Chicago Tribune Steve Johnson: Hypertext Column: High 5 Steve Johnson’s Fast Takes on Web News

By Steve Johnson: Hypertext, Chicago Tribune

Oct. 3–1. New technology at some Starbucks will let customers with an iPhone or iTunes pay 99 cents to download the song that is playing in the store. Or, for $9.99, Paul McCartney will show up and sing it himself.

2. Search engines trying to wrest market share from Google are introducing new features that try to be more intuitive about the results they deliver. The better plan: Buy up all domain names representing misspellings of “Google.”

3. A newly discovered bug in Microsoft’s Excel spreadsheet program causes multiplication problems that should equal 65,535 to display as 100,000. Finally, an explanation for the problems in the subprime mortgage industry.

4. Google’s rapid, sprawling growth has caused concern in its hometown of Mountain View, Calif. It’s getting so hard to get around, you practically need a fast-loading, intuitive, massively scalable Web-based mapping program.

5. To fight the continued migration of technology and services from personal computers to the Internet, Microsoft will now sell Web-based versions of some of its most popular software products, including Exchange, the corporate e-mail server. After extensive testing, the company was able to confirm that e-mail could be handled online.

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