Got three years’ technology experience and a hankering to escape the chill of Internet Winter? How about three months helping the locals create technology infrastructure in warm, friendly Ghana, a West African country with Waikiki-quality surfing beaches and a desperate need to enter the 21st Century.
Geekcorps, a Massachusetts-based charity, was hatched by a group of Internet millionaires who lined their own nests building the hugely successful Tripod personal Web site service. They prefer volunteers who, like themselves, can pay their own way but also offer stipends for those with Web-building or programming or networking talent and a need to cool their jets for a while. Give them a buzz at www.geekcorps.org.
HOME OF FREEDRIVE
NOT SO BRAVE
Chicago-based www.freedrive.com, the ever-more-popular Internet file storage/sharing site, is notifying customers that it pulled the plug on the Public Share feature that let users post stuff online Napster-style and let any and all comers download it as they please.
It was intended to post photo albums, self-published e-books and such, but some pirates scared the start-up’s managers by using Public Share to post stolen software from big companies with legal departments. All other features, including a Private Share option that is by invitation only, remain in force and are as splendid as ever. Looks like it’s back to Napster for us pirated-music lovers.
PORN TO LOSE
FILTER FLOPS
Leave it to oversexed techies to waste their time figuring how to outsmart the most popular filter for pornographic photographs, which businesses use to keep company e-mail reasonably smut free.
Pornsweeper software from Content Technologies Holdings works by analyzing the pixels in photos attached to e-mail and rejects those containing large amounts of skin tones. A multicultural censor, Pornsweeper spots many hues of skin but, it turns out, gets fooled by those who use software like Photoshop to make color negatives that can be restored once past the filters. It isn’t easy being green.
BINARY BIJOU
BIT PARTS FOR ALL
Miramax Films bites the bullet by becoming the first major studio to offer a feature-length movie over the Internet to beat Napster-type media piracy. You need Microsoft MediaPlayer 7, a Pentium II, a cable or DSL Internet connection and a hard drive with 500 megabytes to waste to see the romance “Guinevere.” Oh, yes, you also need Visa or MasterCard to pay the $3.50 fee to view the flick for 24 hours. Others with similar schemes in the oven include Blockbuster Entertainment Group and Lions Gate Entertainment Corp. It’s waiting at www.guineverethemovie.com. A cable modem download takes two hours, plenty of time to get some popcorn.
