"I know there have been a few dot-coms falling on the Nasdaq for the last several months, but don’t kid yourselves: The Internet is still our future."
—Former President Bill Clinton, addressing an Oracle Corp. software conference.

"Compared to what could happen, computer security misuses [to date] have been mostly ankle-biters."
—Peter G. Neumann, principal scientist with research and development company SRI International.

PILLSBURY’S HALF-BAKED IDEA

Yet another sign that the end of the world is near:

Pillsbury Co. has whacked several companies, including Sun Microsystems Inc., with cease-and-desist letters demanding that they stop using the popular term "bake-off" when testing new software against competitors’. Though the term has been commonplace in the computer industry for many years, Pillsbury notes that it trademarked the term in 1949 and claims that the computer sector’s use undermines the baking company’s credibility.

THE (TELE)COMMUTER LANE

Number of telecommuters in the U.S.: 19.6 million. (Source: Cahners In-Stat Group)

Amount of greenhouse-gas emissions kept out of the air each day by telecommuters not driving to work: 39,000 tons of hydrocarbons; 590,000 tons of carbon monoxide; and 31,000 tons of nitrogen oxides. (Source: Reason Public Policy Institute)

Number of lives saved each year through reduced highway deaths as a result of telecommuting: 350. (Source: Reason Public Policy Institute)

PLANE TALK

Little is funny about flying commercial these days, considering the cancellations, crowded planes, lousy food, snippy stewards, and the fat guy in the next seat who is snoring. But at least a few people are trying to brighten things up. Here is a portion of an e-mail making the rounds about some humorous moments:

As a plane landed and was coming to a stop, the pilot came over the loudspeaker: "Whoa, big fella. WHOA!"

From a Southwest Airlines flight attendant: "To operate your seat belt, insert the metal tab into the buckle, and pull tight....If you don’t know how to operate one, you probably shouldn’t be out in public unsupervised."

Another attendant’s approach to the safety demonstration: "Your seat cushions can be used for flotation. In the event of an emergency water landing, please take them with our compliments."

A pilot after a landing: "Thank you for flying Delta Business Express. We hope you enjoyed giving us the business as much as we enjoyed taking you for a ride."

An attendant: "Thank you, and remember, nobody loves you, or your money, more than Southwest Airlines."

Another attendant: "Last one off the plane must clean it."

And another: "Anything left behind will be distributed evenly among the flight attendants. Please do not leave children or spouses."

From a Southwest attendant during a delay at the gate: "The machine that normally rips the handles off your luggage is broken, so we’re having to do it by hand."

An attendant, after a less-than-perfect landing: "We ask you to please remain seated as Captain Kangaroo bounces us to the terminal."

An elderly passenger to the pilot after a particularly hard landing: "Did we land or were we shot down?"

GRANNYCAM

Georgia Institute of Technology researchers are working on what they call a "digital family portrait" that can funnel daily information on the state of elderly parents’ health to faraway relatives. The information is collected from sensors strategically placed throughout the parents’ home to record how many times they go up the stairs, walk to the kitchen, hit the bathroom, and so forth. A computer sends the data over the Internet and displays the information on flat-panel screens mounted on the relatives’ walls. The screens are mounted inside wooden picture frames.

‘YANKEE’ INGENUITY

Howard Anderson has put his money where his mouse is for more than three decades. His long series of bets on the success of the computer industry began in 1970, when he founded Yankee Group, a research and consulting firm that grew into a leading source of information about technology and new media. In 1984, Anderson launched Battery Ventures, which has raised more than $1 billion in venture capital. In early 2000, Anderson persuaded his partners, which included personal-computer maker Compaq Computer Corp. and telecommunications equipment maker Nortel Networks Ltd., to establish YankeeTek Ventures, an early-stage venture fund keen on technology ideas bubbling out of the university sector. Anderson, 55 years old, still finds time to lecture at Massachusetts Institute of Technology and pen let-’er-rip magazine articles with titles such as "Lies Venture Capitalists Tell." As usual, he wasn’t shy about sharing his views, even on his mistakes.

CONTEXT: Where do you think that the Internet stands today?

HOWARD ANDERSON: It’s still divided into four groups: attackers, defenders, arms merchants, and customers. The attackers are the upstarts that have changed the landscape. But they’re kind of like sperm swimming upstream. For all but one of them, it’s going to be a very bad day. You have the entrenched defenders—the companies such as Lucent Technologies Inc., Nortel, Sycamore, and 3Com Corp. that have been here a long time. Then there are the arms merchants such as workstation maker Sun Microsystems Inc. and networking equipment maker Cisco Systems Inc.. Finally, of course, there are customers.

CONTEXT: As an investor, who do you like?

ANDERSON: We’ve always looked at the arms merchants. I like a group that can sell to the Arabs and the Jews, the Christians and the lions, the attackers and the defenders. One of our better investments at Battery was Akamai Technologies Inc., which essentially does Web hosting. We’ve also done well with Broadband2Wireless Inc., which is delivering high-speed, broadband service to consumers in bandwidth-starved areas where cable TV and telephone companies are taking forever.

CONTEXT: What have you taken away from the wreckage of the Internet sector this past year?

ANDERSON: That some things are a lot harder to accomplish on the Internet than initially thought. One of the worst investments we made at Battery was in Petstore.com. We didn’t anticipate that the cost of acquiring a customer would be $300. It might have taken us five years to recover that investment. That is, if the dog didn’t die.

CONTEXT: What will the Internet look like in a few years?

ANDERSON: High-speed Internet access everywhere. There will be many bottlenecks, but many solutions.

The Internet will be the focal point of more new business enterprises than any other development. The Internet is grossly more important than the personal computer and maybe as important as the semiconductor.