Online Services

The Anne Arundel County school board is trying to be make its decision-making process more transparent to the public - and save paper in the process - but few appear to have taken notice. Two months ago, the board began piloting use of a software program that enables it to run "paperless" board meetings by posting agendas and copious supporting documents on the Internet, saving about 14,000 sheets of paper a month. But not many people have used the new online service, perhaps because no contentious topics are before the board or because the pilot program began as the school year was ending, said some board members.

The Anne Arundel County school board is trying to make its decision-making process more transparent to the public - and save paper in the process - but few appear to have taken notice. Two months ago, the board began piloting use of a software program that enables it to run "paperless" board meetings by posting agendas and copious supporting documents on the Internet, saving an estimated 14,000 sheets of paper a month. But not many people have used the new online service, perhaps because no controversial topics are before the board or because the pilot program began as the school year was ending, according to some board members.

Tune in for half an hour and you'll hear Art Linkletter pitch Royal Crown Cola, listen to "Ricky the K" wish Gary Cooper a happy birthday, and hum along with jingles for everything from Palisades Amusement Park to Pall Mall cigarettes - not to mention hit tunes such as Aretha's "Respect." Sound like something from the '60s? Well, it is - sort of. It's the world of Richard Kaufman, a 52-year-old Dallas disc jockey who created a subscription-based, online music service called www.60sradio.

When Apple opened its online iTunes Music Store last month with 200,000 digital album tracks for sale at 99 cents each, the company said it expected to sell a million songs in its first month. Instead, customers downloaded a million tunes in the first week. That's an astounding figure, considering that Macs with the latest version of Apple's operating system - the only computers that can access the store - account for less than 1 percent of the nation's PCs. If I owned stock in a record company, I'd look at those numbers and wonder why the bozos at the top have spent so much energy over the past three years fighting online music instead of jumping in to sell it in a format that millions prefer.

There's a woman on the phone calling from Pennsylvania. She's in labor, and very angry. Her baby is about to arrive, but the crib she ordered hasn't. Computer nerd and young entrepreneur David Schultz, the man whose company sold her the crib over the Internet, is on the other end of the line, hoping to straighten things out quickly. "Ma'am, I am so sorry," he remembers assuring her. "I will fix this problem." And he does. His shipper delivered the product to the wrong address. Schultz overnights another crib to the busy woman.

COLLEGE PARK - At the University of Maryland and other campuses around the country, the fine art of getting easy A's has become a science. College students who once had to rely on rumor to find lenient professors are turning to a Web site, pickaprof.com, that provides detailed grading histories of faculty members. Unlike previous sites where students could share opinions about teachers, Pick-A-Prof provides hard data. Students type in the name of a professor or course - and up pop the average grades given by the professor, as well as the rate at which students drop out of his or her course.

Just the other day, without getting out of my jammies, I bought a fishing license. Took me just four minutes and my credit card. Filled out the application, hit a button on my computer, printed out the license and signed it. Unfortunately, it was a New Hampshire license, not a Maryland license. What gives? The state Department of Business and Economic Development crows that Maryland is a "New Economy" leader, a smarty pants among the 50 states when it comes to high-tech jobs and know-how.

The common perception of eBay, the extensive online auction site, is of Aunt Tillie selling her collection of 1950s-era Avon bottles and Cousin Jose browsing for a bargain on a laptop computer. More than 5,000 such folks attended eBay Inc.'s convention in June in Anaheim, Calif. But in the past year, major companies such as International Business Machines Corp. and Sears, Roebuck and Co. have become eBay devotees, too. eBay now expects its growth to be propelled not by individual users, but rather by big corporations.

Just because you're a digital camera enthusiast, you don't necessarily want to spend hours in front of a computer monitor, learning how to fix photos with complicated image-editing software. After all, you'd rather get back out there and shoot pictures. To help shots that have real potential but a few major flaws, consider one of the professional online retouching services that have sprung up to make bad pictures into good ones. Some retouching is simple, such as removing flash-induced red-eye, or more complex, such as removing someone from a photograph.