Brad’s Sketchpad

This week, the FTC settled a dispute with parasitic adware firm Direct Revenue, whose software, surreptitiously installed, bedeviled so many computers a few years ago. The agreement requires the company to pay a $1.5 million fine and get explicit permission before downloading software onto someone’s PC, something it blatantly failed to do in its first few years of existence.

Commissioner John Leibowitz filed a dissent and makes a persuasive argument that the fine is not heavy enough, given the pain and frustration the company caused millions of Internet users.

A few years ago — before the class action lawsuit, the legal assault by Eliot Spitzer, and the action by the FTC — I investigated the secretive Direct Revenue for a piece that ran on Newsweek’s Web site. Somewhere in my files, I have CEO Joshua Abrams’ angry letter disputing the story. If I find it I’ll post it. In light of recent conclusions about the company’s nefarious behavior, I’m sure the letter now appears hilariously disingenuous.

I grew up at Newsweek- literally. I started in 1990, a sophomore at college, working for the magazine’s syndicated radio show Newsweek on Air. Over the next ten years, I liked to joke, there wasn’t a cubicle in the magazine’s offices at 251 West 57th that didn’t have my initials etched into its wall. Since 1999, I’ve had the luxury of working in the San Francisco bureau, writing about high-tech and the Internet. So this week is bittersweet; I just filed my last story for the magazine.

Next week, I start working for the New York Times. I’ll be spending much of December in New York City, then taking up a station in the San Francisco bureau, covering Internet trends. Please drop me a line at stone [at] nytimes.com. Happy Thanksgiving.

It’s ironic: as the media spins into high-gear to cover the forthcoming launches of the PS3 and Nintendo Wii, the major Internet companies are busy turning the Web into something that closely resembles a game. In this week’s Newsweek, I write about the new Microsoft Virtual Earth 3D, which lets users move in, around and through photo-realistic simulations of 15 American cities. Google has the same idea and is not far behind with Google Earth.

Behind the current flood of Silicon Valley venture capital into renewable energy is a philosophical shift inside high-tech’s most prominent venture capital firm: Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers. Over the last six weeks, I was able to spend significant time with KP partners like Ray Lane, John Doerr and Bill Joy; I tell the story of their committment to greentech, in the special enterprise section in this week’s Newsweek

In this week’s Newsweek, I talk to Barry Diller, and get the lowdown on how he’s using search engine Ask.com to combine elements of his other Internet properties, such as Citysearch and eVite.  It’s part of our recurring series on “Managaing Change.”

Ever wonder where all those cool, somewhat invasive aerial and satellite photographs come from on services like Zillo.com, Google Earth and MSN Virtual Earth? I write about the birds-eye photographers in the enterprise section of this week’s Newsweek.

Also in this week’s magazine, as part of our Health for Life package, I take a look at the advanced technology in use at Denver Health. Though the community hospital services everyone who shows up at its doors - even those without insurance-  it’s managed to piece together one of the most advanced technology networks in the nation.

The Internet’s largest video site has a record-label deal, a taste of advertising revenue and the attention of anxious old-media. I write about YouTube and its remaining challenges in this week’s Newsweek.

In the Periscope section of this week’s Newsweek, I have an update on the HP spying saga, which seems to have claimed the career of chairwoman Pattie Dunn.

With help from Tokyo reporter Akiko Kashiwagi, I also expanded my earlier column on Japanese cell phones into a feature for Newsweek International.

This summer I toured Japan’s dot.com companies, expecting gloom and pessimism in the wake of the country’s blossoming Livedoor scandal. Instead, I found a handful of energetic, untraditional companies building new Web 2.0 features, and taking advantage of the country’s mature broadband and 3G networks. In this week’s Newsweek International, I write about what I’m calling the Samurai 2.0, and the obstacles they face in building out the next stage of the Web in Japan.

In addition to reporting for this week’s cover story on the boardroom scandal at Hewlett Packard, I contributed a short piece on the probably illegal and definitely unethical practice of pretexting for phone records.