This story may be true. Then again, it may not. Names have been changed for legal reasons.

“My daughter and I had just finished a salad at X Cafe in Dallas and decided to have a small dessert. Because both of us are such cookie lovers, we decided to try the ‘X Cookie’. It was so excellent that I asked if they would give me the recipe and the waitress said with a small frown, ‘I’m afraid not’. Well, I said, would you let me buy the recipe?

“With a cute smile, she said, ‘Yes’. I asked how much, and she responded, ‘Only two fifty, it’s a great deal!’ I said with approval, ‘Just add it to my tab’. Thirty days later, I received my VISA statement from X and it was $285.00. I looked again and I remembered I had only spent $9.95 for two salads and about $20.00 for a scarf.

“As I glanced at the bottom of the statement, it said, ‘Cookie Recipe – $250.00’. That’s outrageous!! I called X’s Accounting Dept. and told them the waitress said it was two-fifty, which clearly does not mean two hundred and fifty dollars by any possible interpretation of the phrase.

“X refused to budge. They would not refund my money, because according to them, ‘What the waitress told you is not our problem. You have already seen the recipe – we absolutely will not refund your money at this point’. I explained to her the criminal statutes which govern fraud in Texas, I threatened to refer them to the Better Business Bureau and the State’s Attorney General for engaging in fraud.

“I was basically told, ‘Do what you want, we don’t give a @#$#!, and we’re not refunding your money’. I waited, thinking of how I could get even, or even try and get any of my money back. I just said, ‘Okay, you folks got my $250, and now I’m going to have $250.00 worth of fun’.

“I told her that I was going to see to it that every cookie lover in the United States with an e-mail account has a $250.00 cookie recipe from X . . . for free. She replied, ‘I wish you wouldn’t do this’. I said, ‘Well, you should have thought of that before you ripped me off’, and I slammed down the phone on her.

“So, here it is!!! Please, please, please pass it on to everyone you can possibly think of. I paid $250 dollars for this . . . I don’t want X to ever get another penny off of this recipe . . .”

And so the story goes. And so the story was passed on and one and on. I have not included the recipe here, but millions of e-mail users have seen it. It is extraordinary the power of this new communications tool they call ‘e-mail’.

Think of how it can spread news at such lightening speed. Think of how it can spread the truth, where traditionally the truth found it hard to surface. Think of how it can spread lies, how the world can think that someone is a cheat, and how that someone will find it very hard to counter those lies after they have spread around the world.

These are changing times and those who don’t understand the changes had better be careful.

SITES, SITES AND MORE SITES

Howard Rheingold’s Minds Website: Somebody called Weiser said: “Here is the very hard challenge whose breakthrough solution will be the centerpiece of computing after PC’s: calm technology. That is, information technology that helps us be calm while still providing lots of new information.” And if you want to read more about ‘calm technology,’ then go to the recently launched Howard Rheingold Minds website.

Rheingold is one of the ‘legends’ of cyberspace, and his website is full of interesting stuff and lots of room for online discourse. There is a comprehensive directory of virtual communities on the Web ranging across MUDs, chat spaces, speciality forums, and virtual worlds. There are many interesting articles on subjects such as nanotechnology and mirror worlds.

Although the website graphics are very clean and elegant, they are, in my opinion, too large, thus making the site slower to load than it should be. Overall, though, this website is well worth a visit for those with enquiring minds. http://www.minds.com/

Microprocessor — 25th Anniversary: Never has the saying, the best of goods come in small parcels been more true than in describing the mighty Microprocessor, whose 25th Anniversary it is this year.

“In 1971, Intel engineers Hoff, Faggin and Mazor finished development on the 4004 and on November 15, Intel formally introduced the 4004 microcomputer set (the term “microprocessor” was not coined until later),” states the Intel anniversary website.

“Smaller than a thumbnail and packing 2300 transistors, the $200 chip delivered as much computing power as the first electronic computer, ENIAC. By comparison, ENIAC relied on 18,000 vacuum tubes packed into 3000 cubic feet when it was built in 1946. The 4004 executed 60,000 operations in one second, primitive by today’s standards, but a major breakthrough at the time.” http://www.intel.com/intel/comdex/annivers.htm

Figuring Out Search Engines: If you ever wondered, as I’m sure you have, which is the best search engine to use and why, then this is a good place to go. There’s lots of valuable information here with regard to how to get the best out of a search engine by using its advanced search facilities, such as metasearching: “One way to spend less time searching and get better-quality results is to compose exact searches (lots of specific AND terms) and then perform the search using a metasearch service. Metasearching simply means automatically searching several services at once.” http://www.macworld.com/cgi-bin/pages.pl/pages/december.96/Column.2893.html

Web Pages That Suck: Let’s face it, most of the websites on the Internet are poorly designed. The graphics are either too large and ugly or the information is either too shallow and poorly organised. Web Pages That Suck is a site by designer Vincent Flanders, whose purpose “is to help people design effective and aesthetically pleasing web pages. My methodology is somewhat different I firmly believe that if a person is exposed to bad web page design they’ll be less likely to use these techniques in the pages they create. Luckily, most people commit the same mistakes over and over and over and over — you get the point. By pointing out these mistakes, and being told that they are mistakes, you can avoid them when you design your web pages.” http://www.webpagesthatsuck.com/

Rolling Stone Online: So, finally Rolling Stone goes online. First impressions of this site were that it was very slow. You know, it’s great to have fancy graphics and animations, but, hey, when it takes ages for them to download, it becomes a real pain.

When will designers realise that the web is simply not MTV? High visual impact is just not on because to enjoy it you have to wait and wait and wait. The web is for delivering information to people and anything that gets in the way of that is quite simply a waste of time. From Rolling Stone’s perspective, the web should be about getting news out to the readers as it breaks. It should be about involving the readers in the news and communication process. It should be about providing archives and search facilities.

When Rolling Stone finally did arrive on my screen, I nearly got motion sick. Remember the times you tried to read as you sat in the backseat of a car? Remember how you felt nauseous after a while? Well, I was starting to get that feeling as I tried to read the information on the screen.

Text moving back and forth across the bottom of the screen; pictures wrapping and unwrapping; something going around like a windmill; images swivelling about; a plug and cable slithering like some snake; an envelope opening and then scrunching up. I gave up.

What’s the point? What’s the point in being so smart that you look really stupid? Rolling Stone has arrived on the Internet with as much grace as an elephant slipping on a banana skin. http://www.rollingstone.com

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DOWNLOADING MUSIC

The days of purchasing your music on a CD are numbered as far as Todd Rundgren is concerned. Rundgren told Investor’s Business Daily in October that he feels that most PC users should now be able to receive near-CD-quality music. He thinks that before long musicians will start selling directly to the public, probably through individual subscriptions to a particular artist’s or record company’s Web music distribution service. “This is especially great for garage bands and for people like me who don’t have a gigantic fan base,” says Rundgren.

It is inevitable that the CD will one day be replaced by the hard disk in the same way that the CD itself replaced the vinyl record. People will download their music onto a massive hard disk on their TV-Computer, then either select what they want to play by use of a keyboard, mouse or by voice.

I don’t think this sort of thing will be common for several more years, perhaps not until the turn of the century – but then that’s only a little over three years away. While this sort of change will radically affect the distribution system, don’t expect record companies to disappear.

The Internet has so much information and as the years go by, there is going to be so much more. Artists who have already established a reputation and fanbase will be able to sell and make a living through their websites. But young bands and artists who have yet to make their names will find themselves fighting for sales among thousands upon thousands of other struggling artists. Without record company help with regard to branding, quality production and substantial promotion, only the lucky few will sell anything worth talking about.