David S. Bennahum

Slate: Hope You Like Jamming, Too

Cell-phone jammers may soon be all over.
(Listen to this story on National Public Radio.)

Slate: Warren Buffet for Coupon-Clippers

Can a Web site save you 70 percent at the grocery store?

L.A. Times: Mr Watson, Come Here! It's Free

Home Edition, Opinion, Page M-5
Editorial Pages Desk

The Internet is famous -- and infamous -- for disrupting traditional businesses with unexpected innovations. Hardly a season goes by without some new Internet-based technology upending people's expectations of how things are supposed to be.

Read the rest of this story by downloading the text file (13K):

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Slate: You Can Hear Verizon Now

But can you hear it later?

Wired: Be Here Now

November 2001

Forget the World Wide Web on your cell phone. The key to the always-on, everywhere wireless Internet comes down to three things: location, location, location.

From the first paragraph:

One of the most interesting moments I've had as a venture capitalist took place this past spring, when I visited the offices of Vindigo, on Manhattan's West Side. Seated in the company's conference room, I stared at an image of New York City rendered on a laptop. It was unlike anything I'd seen before. The company's 32-year-old CEO, Jason Devitt, who'd started Vindigo barely a year earlier, explained that I was looking at a map of what New Yorkers like to do and, more interesting, where they like to do it.

Click here to read this story at Wired.com.

Wired: Dameon Seed

May, 1999

Old email never dies...

This story was about the way that people's email can live on long after they've moved on... The first paragraph:

It's almost impossible to hide your email from John Jessen. To him, the word delete is an invitation. Jessen can restore email from magnetic tapes that have been overwritten several times, resuscitating information off "deleted" files. He can read email and documents from obsolete computer systems. Jessen can capture phantoms; he understands the foibles of wordprocessing programs that leave undo lists and backups of old edits in hidden parts of files and disks.

"You see everything," he says, "from high and low comedy to human tragedy."

Click here to read the rest of the story at Wired.com.

Wired: Terminal Velocity

February, 1999

Can Mike Bloomberg, self-made man's man and master of the real-time financial news universe, learn to think out of the box?

From the first paragraph:

"My daughter is tall and busty and blonde," Michael Bloomberg is telling a table of Boston College graduates. "We went to China together. And what's a 16-year-old going to do on a business trip?" He pops another carefully buttered piece of bread in his mouth. "So I got her dates in every city in China." Remembering that I'm also at the table, he glares in my direction. "That's off the record!" he barks. It's typical Mike Bloomberg, wanting to have it both ways: imperious man of the people, coarse billionaire, earthy business leader, accessible control freak.

Click here to read the rest of the story at Wired.com.

Wired: The United Nations of Iridium

October 1998, Cover Story

It's a bird, it's a phone, it's the world's first pan-national corporation, able to leap geopolitical barriers in a single bound.

From the first paragraph:

When the rocket finally lifted off, nine motors pushing hard against the ground, carrying five satellites cushioned against the staccato shock of acceleration, there weren't many people left to watch from the hardscrabble hilltop, with its bleachers and Portosan and pay phone. The May launch was three weeks late, delayed once when the payload specialists detected a leak of the deadly green fluid hydrazine, and again when a US Air Force weather balloon calculated that the wind would blow the plugs in the motors down into the Lompoc Valley, lethal discs falling from the sky - maybe onto someone's roof - ruining an otherwise perfect day.

So only a few remained - engineers and Air Force personnel and a few lucky kids - to see the last launch in a series that would create the world's biggest satellite constellation.

Click here to read the rest of the story at Wired.com.

Wired: The Hot New Medium Is...Email

April, 1998

List publishing is not merely information delivered to your mailbox, it's the devolution of mass media into the hands of everyday people. And it's growing faster than the Web.

From the first paragraph:

Monday, March 4, 1996, begins normally enough. At my office in New York, writing an article. I'm reluctant to start working, so I do what most writers do when they don't want to work: I procrastinate, checking my mailbox for new messages. A few arrive. Nothing particularly interesting. Then one catches my attention. "MEME: georgia6@hr.house.gov joined the list." I sit up. Georgia6? That's Newt Gingrich's district. The Speaker of the House just joined Meme? Well, I think, that's extraordinary. The power of ideas. Gingrich is on my list!

Click here to read the rest of the story at Wired.com.

Spin: Mars or Bust!

February, 1998

From the editors...

"In relative obscurity, a team of young NASA scientists is planning the most ambitious space mission yet. But before they put Man on the Red Planet, they'll have to reinvent the astronaut first."

Read my story on the challenges NASA faces in sending people to Mars; in PDF format (3.7 MB).