August 9, 1999
SF Examiner: Web outages send revenue down the drain.
If your business is building an online presence, you simply have to meet and exceed customer expectations, and do everything you can to keep your e-businesses up and running.
Internet Week: Holiday Shopping List: Prepare For Spikes Now.
[Preview of a series of reports on preparing for traffic spikes]. Consider yourself lucky-or particularly well prepared-if your high-profile online business didn't buckle under its own success last holiday season.
Industry Standard: Lost in the Web.
Despite all that's great about Web browsers, they have serious flaws to which the rise of the ubersite can be indirectly, yet strongly, attributed.
Seattle Weekly: Why the Web sucks.
Nielsen sees a future in which designers lose the page metaphor, integrating Web functions into operating systems (hear that, Microsoft?) and letting designers get away from the browser's one-size-fits-all menus and forward-and-back navigation.
Industry Standard: Softbank, Microsoft Plot Japanese Net Coup.
Microsoft and Tepco were unavailable for comment. But news reports speculate that the wireless service will be run from base stations on Tepco's network of power lines, which already crisscross the country.
Business 2.0: Your Wireless Future.
Taking network access, and ecommerce-heretofore confined to the home and office-out into the world at large may be as revolutionary a development as the Web itself.
LA Times: Simply Put, Few High-Tech Devices Are Designed for Ease of the User.
It reminded me of why I'm a big fan of the Palm: It's an understated marvel. It does the few things I need with intuitive ease, without cluttering up my experience with a host of unwanted "necessities."
TechWeb: Centraal Becomes RealNames And Real Rich.
Teare says content websites will even be able to make up for lagging banner ad revenue by imbedding keywords in news stories and other content, then receiving a small payment every time a reader follows that link. "We're going to go into behavior that isn't currently monetized..."
Industry Standard: The Brains Behind the Big Picture.
AT&T Center for Internet Research. The group focuses on six areas: hacker detection, multicasting to enable better video broadcasting over the Web, network measurement, congestion control, Web caching and Shenker's field of performance analysis.
NY Times: AT&T-AOL Deal Would Rain on Excite@Home's Parade.
Armstrong's view is anathema to the Excite@Home management team and to the venture capitalists from Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers who helped build the former At Home. They contend that the company cannot thrive as simply a "dumb pipe."
Industry Standard: Human Answerbot.
Instead of courting customers, many companies have set up e-mail boxes that are more like roach motels: The e-mail checks in, but it doesn't check out. On the receiving end sit today's Webmasters, who are often a customer's only contact with a company.
Interactive Week: Excite@Home May Lift Ban.
The ban initially was put in place almost six years ago to placate cable operator investors that were wary that streaming video might supplant their own programming.
Scientific American: When Publishing Could Mean Perishing.
Proponents of publication point out that the information is likely to be readily available whether or not the database appears on the Internet, because many local newspapers have made it their business to learn about hazards surrounding chemical plants.
News.Com: Amazon, New York Times resolve copyright suit.
Amazon.com announced today that it has settled its dispute with the New York Times over use of the publication's bestseller list.
Useit.Com: Video and Streaming Media.
Most streaming video is useless; instead use higher-quality downloadable clips and short segments that can be chosen from a menu. All multimedia needs plain-page previews.
Industry Standard: The Killer E-commerce App Is – E-Mail?
Secure e-mail could be a good medium for a number of heavy-hitting business communications, such as prospectuses, medical records, shareholder communications, accounting forms, statements, proxies and confidential reports.
NY Times: Personalized E-Mail Ads: Low Cost, High Response Rate.
Though e-mail overload threatens to dull the effectiveness of such campaigns in the long term, for now, companies are stepping up their e-mail efforts in hopes of establishing a dialogue with customers before their rivals do.
PC Week: Before the discussions: Big decisions.
Even if people have unkind things to say about your products or services, it's better that their complaints be heard and responded to in an official forum rather than in a renegade "yourproductsucks.com" site.
TechWeb: Group Forms Spec To TV Anytime.
Its basic premise is that with the rapid decline in costs for digital storage, "local storage would have a profound effect on the way that audiovisual content could be distributed to consumers..."
First Monday: Honest News in the Slashdot Decade.
Trading on the principles of self-interest and distributed trust, they levy the expertise of thousands into producing honest, cheap daily news.
Editor & Publisher: Shell Oil Buys Banner Ads to Refute Articles.
In an effort to present its side of the story after a series of articles critical of the company's business practices, Shell, the multinational oil and gas company, has placed a series of issue-oriented banner ads on the Web sites of Mother Jones magazine and the Environmental News Network.
Industry Standard: New Media, Old Rules.
Yet even though there's a lot of cynicism about journalism, there is also an enormous demand for good information that is made accessible through good writing and editing – and is free of any hidden agendas.
Interactive Week: Expanding The Internet Business Model.
Since coordinating the use of stored data on a massive scale is at the core of large e-commerce sites, the test center will be key to making sure new commerce sites are road-ready before the first transaction is registered.
Information Week: Legacy Systems: Reinvest Or Restructure?
The consensus for many businesses, still, is to continue making sizable investments in their tried-and-true systems, including adapting them for Internet applications, to which they bring a level of scalability and reliability that some of the newer systems can't match.
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