Results tagged “internet”

It might, if the government is to be believed. As swine flu escalates, leveling everything and everyone in its path, the wide-spread absences that have shut down schools might also lead to similar wide-spread absences in offices across the country. And what will millions of bored, sick, bed-ridden Americans do to pass the time? Why take to the internet, of course. And such simultaneous web-surfing could overload the information super highway, crashing the web for people all around the world. The Government Accountability Office issued a 77-page report that sets guidelines as to how we can all help, including "voluntary public reduction of Internet use," and trying to "limit video streaming, gaming and peer-to-peer and other bandwidth-intensive applications during daytime work hours." Right, that'll happen.

Sprint has been teasing Chicagoans for over two years with its proposed WiMax, a 4G wireless network that would blanket the city with high-speed internet access. Although the network was originally supposed to be available in 2008, PC World reported that technical issues (providing sufficient backhaul to wired networks) and "upheaval in the company" blocked the path to success. As it turns out, Sprint, alongside ClearWire and Comcast, have finally ironed things out and will begin selling WiMax in the next several weeks. Other locations for the end-of-the-year roll out include Philadelphia, Seattle, three North Carolina and three Texas cities, and Hawaii.

As a chef, Lockwood's Phillip Foss is starting to come into his own. His take on the Chicago Hot Dog (made with diced lobster rolled in a scallop mousse in response to a challenge from MP Chicago's Helen Rosner) was said to be "like Hot Doug's in a tuxedo having sex with a Maine Lobster Roll" by Michael Nagrant. He's also a very prolific, engaging, and quite talented blogger. It seems academic that Foss be part of a unique tasting next Tuesday, from 6-9 p.m. Lockwood is hosting what Foss calls the first-ever "digital tasting" with Farmer Lee Jones of The Chef's Garden in Milan, Ohio.

Since its announcement in February, Chicago sports fans have been awaiting today's launch of ESPNChicago -- the sports network's first city-specific website. Why start with Chicago? While it made sense for HuffingtonPost to choose the Second City as its first local site, given the city's steep political history and well-known shenanigans, Chicago is perhaps not quite so obvious a choice for ESPN. Sure, we may think we're the best sports city in the land -- what other city's fans will sit through a blizzard on baseball's Opening Day or fill an arena to watch a 13-69 basketball team? But we can hear the objections from Boston and New York all the way here in the Middle West.

We're getting educational on you! Learn how the Internet came about and developed ... ultimately making it possible for you to fall in love with a certain Chicago-based group weblog! (And for us to fall in love with you too, of course.) Plus, after watching this, you will sound super smart as you dominate the idle chatter at this weekend's cocktail parties.

Now you can: In a book! That he probably won't read. Though maybe he will, since we expect that, like many Americans, he'll be unemployed for a while and will have more free/vacation time than he had even as president. Farewell 43, a Santa Monica, Cal.-based project that claims to be "unbiased, unaffiliated, and politically neutral," is publishing a collection of messages generated from the American public to be given to Bush after Inauguration Day.

A Sox fan would never stoop to this level...

Today, as it's been noted, is my last day as editor of this fine site, and one of my last in Chicago. This gives me license for some seriously corny self-indulgence.

Who owns Chicago2016.com? Currently, MBA student Stephen Frayne Jr., who bought the domain back in 2004. But now the Chicago Olympic bid folk, whose website is currently Chicago2016.org, and the USOC are suing him, claiming the site belongs to them.

Margaret: Marcus, I'm having sort of an off day. Let us turn to the internet in search of wonder.

Millions of football fans have either drafted or will soon be drafting their Fantasy Football teams. As a way to connect with friends, possibly win some money, and as a definite way to kill time at work, it's no wonder that Fantasy Football has grown in popularity. And the web makes drafting and maintaining teams so damn easy!

Well, is it?

Five people were injured, three seriously, when a car plowed into a crowd in a West Side alley last night. "The incident was sparked when someone in the crowd sprayed mace at the motorist, who then drove through the crowd, possibly twice." [S-T]

Wordle is a sweet little applet that takes text and turns it into a word cloud. You can customize the layout, font and color scheme, too. We made this one with some of today's posts.

If you haven't checked out the official blog of the Chicago Pizza Club, you're doing yourself a major disservice. Using the "where is the best pizza in Chicago" argument that has taken lives and broken families and marriages, the members of the club scour the city's far reaches with one simple goal in mind.

Wired's blog Threat Level has an interview with "Defiant" and "EBK," the hackers who took down Comcast yesterday. They say they did it because they hate Comcast.

Comcast.net was hacked last night (screenshot) to read "KRYOGENICS Defiant and EBK RoXed Comcast sHouTz to VIRUS Warlock elul21 coll1er seven." Comcast e-mail was down while the site was out of commission, but a company spokeswoman says no private info was compromised. [AP]

Muckety, a relationship visualization tool, released its map of Chicago's 100 most connected people today. Fun!

Ayee. It's always something. Looks like Looptopia.com isn't working at the moment, which is great because probably no one wants to check it before they leave work or anything. (We're getting "please check back." Katie Scully got "this account has been suspended.")

Eighth grade students from Franklin Middle School in Champaign have written, produced, and acted in a short film about the effects of bullying. Part of an anti-bullying curriculum that will be instated by Franklin and other schools throughout the U.S. next year, the film shows some situational examples of bullying and its consequences, and hopes to make an impact on bullying by provoking classroom discussion on the topic.

An Aurora teen was sentenced to 27 days in jail for posting what prosecutors called threats on his MySpace page. The 15-year-old East Aurora High School student agreed to a plea bargain today, having already served that time. He was also sentenced to 21 days of electronic home monitoring and a year of probation, during which he's only allowed to use the internet for homework.

Have you been getting internal server error messages when you leave a comment? We have, too. But don't worry--your comment still goes through even if you get that message, so you don't need to send it again. Our crack team of internet ninjas are working on it.

Sumei Hu, the woman who disappeared from O'Hare on Feb 26, still hasn't been seen or heard from, but her husband Steven Frash went on Greta Van Susteren's show last night to explain--or, not really explain--what happened.

When it's this cold and icy, the last thing we can imagine doing is sitting outside at a ball game. But spring will one day arrive, and we're sure some of you will want to spend time enjoying the nicer weather at Wrigley Field.

They say Shakespeare wrote over 30,000 unique words in his complete works and his vocabulary is estimated to be about twice that. The average person today knows roughly 12,000 to 20,000 and only uses a tenth of that.

Barack Obama swept the Potomac Primary last night, bringing his winning streak to eight, and eclipsing Hillary Clinton in the delegate count, 1,059 to 956 among pledged delegates.

So's everyone else's, sucka. Research in Motion, the company that makes the way of life device, says a "component of the Americas network infrastructure" is broken, and they don't know when it'll be fixed. It's affecting all wireless carriers, so as much as we all love to curse a our various providers, this problem originates with RIM.

Here are some things going around town to make you consider giving the weather a big ol' raspberry.