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Thursday, December 21, 2000 By David Radin
Who made the biggest Internet waves this year? My Internet Insider Team, with input from our listeners, created a "Top Five Internet 2000 Wave Makers" list. It shouldn't surprise you that three of our top five wave makers have been involved in Internet music, including Shawn Fanning, the Internet entrepreneur who created Napster, and whose creation caused tremors throughout the music world. His nemesis at the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), Hilary Rosen, also made the list, as did Lars Ulrich of rock band Metallica -- perhaps the most vocal of Napster's musical opponents. (I wonder how many additional CDs Metallica sold, simply by being in the middle of the Napster controversy.)
Madonna stayed out of the Napster fight but still received honorable mention, by doing little things in a big way -- as only Madonna can do. She used the Web to introduce her fans to a downloadable version of her hit song, "Music." Then she sued a pornographer/cybersquatter, winning custody of the Madonna.com domain name. (Of course, the usual Madonna-porno jokes were bandied about.) As the year closed out, Madonna smashed previous records by Webcasting to an audience of 9 million people -- three times the number that viewed the previous record crowd for Paul McCartney's Cavern concert.
Although they didn't make the final list, Stephen King, Jay Walker of Priceline and Drew Carey received votes because they paved the way for others in their industries with their respective Web endeavors. We even got a number of votes for Phillip Kaplan, the publisher of that Web site that I can't name here due to its explicit name. His Web site has become a high profile scoreboard to track dot.com companies having problems.
Despite the huge interest in Napster in 2000, our top two picks were not Napster oriented -- and they were almost unanimously chosen as the top two. Steve Case, head of America Online, made our No. 2 slot based on AOL's purchase of Time-Warner. Case pulled off what may be the only major purchase of a large traditional company by an Internet economy company. In doing so, he now controls the most Internet users (AOL), many of the largest connections to the net (Time-Warner's cable systems) and a huge amount of content to feed to his customers (Time magazine, Warner Bros movies, etc.). He can now even control how many of his competitors can compete in the emerging broadband market, by allowing or denying them access to his cable systems.
David Boies took the top spot on our list -- not necessarily because he ended up with the most clout, like Case did. He played a critical roll in several of the most newsworthy events and stories related to the Web. First he had a hand in the ruling to break up Microsoft. Then he argued on behalf of Napster. Then he took up the cause of Al Gore, while millions of people turned to the Net for weeks for real time election updates. In the long run (after Microsoft's legal appeals and Napster's business outcomes), his record may be 0-for-3. But in the short run, he was in the thick of the Internet -- and has had impact in how we all see and use the net.
On New Year's Eve at www.InsiderRadio.com, we'll announce our Top 10 Internet Stories, Five Biggest Tech Disappointments and our short list of promising technologies for 2001.
Q: Once in a while, while typing, my word processor starts to erase characters as I type. What causes this? And how can I fix it.
A. You've probably hit the [Insert] key, and inadvertently entered overtype mode. Most word processors are set up to insert characters when you type. By entering overtype mode, you'll replace characters as you type, one-by-one. In MS-Word, if you enter this mode, the letters OVR at the bottom of your MS-Word Window turn to black (instead of gray). To turn off overtype mode, press the [Insert] button again.
David Radin is host of the nationally syndicated radio show "Internet Insider," a local version of which is aired on KDKA AM 1020 at noon Saturdays. You can ask him a computer or Internet question by following the instructions at www.post-gazette.com/interact, where you can also find an archive of his previous Q&A columns.
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