The use of XBRL for filing with governments and regulators is gaining acceptance quickly. This page has a new publication from Pricewaterhousecoopers on the subject. It adds to one recently published by KPMG. XBRL : How XBRL Web Services Impacts Regulatory Assessments

Philly, the hot spot! Make a whole city a wireless hot spot and make high speed internet available to everyone in it. Maybe it's an idea whose time has come. CNN.com - Philadelphia mulls wireless society - Sep 1, 2004

Video on demand to the TV through the internet. It seems the next logical step in the dissemination of entertainment material. Music is already a long way there. Video presents bandwidth issues, but maybe it's time has come. It'll be interesting to see how this new startup does. Technology Review: Startup Akimbo to Launch Internet Video-on-Demand Service for TV

e-learning goes wireless with the handing out of Blackberry handhelds by the University of Maryland. There's a lesson here. Students need to be thoroughly comfortable and conversant with the technologies being used in business. Globetechnology

Proceedings from the annual European conference on e-Business Productivity are available from this website. e-Business Watch: "The main Annual Event of the e-Business W@tch in 2004 (Brussels, Centre Albert Borschette) discussed methods and results of measuring the economic impacts of ICT on productivity, competitiveness and growth. Speakers included representatives of the OECD, from the EC, official statistics and research organisations.
In the morning session, representatives of the e-Business W@tch presented the results of recent e-Business Sector Studies on the textile industries, transport equipment manufacturing, the chemical industries and retail."

Slowly, the "wild west" phase of World Wide Web development is coming to an end, as the laws and law enforcement practices catch up with technology. The US Justice Department's new Operation Slam Spam is a case in point. Details coming out on Thursday. InformationWeek %3E Spam %3E Justice Department Cracks Down On Spammers %3E August 25%2C 2004

There is quite a controversy about e-voting these days, yet it seems the way of the future. Computerworld has compiled an interesting and timely section on this topic.Electronic Voting - Special Coverage

The benefits of blogs are beginning to be realized by some businesses. Blogs are a useful and simple way to get a message out to the public or to customers. They can be incorporated into existing websites and readily picked up by search engines such as Google. Globetechnology

Music retailers are going through a classic case of disintermediation, and will have to reinvent themselves in order to survive. The only way they can do that is to find new and attractive ways to add value for their customers. Most likely, they will need to embrace the internet, not compete with it. Clive Davis has some suggestions for them in this article. Globetechnology

Outsourcing is here to stay. The New York Times %3E Business %3E World Business %3E Financial Firms Hasten Their Move to Outsourcing

For REI, B2B with a bricks element pays off. How REI Scaled E-Commerce Mountain - Channel Integration - REI uses Web to drive in-store sales; website can complement retail strategy - CIO Magazine May 15,2004

This Darwin survey shows that RFID is an important and growing technology, but that it is still in its infancy in terms of understanding of what it is and what it can do.Darwin - Online Feature - Learn - Research Reports

E-Mail is one of those things that most people like to think is private. However, we know that this is not necessarily so. There is lots of opportunity for many people to read your e-mail, including system support people, ISP's, anyone who has access to the parts of a network where your files are stored, and in some cases, management or groups appointed by management to monitor computer use. But the question is - should any or all of these groups have the right to read your e-mail? The law is not up to date on these issues, although it is changing. Technology Review: E-mail Privacy is All the Rage

The US Securities and Exchange Commission has just announced a new initiative to study the use of tagged data in its filings, particularly using XBRL. This is a major step forward for XBRL and will lead to significant changes in accounting over the next few years.Press Release: SEC Announces Initiative to Assess Benefits of Tagged Data in Commission Filings; 2004-97; July 22, 2004

Speech on the internet, for input as well as output, is just a matter of time. A significant development is the announcement of W3C of Speech Synthesis Markup Language (SSML), which we are going to hear a lot more about over the next few years, as speech gets integrated into web applications. Speech Synthesis Markup Language (SSML) Version 1.0

e-democracy in the form of electronic voting has been around for several years. Before that, there was telephone voting. Yet, we don't seem to be able to pull it all together. You would think we could do that. E-voting's Rush to Failure - Computerworld

A survey released yesterday by Statistics Canada shows that over 50% of households now have at least one member who regularly uses the internet, that internet useage is now extending into lower income groups, thus starting to remove the digital divide, and that the demand for high speed internet access is growing fast.The Daily, Thursday, July 8, 2004. Household Internet Use Survey

RFID (radio-frequency identification) tags will replace bar codes in the not-so-distant future. Giants like Wal-Mart, Procter & Gamble, Gillette, and Kraft are betting that RFID will revolutionize supply-chain management. This Wired article takes a look at the supermarket of the future and explains how RFID technology will make it happen. Wired 12.07: Attention, Shoppers: You Can Now Speed Straight Through Checkout Lines!

In an amazing study just released by the Business Software Alliance, the true cost of software copying is revealed. It shows that 36% of the world's software is pirated and that it represents a loss of $29 Billion US. Try adding that to the cost of pirated music!Major Study Finds 36 Percent of Software in Use Worldwide is Pirated

You have to be so careful with private information in the age of technology. Here's a new example of how private payroll information was inadvertently sent out by e-mail to outside recipients.E-mail glitch exposes private data in California - Computerworld