April 19, 1999
MSDN Online: Design and User Interface Inspirations at Microsoft.
Recently, Donald Norman spoke to a group at Microsoft Design Day 99, and challenged the audience with his comment that Microsoft listens to its customers too much -- subsequently creating software that is too complex and feature rich.
ClickZ: Peas In A Pod: Behind Personalization.
Shoppers returning to the Peapod site to shop again may notice that the screen has changed ever so slightly, with a popup menu describing the functions of the new buttons that have appeared.
Salon: Caveat Poster.
Online anonymity is under siege by a barrage of court orders -- and no one is fighting them.
News.Com: E-commerce comes home.
A new generation of e-commerce start-ups is moving beyond commodity retail goods to capitalize on the home market.
Red Herring: Ask Jeeves has VCs throwing money at its novel search engine.
The company currently has two sources of revenues: it licenses its search technology to businesses and sells advertising on its consumer sites...
Editor & Publisher: Why Online Journalism Is a Great Career Choice.
Steve Outing. Online journalism today is not just about practicing quality journalism, but figuring out how to craft a new media industry.
Interactive Week: After The PC: A World 'Bathed' In The Net.
[Tim Berners-Lee] Now, he persists in trying to make the Web a place where anyone can interact with any idea, any page or anyone else at any time.
Internet World: How Does a Web-Geek Site Handle Success?
It's the communal character of the site that is one of its greatest assets, explained the site's creator, Rob Malda...
Wired News: Digital Music at the Crossroads.
The flat-fee pull world is the way music is headed. Music will be a service, not a product," said Griffin. "As wireless connectivity delivers what we want, wherever we want, our desire to own digits decreases...."
ABCNews.Com: Requiem for the PC?
[Donald Norman] "They should be talking to their non-customers, because those are the people that want something different, and they’ll be driving the market."
SF Examiner: Where the Net economy is going.
The good news is that in the coming year Internet commerce will become easier to use, less intrusive and much more relevant to your day-to-day life.
LA Times: Parallel Universe.
Because the company doesn't operate a "destination" site--as do search engine developers AltaVista and Excite--it doesn't compete against potential customers and can position itself as a technological Switzerland in the portal wars.
News.Com: IPO on Salon's next page.
With its planned IPO, Salon--which remains unprofitable--joins Net publishers such as thestreet.com, CBS Marketwatch, and ZDNet, which either have gone public or plan to soon.
USA Today: Deals give e-books a boost.
The nascent e-book industry has been signing deals and readying new products this month in advance of BookExpo America...
Interactive Week: Netscape Promotes Open Directory.
The idea is that a community working together and using common standards can make more progress than a single company using its own resources to develop a custom solution.
PC Week: Exchange gets the (real-time) message
Microsoft's instant messaging will also use a "federated" approach to transferring messages over a network, according to sources, rather than making messages go through a single central server.
PC Week: LCD shortage hits portables.
The shortage of LCD panels is also limiting the adoption of flat-panel displays by contributing to flat, if not slightly higher, prices for the panels...
News.Com: Microsoft may resell RealNames.
Topics under discussion include having Microsoft's LinkExchange unit sell RealNames to its 1 million-plus small business members.
Wired News: Cable Boxes See What You See.
Digital cable boxes to be provided to new cable customers in mid-1999 will track viewing tendencies by default although customers will be able to opt out -- if they read the fine print of their service agreement.
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