Internet gambling
USED WITH PERMISSION OF THE NEW YORK TIMES
December 25, 2005, Sunday Late Edition - Final
Section 1 Page 1 Column 5 Desk: National Desk Length: 1552 words

Wall St. Bets On Gambling On the Web
By MATT RICHTEL

Internet casinos are outlaw operations in the eyes of the federal government, but they look like solid investments to many of Wall Street's largest firms.

Blue-chip investment houses like Goldman Sachs, Merrill Lynch and Fidelity now hold hundreds of millions of dollars in shares of online casinos and betting parlors, which are publicly traded on the London Stock Exchange and headquartered in places like Costa Rica or Gibraltar.

The growing participation by American investors underscores a striking gap between the federal law-enforcement position on online gambling and the realities behind what has emerged as a booming business.

It also highlights the difficulty of policing cross-border activity in the Internet age at the same time that electronic commerce and a global economy are creating fast economic partners across national boundaries.

Legal experts are divided over whether American investors and the investment houses that operate mutual funds could themselves be seen as criminally liable for their actions by providing financial backing for offshore casinos. To be sure, it is not uncommon for Americans to invest in overseas companies whose operations may be considered illegal or unacceptable here, from sweatshop manufacturers to European energy producers that do business in Iran.

The difference with Internet gambling is that the activity takes place on domestic shores -- with Americans placing bets online using their home computers -- and the Justice Department has stated clearly that the operators are violating American law.

Jaclyn Lesch, a spokeswoman for the Justice Department, said that the agency considered online gambling illegal but declined to ''comment on the liability or hypothetical liability of a company or an individual.''

But Internet gambling analysts and company executives said that the investments highlight how widely the federal policy is, in essence, being ignored.

Millions of Americans use the Internet to play games like poker, blackjack and roulette, or to place wagers on sporting events. Online casinos advertise in magazines and on cable television while filling big billboards in Times Square and other places where crowds congregate. Celebrities like Jesse Ventura, the former governor of Minnesota, hawk their wares.

Representative Bob Goodlatte, Republican of Virginia, an opponent of gambling, said that the federal government had essentially given up enforcing laws against offshore casinos. He noted, for example, that casino operators now travel freely within the United States, gathering at trade conventions even though, he said, prosecutors would be within their rights to arrest and bring charges against them.

He said that the involvement of investment firms could be part of a pattern of laws being flouted.

''It's very bad, and the Congress ought to investigate it,'' Mr. Goodlatte said, adding that it may turn out that the investment houses are knowingly supporting and promoting illegal enterprises.

For their part, the investment houses have taken the position that they indeed know there are legal risks involved in investing in offshore casinos, but that the risks are outweighed by the benefits of owning shares in growing, highly profitable businesses. Those shares can give a lift to mutual funds and other types of investments sold by the investment houses, meaning bigger returns for clients.

''Our analysis shows the gain from these stocks outweighs the very small risk'' of owning them, said a spokesman for one major investment house. The spokesman would not agree to be identified by name or to have his firm identified, citing regulatory policy that could restrict the company's ability to buy and sell individual securities if he commented upon them.

The ownership rolls of offshore casinos read like a Who's Who of America's top investment firms. For example, public filings show that tens of millions of shares of SportingBet, a company listed on the London Stock Exchange that allows people to place bets on sporting events, are owned by Fidelity, Merrill Lynch and Goldman Sachs.

Fidelity Management holds shares worth about $363 million, or 14.1 percent of the outstanding shares. Those shares are largely held in mutual funds. Merrill Lynch Asset Management has $164 million in holdings, and Goldman Sachs Group Inc. has $137 million.

Similarly, Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley Securities hold big positions in BetOnSports, another publicly traded firm in London that facilitates sports betting, according to public filings. Morgan Stanley has one of the biggest stakes -- worth around $25.6 million -- but the company said that the position is held on behalf of one large investor, whose identity it withheld.

It is hard to discern how many of the shares are owned by mutual funds available to American investors. Many of the funds, including some that exclude American investors, are operated out of London.

For instance, Goldman Sachs's International Growth Opportunities Fund, which is open to American investors, owns around 175,000 shares of SportingBet, worth around $960,000, according to a recent public filing by the company.

Goldman Sachs also wrote in a report on Nov. 30 that over the next three months it ''expects to receive or intends to seek compensation'' for investment banking services provided to SportingBet and PartyGaming, two companies that operate gambling sites.

Goldman Sachs, Merrill Lynch and Fidelity all declined to comment.

George Hudson, a spokesman for SportingBet, said that there had been growing interest from the investment houses, and not just their European arms.

''It's not just London, it's New York,'' Mr. Hudson said, noting that the interest represents a change from two years ago when ''the big banks wouldn't touch the industry with a barge pole.''

According to Mr. Hudson and several other industry executives and analysts, a watershed event took place on June 30 when PartyGaming began trading on the London Stock Exchange. It was not the first Internet casino to go public in Britain, but it drew a great deal of attention because of the popularity of the company's sites. The ensuing demand for its shares put it among the exchange's top 100 companies in its market capitalization, currently around $9.6 billion.

At the time, I. Nelson Rose, a professor at Whittier Law School in Costa Mesa, Calif., who has written extensively on gambling law, was flown to London to advise a number of large investment houses -- both American and European -- on the risks involved in owning shares. Mr. Rose declined to specify the companies for which he consulted, but said that he had told them there was at least some risk of owning shares in the casinos.

Today, Mr. Rose said he believed there was only a 10 percent chance that the federal government would take action against the investment houses under the Wire Act, which covers online gambling, or federal statutes that permit the government to charge the partners of illegal operations with aiding and abetting their activities. But he said that if prosecutors did so, they could make a decent case.

The companies are shareowners ''in an illegal enterprise,'' Mr. Rose said. ''Therefore they are liable.'' Potential penalties could range from small fines to prison terms.

But Lawrence G. Walters, a Florida lawyer who specializes in investment law and who has consulted for some prospective American investors, said that the government would have difficulty finding a theory of liability given that the investors do not control the offshore casinos or direct their activities. They are ''passive investors,'' Mr. Walters said.

''Nobody takes them seriously when they say this is a serious crime,'' he said of the government and anti-gambling laws. ''But there is stuff still on the books, and somebody could go down heavily if government decides to turn its attention to them.''

The bottom line, according to casino industry executives and some financial analysts, is that the opportunity for profit may be too good for the investment houses to pass up. Over all, Internet gambling is projected to reach almost $12 billion in business this year, up from $8.3 billion in 2004, according to Sebastian Sinclair, a gambling industry analyst with Christiansen Capital Advisors.

Individual companies are enjoying strong growth and big profit margins. Morgan Stanley on Dec. 1 published an analysis of SportingBet that noted that the company had acquired 700,000 new customers in a recent quarter, almost equal to the number of people it signed up all of last year. The Morgan Stanley report said that the company was taking in $530,000 a day just from its poker business.

''There is no other leisure business in the world with the same potential for growth and shareholder returns as online gaming,'' said David Carruthers, the chief executive of BetOnSports, noting that the major casinos each project 20 percent annual sales growth. ''We're in our embryonic stages.''

Mr. Carruthers said that the investments from American financial institutions have provided the stability and legitimacy needed to helped the casinos grow. ''It says we're running a business legitimately and responsibly,'' he said, ''and we're seen as a worldwide leisure product -- similar to KFC, Ford, Coca-Cola, I.B.M. or any other global brand.''

IDENTITY THEFT
USED WITH PERMISSION OF THE NEW YORK TIMES

May 13, 2002, Monday Late Edition - Final
Section A Page 1 Column 3 Desk: Business/Financial Desk Length: 1505 words

Credit Card Theft is Thriving Online as Global Market

By MATT RICHTEL
Tens of thousands of stolen credit-card numbers are being offered for sale each week on the Internet in a handful of thriving, membership-only cyberbazaars, operated largely by residents of the former Soviet Union, who have become central players in credit-card and identity theft.

The marketplaces -- where credit card prices fluctuate with supply and demand in a sort of black stock market -- offer a window into a crime that costs the financial system $1 billion or more a year. They also show how readily personal information is being stolen and traded in the computer age.

But the same Internet technology that has enabled the theft and sale of credit cards also provides a veritable transcript of the criminal activity, and a real-time peephole into the attitudes, ethic -- and sometimes honor -- among the thieves. The chat forums indicate as well that several dozen of the top participants recently have discussed gathering at a credit-card reseller's conference in Odessa, Ukraine, at the end of this month.

''It's straight out of Capitalism 101 -- it's become a big industry,'' said one high-technology executive who surreptitiously monitors the Internet card markets, and who noted that the market price of credit cards fluctuates daily based on supply -- which, he said, is copious. ''There appears to be an endless supply of cards out there,'' he said.

In recent days, the cost of a single credit card has been between 40 cents and $5 depending on the level of authenticating information provided. But the credit-card numbers typically are offered in bulk, costing, for example, $100 for 250 cards, to $1,000 for 5,000 cards, with the sellers offering guarantees that the credit-card numbers are valid.
Security experts say the buyers of the card numbers in these forums are all over the world, but often come from the former Soviet Union, Eastern Europe and Asia, specifically Malaysia. The buyers use the numbers in a variety of frauds, including making purchases over the Internet, having them fenced in the West, or even extracting cash advances directly from the credit-card accounts.

Security experts say the people living in the former Soviet Union -- often in Russia and Ukraine -- who are operating the marketplaces are typically buying the card numbers from so-called black-hat computer hackers. These hackers obtain the card numbers by breaking into computer systems of online merchants and getting access to thousands of credit-card records at a time.

''This is highlighting a tremendous lack of security,'' said Richard Power, editorial director of the Computer Security Institute, an association of computer security professionals that recently published a report with the Federal Bureau of Investigation on computer crime. ''In the old days, people robbed stagecoaches and knocked off armored trucks. Now they're knocking off servers.''

The ultimate cost of this is hard to estimate, according to financial analysts, though they say it is a fraction of the total size of the credit-card industry. A recent survey from Celent Communications, a market research firm, found that credit-card payment fraud will cost online merchants a minimum of $1 billion a year, which is not insignificant, though it pales in comparison to the more than $900 billion that Visa alone processes annually.

The cost to individual businesses, however, can be dramatic. In January 2000, an extortionist based in Russia demanded $100,000 from an Internet music retailer, CD Universe, by posting credit-card numbers stolen from the company's database to a Web site, which was subsequently shut down by the F.B.I. Last year, people close to Flooz.com, a bankrupt purveyor of certificates used for online purchases, said one reason the company failed was that it had unknowingly sold $300,000 of its currency to credit-card thieves in Russia and the Philippines.

Generally speaking, the Celent report found that the fraud rate on the Internet is 0.25 percent for Visa and MasterCard transactions, significantly higher than the 0.08 percent for Visa and 0.09 percent for MasterCard in the offline world. The typical consumer is generally protected from these costs, since consumers are not held liable for most fraudulent charges, but credit-card interest rates can rise because of crime, and consumers may have to deal with the aggravation of removing charges they did not make.
Mr. Power, from the Computer Security Institute, said: ''You don't want to be an alarmist and say, 'The sky is falling, and Visa is going to crumble.' But the financial losses involved in this kind of theft are underestimated, underreported and underacknowledged,'' estimating the worldwide cost is in the ''double-digit billions.''

''There's a lot more hemorrhaging going on than some people believe,'' he said.
The Internet sites of the online marketplaces are mostly known only to their participants -- though that number can run as high as 2,000 registered users. The site operators change their online addresses frequently to prevent monitoring by law enforcement. In the past, credit-card traffickers did business in private chat rooms on the Internet Relay Chat, a communication network, and now they also use the World Wide Web, where it is easy to start and shut down sites to avoid detection.

But there are security professionals who surreptitiously listen in, tracking the supply of card numbers and prices.

John Shaughnessy, senior vice president for risk management and fraud control at Visa USA, said the company was aware of online marketplaces and sought to monitor them, when it could find them. He said it appeared that many of the buyers and sellers of cards were in Asian countries and the former Soviet Union. Some people familiar with the trend have also said that stolen credit cards were being purchased by people in Saudi Arabia and Dubai, United Arab Emirates.

Mr. Shaughnessy said Visa had worked closely with the F.B.I. on these issues. Officials at the F.B.I. did not return calls for comment.

Even though the activities of the marketplace can be monitored, this does not mean participants can be easily caught, since they do not use their real names or give their whereabouts, and they make their payments through secure money transfers over the Internet that are not easily traced. But the Web sites offer a profile of the typical participant and of the way they do business.

A security expert who monitors several of the bazaars said one of the most active was run by a Ukrainian 18 or 19 years old who went by the name ''Script.'' The operator lives in Odessa. He is among about nine members of a clique, whose members call it ''the family,'' and who are considered the most powerful and reliable of the middlemen.
In a recent transcript, the dealer who operates the forum posted in a typical note: ''I am selling Visa and MC (American cards).'' He added, ''The minimal deal size is 40$.''

He also listed a higher price if the deal included the card's CVV2 code, a printed security code that appears on credit cards and is supposed to prevent fraud. Merchants are not supposed to record the code in their databases, but they sometimes do, which means that hackers can get access to this higher level of information. On the online forum, the seller noted that 100 cards with the CVV2 code cost $300.

A discussion then ensued involving his former buyers, attesting to the seller's reliability. One buyer wrote, ''This guy's always slightly more expensive, but his stuff is good.'' Another wrote: ''This guy is awesome. He always gave me three times the number of cards I paid for.''

The endorsements are a somewhat surreal reproduction of the rankings given to sellers on legitimate e-commerce sites, like the auction site eBay, or to authors by readers on Amazon.com. The feel of the site is one of pure capitalism, replete with marketing. The seller who operates the site sometimes posts online banner advertisements for his service.

The sellers usually ask for payment to be made through online accounts, like www.WebMoney.ru, where money can be electronically deposited, wired, then transferred to a bank account.

The discussions on the forum have a definite anti-Western bent, particularly anti-American. They are critical of American foreign policy. Some of the members of the forum also express anti-Semitic views.

There is not much social interaction, but it is not unheard of. The participants will brag about using their spoils to take vacations, for instance, to Bulgaria or Dubai.
Recently, there was a discussion that nearly 40 members of the group would meet in Odessa on May 31, at the first ''World Carders'' conference, though the organizers appear to have moved the talk to a more private setting.

DOT COM BUST
USED WITH PERMISSION OF THE NEW YORK TIMES
DOT COM COLLAPSE
November 24, 2000, Friday Late Edition - Final
Section A Page 1 Column 1 Desk: Business/Financial Desk Length: 1803 words

E-Commerce Dream Proves the Undoing Of a Solid Business
By MATT RICHTEL
RANDLEMAN, N.C.

Just before midnight, Larry K. Canoy steps into his truck to drive an hour to his father's trailer, where he will spend the night. Neither the commute nor the accommodations are ideal, but Mr. Canoy has been cutting back on expenses, like rent, since the new economy upstarts came to town and turned his world on its head.

Until recently, Mr. Canoy and 65 colleagues worked at Shaw Furniture Gallery, a fixture for six decades in this industrial town of 4,000 near High Point, North Carolina's furniture capital. The store closed after being swept up in a dot-com revolution, leaving Mr. Canoy and some co-workers in perilous financial straits.

But it was not that Shaw was bested by an Internet competitor. Rather, the company was done in by an Internet partner that promised to make Shaw, one of the 10 largest furniture stores in North Carolina, part of the biggest furniture outlet the world had ever seen.
''They tried to high-tech us rednecks,'' said Mr. Canoy, 39, turning back from the 1996 Toyota 4Runner he may soon return to creditors. ''But they ruined us.''

Dot-com failures and layoffs are increasingly common, as investors shed ventures unlikely to meet once-lofty expectations. Yet the bankruptcies of Shaw Furniture and its partner, Living.com, stand apart, and not merely because they took place far from New York or Palo Alto.

Theirs was a union marked by the collision of two worlds. When Living.com acquired Shaw last year to gain a toehold in the furniture business, Internet entrepreneurship came face to face with the rigid, traditional world of home furnishings. Technology-savvy M.B.A.'s intersected with hands-on sellers of sofa beds.

And the difference that counted most may have been how the partners measured success. Living.com was designed to be a billion-dollar company, its name whispered in the same breath with Amazon.com, returning tens of millions of dollars to its investors. In the end, though, company executives issued a statement saying that those returns would not materialize any time soon and that investors were unwilling to wait.

For its part, Shaw was accustomed to earning a profit, albeit a modest one compared with the aspirations of many Internet start-ups. Before the takeover, it expected to sell $20 million this year in merchandise, earning $1 million in profits and paying its top sales people $70,000. And it might have continued that course had its fate not become tied to a plan to move the furniture business into the 21st century.

''They had every C-blank-O you can imagine -- C.E.O., C.F.O., C.M.O.,'' said Mark A. Milligan, a former general manager of Shaw, who is presiding over its bankruptcy liquidation. ''I remember one of them made the statement, 'We're going to revolutionize the furniture industry.' ''

''I just rolled my eyes and said, 'Get a clue,' '' he continued. ''You're not going to come in here like a bunch of cowboys and change the way we've been doing business for 100 years.''

Or in the case of Shaw, for 59 years. George F. Shaw started the company in 1940 to sell inexpensive furniture to mill workers who lived near the Deep River. It became a fixture in Randleman, the hometown of the Petty family of stock car racing fame. Shaw grew steadily, and became a discount hub. Out-of-towners arrived in Lincoln Town Cars and Range Rovers to peruse showrooms full of oak, pine and maple bedroom and dining room sets, sofas and chairs made by top furniture lines, then order the pieces for delivery. Shaw did much of its sales by phone to out-of-state buyers.

As it had been for 58 consecutive years, Shaw was profitable in late 1998 when Sherrill W. Shaw, George's son, who owned the company and was nearing retirement, received an offer from Living.com. In March 1999, Living.com took ownership of the gallery for a price that Mr. Shaw said was over $5 million; he declined to be more specific.

A father-and-son team was also behind Living.com. Andrew Busey, 29, who had already started and sold a successful Internet business, was chief executive. His father, Jay Busey, 60, who had spent 37 years in furniture business, became the chief of the Shaw subsidiary.

The Buseys deemed the Shaw acquisition crucial because they figured it would give them access to top furniture lines. Manufacturers had resisted selling on the Internet, acceding to dealers who said they should not have to compete against virtual entities that did not have to spend millions on showrooms.

Meanwhile, the Buseys were also courting investors, with marked success. They attracted about $70 million from sources like Benchmark Capital, a Silicon Valley venture capital fund, and Starbucks, and signed a deal to become the exclusive home furnishings retailer on Amazon.com.
As part of the deal with the venture capitalists, the younger Mr. Busey stepped aside as chief executive of Living.com and became chairman. The new chief was Shaun Holliday, the former chief executive of Guinness Ireland. Former executives from Kellogg and America Online joined them at the company's headquarters in Austin, Tex.

Asked for his account of the demise of Living.com and Shaw, the younger Mr. Busey declined to comment. His father cited the failure of the financial backers to pay close attention to the inner workings of the furniture business. Company backers, including Benchmark Capital and Amazon.com, did not respond to requests for interviews.

In any case, even after Living.com started its site in July 1999, there was no immediate sense that the old and new businesses were on a collision course. At first, some of the impact was even welcomed in Randleman.

Under Mr. Shaw, employees say, they wore ties to work. Under Living.com, dress was casual. Living.com stocked Shaw's break room with free snacks and sodas. Living.com also gave a few hundred to a few thousand stock options to Shaw employees. Mr. Canoy, who joined Shaw in 1984 working in the warehouse, received several hundred.

A tall, earnest man, who drove a company delivery truck before hurting his back carrying an armoire and then moved to sales, Mr. Canoy said he planned to use the options to save for college tuition for his 5-year-old daughter. He figured sales calls referred from Living.com's Web site would bolster the $4,000 he typically earned each month in commissions, and help pay expenses, like the $400 a month he owed in child support.

But the warm feelings between the companies did not last long.

Within two weeks of the site's introduction, most major furniture makers, under pressure from retailers, refused to let Living.com sell their products. The Web site was able to carry a mere 20 percent of the inventory that Shaw was allowed to sell over the phone, leaving Living.com to sell inexpensive, lower-quality lines, Mr. Milligan said.

Shaw was still allowed to sell all lines -- if, that is, it could fill the orders. The trouble was that Living.com upgraded Shaw's computer, telephone and shipping systems and sought to integrate them with a huge call center that Living.com built 16 miles away in Greensboro. The results were disastrous.

Shaw's old computer system, designed for furniture industry sales people to check prices, place orders and track inventory, was replaced with a state-of-the art Oracle database system. Unfortunately, sales people often could not find an item's price in the computer. The system also falsely reported whether an order was in stock or had been shipped.

''It was a nightmare trying to track things,'' said John Timothy Shepard, 46, a salesman. He recalled one incident where he could not find the status of a $19,000 order. ''We found a part of the order to ship, but not the rest. The next week we found the second part of the order, but couldn't find the first part.''

Living.com sent help -- lots of it. During one two-month period, Oracle sent 10 consultants to Randleman, who worked seven days a week at a cost of $150 to $200 an hour to try to fix the system, Mr. Milligan said.

When orders were successfully placed, the real trouble began. To speed deliveries, Living.com decided to change Shaw's shipping company. But according to Mr. Milligan, the new company was inexperienced in shipping furniture. Dressers were returned with holes, desks with sides ripped off, headboards split in two. The company wound up with a return rate as high as 30 percent, he said.

In addition to sharing Living.com's computer system and delivery service, Shaw was also sharing its expenses. Mr. Milligan said Shaw's revenue was siphoned off to pay the parent company's bills. This is hardly atypical of a subsidiary, but the result was that Shaw found it lacked money to pay furniture manufacturers. Several cut off shipments.

Worst of all, Mr. Milligan and the elder Mr. Busey, who resigned in June, said the Living.com executives in Austin would not listen to any counsel from Randleman about how to operate a furniture business. ''They wanted to strategize and theorize and not listen to what really went on,'' Mr. Busey said.

Mr. Milligan said that one day on a conference call to Austin, he played voice mail messages from three Shaw customers irate they had not received orders or had received damaged goods. He quoted Mr. Holliday, the chief executive, as saying, ''We really have to make some changes.'' But, Mr. Milligan said, ''It was forgotten the next day.''

Living.com declared bankruptcy on Aug. 29. The parent company laid off 275, in addition to Shaw's staff. Left in the lurch were 300 to 400 customers who say they have not received either furniture or reimbursement for payments they made. Their claims are being reviewed as part of the bankruptcy proceedings.

Many Shaw employees have found new jobs, in some cases joining Shaw's competitors. Sales people who earned $4,000 a month say they are scraping by with incomes of less than $1,000. Several may lose homes and cars.

To cut costs, Mr. Canoy is moving out of the farmhouse he rented for $250 a month. He has told his daughter they ''won't have a Christmas this year.''

In the end, Mr. Canoy said, what galls him is that Living.com spent so much money to accomplish so little. ''They destroyed us,'' he said.

''They walked in here with $70 million and couldn't make it happen,'' he said. ''Think about it: $70 million. And within 13 months, it was gone.''

SILICON VALLEY CULTURE
USED WITH PERMISSION OF THE NEW YORK TIMES
March 14, 2007, Wednesday Late Edition - Final
Section A Page 1 Column 1 Desk: Business/Financial Desk Length: 1492 words

Start-Up Fervor Shifts to Energy In Silicon Valley
By MATT RICHTEL
SAN FRANCISCO, March 13

Silicon Valley's dot-com era may be giving way to the watt-com era.

Out of the ashes of the Internet bust, many technology veterans have regrouped and found a new mission in alternative energy: developing wind power, solar panels, ethanol plants and hydrogen-powered cars.
It is no secret that venture capitalists have begun pouring billions into energy-related start-ups with names like SunPower, Nanosolar and Lilliputian Systems.

But that interest is now spilling over to many others in Silicon Valley -- lawyers, accountants, recruiters and publicists, all developing energy-oriented practices to cater to the cause.

The best and the brightest from leading business schools are pelting energy start-ups with résumés. And, of course, there are entrepreneurs from all backgrounds -- but especially former dot-commers -- who express a sense of wonder and purpose at the thought of transforming the $1 trillion domestic energy market while saving the planet.

''It's like 1996,'' said Andrew Beebe, one of the remade Internet entrepreneurs. In the boom, he ran Bigstep.com, which helped small businesses sell online. Today, he is president of Energy Innovations, which makes low-cost solar panels. ''The Valley has found a new hot spot.''

Mr. Beebe said the Valley's potential to generate change was vast. But he cautioned that a frenzy was mounting, the kind that could lead to overinvestment and poorly thought-out plans.

''We've started to see some of the bad side of the bubble activity starting to brew,'' Mr. Beebe said.

The energy boomlet is part of a broader rebound that is benefiting all kinds of start-ups, including plenty that are focused on the Web. But for many in Silicon Valley, high tech has given way to ''clean tech,'' the shorthand term for innovations that are energy-efficient and environmentally friendly. Less fashionable is ''green,'' a word that suggests a greater interest in the environment than in profit.

The similarities to past booms are obvious, but the Valley has always run in cycles. It is a kind of renewable gold rush, a wealth- and technology-creating principle that is always looking for something around which to organize.

In this case, the energy sector is not so distant from other Silicon Valley specialties as it might appear, say those involved in the new wave of start-ups. The same silicon used to make computer chips converts sunlight into electricity on solar panels, while the bioscience used to make new drugs can be employed to develop better ethanol processing.

More broadly, the participants here say their whole approach to building new companies and industries is easily transferable to the energy world. But some wonder whether this is just an echo of the excessive optimism of the Internet boom. And even those most involved in the trend say the size of the market opportunity in energy is matched by immense hurdles.

Starting a clean technology firm is ''not like starting an online do-it-yourself legal company,'' said Dan Whaley, chief executive of Climos, a San Francisco company that is developing organic processes to remove carbon from the atmosphere. ''Scientific credibility is the primary currency that drives the thing I'm working on.''

Just what that thing is, he would not specify. For competitive reasons, Mr. Whaley declined to get into details about his company's technology. His advisory board includes prominent scientists, among them his mother, Margaret Leinen, the head of geosciences for the National Science Foundation.

In the last Silicon Valley cycle, Mr. Whaley's help came from his father. In 1994, he did some of the early work from his father's living room on GetThere.com, a travel site. It went public in 1999 and was bought by Sabre for $750 million in 2000.

This time around, entrepreneurs say they are not expecting such quick returns. In the Internet boom, the mantra was to change the world and get rich quick. This time, given the size and scope of the energy market, the idea is to change the world and get even richer -- but somewhat more slowly.

Those drawn to the alternative-energy industry say that they need time to understand the energy technology, and to turn ideas into solid companies. After all, in contrast to the Internet boom, this time the companies will need actual manufactured products and customers.

''There are real business models and real products to be sold -- established markets and growing economics,'' said George Basile, who has a doctorate in biophysics from the University of California, Berkeley and specializes in energy issues.

Mr. Basile has just stepped into the fray himself. In January, he became the executive adviser for energy issues at Bite Communications, a San Francisco public relations firm with scores of technology clients that is now working to attract energy start-ups.

The sudden interest of lawyers, accountants and other members of the wider Valley ecosystem strikes some as opportunistic.

''There's a large amount of bandwagon-jumping right now,'' said Mark Hampton, chief executive of Blanc & Otus, a technology-oriented public relations firm whose clients have included TiVo, Sybase and Compaq. Still, he understands the interest of relative newcomers: ''There's a huge opportunity.''

They are all, plainly, following the money. In the first three quarters of 2006, venture capital firms put $474 million into a broad range of Silicon Valley start-ups in energy storage, generation and efficiency, according to Cleantech Venture Network, an industry trade group. Energy was by far the fastest-growing area of interest, and the amount was on par with what was put into telecommunications and biotechnology.

Yet the amount of money involved is still relatively small compared with the boom years. Over all, venture funding last year was still less than a third of the nearly $34 billion venture capitalists invested in the region in 2000, the peak of the bubble, according to the Center for the Continuing Study of the California Economy, based in Palo Alto.

''This is not 2000. It doesn't feel like 2000 on the street,'' said Stephen Levy, the center's director. But, he said, ''there's no doubt there's a buzz.''

Mr. Levy said that Silicon Valley was getting a lift from the public's interest in finding energy sources and from government involvement in creating subsidies and policies that promote such sources. Still, he said, the ventures are clearly risky.

''We'll have a sense very quickly -- within two to four years -- whether any of this venture capital has produced any products or services that are market-worthy,'' Mr. Levy said.

Apart from the profit motive, many here say they are driven by more unselfish concerns: cleaning up the atmosphere and creating energy independence for the United States. One of the phrases heard most often in the industry is: ''Do well by doing good.'' Al Gore, with his warnings of global warming, has been a Valley darling of late.

''The résumés I'm getting now are almost identical to the ones I got seven years ago for CarsDirect.com,'' said Larry Gross, chief executive of Altra , a company he founded in Los Angeles that is producing ethanol and developing fuels made from plants. ''The quality, the schools, the work experience, the enthusiasm for wanting to fix something.''

Mr. Gross in 1991 helped found Knowledge Adventure, which made educational software, making him one of the many tech alumni in the energy world. For that company, he said he attracted around $20 million in venture capital; he has received $245 million for Altra. Mr. Gross said investors and entrepreneurs are drawn to energy by what drew them to hardware and software: the chance for huge growth in volatile markets.

Mr. Gross is the brother of Bill Gross, a technology-era icon whose business incubator Idealab spawned many successful start-ups, including Citysearch and WeddingChannel. Bill Gross is now chief executive of Energy Innovations, the solar panel start-up based in Pasadena, Calif., with Mr. Beebe as president.

Mr. Beebe said there were profound similarities between the Internet boom and the miniboom in energy. For one, he said, just as the Internet promised to decentralize computing and put control in the hands of users, the Silicon Valley version of energy innovation intends to decentralize the industry by making power generation more local -- like solar panels on rooftops.

In 1998, Mr. Beebe was a co-founder of Bigstep and raised $75 million in venture funding. At its peak, the company had 150 employees, with most of them laid off during the bust. The company was later sold for less money than it raised -- hardly a dot-com success. So does Mr. Beebe have the track record to make a solar energy company profitable?

''I face that question on a regular basis,'' he said. ''Only my actions will be able to answer it.'' But he added that he felt confident about the political and market conditions for energy start-ups. He said the entrenched oil, coal and gas companies could not ultimately compete with the more efficient and environmentally friendly concepts Silicon Valley envisions.

''The idea of them turning a supertanker is an apt analogy,'' he said. ''They cannot take us over, they can only try to resist.''

COMPUTER ADDICTION

USED WITH PERMISSION OF THE NEW YORK TIMES
July 6, 2003, Sunday Late Edition - Final
Section 3 Page 1 Column 5 Desk: Money and Business/Financial Desk Length: 2256 words

The Lure of Data: Is It Addictive?
By MATT RICHTEL

THIS is Charles Lax's brain on speed.

Mr. Lax, a 44-year-old venture capitalist, is sitting in a conference for telecommunications executives at a hotel near Los Angeles, but he is not all here. Out of one ear, he listens to a live presentation about cable television technology; simultaneously, he surfs the Net on a laptop with a wireless connection, while occasionally checking his mobile device -- part phone, part pager and part Internet gadget -- for e-mail.

Mr. Lax flew from Boston and paid $2,000 to attend the conference, called Vortex. But he cannot unwire himself long enough to give the presenters his complete focus. If he did, he would face a fate worse than lack of productivity: he would become bored.
''It's hard to concentrate on one thing,'' he said, adding: ''I think I have a condition.''

The ubiquity of technology in the lives of executives, other businesspeople and consumers has created a subculture of the Always On -- and a brewing tension between productivity and freneticism. For all the efficiency gains that it seemingly provides, the constant stream of data can interrupt not just dinner and family time, but also meetings and creative time, and it can prove very tough to turn off.

Some people who are persistently wired say it is not uncommon for them to be sitting in a meeting and using a hand-held device to exchange instant messages surreptitiously -- with someone in the same meeting. Others may be sitting at a desk and engaging in conversation on two phones, one at each ear. At social events, or in the grandstand at their children's soccer games, they read news feeds on mobile devices instead of chatting with actual human beings.

These speed demons say they will fall behind if they disconnect, but they also acknowledge feeling something much more powerful: they are compulsively drawn to the constant stimulation provided by incoming data. Call it O.C.D. -- online compulsive disorder.

''It's magnetic,'' said Edward M. Hallowell, a psychiatry instructor at Harvard. ''It's like a tar baby: the more you touch it, the more you have to.''

Dr. Hallowell and John Ratey, an associate professor at Harvard and a psychiatrist with an expertise in attention deficit disorder, are among a growing number of physicians and sociologists who are assessing how technology affects attention span, creativity and focus. Though many people regard multitasking as a social annoyance, these two and others are asking whether it is counterproductive, and even addicting.

The pair have their own term for this condition: pseudo-attention deficit disorder. Its sufferers do not have actual A.D.D., but, influenced by technology and the pace of modern life, have developed shorter attention spans. They become frustrated with long-term projects, thrive on the stress of constant fixes of information, and physically crave the bursts of stimulation from checking e-mail or voice mail or answering the phone.

''It's like a dopamine squirt to be connected,'' said Dr. Ratey, who compares the sensations created by constantly being wired to those of narcotics -- a hit of pleasure, stimulation and escape. ''It takes the same pathway as our drugs of abuse and pleasure.''

''It's an addiction,'' he said, adding that some people cannot deal with down time or quiet moments. ''Without it, we are in withdrawal.''

ACCORDING to research compiled by David E. Meyer, a psychology professor at the University of Michigan, multitaskers actually hinder their productivity by trying to accomplish two things at once. Mr. Meyer has found that people who switch back and forth between two tasks, like exchanging e-mail and writing a report, may spend 50 percent more time on those tasks than if they work on them separately, completing one before starting the other.

As a result, Mr. Meyer said, businesspeople who multitask ''are making themselves worse businesspeople.''

He says little research has been done into why some people are compulsively drawn to multitasking. But he theorizes that the allure has several layers. Multitasking offers a guise of productivity, a ''macho'' show of accomplishment, and similarities to a quick amphetamine rush.

''It's related to what happens to skydivers or jet pilots,'' he said. ''They put themselves in situations where, if they don't perform at peak efficiency, they'll crash and burn. In the aftermath there is a rush of chemicals.''

Patrick P. Gelsinger, the chief technology officer at Intel, says it is clear that the overall time spent in front of screens -- whether desktop computers or hand-held devices -- is rising. ''Time spent watching television is down,'' he said. ''But over all you see a discretionary increase in the amount of time people are connected to technology.''

The presence of such devices, as well as their power, will only grow. Networks that provide wireless Internet access are in their early stages. Intel has put the full force of its science and marketing effort behind wireless devices and the superfast miniature microprocessors that power them.

Intel portrays computers as pushing productivity, and Mr. Gelsinger scoffs at the idea that digital devices have a compulsive or physically addictive draw. ''We don't make drugs,'' he said. ''We make technology building blocks that move the world forward in all ways.''

But he concedes that there can be a point at which the constant accessibility of information is hard to escape.

In one meeting at Intel, Mr. Gelsinger said he found himself sending an instant message to his boss across the room -- a potential distraction, though he argued that by doing so, he did not have to engage in ''disruptive whispering.'' At other times, Mr. Gelsinger has had to remind himself not to use e-mail on his laptop during a meeting because it can send the message that he is not paying full attention.

SOMETIMES, discipline must be imposed from the outside. At a recent technology conference organized by The Wall Street Journal and attended by industry heavyweights like Bill Gates of Microsoft, Steve Jobs of Apple Computer and Stephen M. Case of AOL Time Warner, people were discouraged from using their wireless Internet access during presentations.

Bucking the recent tradition at trade shows and technology conferences, the organizers decided not to provide wireless Internet access inside the conference.

''We wanted people to absorb what the speakers were saying,'' said Walt Mossberg, a technology columnist at The Journal.

''We decided that if you have Wi-Fi, it would be destructive,'' he added. ''If you have the Internet, it will win out. People imagine they can multitask, but sometimes people overestimate the extent to which they can do it.''

If multitasking creates a problem for people, the cause is not the gadget makers themselves, said Jeff Hallock, the senior director for consumer products at Sprint PCS, the mobile telephone carrier. The company has been selling the manna of multitasking: phones that can also take digital pictures, send e-mail and instant messages and download music. But Mr. Hallock says those functions help people stay organized, not make them frenetic.

''We're enhancing people's lives so they can have more control of the flurry of activity that's seemingly coming in,'' he said.

''You don't have to check your voice mail,'' he added. ''We're giving you the chance to do so.''

The notion that using all these devices creates a harmful addiction is absurd to Bruce P. Mehlman, assistant commerce secretary for technology policy and a former executive at Cisco Systems. Mr. Mehlman said the presence of many gadgets in people's lives created not a cacophony, but harmony and balance.

Mobile phones, wireless Internet devices and laptops have liberated executives, he said, allowing them to leave the office and to spend more time at home. The users of these technologies are constantly wired, he said, but to a very positive goal.

''Ten years ago, you had to be in the office 12 hours,'' said Mr. Mehlman, who said he now spent 10 hours a day at work, giving him more time with his wife and three children, while also making use of his wireless-enabled laptop, BlackBerry and mobile phone.

''I get to help my kids get dressed, feed them breakfast, give them a bath and read them stories at night,'' he said. He can also have Lego air fights -- a game in which he and his 5-year-old son have imaginary dogfights with Lego airplanes.

Both love the game, and it has an added benefit for Dad: he can play with one hand while using the other to talk on the phone or check e-mail. The multitasking maneuver occasionally requires a trick: although Mr. Mehlman usually lets his son win the Lego air battles, he sometimes allows himself to win, which forces his son to spend a few minutes putting his plane back together.

''While he rebuilds his plane, I check my e-mail on the BlackBerry,'' Mr. Mehlman explained.

Mr. Lax, too, cannot pass up the chance to use every bit of technology that comes his way. A graduate of Boston University who lives outside Boston, he is managing general partner at GrandBanks Capital, a venture investment firm. He serves on the boards of three companies, working to turn them into successful ventures. ''I build companies one customer at a time,'' he said, adding that his investments are up against other well-financed competitors. ''It's a race against time.''

Mr. Lax uses technology to keep up. He is, by his own admission, ''Always On.''

On his office desk is a land-line telephone, a mobile phone, a laptop computer connected to several printers, and a television, often tuned to CNN or CNBC. At his side is the aptly named Sidekick, a mobile device that serves as camera, calendar, address book, instant-messaging gadget and fallback phone. It can browse the Internet and receive e-mail. He has been known to pick it up whenever it chirps at him -- and he acknowledges having used it to check e-mail while in the men's restroom.

There is no down time in the car, either. ''I talk on the phone, but I have a headset,'' Mr. Lax said. Does he do anything else, like using his Sidekick to read e-mail? ''I won't be quoted as saying what else I do because it could get me arrested,'' he said, laughing.

Mr. Lax said he loved the constant stimulation. ''It's instant gratification,'' he said, and it staves off boredom. ''I use it when I'm in a waiting situation -- if I'm standing in line, waiting to be served for lunch, or getting takeout coffee at Starbucks. And, my God, at the airport it's disastrous to have to wait there.

''Being able to send an e-mail in real time is just -- '' Mr. Lax paused. ''Can you hold for a second? My other line is ringing.''

When he returned, he said he shared this way of working with many venture capitalists. ''We all suffer a kind of A.D.D,'' he said. ''It's a bit of a joke, but it's true. We are easily bored. We have lots of things going on at the same time.''

The technology gives him a way to direct his excess energy. ''It is a kind of Ritalin,'' he said, referring to the drug commonly taken by people with attention deficit disorder.
BUT he said technology dependence could have its down side. ''I'm in meetings all the time with people who are focused on what they're doing on their computers, not on the presentation,'' he said.

During the Vortex telecommunications conference, held in May in Dana Point, Calif., he and dozens of others were using wireless Internet access. He said that he was paying attention to the speaker, using his Internet connection to look up information about the cable industry.

''I was supporting the effort of the speaker by figuring the elements he was talking about,'' Mr. Lax said. He paused. ''I was also doing e-mail so I guess I wasn't giving 100 percent,'' he added. ''I was 40 percent supporting the effort, and 60 percent doing other things.''
Indeed, he said, the technology can be a bit distracting. ''But it's not a problem,'' he said. ''Being able to process lots of data allows me to be more efficient and productive.''
''It allows me to accelerate success.''

Hewlett Packard coverage
USED WITH PERMISSION OF THE NEW YORK TIMES
September 29, 2006, Friday Late Edition - Final
Section A Page 1 Column 3 Desk: Business/Financial Desk Length: 1519 words

H.P. Goes to Washington:
Retracing the Trail of Corporate Sleuths; Hewlett's Hunt for Leak Became a Game of Clue

By MATT RICHTEL
SAN FRANCISCO, Sept. 28

They were looking for an academic. The suspect was conversant in computer chip technology. And he would have to be the kind of person who used the word ''pooped'' to mean tired.

In a case right out of CSI: Corporate America, a team of private investigators spent months obsessively hunting the source of a news leak from inside Hewlett-Packard about the company's corporate strategy.

By the time they had finished their search, the team had solved the mystery of what eventually became the most notorious investigation in Silicon Valley. And the way they did it seemed to resemble a bureaucratic version of a Dan Brown thriller.

But in building a clue-heavy reconstruction -- part dossier, part ''Da Vinci Code'' -- the detectives ended up wreaking the havoc that has forced out Hewlett-Packard's chairwoman, led to the resignation Thursday of its general counsel and spawned a series of criminal investigations that are far from over.

The Hewlett-Packard scandal turned into a spectacle Thursday as a House committee brought all those involved to a packed hearing room on Capitol Hill so that lawmakers could chastise them before the television cameras for the series of subterfuges used in the company operation that spied on its own directors, journalists and others.

''As I reviewed all of the documents for this hearing today,'' said Representative Diana DeGette of Colorado, the ranking Democrat on the House Energy and Commerce Committee, ''I felt like I was looking at a proposal for a made-for-TV movie, and maybe this will be a made-for-TV movie. But I think it's awfully, awfully sad.''

While many of those brought before the committee declined to answer questions, invoking their Fifth Amendment rights against self-incrimination, those who did testify were at pains to distance themselves from the details of the internal investigation.

Mark V. Hurd, the chief executive, apologized for what he termed a ''rogue operation.'' And he accused the investigators of being ''so focused on finding the source of the leaks that they lost sight of the values of this company.''

The company's sleuths produced an 18-page report, released Thursday by the Congressional committee, that reads at times like a whodunit, at other times like a dissertation. They created a profile of the leaker by studying phone records and e-mail message trails, even delving into physical mannerisms and speech patterns.

In the end, the investigation fingered George A. Keyworth II, who recently resigned as a member of the board.

Mr. Keyworth acknowledged that he talked to a reporter from CNet, an online technology news service, but insisted that nothing he discussed was confidential or damaging to Hewlett-Packard.

Before the investigators even confronted Mr. Keyworth this May, they had gone through more than 10,000 articles about Hewlett-Packard, they said, trying to determine which ones included secret information and whether Mr. Keyworth had spoken to reporters around the time of sensitive articles.

The scrutiny included intricately parsing the language of a Jan. 23 CNet article in which Dawn Kawamoto, a reporter for the service, described a board meeting that month. The article quoted an anonymous source as saying, ''By the time the lectures were done at 10 p.m., we were pooped and went to bed.''

Like Kremlinologists (or maybe Encyclopedia Brown), the investigators for Hewlett-Packard drilled in on the use of the word ''pooped.''

''This is also an unusual term,'' the report reads. ''A number of key witnesses interviewed indicated that contrary to a number of members of the board, Keyworth often uses casual, colloquial terms in conversation, so this is a term he may use.''

The investigators also focused -- in that same CNet quote -- on the use of the word ''lectures.''

''This is an academic term, rarely used in the business environment. Keyworth is the only board member with an academic background.''

The level of detailed scrutiny shows the depths to which the investigators inside and outside Hewlett-Packard went to connect the dots and to expose a high-level board member who some at H.P. believed was a highly disruptive force. Not all of the investigation involved wordplay; much of it entailed detailed and highly sophisticated surveillance.

Above all, the corporate sleuths unearthed numerous personal and professional details about Mr. Keyworth, a former White House science adviser to Ronald Reagan who had worked earlier at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico.

The report is ''both childish and chilling,'' said Reginald J. Brown, Mr. Keyworth's lawyer. The analysis ''piles inference on innuendo to reach a predetermined and hopelessly flawed conclusion.''

''It was developed through illegal and invasive means.''

''Dr. Keyworth did not reveal confidential or damaging information about H.P. to CNet, and spoke with the reporter with H.P.'s best interests in mind,'' Mr. Brown added. ''More importantly, neither Dr. Keyworth and his family, nor any journalist and his or her family, deserved to have their records purloined, homes monitored or trash picked through by private investigators.''

State and federal prosecutors are now trying to determine if the methods used by Hewlett-Packard's hired guns broke any laws by using pretexting, a technique in which an investigator lies about his own identity to obtain phone calling and other personal records.

The report was prepared by Kevin T. Hunsaker, a senior lawyer and the director of ethics who is leaving the company, and was delivered May 24 to Mr. Hurd; Ann O. Baskins, the general counsel who resigned Thursday; and the company's board.

The report focuses on the relationship between Mr. Keyworth and Ms. Kawamoto, the CNet reporter; Investigators determined they met at the beginning of 2001. They did so, curiously enough, at the behest of Hewlett-Packard's chief executive then, Carleton S. Fiorina, whom the report concluded instructed Mr. Keyworth to establish a relationship with Ms. Kawamoto to spread word of the company's new exploits.

Sarah Cain, a spokeswoman from CNet, said the news organization would not comment on Ms. Kawamoto's sources, nor discuss whether Mr. Keyworth was a source. Ms. Cain said the organization was distressed over the investigation into the activities and lives of reporters. ''We feel it's a huge violation to our reporters' personal and profession privacy,'' she said.

The team of investigators -- which included Mr. Hunsaker, members of the company's internal global security operation and outside detectives -- found that Ms. Kawamoto had written 10 articles since 2002 about the company that cited a confidential source.

''One of the first things the investigation team noted is that Kawamoto always cites just one 'source' rather than citing 'sources' or 'people familiar with the situation,' like other reporters who more frequently cover H.P. do,'' the report theorized.

And unlike some other reporters, the investigators noted, Ms. Kawamoto did not contact the company's media relations department to confirm her articles. Investigators concluded the reporter must have found the source so highly credible and well placed that she did not believe it was necessary to nail down the information.

Then there were the phone conversations. By studying calling records, the investigators determined that on Jan. 18, just before a CNet article was published, a call was made from Ms. Kawamoto's cellphone to Mr. Keyworth's home in Piedmont, Calif. The call was placed at 5:25 p.m. and lasted approximately one minute. (In the final report, the notation about the call is in bold type, highlighting significance.)

''It should be noted that the phone is listed in Keyworth's wife's name,'' the report states. ''There is no documented 411 call from Kawamoto's cellphone prior to the call. This indicates that Kawamoto likely knew the home phone number.''

The sleuths determined that another call, for 10 minutes, was placed on Feb. 3, at 2:21, from Mr. Keyworth's cellphone to Ms. Kawamoto's office. Again, the report notes, there was no 411 call, suggesting to the investigators that Mr. Keyworth knew the number.

Meanwhile, the report suggests that the tension was getting to Mr. Keyworth and Thomas J. Perkins, a friend and compatriot on the board. The report says that during a break at a March board meeting -- as the scrutiny from the investigation was mounting -- Mr. Keyworth and Mr. Perkins were overheard in a heated discussion.

According to the report, ''The arguments were mainly one-sided, with Keyworth intently speaking and even pointing his finger at Perkins' chest several times. At the very end of the second argument/heated discussion, Keyworth was overhead saying: 'They don't have enough to go there.' ''

The investigators also drew a link between Mr. Keyworth and Stephen Shankland, a reporter who collaborated with Ms. Kawamoto on three articles in which a confidential source was used. The report indicates that Mr. Keyworth worked for six years at Los Alamos Labs with Thomas Shankland, Stephen Shankland's father.

''Stephen and Keyworth's son, George, who are just two years apart, likely attended the same elementary school,'' the report states.

But now that all their work has been exposed to the light of day, the investigators are unlikely to be taken up on the offer they presented in the final sentence of the report. ''The investigation team,'' they wrote, ''would be pleased to participate in any discussions regarding proactive measures designed to reduce the likelihood of similar incidents occurring in the future.''

NON-TECHNOLOGY TOPICS:
USED WITH PERMISSION OF THE NEW YORK TIMES

OTHER TOPICS
September 23, 2003, Tuesday Late Edition - Final
Section A Page 1 Column 5 Desk: National Desk Length: 1299 words

Air Passengers' Carry-Ons: No, Not the Baggage, Dinner
By MATT RICHTEL
SAN FRANCISCO, Sept. 22

Munching on mahi-mahi, Laura Malone sat in the airport here and told of a recent run-in with security. Screeners at the metal detector had found no weaponry or sharp objects but had stopped her anyway. The offending item? A tin of smoked shrimp with tarragon.

Arriving at the airport well stocked with tasty refreshments is nothing new to Ms. Malone. (When she and her husband fly together, they even carry aboard a bottle of petite sirah.) To her, the routine is as much necessity as luxury. Even food that she considers inedible -- ''it's ugly, it's fattening, and it's old'' -- has in many cases been disappearing as a jetliner service.

In the era of the no-frill airline, a crucial part of the preflight ritual has become stocking up on sustenance, and travelers are growing more creative by the day. Rather than carry nothing more than trail mix or sandwiches, they are packing elaborate picnics to be consumed at 25,000 feet: coolers and Tupperware containers are filled with fragrant homemade meals, bottles with spring water and juices.

Travelers, flight attendants and industry analysts say the trend has become more pronounced since the Sept. 11 attacks, which accelerated a business downturn that has caused even full-fare airlines to often provide little more than a snack.

For flight attendants, that trend has created yet another headache, and not just from the various new food-related odors: the in-air picnics are also resulting in a mess of discarded food, bags and boxes. Passengers are bringing so much food on board that there is barely enough room to fit all the garbage in trash bins.

Indeed, on short-haul commuter flights like those from Los Angeles to San Francisco, travelers are sometimes admonished over the intercom to pick up after themselves before landing so that the plane can be quickly turned around to head in the other direction.

''There's stuff everywhere, more garbage on the floors and in the seat backs,'' said Peter M. Lebeau, a flight attendant for American Trans Air. ''It's pretty gross.''

Untidy, perhaps, but passengers say the noshing is necessary to stave of hunger or having to eat something significantly substandard.

Ms. Malone, a 56-year-old marketing executive from Napa Valley who was interviewed just before boarding a flight to Seattle on business, said that she always took food with her for air travel and that it was usually something delectable. She typically smokes some salmon the night before, and takes it along with goat cheese and a fresh sourdough baguette. She and her husband often carry enough for those who sit nearby.

''We make a lot of friends,'' she said.

Those who fail to prepare at home, or are not lucky enough to sit beside a gourmand, can turn to a growing array of cafes that line airport concourses. Some offer only overpriced ordinary fare, but others provide increasingly high-quality food from designer brand names like Wolfgang Puck. Airport snacks include sushi, juice shakes and vegetarian wraps, letting travelers watch their weight while they digest with the Grand Canyon far below on their left.

Joe Brancatelli publishes a travelers' advisory Web site that includes counsel on where to get the best food at airports. Among the recommendations are the Rose City Cafe in Portland, Ore., which has ''very fresh sushi,'' and Erwin's Glatt Kosher Delicatessen, which, the site says, serves superior deli fare at Kennedy International Airport in New York. Philadelphia International features Caviar Assouline, where each lunch bag holding a sandwich also contains a Valrhona chocolate square.

Mr. Brancatelli said shops at a handful of airports had even begun allowing travelers to order meals over the Internet that can be picked up at terminals before a flight.

''I work on the assumption that there won't be food on the plane,'' he said. ''If you feel you need to eat on a plane, it does take some planning ahead.''

Travelers have always had an uneasy acquaintance with airline food, but those who find it unappetizing have had much less of it to complain about in recent years. The major airlines, either losing money or operating on very thin profit margins, have cut back on hot meals, except on international flights and all but the longest domestic ones.

Then there are the no-frill airlines. Southwest, American Trans Air and JetBlue Airways do not offer meals at all. Travelers on some America West flights can get sandwiches, but they must pay for them.

For passengers who want to take food on board, though, one of the no-frill carriers, JetBlue, is in the process of bringing in a host of new food shops at Kennedy Airport's Terminal 6, where it is the sole airline. A JetBlue spokesman, Gareth Edmondson-Jones, said the airline ousted the existing food businesses there three months ago and has hired a company to expand the offerings and emphasize fresher food.

As for the drink to go with it, it is not illegal to carry alcohol onto planes. Airlines themselves have varying policies about it, said Mr. Edmondson-Jones, who added that JetBlue permitted alcohol but required passengers to let the flight attendants serve it. That way, the crew can try to make sure that nobody downs too much.

One result of the picnics in the sky is that the cabins, once filled with cigarette smoke, now often carry a fragrance of various foods brought on board -- and not always for the better.

''Once there was this horrible smell,'' said Eloin Rodriguez, a flight attendant with American Trans Air. After several travelers complained, Mr. Rodriguez said, he pinpointed the problem: ''There was a woman discreetly eating fried squid.''

Robin Kidwell, a nurse who prefers to pack a turkey and cheese sandwich rather than something more elaborate, remembers an unpleasant scent that wafted from three rows in front of her during a flight in July from Charlotte, N.C., to San Francisco.

''It was chicken curry,'' Ms. Kidwell said. ''And it wasn't great. Trust me.''

But even people who carry food on board are not always happy about the need to do so. The passengers aboard a recent American Trans Air flight from Boston to San Francisco (with a stop in Chicago) included Coryinne Soyster and her 19-year-old son. Before Ms. Soyster left the East Coast, her sister had packed a blue cooler with three sandwiches and a plastic container that held grapes, blueberries and pieces of melon.

Ms. Soyster felt burdened, however, and blamed the airline for the lack of a tote-free meal. ''It's ridiculous,'' she said. ''I don't know what it could cost them: $4, $5, $6. I don't want to have to hike a cooler all over on a trip.''

In the back of the airplane, Mr. Lebeau, the flight attendant, was not feeling particularly sorry for complaining travelers.

''Don't give me grief for three hours or act like your kids are going to starve to death,'' he said. ''We're in the transportation business, not the food service business.''

Not that Mr. Lebeau himself had come unprepared. In one of the plane's ovens he was warming penne with ground turkey and squash. He had made it at home the night before.

ADULT FILM AWARDS - there are two stories in this section

USED WITH PERMISSION OF THE NEW YORK TIMES
January 10, 2006, Tuesday Late Edition - Final
Section A Page 22 Column 1 Desk: National Desk Length: 1045 words

A Night to See the Stars Actually Wearing Clothes
By MATT RICHTEL
LAS VEGAS, Jan. 8

The actress known as Tyla Wynn took to the stage late Saturday night to accept an X-rated-film award, the pornography version of an Oscar. The category was excellence in a multiperson sex scene.

Although thousands of people have watched Ms. Wynn perform intimate acts, she admitted to extreme nervousness when accepting her trophy, an opaque rectangle with the image of a man and woman intertwined.

''Speaking in front of people is hard,'' Ms. Wynn said, cradling her award, called the AVN.

The 23rd AVN awards presentation here was a campy mix of Hollywood cliché and X-rated clips watched with 3,000 of your closest friends and industry insiders. The acceptance speeches tended to be brief, befitting a film industry with little emphasis on dialogue.

The program highlighted that pornography is, at least in a sense, at a crossroads. The sex-film industry shows signs of gaining some mainstream acceptance -- spurred in part by its leading diva and business success, Jenna Jameson -- and it is reporting record sales. According to AVN Publications, which organizes the awards, it generated $4.3 billion in sales and rentals last year. That amounted to about half the size of Hollywood's box-office receipts of nearly $9 billion last year.

At the same time, prospects for the industry have been tempered by fears that the Justice Department is poised to add to a handful of obscenity prosecutions recently brought against makers of hardcore films.

Saturday night, though, was an unapologetic, hearty celebration, with a flashbulb-drenched red carpet entrance and awards presented in 104 categories, including best performances in a wide range of explicit acts and sexual positions. The more conventional were for best director, supporting actor and actress, screenplay and the most anticipated award of the evening: best feature.

That went to ''Pirates,'' a relatively high-budget story of a group of ragtag sailors who go searching for a crew of evil pirates who have a plan for world domination. Also, many of the characters in the movie have sex with one another.

Evan Stone, the stage name of the man who won the award for best actor as the good ship's captain, said a crucial component of the movie's success was its authenticity. A consultant instructed the cast on proper ship etiquette, he said, like never letting the captain steer the vessel, a job that belongs to the first mate.

''Take the sex out of this movie, and it's Walt Disney,'' said Mr. Stone, who declined to give his real name.

The precise criteria for winning an AVN are not, well, explicit. About 60 reviewers judge some 6,000 films submitted throughout the year. Paul Fishbein, the president of AVN Publications, said you know a good acting and sex scene when you see one.

Still, certain things rule out a nomination. One is ''if you can still hear the director's voice,'' Mr. Fishbein said. Another no-no is ''if it's clear the cameraman is not paying attention.''

The industry seems to have a sense of humor about itself, but there is an awareness that many Americans disapprove of their trade. Savanna Samson, who won an award for best actress, said in her acceptance speech that ''most of my family is pretty ashamed of what I do.''

Universally, the participants defend their right to make the films, but even within the sex-entertainment industry, opinions differ about what is tasteful.

''The bikini models hate the topless dancers, the topless dancers hate the nude dancers, the nude dancers hate the adult-film actors,'' said Stormy Daniels, 26, who won an award for best supporting actress. Ms. Daniels, who said she wished people would stop judging one another, does have her own pet peeve: tired plots.

''There's nothing worse then when the pizza boy rings the doorbell, the girl says she doesn't have a tip, and then they get it on,'' she said. Ms. Daniels also won an award for best screenplay for a parody, ''Camp Cuddly Pines Power Tool Massacre,'' which presumably had a storyline more in keeping with her tastes.

When the night began, starlets paraded past more than a hundred photographers. The divas said they had agonized over what to wear. Tanya Mercado, 31, whose stage name is Gina Lynn, wore a strapless black gown from Nordstrom, bought after she had rejected two others as not fitting quite snugly enough.

Not everyone makes a big deal about the awards. Even Ms. Wynn, a winner, said in an interview the day before the ceremony that she had trouble remembering one of her sex scenes that was nominated.

''What's the movie called?'' she asked, trying to distill just one title from the 150 movies that she said she performed in last year. A few moments later, it came to her -- ''Too Hot to Handle'' -- whose plot she described as two women who wear the same outfits and then have sex.

Unlike ''Pirates,'' which has a high production value and is meant to appeal to both women and men, Ms. Wynn's film is in many ways more characteristic. More than 90 percent of the movies are called ''gonzo,'' meaning they have little or no plot.

Steven Hirsch, chief executive of Vivid Entertainment, which made the award-winning ''The New Devil in Miss Jones,'' said the awards could help market films to distributors and really bolstered sales.

Not all fans pay attention to awards, though. Ian Thomas, 34, who sells real estate in Las Vegas, said before the ceremony that he picked pornographic films based on his favorite female performers.

''If I want acting, I'll go to a mafia movie,'' Mr. Thomas said.

HIGH-DEFINITION AND PORNOGRAPHY
USED WITH PERMISSION OF THE NEW YORK TIMES
January 22, 2007, Monday Late Edition - Final
Section C Page 1 Column 4 Desk: Business/Financial Desk Length: 1032 words

In Raw World of Sex Movies, High Definition Could Be a View Too Real
By MATT RICHTEL
SAN FRANCISCO, Jan. 21

The XXX industry has gotten too graphic, even for its own tastes.

Pornography has long helped drive the adoption of new technology, from the printing press to the videocassette. Now pornographic movie studios are staying ahead of the curve by releasing high-definition DVDs.

They have discovered that the technology is sometimes not so sexy. The high-definition format is accentuating imperfections in the actors -- from a little extra cellulite on a leg to wrinkles around the eyes.

Hollywood is dealing with similar problems, but they are more pronounced for pornographers, who rely on close-ups and who, because of their quick adoption of the new format, are facing the issue more immediately than mainstream entertainment companies.

Producers are taking steps to hide the imperfections. Some shots are lit differently, while some actors simply are not shot at certain angles, or are getting cosmetic surgery, or seeking expert grooming.

''The biggest problem is razor burn,'' said Stormy Daniels, an actress, writer and director.

Ms. Daniels is also a skeptic. ''I'm not 100 percent sure why anyone would want to see their porn in HD,'' she said.

The technology's advocates counter that high definition, by making things clearer and crisper, lets viewers feel as close to the action as possible.

''It puts you in the room,'' said the director known as Robby D., whose films include ''Sexual Freak.''

The pornographers' progress with HD may also be somewhat slowed by Sony, one of the main backers of the Blu-ray high-definition disc format. Sony said last week that, in keeping with a longstanding policy, it would not mass-produce pornographic videos on behalf of the movie makers.

The decision has forced pornographers to use the competing HD-DVD format or, in some cases, to find companies other than Sony that can manufacture copies of Blu-ray movies.

The movie makers assert that it is shortsighted of Sony to snub them, given how pornography helps technologies spread.

''When you're introducing a new format, it would seem like the adult guys can help,'' said Steven Hirsch, co-chief executive officer of Vivid Entertainment Group, a big player in the industry. Mr. Hirsch added that high definition, regardless of format, ''is the future.''

Despite the challenges, pornographers -- who distributed some 7,000 new movies on DVD last year and sold discs worth $3.6 billion in the United States -- are rapidly moving to high-definition.

One major company, Digital Playground, plans to release its first four HD-DVD titles this month, and plans four new ones each month. In March, Vivid plans to release ''Debbie Does Dallas Again,'' its first feature for both HD-DVD and Blu-ray.

Vivid, like Digital Playground, has been shooting with high-definition cameras for two years to build up a catalog of high-definition movies. Both studios have released the movies in standard definition but plan to make the high-definition versions available as compatible disc players and televisions become more popular.

The studios said their experience using the technology gives them an advantage in understanding how to cope with the mixed blessing of hypercrisp images. Their techniques include using postproduction tools that let them digitally soften the actors' skin tone.

''It takes away the blemishes and the pits and harshness and makes it look like they have baby skin,'' said the director known as Joone, who made ''Pirates,'' one of the industry's top-selling videos. It will be available this month in high-definition.

Joone does not use a last name, but he does use a number of techniques to keep his films blemish-free. They include giving out lifestyle tips.

''I tell the girls to work out more, cut down on the carbs, hit the treadmill,'' he said.

Within the industry, the issue seems to have created a difference in perspective that cuts roughly along gender lines. Some male actors have begun using makeup to mitigate wrinkles or facial flaws, but generally they, and the male directors, are less worried about high-definition's glare and more enamored of the technology.

Ms. Daniels said that attitude was just so typical of men.

''Men are all about outdoing each other, being up with the times, being cool, having the latest technology,'' she said. ''They're willing to sacrifice our vanity and imperfections to beat each other'' to high-definition, she said.

Other female actors say they generally like working with high-definition -- except for the cosmetic-surgery part.

Jesse Jane, one of the industry's biggest stars, plans to go under the knife next month to deal with one side effect of high-definition. The images are so clear that Ms. Jane's breast implants, from an operation six years ago, can be seen bulging oddly on screen.

''I'm having my breasts redone because of HD,'' she said.

The stretch marks on Ms. Jane from seven years ago when she gave birth to her son are also more apparent. But she deals with those blemishes in a simpler way: by liberal use of tanning spray.

Still, Ms. Jane likes the technology, as does her close friend Kirsten Price, 25, who appeared in ''Manhunters'' and ''Just Like That.''

''HD is great because people want to see how people really look,'' Ms. Price said. ''People just want to see what's real.''

Ms. Price is allowing them to do so, mostly. She had laser treatments to diminish tiny purple veins on her thighs that weren't visible to viewers before.

''You can see things you cannot see with the naked eye. You see skin blemishes; you see cottage cheese,'' said Robby D. ''But some cellulite is not necessarily a bad thing. It's kind of sexy.''

The technology makes the experience more intimate, he said. ''People look to adult movies for personal contact, and yet they're still not getting it. HD lets them see a little bit more of the girl.''

That's not necessarily good, said Savanna Samson, an actress who last December directed her first movie, ''Any Way You Want Me.'' During a scene in which she played a desperate housewife, she ran into a problem: the high-definition camera revealed she had a tiny ill-placed pimple.

''We kept stopping and trying to hide it. We put on makeup and powder, but there was no way,'' Ms. Samson said. Finally, they tried another approach: ''We just changed positions,'' she said.

Backslash - there are three stories in this section

USED WITH PERMISSION OF THE NEW YORK TIMES

April 8, 2001, Sunday Late Edition - Final
Section 3 Page 10 Column 4 Desk: Money and Business/Financial Desk Length: 807 words

BACKSLASH; You Have Psychotherapy!
By MATT RICHTEL

Matt Richtel reports on technology for The Times. His column about living and working in the technology maelstrom appears the second Sunday of each month.
E-mail: mrichtel@nytimes.com.

INTENSIVE psychotherapy, effective though it can be, may be considered an anachronism in a high-technology era when people demand quick, ever-present and efficient solutions. Therapy can take years, cost lots of money and is not easily carried out via a mobile phone at lunch.

But change is afoot. Some counselors are putting their practices on the Internet and offering consultations via e-mail. That makes it possible for patients, in written exchanges with the therapist, to conveniently confront their own demons while also indirectly helping those patients to improve their spelling and subject-verb agreement.

Judith Schwambach, Ph.D., an e-mail counselor for the last six years who goes by the name of Dr. Judith (www.drjudith.com) and charges $120 an hour, said the arrangement was convenient for therapists, too, allowing them to work from a home office at their leisure. One downside, she said, is that she and the patient do not see each other. But that is a problem only for ''the more feeling-type people'' who want to ''pick up my caring compassionate feelings,'' she said. For these people, she said, she recommends consulting with her by phone.

But perhaps the great leaps forward are ahead. For advocates of efficiency, there may be better ways to use technology to mend the psyche:

FREUDWARE 1.0 -- Therapy is expensive, mostly because of the cost of ''human capital,'' or, as it is known in the industry, the therapist. Obviously, one way to make therapy less expensive is to outsource the therapy to low-cost overseas labor markets. But there is a better way: automation.

The idea here is to create an automated software program, say, Freudware version 1.0, a complex algorithm that can analyze issues as deftly as any flesh-based therapist does. It would be built on two main principles of therapy: ''They don't hate you; they are just jealous'' and ''Sorry, we're out of time.''

An exchange might go like this:

Patient: I need help with my hostility. I got into another nasty argument with my boss.

Freudware 1.0: I see. And how did that make you feel?

Patient: I guess I felt sad, and guilty.

Freudware 1.0: I see. And how did that make you feel?

Patient: I just said -- sad and guilty.

Freudware 1.0: And how does that make you feel?

Patient: I'm going to kill you.

Freudware 1.0: Sorry, were out of time.

MORE EMOTICONS -- People already garnish their electronic missives with :) and :( symbols. Such faces can help e-therapy patients convey a mind-set, especially if they cannot find exactly the right word to show if they are happy or sad.

E-therapy may truly blossom, however, only with a broader range of so-called emoticons. Patients would send them to punctuate their prose or, words failing, in lieu of them. In turn, the emoticons would let the therapist sense the unspoken emotions otherwise conveyed through facial expressions and gestures. After seeing such a symbol, the therapist might say, ''You're looking pensive'' or ''This subject seems to make you uncomfortable?'' or ''I see you've sent a semicolon, followed by two dashes and an asterisk. Does that mean you're happy, or sad?''

PORTABLE PSYCHOTHERAPY -- Technology has allowed people to buy ever-smaller portable phones and digital organizers. Yet psychotherapists remain inexcusably full size. That is about to change. We will be able to shrink the shrink, so to speak, with the development of the New Mini-Healer (copyright not pending, so go for it).

Easy to carry, equipped with wireless Internet access and doubling as a telephone and digital organizer, this handy portable device will let users undertake intensive e-mail-based psychotherapy while on the go. E-mail exchanges could be sent during the morning commute, while grabbing lunch at the food court or while attending tense family functions. Warning: Patients having trouble concentrating should avoid using the Mini-Healer to place day trades while driving.

ASK JEEVES -- In a pinch, there may be no time for a full-length therapy session, portable or otherwise. No worries: Ask Jeeves. This service, at www.askjeeves.com, lets you ask basic Internet navigation questions like ''How can I find a recipe for great pancakes?'' But that does not mean that it cannot be used for other inquiries like, ''Am I a failure?''

In a recent actual test, Ask Jeeves showed mixed results as a spiritual and psychological guide. For instance, when asked, ''What is it all about?'' Jeeves responded with a link to a Web site selling fine jewelry. It may not make a lot of sense, but that's O.K., we're out of time.

June 10, 2001, Sunday Late Edition - Final
Section 3 Page 13 Column 1 Desk: Money and Business/Financial Desk Length: 818 words

BACKSLASH; How to Take Back Our Analog Brains
By MATT RICHTEL

WE have outsourced our brains.

We have ceded mathematical skills to calculators, and spelling to spelling checkers. Without a global positioning system or directions from Mapquest, many of us cannot find our way out of a coat closet. Even our ability to focus has been assaulted -- by phone calls and e-mail messages.

But there is hope. With a little discipline, anyone can polish basic intellectual skills and reclaim his brain. Here is how:

MATHEMATICS -- First, become familiar with numbers again. One trick is to try counting the number of digital devices you own. Remember, of course, that 50 comes after 49. Without the help of a calculator, divide the number of devices by 10. Congratulations: you have just figured out how many dollars are left in your stock portfolio. But more important, you have again experienced the rush of doing simple math. Feels good, doesn't it?

This means that you are ready for a word problem: Two trains are going in opposite directions. One train is carrying your cell phone and traveling 40 miles an hour; the other is carrying your Palm Pilot and traveling 36 miles an hour. Taking into account the Doppler effect, for how many minutes will you try to talk on that phone before you realize that it's no longer in your hand?

SPELLING -- If you want to become persuasive in the art of written expression, become a powerful media mogul. The power of spelling and other skills is overrated, especially in an age of spelling- and grammar-checking programs. But if you wish to hang on to those skills (you know whom you are!), do not fret.

Start by working with the building blocks -- the letters. To reacquaint yourself with the alphabet, turn off your computer, pick up a pencil and start writing those letters by hand. Feel the sensuality as these molecules of expression dance from your pencil. Next, try to write some typical correspondence to an associate. Remember to start with a salutation, then to write the body of the letter and, finally, a closing clause, making sure to mention that you ''prefer not to involve lawyers in the dispute.''

As an additional test, try to recognize which of the following commonly used words are spelled incorrectly, even though the offending ones are not highlighted in red: paralell, analyse, pituitary, dawg, sofomore, multiplakashun, the.

Finally, remember that, despite what creating passwords for the computer age has taught you, it is not essential for all words to be at least seven characters long and to include at least three characters that are not letters.

MEMORY -- How can you revive your memory? After all, you've lost your ability to remember telephone numbers because they are programmed into your mobile phone. And your portable digital device, not your brain, keeps track of mailing addresses, e-mail addresses, family members' birthdays, business contacts and a daily calendar.
So what was the question again?

SENSE OF DIRECTION -- Start in the middle of a thick forest. Leave behind your cell phone. Do not download directions from Mapquest. You are ready for your first big test: find a tree. Good! You've begun to regain an awareness of your surroundings.

If you find yourself without a digital device to help you find your way, the best thing you can do is to develop something called people skills. That can be scary, because it entails asking for directions from another human being, not from a computer screen. But don't worry. Remember that other people are just as scared of giving directions as you are of asking.

It also helps to familiarize yourself with basic directional rules: The sun rises in the east and sets in the west. Moss grows only on the north side of a tree. And if the water in the toilet is swirling counterclockwise, you are probably driving a car in Britain.

ATTENTION SPAN -- Sometimes it is difficult to recognize that you aren't concentrating. But consider this: The sun rises in the east and sets in the west. Moss grows only on the north side of a tree. And if the water in the toilet is swirling counterclockwise, you are probably driving a car in Britain. Sound familiar? Yes, those sentences appeared just above, although you may have forgotten amid interruptions from cell phone calls, e-mail messages and life's generally blistering pace.

To remedy the problem, start by shutting down all incoming stimuli. Pick up a book -- say, a thick Pulitzer Prize-winning work of nonfiction. Ease into it. Read only the inside and outside flaps. Now stay in the moment, focus on what you've just read and ask yourself a question: What is a book?

An alternative: Walk paralell to the direction from which you came, divide the cirkumfrence of the angel by pie, then log onto Mapquest.

September 8, 2002, Sunday Late Edition - Final
Section 3 Page 10 Column 1 Desk: Money and Business/Financial Desk Length: 852 words

BACKSLASH; It's Time to Turn Off Those Bells and Whistles
By MATT RICHTEL

Matt Richtel reports on technology for The Times. His column about living and working in the technology maelstrom appears the second Sunday of each month. E-mail: mrichtel@nytimes.com.

PUT down that SkyMall catalog. You do not need a juicer that has e-mail access. While you're at it, shove your cellphone, BlackBerry and other gadgets into the sock drawer.
You can pick them up again on Thursday.

That's the day after the anniversary of the terrorist attacks, a day that, among its many facets, lets us reflect on the mixed blessing of technology in our lives.

There's no doubt that we should raise a glass to the ubiquitous silicon chip for its dedication, dependability and overall contributions on Sept. 11. Cellphone calls from 30,000 feet and more than 100 floors up let some of us hear our loved ones for the last time. The phones delivered continuing reports of heroism. They permitted those of us a proverbial million miles from ground zero to call to tell one another: that plane just crashed into my heart.

Around-the-clock news updates -- on television, over the Internet and through wireless hand-held gadgets -- informed us on that day that our world was falling apart, and then that it would remain intact. For a few days, the one thing that seemed almost as important to us as kin was the constant flow of news.

The trouble is, we have so often abused technology and let it dull our senses. And so, on Wednesday, consider observing a moment, if not a day, of data silence. Pull the D.S.L. connection out of that forearm vein. Listen. Slow down. Understand that whatever it is you think you need, you don't absolutely, positively need it overnight:

*Do not instant anything. Your interpersonal relationships are not enhanced by setting a record for the sending and receipt of messages like ''Hi. How R U,'' or ''Insnt MssGng Is so kool!'' When the urge hits for interaction, get positively medieval: write a letter. Write it on something that the old-timers called paper. Use your own font. Handwriting has personality -- yours. Let ''instant'' be replaced by ''anticipation.''

*Do not call your orthodontist. If this sounds odd, you may not be familiar with the cellphone orthodontist principle. It comes into play when you are addicted to talking on the phone while driving but have run out of people to call. Eventually, desperate for anyone to talk to, you phone the guy who attached your braces in junior high and say: ''I love what you did with my teeth. Are you busy for the next 40 miles?''

The point is this: On Wednesday, don't call someone unless you mean it. Save your minutes for Thursday. Don't fill dead air time with empty words. While you're at it, restrict incoming calls. Turn off the ringer. That person sitting across from you at lunch deserves all your attention. Pretend that he or she is a New York firefighter. Do not once say: ''Hold on. That's the other line.''

*Don't upgrade -- anything. That empty nagging feeling you have? It's not the need for more megahertz. You will not feel any more connected to other human beings if you can see their virtual images more clearly on a new flat-screen monitor. Go outside and browse other people. Establish a wireless connection formerly known as the hug.

*Don't be caught on the 24-hour news merry-go-round. The round-the-clock, rapid-fire television news format has become a potpourri of factoids, rumor and important updates about what George Clooney had for lunch. On Wednesday, pull your head off the swivel. Don't be distracted by snippets. Read one entire news article start to finish, whatever the topic. Five minutes later, make a concerted effort to remember what the heck it was about.

*Don't multitask. Give your undivided attention. When you're nursing the baby, don't talk on the phone. When you're talking on the phone, don't check your e-mail messages. When you're checking your messages, don't clip your nails, browse the Web, pay your taxes, tell your mother you love her and keep running back and forth to the kitchen to see if you've received even more e-mail on your new juicer.

*Don't think about tomorrow. Forget about what advances are to come and whether you're falling behind. News flash: You're behind. Get over it. Instead, think about the past -- not a year ago, but long before. Think about how technology, which has evolved into incredible gadgetry like cellphones, has evolved along another path into weapons of mass destruction. Think about how to use in-person diplomacy in your own life to settle old, tired, unnecessary disputes.

If you feel angry and vengeful, don't fight it. Use your destructive energy for good: Delete an emoticon. Kill a symbol. In its place, express a real emotion -- good, bad or indifferent. Find the words -- not symbols, acronyms or digital era short-cuts -- that mean: I love you. I miss you. I'm sorry.

This Wednesday, keep it real. You can get virtual again on Thursday.