Web hits - and some missesThe growing speed and rekabuty ol tne Internet was apparent last week as the global network easily handfed aflood of users seelung informabon on the Michael Jackson tnaj veract.

.Mt. HirryPetUr.cp*o:M NBv*n**r!001:fiwio v.» «!«-«&« w totitttvc mtttrwnxu

*wr -laMi-eh Ooo* IPO, Aori T nwrt. Qtt*rt»r2OQ,- Are* ton* pi* SM: Goci*'ill« 201: 1« KW Ma oftimdioi/TOuciu wwis-^kuoa uracrvuMremi. c*J-^ we*. W UMMtocuio

Sotnr FCC: Uftu Syot

Net gains in the delivery of newsWeb: Internet Mirviceshave posted signincantiinpnivemcnls in report-ing information.

Hit ANDUW RATKEK

After the court clerk an-nounced the Jury* "not gullly"verdict to each charge oi childabuse aumnsi Michael Jackson.

whether the system was broken.The system they were debat-

ing was the legal one — not theInternet, whkh hai made majorMt.J t . over the past decade InbeLng able U> shoulder major

trial verdkt.Seven years ago. newt and

government sites choked when

download ihe report from Inde-pendent Counsel Kenneth W.Starr about President Clinton'saffair wlih Monica Lewinsky.Bui events thai followed — Ihe

bllltoos of dollars Invested labroadband capacity during thedot-corn mania and the Sept. Uattack that altered how Websues respond to major news —have resulted In a much more

The Michael Jackson verdictcreated no Web traffic Jams, re-ported KcynoU; Systems Inc.. a

ages and measures Internet per-formance, even as sites such uCNN.com reported their busiestnews day this year. Nearly 6.9million peo- {See Internet. 2c\

P E R S P E C T I V E

This just in, according to the Netllnttrntt, from Poye lc]

pie accessed CNN.com the nightof the Jackson vtrdfct, about 1million more than after the U.S.launched war on Iraq In 2003.

Inicrre'l research firm. ^^The system Itself ... is more

robust. The routers ore smarter.

smarter,' said Harrison "Lee"Rainle, director of the PewInternet and American LireProject, a research group. "BackIn the mid- to late 1990s whenthe Internet was taking off. a lotof commentary was about 'Canthe system hold?1 The worry has

about security lor the system."

Handling tho stresiThe test of any communica-

tions technology is how It han-dles stress. The reliability of thelar.dll.ne phone was considered,by many, it* greatest character-istic. Wlrelesi phonei have

even the providers recognize the

^Tt-^T \fV el b*o dffcnw oro'rfcl In U-e Elsenhoweradministration because leadersfeared the telephone system wasvulnerable. Scientists set out tocreate a more redundant, diffusecommunications system lesscentralized than Ma Bell's net-work, ftars still loom over theInternet about security and vi-ruses such as the "MyDoom"worm that Infected millions of

CITES about the network's abilityto respond to spikes In traffichave abated.

Perhaps the greatest transfor-mation In recent years has beenthe growth In high-speed broad-

•pipes' that can carry morevoice, video and data. High-speed lines In the United Statesgrew to 39 million last year, upseven-fold from 5 million In 2000.according :o the most recentdata from the Federal Commu-nications Commission.

Provider* and consumershave gotten smarter about thetechnology. Some experts envi-sion a more active. IntuitiveInternet that will make today'sstill mostly static, pom1, and-click screens seem like early

Tracking page view counts on CNN.comMm tvMt [tat* t*t* rimMichael Jackson ventctPope Benedict XVI o'ccicjPope John Paul II nsars deathDeath of fern SchiauoPresident Bush inauguration3004 election nigji! (24 hours)

black-and-white television.•We're a IllUe past the 'Mr.

Wauon. come here, I need you'stage," sold Paul Sagan. refer-ring to Alexander Graham'sBell's first word* transmit led byphone in 1876. 'Mr. Watson.come here. I want to see you."

Technologies Inc.. has spread10.000 computer serve rs aroundthe work) to speed connectionsto hundreds of Web sites.Akamai prospered after theevent si-en as pivotal la the lifeof Internet news — the Sept. 11attack that aJso claimed the lifeof the company's co-founder.Daniel Lewln. 31. was on Ameri-can Airlines Flight 11 thatcrashed Into the north tower ofthe World Trade Center.

His partner In creating theCambridge. Mass.. company.Tom Lelghlon. cultivated histhinking about managing theWeb during the mid-1990s whilehe worked down a hall at theMaiiachusetts Institute ofTechnology from Tim Berners-Lee. credited ai the Inventor ofthe World Wide Web.

Time capauloThe events that have taxed

the young Internet read like atime capsule unearthed from re-cent years - the Victoria's Se-cret online roshlon show that

1GS9. the Harry Pouer phenome-non, and consumers clamoring(or relief from Ulemarketers onthe 'Do Not Call' list. Onlineholiday shopping also stumbledeorty on but has performed bet-ter In recent years. Online salesdoubled between 2000 and 2004,to 123 btllloa

When a colleague suggested toDon Hess last Monday that hesummon live video of MichaelJackson traveling to hear theverdict In his trial. Heu' mindraced back to another famous

June 13 77 millionApnl 19 Si millionjif-.n 71 trillionMarch 31 62 millionJan. 20 57 millionNov. 2 650 milion

celebrity trial In California adecode earlier. 'I was a market-ing consultant at a health carecompany on the j£asl Coast, andthere were 15 people crowdedaround a pocket TV awaitingthe OJ. verdict." said Hess, avice president with comScore

2009. and every Individual hasthis extraordinary ability to tuneInto live coverage,"

Last fall. 180.000 peoplesigned up with CourtTVcom toget free e-mail alerts on theircell phones when the ScottPeterson verdict wai an-nounced. The response wasgreater than Court TV expected.and subscribers complainedwhen they didn't get akru untilho urs after the verdict.

CourtTV switched vendorsand warily rolled out a similaroffer for the Jackson trial, butwith less publicity. Still, about45,000 people signed up forJackson alerts to their cellphones, and the process wentmore smoothly. Court TV hasalso seen strong response to Itsthesmoklnggun.com, which tookoff after It documented the crim-inal past of bachelor jRlck Rock-well In the TV show W?io Wantsto Marry a Multi-Millionaire?

"We learned how challengingIt was to execute, but the Web Isthe perfect environment to fol-

caught up on the online side Inother areas, to cell phones andsatellite radio," said GalenJones, chler strategy officer forCourt TV. a venture of TimeWarner and Liberty Media Corp.•people can follow the trial withtheir laptop at Starbucks, thenlisten to It on Sinus when theyget In their car."

FftJrt InforraatlonDemand Is growing for Instant

information. Ejection Night 2004generated more than 000 million

page views for Turner Broad-

minute at Its peak and nearlyseven times as many as the pre-vious presidential election. 'Ithink we have attention deficitdisorder as a society." said DavWPayne, senior vice president andgeneral manager of CNN.com,

1 1"" 'I want to see what's goingon now.' get In. get ouL At 5:13on Monday night, everybodyknew that Jackson was acquit-ted."

One-fifth of today's newspa-per readers never see the printeditions, according to a studyJust released by the rating serv-ice Nielsen/Net jRaUr.Ks,

pers. the Lot Angela Time*posted a Web site gain of 31 per-cent, from May 2004 to May2005; NYTlmes.com. 25 percent;USATodoy.com. 15 percent, andWashlngtonpost.com, 10 per-cent. Nielsen reported. Somenewspaper people, wonderingabout the destiny of print, havesurmised that a better model forthe future might be for subscrib-ers to pay for online access andget the paper edition free.

Still la black and whltoAndrew J, Bulrtca. a historian

with the Society for the Historyof Technology, recalled that16th-century Americans mar-veled at how the telegraphshaved time (rom. the process ofgetting Information and stillmany people didn't learn furdays in 1865 that President Lin-coln had been assassinated. Acentury later, the nation sattransfixed as television deliv-ered news of the assassination

or his suspected assassin.•We're probably in the 1940s or

the television age when It comesto Internet downstreamlng.Look at how many people stilloont^have broadband. Bulnca

ublqui'.y of cameras and micro-phones, especially since digitalcameras are In the hands of ev-erybody. If they can get televi-sion and the Internet to cometogether, that would be the nextbig explosion.'