Brad’s Sketchpad

The worst part of recovering from identity theft is trying to freeze your credit accounts with the three credit brokers, TransUnion, Experian and Equifax. The young TrustedId, which I wrote about last week, is trying to make it easier. They have their work cut out for them. This week, I attempted to untangle MSN’s new search ad system, AdCenter.

If the word “cyberspace” seems strangely dated, perhaps it’s because the Web is no longer the foreign destination it was in the mid 90s. Today, the Web is where we join communities, express ourselves and spend way too much of our personal time. Steven Levy and I cover what some call the Web 2.0 phenomenon, in this week’s cover story.

In a special business section in this week’s Newsweek, I write about John Chambers’ quest for the living room. Last month, Cisco completed its acquisition of Scientific Atlanta, which I also argue, in a sidebar, is bad news for TiVo.

Last night we saw the San Francisco premier of the excellent “V for Vendetta”, the best adaptation yet of a graphic novel by one of my favorite authors, Alan Moore. A few years ago, Jen and I had the honor of sitting down with Uncle Alan in London for an interview. I’ve reposted parts of that conversation in the career archive.

I write about the Web’s most popular video site, YouTube.com - and one of the reasons for its popularity, all that copyrighted material sitting on the service.

First Fox buys MySpace, and now NBC scoops up Web 1.0 firm iVillage. Old media is officially rushing to make reservations at the new media table. I write about it here, an article that appears on the Web and in overseas editions of next week’s Newsweek.