MARRIOTT TO PROVIDE WIRELESS NET IN HOTELS
Four hundred Marriott hotels in the United States, the United Kingdom and Germany will be set up for wireless Internet access, the company said Wednesday. The new service, from high-speed Internet provider STSN, will be available in lobbies, meeting rooms and public spaces of select hotels in the company's Marriott, Renaissance, Courtyard, Residence In, TownePlace Suites, Fairfield Inn and SpringHill Suite franchises. Marriott already provides high-speed Internet access in its rooms, but the new wireless access will complement the in-room service and provide "a distinct competitive advantage," said Lou Paladeau, Marriott's vice president of technology business development. To use the service, clients will log onto the Internet using a wireless-enabled laptop. A purchase screen will appear, into which they will enter their billing information. Pricing for the service has not yet been determined, the company said, but instructions for wireless access in the hotels already are available online at stsn.com.
SEC CALLS FOR ONLINE DISCLOSURES
The Securities and Exchange Commission, in an open meeting Wednesday, proposed rules requiring companies to post their insider deals online to increased transparency in corporate dealings. The insider ownership disclosure reports, already required under the 1934 Securities Exchange Act, would be posted on corporate Web sites under the new SEC plan, as outlined in the Sarbannes-Oxley Act, passed this summer in the wake of corporate scandals. "With these rules, insider ownership information would be publicly accessible substantially sooner that has generally been the rule in the past. Electronic filing and Web site posting of this information would provide more timely and transparent access to the information these reports contain," the SEC said.
U.S. HOLDS LEAD IN INTERNET USAGE
The United States has maintained the highest level of Internet usage over the past three years, with 72 percent adults reporting having gone online in the past 30 days. However, according to the annual "The Face of the Web" report by marketing research firm Ipsos-Reid, the United States not only retains top billing, but also reported one of the largest growth rates of adult users among the 12 countries surveyed. "The Internet is in advanced stages of growth in the U.S. and is becoming a necessity to many of the adult Americans who had resisted going online before," said Brian Cruikshank, an author of the study. The findings were somewhat surprising in the face of the dot-com crash, with growing skepticism in the markets about Internet related stocks, the firm said, but growth over the past two years has been high in South Korea, the United Kingdom, Japan, Germany and France, in addition to the United States.
YAHOO! POLL RANKS EMINEM BEHIND BUSH
Yahoo! users ranked President Bush as their "Person of the Year," giving the chief executive 36.2 percent of the votes. A distant second: rapper-turned-actor Eminem, with 12.2 percent of the votes. Sandwiching Eminem with Bush was U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan. Rounding the top 10 of this eclectic group, according to a recent poll by the online provider, were The Osbourne Family, of reality TV fame; Secretary of State Colin Powell; Britney Spears; Howard Stern; J.K. Rowling, creator of the Harry Potter books; tennis great Serena Williams and baseball's Barry Bonds. This is the first time for the Yahoo! poll, which the company said it plans to make an annual event.
(With thanks to UPI's Dennis Daily)
GOOGLE AND SPRINT TO PROVIDE CELL SEARCH
Wireless server Sprint and search engine Google have teamed up to provide the first U.S. wireless image search, the companies announced Wednesday. Customers with Sprint's PCS Vision service will have access to nearly 400 million Web images and more than 3 billion Web pages from Google's collection, and will be able to search or view full-color pictures and graphics at speeds comparable to home computer's dial-up connection, Google said. According to Sprint Vice President Chip Novick: "The ability to search for and view images clearly provides our customers another valuable reason to do more with their phones than simply make calls."
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