Internet connection

Anthony Celestine was a latecomer to the Internet Age. The 40-year-old Harlem resident has owned a small Jani-King commercial cleaning franchise since 2004, but until recently, the New Yorker hadn't owned a computer or even surfed the Web or had an e-mail address. "I didn't know what none of that stuff was," he says.

Angry online subscribers who had their Web surfing habits tracked in detail are suing a Silicon Valley startup that created the technology and six Internet service providers that briefly used it.

The 15 customers who filed the lawsuit in federal court here Monday demand more than $5 million in damages and are asking a judge to turn the case into a class action representing tens of thousands of Internet subscribers.

Owners of MP3 players and microSD-enabled phones will soon be able to listen to their favorite tunes without Digital Rights Management issues, passwords, or even an Internet connection.

SanDisk, together with Sony, Universal and Warner Bros., has developed microSD cards called slotMusic cards with "more stuff in less space." The new cards will allow users to listen to preloaded music, videos and images from Sony, Universal, Warner Bros. and EMI.

In the beginning, the Internet was fast enough for most. Checking e-mail and reading a Web site didn't require scads of bandwidth. Any broadband connection was more than enough for anyone other than power users.

But a funny thing happened in the past few years: Many people became power users. People started buying albums from iTunes, they started downloading episodes of "Mad Men," they watched endless videos on YouTube. All this added activity calls for a faster Internet.

Until that day comes, there are things that a user can do to make sure their connection is as fast as possible.

Apple is receiving more than consumer backlash in support forums and negative press for the iPhone 3G issues -- the company is getting sued.

On Wednesday, an Alabama woman filed suit against Apple. Her claims sound similar to what's been reported widely in the media: receptivity issues, slow connections to AT&T's 3G network, and dropped calls.

The plaintiff, Jessica Smith, is seeking class-action status that could let thousands of others join the fight. Smith wants Apple to repair or replace the new phone. She is also seeking unspecified damages.

Transferring information between computers is easier now than it ever has been.

I remember back in the days of my Commodore 64 when it was near impossible to exchange information between different machines unless they were of exactly the same manufacturer and model and had compatible peripherals.

Modems were primitive devices that few had access to and as such you ended up saving the information on to an audio cassette, then either posting or exchanging it in person.

The home agent model, for the past several years, was the call center equivalent of the "video phone." It was always the next "up and coming thing," not quite ready yet for its close-up, and many privately doubted that it ever would be, except for a few small niche companies and a couple of notable and oft-repeated case studies, most notably in the travel industry.

As I watched the first few minutes of a TV program on the new $99 Netflix Player, I grew worried that the DVD rental service had gotten something horribly wrong with this foray into Internet video downloads.

Building on the success of its Wii game console, Nintendo has launched WiiWare, a software service for games. Wii owners who have their machines hooked up to an Internet connection will be able to download games from both large developers and small shops. As a game service, WiiWare competes with services on other consoles, such as Microsoft's Xbox Live Arcade and Sony's PlayStation Store.

"By reducing the barriers that make console game development prohibitively expensive," the company said, "WiiWare showcases original ideas in the most democratic environment in industry history."