July 2, 1999
Today's Links Story: Southwest Airlines' pencil hits the Web
PC World: Webscapes in the Works.
Microsoft, for one, has a think tank studying future Web interfaces that the software kingpin may someday adopt. Researchers shared some of their and studies this week at the Web99 Design and Development conference here.
BBC News: Net users take over news.
"We are not gatekeepers anymore, the city walls are down, we don't own customers, we don't control information."
NetMedia99: Revolutionary start to NetMedia99.
[Steve Yelvington, Cox Interactive Media] ...it's time for new media publishers to strip away the security blanket of metaphoric terms like "online newspaper", "interactive service", or "computer desktop", and see what vocabulary remains.
NetMedia 99: Surfers teach journalists to ride the waves.
Direct online contact with readers is benefiting journalists. As more readers get their news from the Internet, news provision is becoming a conversation rather than a lecture.
USA Today: Are CEOs paying heed to the Web?
[Herb Kelleher, CEO of Southwest Airlines] "I still use a No. 2 pencil and a legal pad," writes Kelleher (in pencil) in response to a request for his favorite sites. "I call 800 numbers to order things from catalogs. That took me 10 years to learn."
Industry Standard: Hanging on the Telephone.
But while customers in other industries can order services and pay bills online – not to mention monitor their accounts in real time – most telecom customers are stuck with old-fashioned telephone sales.
USA Today: Portals suffer as surfers get savvy.
Experts say the relatively flat growth of the huge sites that serve as clearinghouses for information is proof that as the Net matures, sophisticated users are turning directly to sites that meet their needs best.
- PC Magazine: From May 24, 1999; The All-Things Approach.
And then there is this confused portal business, with every growing Web site trying to copy AOL, too. The irony is that many of them should have been specializing in one thing or another but couldn't resist trying to be AOL.
Salon: Scenes from the Web's callow youth.
Scott Rosenberg. In any case, personal storytelling is only one part of what makes the Web exciting -- and in concentrating on it, "Home Page" neglects the entire realm of what we call, for lack of a better word, "interactivity."
FEED Magazine: Home Page And The Web's Loss Of Innocence.
Steve Johnson. We have net IPOs because there are a million Justin Halls today, many of them adapting to the web's public confessional with the same mix of anxiety and enthusiasm that Block captures so well.
Forbes: Reinventing the cursor.
For users who've downloaded the 25-Kb file, Comet turns the three-quarter-inch square space occupied by that ever present black-and-white arrow that helps you navigate the Internet into a tiny graphic or logo to promote either a web site or its advertisers.
- Business Week: From May 10, 1999; Web Advertising's Newest Tool: Your Cursor.
"I suspect that the first few times consumers run across it, they'll find it entertaining and appealing," he says. "But [a changing cursor] will lose its appeal if it becomes too common. Too much of it can be confusing and annoying..."
Red Herring: Angel funding gives iWare wings.
Search engine companies have tried offering tool bar components for their browsers and "haven't been very successful," she says. "[Tool bars] have not gotten much reception from consumers."
Microsoft Backstage: Microsoft's Internal Publishing Tool Expedites File Flow to Live Web Servers.
With PubWiz, we can publish on demand just like when we used to edit files on the live Web server. But we have none of the liabilities associated with such a direct approach and all of the benefits of scalability and rules checking.
Web Page Design for Designers: Body Language 3.
Sure, there will be lots of alternatives that don't work, but there are usually some that do. These are the ones that stand out like gemstones amongst pebbles on a beach.
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