, Clinton Escapades and the Internet in the 90s, PRIVACY is going to be the issue that defines the 00s.  I hope to do either a special issue of Web Street Studios Stuff on this subject as it applies to the Internet, or perhaps the next issue.  We'll look into DoubleClick's purchase of Abacus-Direct and Opt In E-Mail.com -  what those ramifications might be, and some of the recent privacy debacles by the Comet Cursor people, Geocities, AOL, RealJukebox, and others.  Also, marketing cookies in general and now e-mail marketing cookies.  And, credit cards on the Internet.  Stay tuned.

www.WebStreetStudios.com/school/cookies.htm has some good basic cookie info if you need a brushup.

California state emergency officials have developed a "follow the sun" program to keep tabs on any disastrous effects from Y2K as it crosses the globe.  They will have 20 hours advance warning from the time Y2K hits the New Zealand time zone before it is midnight in S.F.

Staff in nine state foreign trade offices including Tapai, Mexico City, London, Johannesburg, Jerusalem, and South Korea will be reporting any problems from their corner of the world back to California headquarters, and will use satellite phones if other methods fail. Many will be using office space around the world donated by Microsoft, Hewlett-Packard and Hitachi, among others.

Check out www.jrwhipple.com/z2k and see where Y2K hits first.  JR Whipple has divided the world into 24 zones, and has reporters signing up to give reports on any Y2K disturbances as the time change moves across the world.  Sign up and report on your city January 1 if you still have power.

"The year the big light in the sky goes dark"
www.y5b.com will fill you in on how to prepare for the year 5 billion.

Here are some interesting Y2K related events that have already occurred, complements of the National Science Foundation (the article, not the events.)

Twenty Russian officers will sit side-by-side U.S. colonels at Peterson Air Force Base in Colorado Springs to watch as Y2K information comes in from around the world.  They will be in direct contact with leaders in Russia, sharing information to ensure that any Y2K glitches in either nation's missile warning systems do not lead to the launching of a nuclear warhead.

The command post is ready, and the Russian officers will arrive in late December.

"Is it the "Zeros", the "Y2Ks", the "Naughties"? Who decides this and how?"   I like "The Oh's" or maybe the Oh Ohs! even though it's not technically the letter O but the number zero.  The owners of this site (former founding partners of LinkExchange, and 2 who work at Microsoft), started this site because they thought it would be cool, and because they thought the world needed it!  They were right!  This is a side project for them, with no affiliation to their companies, and no risk of e-mail spam or privacy problems.  Have fun at www.namethedecade.com .

Read the faqs page, then download at www.atomtime.com . Try it free for 30 days, then purchase for $US 10).  (Download directly from AtomTime - I found WinFiles had an old version.)

The first populated land where the Sun will rise in the new millennium (and at the beginning of any other year) is at Kahuitara Point (44° 16' S 176° 9' W) on Pitt Island in the Chatham Islands, a dependency of New Zealand.

If you liked that fact, you'll find more like that at the U.S. Naval Observatory site.

WinKey
Can one have too many short cuts?  Is anything fast enough?  No!

Does your keyboard have the WinKey?  If not, maybe it's time for a new keyboard. It is the flying windows key between your ctrl and alt keys.  Ever since I discovered that pressing the WinKey and D would minimize all my open windows and show me my desktop, I've been waiting to have time to look up other WinKey functions, and wait!  Stevebass@onelist.com sends over a free WinKey program from Copernic Technologies that lets you customize what your WinKey will do.  I've just got it, but I've programmed it to bring up one of my favorite "quick search" engines - www.infind.com by just pressing the WinKey + the letter I.  It can also be programmed to start applications and open files.  I can't wait!  Let's see, there's 26 letters, and...

Download WinKey from here - http://www.copernic.com/winkey - 1.19MB, 6 minutes possible download time on 28,800.  Works with Windows 95, 98, NT.

In the mean time, here is what your WinKey should currently do without programming.  Essentially, it opens your start menu, then the second letter selects a menu item. 

Ever open a new browser window and need to maximize it?  So you go to the middle box on the top right corner of your of your browser - the one next to the closing X?  Could they possibly make that any smaller?  Instead, just double click anywhere on the title bar and get the same results.  If you double click while it's maximized, it will shrink to partial view.  If it's already in partial view, it will maximize.

On this page the title bar is the top line that says Web Street Studios Stuff, e-letter. Double click this page's title bar and see what happens.  This seems to work in all MS Office applications, Internet Explorer and Netscape browser windows.

See you in about 2 weeks,

Enjoy the Web,

Comments and suggestions welcome.

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    Updated  04/01/02 12:11 AM            Top