January 1, 2000
Happy New Years and good luck in 2000!
Web Informant: Buying a car online.
There are many car buying web sites these days. What I liked about CarsDirect is that you see the price before you provide any personal information -- such as your phone number or credit card. This is a very different process from say, Cars.com, where you first pick a dealer and then your information is transmitted to them before you can get a price quote.
NY Times: Technology Sprints, but Users Set Their Own Pace.
Initially, investors swarmed to the idea of pushing information onto computer screens throughout the day. If you left the computer idle for a few minutes, headlines or stock prices or weather maps would be pushed onto your screen. You could choose to pay attention -- or to click the whole mess away with mounting annoyance.
Web Techniques: Toward Successful E-Fulfillment.
However, the "back-office" subsystems of e-commerce sites -- those that provide the link between the user experience and the actual physical delivery of goods to the customer -- continue to be a challenge. These parts, which include inventory management, order capture, and management and reconciliation, often prove to be more difficult than the construction of the site itself.
- Business 2.0: From September 1999; No ExSKUses.
Glenn Fleishman.
NY Times: Haven't I Seen These Shows Before?
Television in the next century will surely be about choice. No matter what form the television set itself takes, the number of programs it delivers will be virtually limitless with the notion of separate, distinct channels all but extinct.
Web Techniques: The Post-Apocalyptic Web.
Even though I witnessed Bob Metcalfe publicly eating his InfoWorld column on the day that the Internet didn't collapse as he had predicted, I'm going to yield to the temptation and try to predict the major trends in Webdom over the next year or so, if not the new millennium
|
