December 10, 1999
FEED Magazine: Why Everything Is All That.
Steven Johnson. Plenty of decentralized systems in the real world spontaneously generate structure as they increase in size: Cities organize into neighborhoods or satellites; the neural connections of our brains develop extraordinarily specialized regions without any master planner drawing up the blueprints. Has the web followed a comparable path of development over the past few years?
A List Apart: E-commerce sites are designed to fail.
The only way to find out about each laser printer on the H-P site is to choose from a list that tells you virtually nothing but model number. Electing a model leads you to some details about that model. It's like being in a store and seeing lots of closed cartons which you open, one after another, hoping to find what you want inside. Who, outside the Soviet Union, has ever shopped for anything this way?
AtNewYork: Giving it Away Online: The Six Degrees of Free.
Tom Watson. Then too, look around at the marketing on and about the Web this Christmas season, all of it aimed at those prosperous enough to possess an Internet connection and a credit card. Never has the principle of "give it away now, take advantage it later" been more prominent.
Web Review: Point of Presents.
Michael Swaine. One of the hot or at least warm gimmicks in e-commerce in these chilly (in some latitudes) days of the 1999 Christmas shopping season is the online gift registry. Once again, evidence that e-commerce is still mostly about acquiring quote customers unquote rather than about selling anything to anybody.
Business Week: Using the Net for Brainstorming.
Today, increasing numbers of companies are using the Internet to stimulate and manage innovation--and to put the brightest new ideas into the hands of the people who can turn them into products the most quickly.
PC World: The Many Paths to Mobile Net Access.
Vendors struggle to come up with compelling applications for Internet-enabled phones. But since even the latest models have tiny displays, you can all but forget about extended Web surfing. But the designers and developers keep trying. They showcased many of the latest products and services here this week at a conference on The Future of Pervasive Computing, hosted by Technologic Partners.
Newsbytes: AOL Shopping Site Launches Product Simulations.
The LiveProducts technology from Israel-based e-SIM enables ShopAtAOL customers to take control of simulations that recreate the looks and sounds of the products they want to buy. Alternatively, they can sit back and watch animated "walk-throughs" showing off product features.
Business Week: Needed: The Human Touch.
Some of them are depending on fresh technology to help them answer e-mail faster, update Web sites more often, and make the essentially self-service Web work better. But those sites may be left behind by bolder outfits, like Lands' End. They're relying on the personal touch to make themselves stand out.
PC Week: Compaq readies new e-mail support system.
The multiyear outsourcing deal, signed last month, is worth an estimated $6 million, according to Brigade officials. The free service will augment the customer service area of Compaq's Web site, which includes searchable FAQs, downloadable manuals and phone listings but little in the way of interactive help online.
Upside: Net Patent Fights May Surprise.
The most contentious debates in today’s patent stampede, however, center on the new practice of granting patent rights not just to devices and other tangible inventions, but also to fundamental Internet business models and methods of doing business.
Christian Science Monitor: Media didn't give Comet Systems a chance to explain.
It turns out the story is more complicated than first presented by AP, and that Comet is not the 'privacy destroyer' that it was painted to be in the media -- but that it did show poor judgement in communicating with its users, and that's part of what caused the problem.
NY Times: EBay Says Law Discourages Auction Monitoring.
EBay, which is the leading Web auction service, says that under current law, aggressive monitoring of the transactions on its site could leave it open to lawsuits. So it makes no effort to sift through a vast majority of the tens of thousands of new auctions each day to weed out inappropriate items.
NY Times: Copyright Decision Threatens Freedom to Link.
In a ruling that could undermine the freedom to create links on the Web, a federal judge in Utah has temporarily barred two critics of the Mormon Church from posting on their Web site the Internet addresses of other sites featuring pirated copies of a Mormon text.
Business Week: Copyright on the Net: Who 'Owns' a Price?
One of the great weaknesses of the Net is that it provides too much information. That paradox is creating a legal controversy that will leave an indelible imprint on our ability to use the Web productively and companies' ability to use the Web profitably.
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