Technology

Once again, Doug Humphrey is looking to make it big on the Internet.Humphrey's last company, Digex Inc., was a Beltsville-based Internet service provider that embodied the turbulent early days of the industry. Digex enjoyed heady growth, suffered persistent losses and was eventually sold in 1997 to a Florida telephone company for $150 million.This week, at a convention in Baltimore, Humphrey unveiled the first service of his new firm, SkyCache Inc. of Laurel. This time around, the aim is not to compete with Internet service providers, but to sell them on a technology that may help change the face of the Internet.

Ever since the first roller coasters were built in America in the 1920s, they have worked pretty much the same way.After the cars leave the loading platform, they begin a long climb up a wooden tower, pulled by chains, to the ride's highest point. Then comes the big drop.Premier Rides Inc. of Millersville is helping to change that with linear-induction motor (LIM) technology.LIM roller coasters are launched at 55 mph -- or faster -- and often don't hit their highest point until well into the ride on the twisting and looping steel track.

They put a computer in Stephen Dixon's office at Johns Hopkins even though he didn't ask for it and didn't want it. He has never used it. It was turned on for two years, and he didn't even know it. When contact with a computer can't be avoided, the acclaimed novelist and professor has a colleague go online for him. He has written all 23 of his published books on manual typewriters. His wife handles the e-mail that arrives at their home. "I didn't want e-mail: I didn't want students to contact me through it. I wanted them to call me," Dixon said.

The state is prepared to meet potential technology problems associated with Y2K when the new year arrives at midnight Friday, said Gov. Parris N. Glendening.Glendening said yesterday that if problems develop, backup plans are in place. Staff will monitor essential equipment, such as laboratory equipment at the health department and security in the Department of Public Safety and Correctional Services, into the new year.Information is available through the state's toll-free Y2K hot line at 877-925-6365.

Hammers and saws echoed in a cavernous space where students chiseled and honed large wooden frames for portable classrooms. But here, in this din at the Center for Applied Technology-North, state schools Superintendent Nancy S. Grasmick believes the students are building something else: Maryland's hope for a more skilled work force. On Friday, Grasmick toured the warehouselike facility in Severn to call attention to the evolution of career-technology education. The vocational programs of the 1970s that offered an alternative track for academically weak students are changing.

SEATTLE -- Amazon.com, the Internet's largest retailer, accused rival online bookseller Barnesandnoble.com yesterday of copying Amazon technology that lets shoppers make their purchases with one click of a computer mouse button.Seattle-based Amazon.com filed a patent infringement lawsuit in federal court seeking to bar Barnesandnoble.com, the No. 2 online bookseller, from using its patented 1-Click technology."Being a pioneer and innovating for customers is always hard," said Jeff Bezos, Amazon.

The Boeing Co. has decided to hang up its traditional phones and instead use Internet technology for communications worldwide. With 157,000 employees and operations around the globe, the Chicago-based plane maker and defense contractor is the biggest company to embrace Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) technology, which allows it to transmit voice, data and video on a single network. Boeing employees are unlikely to notice the difference. Their phones will still ring and they'll continue to talk on what look like regular phones.

Torin Ellis has a message for leaders of youth programs: Young people and technology should mix. Through his company, Method 1518, he's trying to help directors of youth programs and the young men and women involved in those programs find career paths that involve technology. Ellis, a former sales manager and technology recruiter, has become a trainer and mentor to youths through U.S. Department of Labor-sponsored Youth Opportunity programs in Baltimore and a link between those government-sponsored training programs and the businesses that will hire graduates.

IBM Corp. agreed yesterday to license key technology from a small Howard County computer-security firm, giving a big boost to shares of Trusted Information Systems Inc. and moving IBM a step closer to offering equipment to support worldwide Internet-based commerce.The license allows IBM to use Trusted's RecoverKey technology, which is designed to allow a computer's owner -- such as a corporation that buys a computer for employees to use -- to recover and unscramble encrypted computer files.

PREVENTING firearms accidents is not equivalent to a ban on handguns. Developing the technology to make guns safer is not science fiction. Requiring that handguns be sold with built-in locks and, eventually, with a user-ID system to activate their use is a goal that responsible citizens should endorse. Maybe not the details or the ambitious deadlines advanced by Gov. Parris Glendening in his campaign to require "smart guns" that can only be fired by a single owner. But certainly the objectives.