Users

If you've ever visited a Disney theme park, you might recall the "It's a Small World" ride. As you drift through the building on mini-boats, hundreds of robotic children from around the world sing their annoyingly memorable song about the shrinking nature of our planet. Soon, they could be singing about computers. For years now, the fundamental building blocks of personal computers have been shrinking, at least in the sense that you can pack more and more power or storage into the same space.

Columbia-based Essex Corp., a maker of fiber-optic equipment, said yesterday that its newest commercial technology has performed successfully. The company said the technology, called Hyperfine Wave Division Multiplexing technology, creates a less-expensive, more flexible way to carry information through the Internet. The technology separates wavelengths that carry information through a fiber-optic strand into as many as 4,000 channels. It also can combine several wavelengths of information on one channel, or break wavelengths out of a fiber and reroute them.

WASHINGTON - First came the Internet in the late 1960s, electronically linking computers around the world. The '90s brought the World Wide Web, making it possible to exchange words, pictures, music, videos and information of every sort. Now comes the "Grid," a third wave in the evolution of the cyberworld that promises to give users access to unprecedented computing power, services and data, no matter where they are located. Ultimately, supporters say, the Grid will be like having a supercomputer at your fingertips.

In his decades-long affair with maps, Ed McNierney has scoured library book sales for yellowed charts, covered walls with maps, and even surveyed the hiking trails near his Groton, Mass., home. But when the 40-year-old software developer brought thousands of the most detailed maps to the Web, he stumbled on a solution to the woes of outdoor enthusiasts and others who follow the nation's charted territory. McNierney's brainchild, Topozone.com, has managed to stitch together seamlessly 58,938 oddly sized and mismatched topographic maps produced by the U.S. Geological Survey.

DALLAS --Computer users can start thinking outside the box. Traditionally, if you wanted to use a new software application, you had to drive to a store and buy a boxed version of the product or download the entire program off the Web and install it on your machine. But that model is being replaced with a concept known alternately as "hosted software" or "software as a service." You don't buy or download the entire program; instead, you go to a Web site, log in, and access the program's functionality through that online portal.

BOISE, Idaho -- Idaho Water Resources Director David Tuthill issued orders Friday to farmers, food processors, dairies and 13 cities in six counties to shut off their water pumps July 6. The order, if carried out, would dry up 16,600 acres of farmland planted in crops including corn, sugar beets, potatoes and hay. Tuthill issued the curtailment order under the state's first-come, first-served water law to meet the demands of two spring-fed fish producers...

A lot of people would call the Commodore computer a dinosaur -- old, slow and obsolete. Dedicated members of the Brooklyn Park Users' Group, however, have a different view.They say the very simplicity of the Commodore is its best feature. And while Commodores are challenged by modern graphic-intense computer programs, they admit, the old computers still can provide hours of enjoyment."I have an IBM, and if I have work to do I use it. But when I want to have fun, I use my Commodore," says Don Graham, a charter member of the group.

Get ready for another flood of America Online CDs. The world's largest Internet service provider has upgraded its software this week to Version 8.0, the most extensive effort to change the look and content of AOL since Version 4.0 was released in the 1990s. Among the changes then was the ability to insert photographs in e-mails. Not to be outdone by the king of ISPs, Microsoft will introduce MSN 8.0 to its 9 million subscribers Oct. 24 with emphasis on similar themes. Microsoft's upgrade won't be nearly as sweeping as AOL's.

Some of the youngest employees at Microsoft are getting ready for a public test of a software program they've been working on for 18 months. The group, part of the company's NetGen division, recently started beta testing on a product called Threedegrees, an instant-messaging program geared at users ages 13 to 24. The program targets some of the key interests of that demographic, which, predictably, include online socializing as well as music- and photo-sharing....

Comcast Cable Communications is switching its 90,000 metro-area Internet customers to a new e-mail system over the next two weeks, and company officials are asking users to adopt their new addresses sooner rather than later. The e-mail switch is the final step in Comcast's plans to move its broadband network in-house after the December collapse of Excite@Home, which provided the communications backbone for 4 million customers of Comcast, Cox, AT&T and other cable Internet operators. Comcast moved its customers' general Internet service to its own network last month.