August 19, 1999
Today's Links Story: Southwest Airlines' Service Desk Closes
Net Company: Time for Zero Time.
"Zero Time means that when something needs to happen, it can happen immediately," Pearlson explains. Adds Yeh: "Zero Time is not only about the compression of time. It's about the ability to react instantaneously, to provide value for every customer at every opportunity."
Net Company: Book Report - Time Keeps Getting Faster.
"Recognize that neither technology nor efficiency can acquire more time for you, because time is not a thing you have lost..."
Fortune: Internet Defense Strategy: Cannibalize Yourself.
There are two choices: Yield to your instincts and protect those still-profitable technologies and models. Or preemptively overturn them yourself, even if it means eroding the very revenue streams upon which your company is founded.
RCFoC: Adapt, or Die!
But to me, the newspaper issue is a good reminder that the Knowledge Age offers tremendous opportunities to restructure the old into new ways of meeting peoples' changing needs.
Seattle Post-Intelligencer: The future is in sight at MobiCom.
Creating wearable computers, engineering personal-area body networks, and mastering mobile networking for "smart dust" are just a few of the more exotic sessions being offered during the five-day conference.
Net Company: The Customer Experience.
Building a great company on the Web isn't about "aggregating eyeballs," "increasing stickiness," or embracing any of the other slogans that masquerade as strategy. It's about rethinking the most basic relationship in business: the one between you and your customers.
Net Company: Four Rules for Great Experiences.
Q&A with Phil Terry and Mark Hurst of Creative Good. "Web developers know the difference between Java and JavaScript, and they like downloading plug-ins. Customers come to a site and say, 'When do I get my plane ticket?'"
Net Company: The Experienced Customer.
"A customer is in a self-service environment. So retailers must know what the customer wants before she tells them. From start to finish, the experience is the only thing that matters."
devhead: Fighting Back for Web Standards.
If the W3C wins its fight, the P3P project can finally get back on track. But would a victory against Intermind have any real effect on how the U.S. government handles the patent process?
Net Company: The Brand Called URL.
But a personal Web site -- a 24x7 storefront devoted exclusively to the Brand Called You -- may become the mother of all self-promotion tools.
SJ Mercury: E-commerce is bringing boom in warehouse space.
Warehouse developers are expecting to cash in from the boom in electronic commerce -- even as they fret over the financial risks of housing heavy money-losing Internet companies as tenants.
Business Week: Nobody's Home: Solving the Online Grocer's Problem.
...it's still in prototype. It doesn't even have a distributor. Porter's onto a real problem, though. Before online groceries and other Net-based delivery services can take off, they'll have to devise delivery solutions.
Wired News: Cyber-School's Never Out.
His forthcoming book, Teaching Online, predicts that half of all education will occur online in the 21st century and that people will learn better and faster in virtual classrooms with hundreds of students around the world.
USA Today: Newspaper designer moves to Web.
In 1996, Black was hired to work with MSNBC's Web site. Black suggested that the site for the Microsoft/NBC cable and Web venture use more color, vary the type fonts, add live video and make some areas interactive.
CBS MarketWatch: A Digital New Deal for Japan.
Keidanren, the Federation of Economic Organizations, has submitted a 20-point information technology wish list to Prime Minister Obuchi that'll cost the government 5.4 trillion yen ($48 billion) to wire itself, the nation's schools and, yes, the highways...
Washington Post: Leaping From News to Enews.
Don't get him wrong, he loves journalism. But when it comes right down to it, says Hecht, journalists have been doing what journalists do for decades. "The Internet is something that's never been done before..."
NY Times: Easier Than Crayons: Graphics Grows Up.
Ultimately, the real challenge for Siggraph is to integrate those cultures, so that people who speak different design languages can learn from one another. That will require good interfaces, and making good interfaces is harder than making fast chips.
NY Times: The Sound and the Fury: Beating Back the Beep.
With its democratization over the last 40 years, the beep has moved from cutting-edge chic to downright tacky. And it may be headed for the scrap heap if sound designers have their way. "The time has come for the beep to die an honorable death..."
NY Times: Too Many Phones, Too Little Service.
While no one knows the precise number of calls that are not completed, fade in and out or get cut off midconversation, such incidents are increasingly common complaints among wireless users.
Forbes ASAP: Sefi Visiger: ICQ's low-key creator.
The downside is when their enthusiasm blinds them from targeting a specific audience. "Some startups think they have a good idea," he says, "but they try to brand it from the very first day, thinking it doesn't really matter what the user needs."
PC Magazine: E-Books Open Up.
Yet industry insiders are still cautious as to the immediate success of electronic books. "We don't yet have a firm forecast for e-books. Despite work on standards, it will remain a niche product in the consumer space for some time..."
USA Today: Intel announces privacy measures.
Intel Corp. will require Internet sites that carry its advertising -- including its popular ''Intel Inside'' campaign -- to warn consumers what personal details are collected about them online...
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