It Really Helps To Say Please

The following stories appear in more detail at www.spokane. net/technology

While the 2000 Census has triggered a minor revolt over privacy issues, a new breed of online marketing service is doing well extracting information from citizens.

The “permission-based marketing” industry has discovered that it can collect the most revealing details about people simply by asking.

“Because the Internet is a more intimate media, it plays by different rules,” says one analyst. “The first rule is permission.”

Knight Ridder

* High-tech alchemy: Efforts to convert lead and iron into gold never paid off, but hopes are high that a new process developed by IBM can achieve somewhat the same result.

Big Blue’s research scientists have developed a technique for transforming iron and a dash of platinum into the magnetic equivalent of gold.

The result could increase the storage capacity of computer disk drives a thousandfold.

Knight Ridder