December 24, 1999
SJ Mercury: Web retailers brace for post-holiday returns.
Online merchants say one of the main ways they prepared for after-Christmas returns was to do everything possible before Christmas to make sure their customers were happy with the items they ordered. ``We provide oodles of information about our products up front, all intended to help make the right purchase in the first place,'' says Bill Curry, spokesman for the online retail giant Amazon.com...
LA Times: Buying Insurance Via the Net Waits.
Even those who start an insurance purchase on the Internet, though, typically must send in a paper form with their signature to complete the transaction. The only exception so far is ECoverage, a San Francisco-based online insurance services company launched earlier this year.
ClickZ: The Brutal Truth About Online Support - Part Two.
Unfortunately, a high rate of customer satisfaction is not usually one of the numbers they are chasing. Venture capitalists tend not to look at customer satisfaction numbers with the same scrutiny they apply to revenue, margins, and customer acquisition costs.
Boston Globe: Time magazine goes shopping on the Web for its Person of the Year.
So most users learn only what they really need to know and high-tech companies actually brag about how many calls are made to their help line. Computer literacy means that we have to learn the language of programmers; they don't have to learn how to talk to us.
USA Today: 'Buffy' fan sites fight off 'demon' Fox.
The legal tactics are part of an "ongoing policing" that also includes sites run by fans of such Fox shows as The Simpsons and King of the Hill, Fox says. Three years ago, when The X-Files sites were targeted, fans responded with thousands of angry e-mail messages.
NY Times: Selling Online, Delivering on Bikes: Low-Tech Couriers Thriving.
But now the city's couriers are enjoying a renaissance as new Web-based retailers -- including Kozmo.com, Urbanfetch.com and Barnesandnoble.com -- are employing them as shock troops in a struggle with traditional brick-and-mortar video outlets, food purveyors and retail stores.
Industry Standard: RealNetworks Sues Streambox.com.
In October, Streambox.com, a Seattle-based software company, issued a giddy press release announcing that its programmers had "cracked" the source code of RealNetworks' RealPlayer, allowing users to copy and distribute previously restricted audio and video. Soon, it may be facing RealNetworks in court.
LA Times: Toysrus.com CEO Blames Snafu on Several Factors.
Analysts suggested the company should have warned of its problems before a Tuesday night e-mail, but Barbour said Toysrus.com believed it could still deliver. "Being a parent myself and having shopped on the Internet . . . I felt we should put it out there and pro-act," Barbour said...
Web Review: Visual Language - Global Communication for the 21st Century.
Review of Robert Horn's book Visual Language. Written in the "visual language" it describes, the book reads like a very dense graphic novel—it's full of ideas for your next design project ... and many beyond. While not written specifically for the web design audience, much of the information will be of value to developers of web sites that use graphical elements to enhance text.
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