June 4, 1999
Fortune: The Five New Rules of Web Technology.
Stewart Alsop. Old-line companies can't afford to let newcomers be the only ones to integrate customers into every aspect of their business. So virtually every company will need systems that can adapt to the real-time access of a customer database.
Editor & Publisher: Alternative To Spinning Off New Media Units.
Steve Outing. That means using the Internet across all departments, and using Internet technologies to better serve all customers — whether of old- or new-media products and services produced by a company.
News.Com: VW's Net engine idles.
Analysts said the effort pushes GM ahead of Ford, and far beyond VW, which is cracking down on its dealers use of the Web as a sales channel in the UK.
Forbes: Pushing to PDAs.
An explosion of various devices, operating systems, differently sized display screens and functions means that any given company may have to hire a handheld-savvy technical staff just to deal with back-end complexity.
Industry Standard: AT&T and AOL: Separated at Birth?
[Ellen Siminoff, Yahoo] ...says that the important issue is how difficult AtHome makes it for consumers to get to Yahoo and other sites. "From all indications, they don't plan to lock off access," Siminoff says. "The question is, 'How many barriers will they put in the way of the consumer?'"
NY Times: Judge Says Local Officials Can Force AT&T to Share Cable Lines.
...a Federal judge in Portland, Ore., ruled yesterday that a local government could force the AT&T Corporation to share its cable lines with competing Internet service providers.
USA Today: Manufacturers move onto the Web.
Tantalized by the chance to showcase all their wares, forge direct links with consumers and, yes, realize fatter profit margins, manufacturers are edging onto the Web -- not just to promote their products but to sell them.
Boston Globe: Web design as an art.
Simson Garfinkel. [Philip Greenspun] "We are finding people that we are going to invest in for the next 10 or 15 years by helping with the infrastructure part. They will have the infrastructure of the best Web publisher."
Wired News: Digital Campfire Tales.
[Dana Atchley] "Computers, to me, are a tool," he continues. "They've had a huge impact on storytelling. It's a great new platform that I can use for my craft."
Forbes ASAP: E-commerce liposuction key to stealth strategy.
e-Chemical's plan is based on the web's ability to inexpensively target a hard to reach--but profitable--slice of buyers and then engineer a new delivery system to put the product in their hands more cheaply.
Wired News: Show Me E-Money.
E-commerce companies have searched for a universal system for selling goods online that's easy to use and inexpensive to control. But "e-cash" has been an e-dud.
Forbes ASAP: New technology prints books while you wait.
"The worst aspect of book publishing has been its distribution system." Typically, a retailer orders the number of books it thinks it can sell. But should the title prove to be popular, the store may not be able to order more if the publisher's inventory is depleted."
Industry Standard: Europeans Online Doubled in '98.
The total number of Europeans online grew from 17.7 million in 1997 to more than 35 million in 1998, a growth rate of 99 percent...
Fortune: Brave New Work: Will Evolving Corporate Strategy Be Dar-win-win-ian?
A growing community of psychologists, sociologists, anthropologists, and economists are mining Darwin's evolutionary observations in ways that threaten to make much of contemporary managerial and marketing thought either obsolete or extinct.
Cal Law: Congress Does a Database Dance.
Net companies also see the bill as a threat to their bottom line: Such legislation, they say, could set up a system of tolls that forces them to pay for information they collect from databases for use on their sites.
Boston Globe: As far as the Senate is concerned, 'Dr. E-mail' is in.
...GII makes a software package called EchoMail that analyzes, tracks, and responds to e-mail - in most cases without requiring a human to read individual e-mail messages.
News.Com: Microsoft takes stake in Wink.
As part of the deal, Microsoft and Wink will promote interactive content and commerce for a new standard, known by the initials ATVEF, which allows interactive features over televisions.
Internet Week: Enterprise Users Poke Holes In E-Procurement.
The benefits of e-procurement can be overwhelmed because "you have to integrate that with existing legacy systems, and then tie every process with easy work-flow forms for purchase approvals..."
ZDNN: Amazon, NY Times book a fight.
The online bookseller said that it received a letter from the newspaper on May 28, ordering it to stop using the Times' list and to stop promoting the fact that it offers 50 percent discounts off books on the list.
Industry Standard: Will Web Startup Replace Copyright Office?
Simply upload your file (whether it be an MP3, a Web document or an e-mail) to his server, and for $18.95 you get a digital timestamp identifying you as the creator, valid for 10 years.
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