Superior Offering This Month
Written: Oct 24 '99 (Updated Oct 24 '99)
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Superior Offering, Highly Readable, Well Designed
Cons: Editor's Bush Endorsement Makes Me Second Guess Content
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| pshropshire's Full Review: Red Herring Magazine |
Line per line, this month’s Red Herring ranks as one of the best reads in October. As per usual, the big news was about yet another company with plans to dethrone Bill Gates ‘n friends. Named Tightwad Computer, the company is reported to be constucting a secret universal OS—code named TW-Savant—that would supposedly run on any “hardware, work with any software, and be distributed either free or at low cost.” Actually, wasn’t this called Java? Java didn’t quite work out that way, right?
On the other hand, this company has been working on this idea since 1981. That’s a long long time.
The other small bits ‘n pieces in Red Herring were also very entertaining. There was a profile on Stan “the Man” Lee and his online effort to create a new comic book universe. While the writer of the piece lamented that Lee wasn’t going to be using interactivity, it slipped out that Lee plans to hire real actors to voice the characters. Unknown is how much he’ll be using quasi animation programs like Java applets or shockwave. Should be fun to check out there. Related to that piece was a short by Alex Gove who thinks the intenet could and should revive comics. He’s obviously a fan.
Yet another interesting short piece was done on Israeli hacker Eden Shochat. He sounds like the guy who was in the news awhile aback for organizing some notable hacks here in the US. Can’t remember that guy’s code name. Anyway, Eden is here in the USA and he’s translating his hack expertise into IPO territory and apparent big money.
There were also not one, but two profiles of companies with a conscience. One company, run by Atul Jain, is employee owned and is inordinately ethical—a phrase that I thought I would never use to describe a corporation. But what would you call a company that allows its employees to take as many vacations as they want, vote on policies as a committee, and gives discounts to its customers if it bungles a part of the job. I’ve worked for bleeding heart left organizations that wouldn’t give me a sniff of any of those rights—thus my disillusionment with the American Left.
The other ethical company is called Wcities.com, which the developer Tan Rasab hopes to develop into an international City Search. His goal, according to the story, is to help impoverished people all over the globe by “paying locals an above average fee to produce their own web site content.”
Hate to keep repeating myself but there was yet one more very interesting short piece on a company called Disappearing Inc. Ever wonder why companies like Microsoft would allow their old emails to just kind of sit around and be used against them in court someday? Well, this company makes emails that automatically encrypt themselves after a certain time period. That way a company or person can keep their secrets to themselves.
There were more cool articles—a new company that would allow less prosperous investors to buy parts of more expensive stocks, a book review of how China is using Capitolism to promote its ideology (Just like us!!), and an interesting profile of the new Hong Kong among others-but you should just go out and read it yourself.
One other cool thing: It was well designed this month. It looked really really good. Great photos and art.
(By the way if you liked that review, please check out more of the same at www.threerivertechreview.com and for science fiction and comics check out www.majic12.com.)
Recommended:
Yes
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Epinions.com ID:
pshropshire
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Member: Philip Shropshire
Location: Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
Reviews written: 8
Trusted by: 5 members
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