August 10, 1999
Wired News: Here Comes the Netmobile.
Next time you're trapped in a traffic jam, bored, alone, eyes casting listlessly about, take heart -- the adman will soon be coming to put on a show for you. At least if Scott McNealy and General Motors have their way.
InfoWorld: Car giant General Motors 'dot-coms' itself.
It may be an interoperability nightmare on a galactic scale, but GM plans to link and integrate its 100 separate Web sites, many supplier and dealer channels, hundreds of factory inventory and ordering systems, and offer customers a
"single view" of the car buying and servicing experience.
News.Com: DaimlerChrysler quietly accelerates Web strategy.
Organic's CEO Jonathan Nelson said the company intends to expand DaimlerChrysler's capabilities beyond simple information retrieval to better use of software systems that manage customer inquiries, requests for support, and orders.
Time Digital: Can a Man Named Webb Keep eBay from Crashing?
Now a former Gateway executive has been named president of eBay technologies to oversee all engineering and technical operations. At least eBay addicts will have someone to blame.
NY Times: Old Line Consulting Firms Become the Internet Mavericks.
All the major accounting and consulting firms are turning into self-appointed Internet gurus and going after the same customers around the world.
[clip]: Breaking Out Of The Box.
Companies live and die by communicating, he says, and now they need to communicate with businesses a world away as quickly and efficiently as possible. "None of our enterprises are islands – we have to deal with suppliers..."
NY Times: Ticketmaster Sues Again Over Links.
Six months after prevailing in a suit against the Microsoft Corp. over the practice known as "deep linking," Ticketmaster Online-CitySearch Inc. filed a similar suit against a competitor, Tickets.com Inc.
Builder.Com: Globalize Your Web Site.
So, the question isn't, "Should I make my Web site internationally accessible?" but rather, "How do I make my site internationally friendly and to what level?"
PC Week: The 100 top innovators in manufacturing.
The list ranks manufacturing companies that, by virtue of the advanced technologies they have implemented or plan to implement, have distinguished themselves as innovators.
SJ Mercury: Digital stamps get Postal Service OK.
The federal government's approval of an electronically generated bar code that functions as a form of currency in the real world is expected to help open fresh areas of e-commerce -- from micropayments, transactions under $1, to paper goods with physical value such as printable concert tickets...
Fortune: Web Ads Wise Up.
...AdKnowledge looks at two separate groups of people--those who see banner ads for a given Website and those who buy things on that Website. It then uses data mining technology to match them up. If the subsets match up well enough, your banner ads are working.
Red Herring: LivePerson reels in $19 million.
In other words, in addition to hosting and managing a Web site's live customer-service chat functions, LivePerson will track chat conversations with customers and learn what types of techniques help you satisfy and "upsell" them.
Computerworld: Online Stores Add Off-Line Outlets.
[Tim Harmon, an analyst at Meta Group] "What people in the mass market are going to come to expect in the future is to be able to order a product through any channel and to pick it up or have it delivered through any channel..."
USA Today: E-mail used as management tool.
People are more honest when using e-mail to communicate bad news than they are with other methods such as the phone or personal delivery, says a recent study by Case Western Reserve University and New York University.
Forbes: There's gold in them thar hills.
As local cable companies across the country expand their footprints to reach into smaller markets, a new market opportunity has arisen for companies that offer high-speed Internet access over this growing cable infrastructure.
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