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March 1, 2000
Editor & Publisher: No Media Entity Can Afford To Operate In a Vacuum.
Steve Outing. Surely you've noticed that the media environment has gone through a sea change. The growth of the Internet has created a powerful new communications medium that is rivaling old-timers like newspapers, magazines, radio, and TV. But it's done more than that: It's also profoundly affected "traditional" media.
Salon: Should your boss know about those visits to the shrink?
Review of Simson Garfinkel's Database Nation. Garfinkel makes the infuriating revelation that much of the most promising technology that could decrease consumer jeopardy isn't implemented because of the marginal costs to corporations; profits are more important than individual welfare, apparently.
ZDNN: AltaVista, Kozmo back away from DoubleClick.
The moves are more fallout from the consumer-privacy problems facing DoubleClick, New York, after privacy activists charged the company's efforts to accumulate data about consumer Web-surfing habits are illegal.
TechWeb: Virginia Law Standardizes Internet Contracts.
On Feb. 15, the Virginia General Assembly in Richmond became the first in the nation to approve a standard commercial code for Internet contracts, the "Uniform Computer Information Transactions Act."
FEED Magazine: The Big Three's Online Auto Parts Superstore.
Clay Shirky. Though the immediate benefits of this online market will be mainly captured by the auto manufacturers, over the long haul the constant multiplication of possible uses for the system won't be in any one party's control.
ZDNN: Old ally slams Amazon on patent filings.
In an open letter to Amazon.com, O'Reilly criticized the company for patenting ideas that he said were as obvious as "1-click ordering" and an "affiliate program." "Once the Web becomes fenced in by competing patents and other attempts to make this glorious open playing field into a proprietary wasteland..."
Slate: No Exit.
Anyway, the exit poll genie is now out of the bottle. I wish VNS the very best of luck in policing the Internet this election season to prevent the posting of the exit poll numbers.
Wired News: U.S. Wants Less Web Anonymity.
The U.S. government may need sweeping new powers to investigate and prosecute future denial-of-service attacks, top law enforcement officials said Tuesday. Anonymous remailers and free trial accounts allow hackers and online pornographers to cloak their identity...
SJ Mercury: Written words may jump off the page in the future of reading.
``Instead of a convergence of one way people all read, there's going to be an incredible divergence,'' said Rich Gold, who has led a team of scientists, artists, engineers and designers studying ``the future of reading'' at the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center for the past two years.
ZDNN: Yahoo! charged with blocking rivals.
[Scott Kurnit, CEO, chairman and founder of About.com] "We've never paid AOL a nickel, but 30 percent of our traffic comes from them," Kurnit noted. "It's an open system. If you can create an open system, you can compete anywhere."
Business Week: How Mike Lynch Became Britain's First Net Billionaire.
Thanks to the Internet, the demand for this kind of information processing is growing exponentially, as is four-year-old Autonomy. Since last October, the company's shares have soared from $15 to about $120 on Europe's Easdaq exchange.
NY Times: Southwest Airlines' Success With Online Bookings.
Wolf credited Southwest's simple, user-friendly Web site design as a major reason for the surge in business. "If Southwest can't sell travel on their Web site, nobody can," he said. "They have the simplest, easiest price and schedule paradigm in the industry."
Industry Standard: Expedia to Take Credit Card Charge.
Online travel service company Expedia said Wednesday it will take a $4 million to $6 million charge in the third quarter to cover the cost of purchases made on its site with stolen credit cards.
Industry Standard: Thousands Joining ICANN.
Since opening its membership Web site on Feb. 25, ICANN has received 2,599 applications from people in North America, 656 from Europe, 315 from the Asia-Pacific region, 66 from Latin America and the Caribbean and 38 from Africa...
March 2, 2000
NY Times: Europe Plans to Collect Tax on Some Internet Transactions.
Under proposals developed by the European Commission in Brussels, companies would have to collect what is known as a value-added tax, a type of sales tax, on products they sell and distribute over the Internet. At issue are products like computer software, music and videos that can be turned into digital code and downloaded by customers anywhere.
BBC News: Gambling billions on next generation mobiles.
The race to operate the mobile phone networks of the future begins in the UK on Monday with a novel auction of radio frequencies. Thirteen bidders will start battling it out over the rights to run five separate, "3G" (third generation) mobile networks.
MSNBC: Start-up stirred a media frenzy.
It was a heady time when e-commerce was just bursting into the national consciousness, and Mr. Bowlin was one of the early poster-boys for its promise. If his little home operation could make money while undercutting the prices of such giants as Amazon.com, the thinking went, anybody could make a living on the Web.
Financial Post: CBS Radio to keep content off Web.
Although it is believed radio is threatened by the Internet and should be more adaptable to the technology, Mr. Pearlman said CBS has taken a stand that, until a better business model is invented to keep local stations alive, the company will not broadcast its radio content via the World Wide Web.
Editor & Publisher: 'Soft' News Breaks Ad/Edit Wall.
This strength of the Internet can present real ethical quandaries for publishers. Imagine a business news story with a button at the bottom that says "Buy Microsoft stock" or "Sell Microsoft" through an online broker, Jaroslovsky said.
USA Today: AltaVista adopts 'opt-in' privacy policy.
Checkboxes on Alta Vista's new member forms now require registrants to enter checks to authorize distribution of personal data to AltaVista partners to target banner ads according to the users' interests.
ZDNN: DoubleClick to delay data-gathering plan.
DoubleClick Inc., the Internet advertising firm whose methods for gathering personal data have come under scrutiny, says it will hold off on a plan to add people's names and addresses to its ad-tracking program until the government and industry agree on privacy standards.
PC World: Web Sites Must Know How to Wow.
The "wow" factor is the "central experience" of any successful Web site, and the key litmus test of any site, because when a customer experiences that "wow" feeling, then he or she goes and tells friends, business associates, and the word of mouth expands, fueling the customer base, Walker said.
Industry Standard: Who Owns the Internet?
Like analyst Zeribi, numerous others interviewed for this article pointed to peering arrangements as perhaps the prime example of how companies exert control.
Red Herring: Lab Rat: Microsoft Research's vision for vision.
The term PUI, which makes Microsoft's PR people cringe, describes efforts both at Microsoft and other tech labs around the world to make machines respond to the ways humans naturally express themselves, instead of waiting for keyboard strokes and mouse clicks.
USA Today: Net sales total $5.3B in first govt. report.
Thursday's electronic sales report is just one move by the Commerce Department to account for the growing effect of technology. The department requested $11.5 million for fiscal year 2001, which begins Oct. 1, to improve its measurement of the economic effect of the Internet.
Mappa.Mundi Magazine: Conceptual Map of Net Spaces - Circa'94.
December's Cybermap Landmarks reveals the geographies of net spaces, providing a good way of conceptualising them as distinct and self-contained domains, but with fluid, irregular boundaries and many interconnections and overlaps between them.
MSNBC: Can Furniture.com deliver?
As part of the solution to its tracking problems, Furniture.com is in the process of building a Web-based Extranet which would link manufacturers, the merchandising department, carriers and customer care together to share data, says Brooks.
NY Times: Paying Martha Stewart a Premium for Convenience.
I would expect Ms. Stewart, who has been selling things online since 1997, to be shrewd enough to have figured out that she should be leveraging the power of her popular brand to offer products at more reasonable prices.
March 3, 2000
Salon: Patently absurd?
Low barriers to entry are also low barriers to theft, say Kline and Rivette. Although major players like Amazon and Priceline.com have been the first to win patents -- and use them in court -- ultimately, patents protect the bit players from the big boys, not vice-versa.
Ask Tim: My Conversation with Jeff Bezos.
Tim O'Reilly. We each made some important points that resonated with the other, and while our central disagreement remains unresolved, I think that we've laid out the issues in a way that will lead to fruitful further discussion.
Computerworld: CIOs join fight to kill Ucita.
John Rudin, CIO at Reynolds Metals, in Richmond, Va., is at the vanguard of a high-stakes political battle against a controversial law that is pitting users against software vendors, the Uniform Computer Information Transactions Act.
Salon: Death of a David.com.
Scott Rosenberg. Bowlin's business was going gangbusters not coincidentally thanks to the choice coverage in the New York Times, which placed Bowlin in the media food chain and led to other free publicity for his enterprise.
NY Times: Saga of An Online Pioneer.
Thomas Friedman. A year ago I wrote a column about Lyle Bowlin, a professor of small business in Cedar Falls, Iowa, who had started an online bookstore out of his spare bedroom. I used his story to illustrate the low barriers to entry for those wanting to compete on the Internet, even against Amazon.com.
Internet World: Voltage Goes Virtual.
National's most recent good idea is a first. Electronics design engineers can now test analog power-supply devices at the Web site. For a small fee, they can run a simulation called WebSIM in a matter of minutes through a browser, saving the time it takes to get the product in hand, set up equipment, and run tests at their office.
Freedom Forum: Panelists say separating content, commerce a major Web issue.
[Merrill Brown, editor in chief of MSNBC on the Internet] Two factors that set the Web apart from other media — linking and interactivity — also are forces making the firewall between news and non-news content harder to define. When it comes to linking hate sites to a news story about hate content on the Web, for example, Brown asked, "What's the analogy to that in the print world?
News.Com: Stock manipulators move beyond bulletin boards.
This new form of manipulation is particularly hard for investors to detect, as most people assume that information appearing on a company's Web site is genuine. By contrast, with anonymous postings on bulletin boards, most investors have learned to question the source.
PC World: ICANN Vote Plan Draws Criticism.
The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers offers at-large memberships, which allow anyone with an e-mail address to vote for board members. But a new study of the proposal finds that the plan runs counter to the democratic process, could be subject to fraud or "capture" by special interests, and is generally fraught with problems.
Marketing Computers: Newmedia.com Secures Site Sponsors.
Yesterday, Newmedia.com announced its first rash of sponsors since the site relaunched Jan. 27. Broadvision, Destiny Media Technologies and PeopleSoft are the first three companies to sponsor the site during a three-month clip.
SJ Mercury: Battle for online images.
[Steve Weinstein, research analyst at Pacific Crest Securities] ``There are no big brands or companies left to consolidate,'' he said. ``There will be only smaller ones from here on out. The No. 3 player is a very distant third.'' Nevertheless, there's a vast pool of images available outside the purview of the two giants.
March 4, 2000
SJ Mercury: President gives online privacy some perspective.
Dan Gillmor. But in an odd way, the rest of us can draw some comfort from Clinton's worries. When online privacy becomes a personal issue for the president of the United States, maybe we're closer to a day when privacy will reach the position it deserves on the public agenda.
Internet World: Deconstructing Wal-Mart.com.
Jennifer Fleming and Jakob Nielsen. We all know that Amazon.com wants to be the Wal-Mart of the Internet. But does the concept of Wal-Mart make any sense on the Web in the first place? Judging from Wal-Mart's own site, the answer is no.
Advertising Age: RadioShack.com opens a retail location.
Tandy Corp.'s Radio Shack is testing a new e-commerce retailing strategy by opening its first Web store, RadioShack.com, in Aurora, Colo., a suburb of Denver. The store is a virtual mirror image of the company's Web site.
InfoWorld: Count out your XACCT change to merge to the Pay-As-We-Go Internet.
We think the Internet is not properly priced if it's free, or if it's even mostly flat rate. To sustain growth and evolution, the Internet needs metering infrastructure and competitive pricing along various dimensions of access and backbone usage.
Industry Standard: Now, UCITA ... Later, You Don't?
Previous generations of intellectual property vendors have also attempted to legally alter the purchase of their wares – books and record albums, specifically – into a lease transaction with a legally-binding contract dictating their terms. But courts have consistently struck this down.
March 5, 2000
Useit.Com: Profit Maximization vs. User Loyalty.
Instead of maximizing the profits from an individual visit it is better to encourage loyal users and establish non-monetary differentiation and frequent-user programs.
SJ Mercury: Greed undermines benefits of digital technology.
Dan Gillmor. The entertainment and information industries are leading the charge. They make no secret of their ultimate goal -- a system where consumers pay each time we read, view or listen to anything. Today, sadly, the forces of greed have the law on their side.
Boston Globe: Ban on Net taxes is a bad idea.
Shannon P. O'Brien, state treasurer of Massachusetts. Five years ago, e-retail was virtually nonexistent. Five years from now, it could be the primary method of auto sales. The Web is arguably the most dynamic tool to be introduced since Johannes Gutenberg's movable type. To arbitrarily draw a tax-free line in the sand around any segment of the industry could prove shortsighted.
NewMedia: Sites We Love To Hate--Reflect.Com.
Being a beauty product whore, I'll gladly endure silly questions if it means discovering a perfect lipstick or an extraordinary lotion. But reflect.com, a beauty site devoted to reflecting the true you, is more like a Barbara Walters interview than a trip to the Stila counter.
March 6, 2000
Boston Globe: Nabobs of Net negativism.
It's natural, as a new medium wriggles its way into our lives, to wonder - even to be anxious about - how it's changing us. But unscientific surveys and the attendant media hype don't help us reflect on what it all means.
SJ Mercury: Q&A on the Internet and investing.
Q&A with Geoffrey Moore. In the book, we talk about outsourcing everything that's context and insourcing everything that's core, that contributes to your competitive advantage. In fact, what Barnes & Noble did was just the opposite. They actually outsourced their core. You have to embrace the future.
InfoWorld: Palm president sees dim future for cell phones as corporate device for data acquisition.
Among the barriers mentioned to corporate adoption of cell phones was poor display, slow access, and the tedious process typically experienced by cell phone users as they work their way through menus to get to features.
devhead: Shoppers of the Web Unite: User Experience and Ecommerce.
The problems that fuel these statistics generally aren't from hard-to-fix situations, such as immature technologies, lack of consumer interest, or even worse, some sort of voodoo that nobody can figure out. Rather, they stem from a theme that is easy to identify and relatively straightforward to remedy.
ZDNet E-Business: Reflect.com gets too personal too fast.
The Proctor & Gamble spin-off proposes to create a site and products suited to the individual customer. However, Reflect takes customization too far by forcing customers to personalize the site first in order to shop.
LA Times: With Internet, Consumers Turn Tables on Firms.
Esther Dyson. The same impetus and power shift that lets consumers push prices lower by buying in the aggregate or through bidding services such as Priceline.com is about to affect terms and conditions, as well as prices.
Forbes: Inventing The Future.
The "Killer Bs," as the triumvirate is known in sci-fi circles, constituted a unique panel at the first Internet Everywhere CEO Summit in San Francisco. "The folks here are inventing the future," conference chairman Jack Powers said when asked why he invited the authors.
Industry Standard: Daydreamer.
Forget about the Net for a minute, lean back and listen. Rolf Jensen likes to spin a good yarn, especially on this gray winter day in the Danish capital of Copenhagen. Lit pipe in hand, hunched over a cup of strong coffee in his cramped office, the futurist re-enacts Homer's epic for the information age.
LA Times: Archiving the Internet: Some See Noble Experiment, Others Fear Excess of Trivia.
How would historiography change if we could save everything--every document, snapshot, video clip, song or public utterance that anyone chose to preserve--in a form that can be quickly searched, sorted and understood?
Salon: "Opt-in rules!"
Q&A with David Moore, CEO of 24/7 Media. It's a quid pro quo -- if you want content for free, you have to give me information so I can sell you to an advertiser. If you won't even tell me if you're male or female, then pay me.
NY Times: DoubleClick's Competitors Relieved, for Now.
One company in particular, 24/7 Media, escaped the public flogging endured by DoubleClick, even though it had planned -- and still plans -- to implement a data-gathering technique almost identical to the method that earned DoubleClick the wrath of privacy advocates and investors.
Fortune: Buying Without Spending: The New Coupon-Clipping.
Auctions and naming-your-own-price may have just whetted the appetite of fevered online bargain hunters. Now they can troll Websites dedicated to finding online coupons (which consist generally of codes that earn discounts when entered into sales orders for the appropriate e-tailers).
Newsweek: The Great Amazon Patent Debate.
I asked Bezos if Amazon would have developed 1-Click even if there were no patent system to protect it and anyone could legally rip it off. "Yes," he responded without hesitation. "Very definitely." This was quite telling, because the purpose of patents is to encourage innovation that otherwise would not occur.
USA Today: Net address expansion plan under fire.
Bell Atlantic Corp., AT&T Corp. and other companies that do business over the Internet are fighting plans by an independent oversight body to expand the Web address system, citing potentially higher costs to protect their trademarks.
Information Week: CyberSource Helps Detect Consumer Fraud Online.
CyberSource has screened for fraud by asking a series of questions to help rate a transaction's risk. But the method isn't foolproof, and customers can be inadvertently turned away...
March 7, 2000
SF Chronicle: Concern Over Cell Surfing.
It turns out that Sprint PCS, and possibly some other wireless companies, routinely embed customers' phone numbers in Web page requests, raising concerns about whether these companies are doing enough to safeguard users' privacy.
Online Journalism Review: Forecasting the Ballot: A Clash Over Exit Polls.
A better question is: What serves the public's interest? Clearly, it's not in the public interest when broadcasters reveal real-time results while an election is in progress. But the Web is not a broadcast medium.
TechWeb: Site Will Offer Free Real-Time Financial Info.
This announcement sets free information that was once thought of as too valuable to give away, and adds credence to the idea that the Internet makes it almost impossible to charge for content -- with the subscription-based Wall Street Journal being the most successful exception to the rule.
Fortune: Presto Chango! Sales Are Huge!
At the intersection of Wall Street and Silicon Valley, that other gambler's paradise, the props are more prosaic--spreadsheets and balance sheets, invoices and opaque footnotes. The illusions, however, are no less impressive.
InfoWorld: VeriSign to acquire Network Solutions in $21 billion deal.
The combined company will be able to deliver a broad range of Internet infrastructure services required for electronic commerce, from establishing an online presence to delivering authentication and secure transaction services...
MSNBC: Internet casino violates U.S. patent.
But the order in the i2corp adds a new wrinkle to the debate by applying the U.S. patent to a corporation outside the United States, raising both jurisdictional and enforceability issues.
Wired News: ICANN Meetings in De Nile.
The core topic each discussion returns to, sooner or later, is whether more top-level domains are needed. Dyson's opinion is clear: "It's really easy to say no, we don't need this, we have enough names, people can figure out how to work within the system, we don't need anymore. It's much harder to say yes, we should have more..."
Business Week: The Japan That Shouldn't Say No -- to English.
The question is what Japan can do to emerge as a more prominent global player. First, let's drop the doomsday talk that an increase in English-language fluency will do grave damage to the nation's identity. Can anyone really see Japanese ending up in the linguistic graveyard along with Latin?
InfoWorld: Everything I need to know about B-to-B exchanges I learned in kindergarten.
But the business-to-business world is a whole new game. Business-to-business I-commerce -- and exchanges in particular -- represent an opportunity for brick-and-mortar players to kick out the dot-coms who've been hogging the Net sandbox.
News.Com: Internet access over power lines nears reality.
Following years of skepticism about the technology's future, German energy conglomerate Veba, working with U.S. home networking firm Enikia, says it is close to launching a service offering high-speed Internet access over power lines.
Boston Globe: MCI chief sees big outlays to handle Net traffic.
...MCI-WorldCom president Bernard J. Ebbers estimated his company may have to spend as much as $100 billion over the next three years upgrading its network to handle an explosion in data and Internet traffic.
News.Com: Researchers work to eradicate broken hyperlinks.
While researchers have tried to tackle the issue before, Internet search experts said the paper describes a potentially elegant solution to a widespread and long-recognized puzzle.
News.Com: WebTV yanks email ads.
Banner ads started to appear on general Web pages relating to email service on WebTV, but also on top of opened email messages, so that subscribers received ads with their correspondence.
March 8, 2000
ClickZ: Brand Is Back.
Just as the greeter at the door of Wal-Mart is as much a part of the brand as the logo, so must your site's offerings and the way your company is expressed in the whole slew of communications strive to communicate brand values.
SF Chronicle: Sprint to Hide Web Surfers' Phone Numbers.
Sprint said it will let customers decide whether to give out their phone number in the next version of its wireless Web service, scheduled to be rolled out in April or May. If users don't make a choice, Sprint will automatically send Web sites a ``bogus number'' as their user ID.
NY Times: Voter Survey Data Is Held Back to Avoid Leaks.
Seeking to stop early leaks by online publications, the organization that conducts Election Day exit polls yesterday delayed the release of its findings by two hours. The later distribution caused hardship for some subscribers in the news business that depend on the data to help devise news coverage.
News.Com: IKEA enlists friends for email publicity.
"It's extremely ill-advised for them to encourage people to spam their friends," said Barry Parr, e-commerce analyst for research firm IDC. "People hate to be spammed. (And) they're risking a serious alienation of their customers."
Computerworld: Meeting online can save money, boost productivity.
Don Tapscott. Not so long ago, Web collaboration meant e-mail, chat rooms and document-sharing. No more. Creative Web-based companies are creating rich multimedia environments that closely resemble -- and in some cases are better than -- real-time, in-person meetings.
Wired News: More Publishers Going Online.
First chapters on the Web have long been used as a promotional tool in book publishing. Doubleday, also part of Random House, began emailing them to John Grisham fans for free in 1998. But until recently, book publishers saw complete Web editions as taboo.
MSNBC: Simon & Schuster to release story by Stephen King on the Web only.
Increasingly, authors have been looking to the Web to publish short novels or essays typically overlooked by the traditional publishing process. Science-fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke, for example, published a speech through online publisher and bookseller Fatbrain.com...
Editor & Publisher: Weblogs: From Underground to Mainstream.
Steve Outing. But as Gillmor and Cooper are showing us, the model can work on a corporate level — if news organizations are willing to be more free with their notion of what is acceptable content for their Web site.
Slate: The Rise of the Newsportal.
Instead, they practice a sort of meta-journalism, guiding readers to news from various sources. Through the use of hypertext links, these Web sites encourage grazing for news from multiple sources, rather than getting it all from a single outlet.
LA Times: Some Landlords Take Stock of Net Start-Ups as Rent.
It used to be that all a landlord would require from a prospective tenant was a security deposit and first and last month's rent. Now, a small but growing number of Southern California commercial landlords are asking some tenants to cough up one more item: stock.
News.Com: Analysts divided over VeriSign's purchase of Network Solutions.
"They don't have a clear road map in place," said Forrester Research analyst Frank Prince, who echoed others in criticizing the cost. VeriSign paid $17 billion for "a public mailing list, and that's all," he said.
Internet Week: Internet Gives Suppliers New Sway With Manufacturers.
In the heyday of EDI, the biggest manufacturers and retailers called the shots, mandating that all their suppliers invest in expensive, dedicated connections to the mother ship.
NY Times: 2 Hired to Calm Fears for Web Privacy.
DoubleClick, the Internet's largest advertisement placement company, has hired two of New York's most prominent consumer advocates in an effort to reassure the public, investors and federal and state regulators that it will respect computer users' privacy rights.
March 9, 2000
Freedom Forum: Corporatists fire back at Net freedom.
Jon Katz. The Digital Millennium Copyright Act is an especially devious title for one of the more significant pieces of Internet legislation passed in this new century, and one law that may have more bearing on First Amendment-related concerns than any passed in years.
Business 2.0: Go Global or Bust.
Clay Shirky. The economic logic of Internet businesses has shifted from creating new value to destroying existing inefficiency, and as that happens, the pursuit of inefficient markets with wired populations is going to drive globalization.
Amazon.Com: An Open Letter From Jeff Bezos on the Subject of Patents.
But I do think we can help. As a company with some high-profile software patents, we're in a credible position to call for meaningful (perhaps even radical) patent reform.
USA Today: Amazon moves to stem patent uproar.
''If you look at the patents we've received, we've only chosen to enforce one of them in one particular case,'' Bezos said. ''We plan to look at this on a case-by-case basis and determine if we need to license it or take some kind of action. Or just leave it alone.''
Ask Tim: Amazon's Patent Reform Proposal.
Tim O'Reilly. While Jeff hasn't done what I originally asked for--to rescind his patent claims--he has most definitely engaged with the problems I was raising, thought seriously about them, and proposed an answer that works for him and his business.
NY Times: 2000 Census (Shhh!) on the Net.
But even as the Census Bureau has embarked upon an advertising campaign to encourage participation in the nation's decennial head count, the use of the Internet has remained something of an open secret within the agency, which has not gone out of its way to advertise the Internet option.
Salon: Maybe the Net doesn't change everything.
Review of John Seely Brown and Paul Duguid's book The Social Life of Information. Their none-too-radical conclusion, which could only threaten to sound radical in the current environment of hyper-hype, is that technology is more likely to mutate and shape the present than truly revolutionize or overthrow it.
Business 2.0: The 10 Driving Principles of the New Economy.
This month, for the first time, we have aggregated all of the 10 original articles. We feel they make the perfect accompaniment to our cover story about starting your Net business.
Columbia Journalism Review: The Critics: Internet.
Why has media criticism flourished online? In part, it's because magazines of media criticism -- notably this one and the American Journalism Review -- have not been especially aggressive in their approach to the Web.
Business 2.0: The New Volunteer State.
To catch lost revenue, last year North Carolina added the dreaded Line 16 to its tax form. The line requires residents to report a year's worth of out-of-state purchases, made online or through catalogs.
visualLogic: Deep structure: “Blueprinting” the site interface.
Your site’s home page is very important, but the design of the home page is inherently a singular problem. I prefer to start site design discussions by establishing the basic page grid for all pages within the site, and then make the home page the first iteration of that basic page grid.
MSDN Online: Why Good Design Comes from Bad Design.
When the design student showed me his sketches, he was showing me that he was a designer. All creative, talented people recognize the value of process, and have no concerns about revealing to others that it takes many bad ideas to obtain good ones.
Business 2.0: Careless and Shareless.
In the Age of Easy Money, everyone and their gardener wants a piece of the next Internet startup on the slim chance that it could morph into a blue-chip multinational. Even Net entrepreneurs with barely their first round of financing secured are brazenly scattering their paper wealth.
March 10, 2000
Salon: Their names are legion.
Scott Rosenberg. It's hardly news that a lot of people are spending a lot of money to stockpile domain names in the hope that they'll be able to resell them for big bucks. What's increasingly otherworldly is the apparent value some investors are placing on the whole domain-name infrastructure.
The Economist: i-modest success.
What are the lessons of i-mode for the Europeans and Americans? First, because they lack a DoCoMo-style advanced packet-switched network, they must get on with the commercial launch of their own 3G networks. WAP is no substitute for the full riches of the web, and may even turn customers off.
PC Week: Hype aside, WAP has worries.
Serious issues involving the protocol, such as security holes, intellectual property rights, competitive interim solutions and slow product cycles, could impede delivery of more browsers and devices that support the spec.
SJ Mercury: Bezos has a point on patents -- so do I.
Dan Gillmor. Shortening the life of these patents would be a big improvement, but it's not the best answer. Doing away with software and business-process patents is the better approach. When lawyering replaces engineering, as it does when winning patents becomes a huge priority, innovation suffers.
DaveNet: Speaking of the Cluetrain.
Due to an accident of history, Amazon is first, but there are plenty of companies waiting in the wings, watching what's happening, deciding what they will do with *their* patents. That's the sub-text.
Builder.Com: Mark Hurst on Customer Experience.
Q&A with Mark Hurst, founder and president of Creative Good. The customer experience is both strategic and holistic, while usability is mostly a tactical issue separated from other issues in e-business. In other words, usability is an important part of the customer experience--but just a part.
Web Review: Usability Matters.
Users don't care how clever the scripting and programming behind the site is, but they do care if the site keeps crashing. Their focus is on the experience of using the site, not on the means by which that experience is delivered.
Industry Standard: Planet Web: The Bloom Economy.
The tulip boom is often trotted out as a favorite precursor of today's Internet Economy – in both, economists and analysts alike see telltale signs of a speculative bubble.
Red Herring: Lab Rat: AT & T will deliver your messages, your way.
With all the hype surrounding so-called universal mailboxes and broadband wireless technologies, it's important that companies also are working on ways to filter information instead of just watching users get inundated and frustrated.
Industry Standard: Washington Post Loses President to VCs.
Alan G. Spoon, president and COO at the Washington Post Company, is leaving one of the country's most powerful media positions to become a venture capitalist. Spoon will join Polaris Venture Partners, a Waltham, Mass.-based firm that was established in 1996.
Wired News: That's Mr. Search Engine to You.
Unique among sites that add a human touch to their services, iNetNow doesn't even require a computer to get on the Net. Users simply phone the company's offices and a professional surfs the Web for them.
Online Journalism Review: Brill's Content After Contentville: Profit 1, Ethics 0.
Brill's Content magazine -- the "media watchdog" that proposes anal new conflict-disclosure measures nearly every month -- just published its first issue since the incredible news that its editor/publisher had launched a new e-commerce company with several of the media companies he covers...
Industry Standard: The Web's Exit-Poll Strategy.
But if the loss of power is new to the entrenched media institutions, the pinball-bouncing of exit-poll data from site to site is already a classic maneuver on the Internet. And it's only likely to build. The more exit-poll data that is published, the more people who have access to the information seem to want to leak it.
March 11, 2000
NY Times: Patently Absurd.
James Gleick. The patent office has grown entangled in philosophical confusion of its own making; it has become a ferocious generator of litigation; and many technologists believe that it has begun to choke the very innovation it was meant to nourish.
Wired News: Site No Longer Bugs Terminix.
For two-plus years, Virga, a California secretary, has maintained a Web site bashing Terminix for bad service. Type in Terminix on any search engine and Virga's scathing site will pop up right there with the official company Web pages. The site has logged thousands of visitors.
NY Times: Internet Board Agrees to Overhaul Election Plan.
The new plan calls for individual Internet users -- essentially anyone over 16 with an e-mail and postal address -- to elect five board members in a direct election before Nov. 1, instead of the original plan to have the same users select an electoral council, which in turn would have selected all nine at-large members by Sept. 30.
Wired News: Censorware Exposed Again.
If you buy software to filter smut from the eyes of Web-savvy children, you might expect it to catch a few innocent sites in its electronic net. But you may be surprised if over half of those sites being blocked are on the list for no good reason.
InfoWorld: Wireless Application Protocol draws criticism.
Lost in the standards debate are the content providers, whose Web sites are directly affected by whichever standard emerges victorious. Most are forced to comply with any and all delivery methods if they want their content to be available anytime, anywhere.
March 12, 2000
SJ Mercury: Upgraded e-tail sites make browsing feel real.
But don't think you have to drive to the local mall to test these quirky gadgets. Just point your browser to SharperImage.com, a site that uses 3-D images, rich graphics and sounds to let online shoppers interact with its products much as they would in one of the company's retail stores.
SJ Mercury: A father of the Net looks back and asks, `What took so long?
[Robert W. Taylor] ``In one sense,'' he says, ``I'm a very bad predictor of when things are going to happen. By the early '70s, given what we knew we could do, I thought `Well, within 10 years we'll have the country networked." We'll all have personal computers, people will be on the Internet.
USA Today: Nation honors luminaries.
Ray Kurzweil, Robert Taylor and Ronald Coifman are among luminaries who, on Tuesday, will receive the National Medal of Technology and National Medal of Science, the highest honors bestowed by the president on members of the high-tech and scientific communities.
March 13, 2000
NY Times: Case Illustrates Entertainment Industry's Copyright Power.
Denise Caruso. Many people are likely to object strongly to Craig's balkanized Internet. Privacy and free speech issues aside, they might say -- for good reason -- that such a system would devolve the Internet into a model very much like the restricted, centralized control of cable television.
LA Times: Investors Have 'Dot-Qualms' on Ad Spending.
On first blush, it seems easy enough to divide quarterly advertising and marketing budgets by the number of newly acquired customers. But there's surprisingly little agreement online as to what constitutes customer-acquisition costs.
ZDNN: eBay’s marketing maneuvers.
These arrangements aren't officially called advertising either. But whether they're referred to as strategic relationships, partnerships or marketing alliances, the logos, icons and links from eBay partners such as e-Stamp, i-Escrow and Kodak PhotoNet are a growing source of revenue for the auction giant.
NY Times: F.C.C. to Promote a Trading System to Sell Airwaves.
As the airwaves grow ever more congested with modern wireless communications, the federal government is developing plans to open up the spectrum by, in effect, treating its frequencies as commodities to be bought and sold as routinely as pork bellies or soybeans in the open market.
InfoWorld: Wireless high-speed, last-mile technology unveiled.
A service provider on Monday unveiled a technology capable of sending and receiving data through the air at gigabits-per-second speeds, with the intention of resolving issues pertaining to last-mile broadband connectivity.
Interactive Week: The COPPA Is Now Patrolling The Net.
Next month, the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act is set for implementation, and online companies catering to kids are gearing up to comply. Satisfying the 1998 law won't be easy. The law calls for "parental consent" for any information collected about children under 13.
ZDNN: Click here ... and lose your rights.
For consumer advocates, the infant legislation is a terror. UCITA will help the software industry reach a goal that has long been a Holy Grail: turn shrink-wrap licenses into bedrock contracts.
NY Times: Web Merchants Go Multimedia.
Now that those systems are mainly in place, many Web merchants are devoting an increasing amount of time and money to implementing audio and video features -- hoping to provide so entertaining an experience that users will stay glued to the computer, credit cards at the ready.
News.Com: Amazon gets personal with Web site update.
Amazon has previously used "cookies" to recognize returning customers and offer them personalized product recommendations. The Seattle-based company, which launched the "new for you" area late last month, will continue to personalize services for individuals...
Information Week: Getting To Know You.
Knowing more about online customers, from their ages and where they live to their interests and product preferences, is a goal for many E-commerce companies as they take steps to customize Web-site responses for individual visitors.
Industry Standard: The Age of Access.
Excerpt from Jeremy Rifkin's new book. The process started in the 20th century with a shift in emphasis from manufacturing goods to providing basic services. Now the commercial sphere is making an equally important shift from service-related to experience-oriented.
Byte: Database Nation: The Death of Privacy in the 21st Century.
Excerpt from Simson Garfinkel's new book. The book poses a disturbing question: how can we protect our basic rights to privacy, identity, and autonomy when technology is making invasion and control easier than ever before?
SF Chronicle: Online Outposts Flocking To Bay Area.
Over the past year, many prominent brick-and-mortar companies from across the nation have established their dot-com businesses here. Like Kmart, they often select the Bay Area as their Internet address rather than simply operating from their corporate headquarters.
Interactive Week: Landlording It Over Dot Com Renters.
Landlords have been quoted as saying they are merely taking advantage of a seller's market. They say letters of credit and warrants are just one way of minimizing the risk they assume when renting to an unknown dot com.
March 14, 2000
SJ Mercury: Delivering fiber speeds without needing the wires.
Dan Gillmor. If TeraBeam can deploy this bandwidth as it claims, it has a chance to own what people sometimes call a disruptive technology -- a breakthrough that wrecks old business models and inspires new industries.
USA Today: Web reporters barred from Final Four.
''We don't credential Web sites,'' says the NCAA's Jim Marchiony, director of media for the Division I men's basketball championship. ''There's just a finite amount of seats and space, and there's no legitimate way to distinguish between legitimate and non-legitimate Web sites.''
Salon: Why I'm still scribbling for a living.
Chris Nolan. But despite the newspaper's best efforts to convince me and anyone I might want to work for that I had failed -- ethically, morally and deliberately -- at a craft I've practiced for almost 20 years, I couldn't jump to the start-up Yarnold seemed so sure I wanted.
NY Times: Tribune Co. Adds Content to Diverse Outlets.
The announcement today that the Tribune Company was acquiring the Times Mirror Company elicited this response from Esther H. Dyson, the high-technology pundit: "So one newspaper buys another: so what?"
Online Journalism Review: Yahoo-Murdoch: A Marriage Made in Hell.
From a journalistic viewpoint, it bodes something else: a marriage made in hell. Yahoo News, the largest headline news service on the Web, is a class act -- and a rare act in cyberspace. The ultimate news portal, Yahoo News puts news judgment and reader interests ahead of financial considerations.
News.Com: IKEA cans spam-like postcard promotion.
Although many IKEA fans embraced the email and savings, critics called the promotion "poor judgment" because of its likeness to spam, or unsolicited email, long a controversial practice in the Web community. IKEA's turnabout is the latest example of a brick-and-mortar retailer struggling with a Net marketing plan.
BBC News: US and Europe clinch privacy deal.
The move eases fears as to how European personal data is protected when it is sent to the US, where data protection rules are less strict than in Europe. US companies will now be required to match European standards of data protection when dealing with European data.
Seattle Post-Intelligencer: FedEx to add home deliveries.
Unlike the market leader in commercial express delivery services, United Parcel Service, FedEx until now stuck mostly to its business-to-business deliveries. Stepping beyond regular dropoff delivery for homes, FedEx now will offer delivery by appointment and in the evenings.
Internet Week: Mobile Data For The Masses? This Time For Sure!
But in this age of instant gratification, it's easy to forget that enormous challenges lie ahead before surfing the Web from your cell phone becomes anything but a painfully pointless experience.
PC World: Dell: We Laugh at Your Puny Net Devices.
Dell also disagreed with predictions that mobile phones using the Wireless Application Protocol, a specification for sending Internet-based content, would eclipse traditional computing products. The devices' screens are simply too small, he said.
Useit.Com: Spotlight of Steve Ballmer's talk at PC Forum where he emphasized the need to give users more control over the Internet.
I commented that even though I agree with his vision, I found their products sorely lacking in the area of user empowerment. For example, IE 5 does not have better user support than Mosaic did 7 years ago.
Computerworld: AT&T offers flat-rate wireless data for $14.99/month.
AT&T Wireless Services introduced what it called the first flat-rate pricing program for wireless data in the country, priced at $14.99 per month for unlimited wireless IP service.
News.Com: AOL's Nullsoft creates software for swapping MP3s.
Pepper added that the software is not just for MP3 audio files, but allows people to share all types of file formats, including Microsoft Word, text and HTML documents.
Advertising Age: CyberCritique of Hewlett-Packard.
Marketers are doing more to bring the customer service feedback chain online. Consumers can buy, sell, auction, get tech support, give product feedback from companies online. But rebates and bonus gifts are almost universally a mail-only transaction.
ZDNN: MS-RealNetworks? What's the real deal?
Banfield, a former Microsoft executive himself, claimed RealNetworks was caught "unaware" by Microsoft's decision on Tuesday to issue a press release and hold a press conference on the latest round of Windows Media deals.
InfoWorld: Microsoft buys into RealNames.
Microsoft is taking an equity stake of about 20 percent in RealNames, and the two companies will jointly market projects in Web navigation and use of brand names and trademarks on the Internet.
USA Today: The future is already written.
When Ray Kurzweil discusses the future, his words stun like science fiction. But there's no hint of a grin in his serious and certain eyes. Computer screens will be placed directly on the retina, he says, matter-of-factly.
March 15, 2000
FEED Magazine: Europe's Online Tax Overhaul.
Clay Shirky. With e-commerce destroying geographic boundaries, however, every customer with access to a Web browser can now comparison shop across Europe, and the very rigidity of the old system now turns out to sharpen rather than blunt the difference between high- and low-tax countries.
Freedom Forum: Digital Age asks, Who owns ideas?
Jon Katz. Now the Net and Web have put the idea of copyright and intellectual property on the table for the first time in centuries. At the moment, nobody can clearly define what these things mean in virtual space, let alone how they should be regulated or policed.
Wired News: Open-Source 'Napster' Shut Down.
"The Gnutella software was an unauthorized freelance project and the Web site that allowed access to the software has been taken down," said Josh Felser, general manager for AOL's Spinner and Winamp projects.
MSNBC: With so much subscriber data, AOL walks cautious line on privacy.
Making a delicate calculus of privacy and profits, AOL has opted thus far to focus on attracting and keeping paid subscribers, who in turn lure advertisers to the single largest audience on the Internet.
Online Journalism.com: As the Wall falls, Web content gets tainted.
The opportunities in this frenetic economy are so tremendous, it's hard to fault companies that have a profit motive for trying to dip in to the Fountain of Cash that is the stock market. The only problem is that the content side still has to go on writing about the very people the business side is jumping into bed with.
NY Times: Ruling Says Judges' Holdings May Not Be Kept Off Internet.
The action taken by the Judicial Conference of the United States repudiated a policy adopted in December by its own financial disclosure committee, which refused to provide the disclosure reports to APBnews.com, an Internet site that requested them.
Business Week: An MIT Prof Who Could Level the Cyber Playing Field.
Now, Maes hopes to nudge Net commerce to the next level by giving small businesses the ability to display objective ratings that consumers can trust. That should make it easier for tiny, cash-strapped startups to compete with giants that own all the big online brands.
ZDNN: NASA site blocks out Brazil.
JPL's current ban on Brazilian data traffic was first brought to light Tuesday by Geovani Balbino, a network analyst at the Bank of Brazil's office in Brasilia. Balbino said he noticed more than two weeks ago that he was no longer able to gain access to the JPL site...
Red Herring: Universities graduating to dot-com profits.
The Internet may indeed be changing education, but not as first was imagined. Instead, the Web is emboldening universities to get into the dot-com act. They're starting new ventures, partnering with technology companies, developing online classes -- and searching for profits.
- Industry Standard: From October 22, 1999; Ivy Online
Wired News: Best E-Tailers? It's a Mystery.
Customers expect the same high-quality experience "with every interaction, with every sales associate, with every call center agent, and with every visit to a Web site," said Lisa Goodman, vice president of marketing and business development with Seattle's Service Intelligence.com.
News.Com: Drinks.com works around intrastate sales laws.
By partnering with national retail chain Drinks America, Drinks.com said it can offer customers their choice of spirits from wholesale inventories throughout their state. In addition, the company said it will be able to ship the alcohol without crossing state lines in compliance with state and federal alcohol laws.
News.Com: Fogdog email hounds customers' friends.
Some critics say Fogdog Sports is playing out of bounds with a new marketing program that involves customers turning over their friends' email addresses to the company.
March 16, 2000
Salon: Patently Bezos.
After all, Bezos' plan, like some of his company's e-commerce patents, did not sound all that novel to people familiar with the subject. "This is really nothing new," says Randy Lipsitz, partner at Kramer, Levin, Naftalis and Frankel. "He's not the first person to have spoken out against the patent system."
ZDNN: Why is my cable modem so slow?.
At one time, 10,000 homes per node was the norm and, in some regions, as many as 20,000 per node was considered adequate. Now most cable-system operators are busting down node sizes so that each one serves 500 homes or fewer.
Strategy & Business: To Hal Varian, the Price Is Always Right.
Michael Schrage. Where C.E.O.'s once devoted their energies to cutting costs, clever marketing and enhanced innovation, says Mr. Varian, in the Network Economy, their efforts must focus on creating compelling and cost-effective market mechanisms.
Computerworld: In the Web Lab.
He was the first of nine people who would visit the usability laboratory to put the Web site through its paces as King and a half-dozen other observers watched from behind a one-way mirror. The objective: to ferret out every bug, bottleneck, wart, garble and glitch before exposing the service...
Strategy & Business: Corporate Culture in Internet Time.
People in most of these industries have learned to maintain a delicate balance between hype and craft. But under the high-speed pressure to grab Internet market share, the balance is falling off kilter, and many e-commerce companies are faltering as a result.
USA Today: Net-filter bypass software leads to suit.
The pair offered a small ``cphack'' utility free for downloading that, when run on a parent's computer, discloses the password allowing access to questionable Web sites -- and also reveals the product's entire list of more than 100,000 Internet sites deemed unsuitable for children.
Strategy & Business: Tailored Marketing On The Internet.
The fewer ties individuals have, the freer they are to seek out the best deal on the market. In the Darwinian world of the Internet, the rewards of relationship marketing may be too meager to keep shoppers from looking elsewhere.
PC World: Crafting the Next PC Interface.
That was the theme of a session titled "@ the Human Interface" at Intel's Computing Continuum here Thursday. Led by Dr. Victor Zue, a senior research scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, a panel of experts offered their visions of future computer-to-human interfaces.
Wired News: RIAA-Friendly Rio Surfaces.
Leading the way are the third-generation of Diamond Multimedia's Rio players, which have a new look, more memory, and most significantly, new security features in line with the recording industry's SDMI initiative.
News.Com: Lucasfilm takes flak from fan page builders.
The protesters are indignant over a provision in the contract's language that gives Lucasfilm sole control of the original designs people post on their fan sites.
Business Week: The E-Commerce Race to Conquer "the Last Mile".
No one has figured out how to smoothly blend a Web infrastructure with a fleet of instant-gratification merchants. And with big gun FedEx entering the fray, it might not be long before the Memphis (Tenn.) behemoth puts the squeeze on all the upstarts.
Computerworld: Equity exchanges cement start-up relationships.
Forget about cash; equity rules the Internet economy. But it's not only cash-strapped start-ups that are looking for stock deals to finance e-commerce efforts or to cement partnerships.
USA Today: Tech start-ups paying bills with stock.
In stock-option crazed Silicon Valley, a growing number of law firms, consultants, public relations specialists and landlords are demanding equity in exchange for services.s
March 17, 2000
Salon: Give my regards to broadband.
Scott Rosenberg. But because broadband's speed makes audio and video content more readily accessible than it was with dial-up modems, broadband is sometimes, confusingly, used as a synonym for multimedia content -- and its advent has helped to reinvigorate the hoary concept of "interactive television."
MSNBC: Success of King’s e-book sparks old-line vs. online controversy.
But Simon & Schuster, the publishing arm of Viacom Inc., banned upstart Web publisher and distributor Fatbrain.com Inc. from carrying “Riding the Bullet.” It also told Fatbrain that it should go through Simon & Schuster in order to solicit original material from any authors under contract with Simon & Schuster.
MSNBC: Music industry now seeing gold in once-tacky music compilations.
Still, other Warner executives had reservations about compilation albums in general, and Pepsi’s proposal seemed particularly worrisome because it gave consumers choice among artists, removing one more layer of the record company’s control.
Wired News: CyperPatrol Hackers Lose Round.
U.S. District Judge Edward Harrington granted Mattel -- the toy giant that also sells CyberPatrol -- its request on Friday for an injunction against two programmers who created the "cphack" utility.
Wired News: Amazon Flames: ALL About Nada.
Misleading language on a pro-choice website led to a flurry of flame-mail to Amazon.com on Thursday. The flames were a result of an email entitled "Amazon.com Supports Anti-Choice Organization," which landed in a slew of inboxes.
ZDNN: Sony red over PlayStation2 flaw.
Sony's game making unit Sony Computer Entertainment said it had found users of PlayStation2, launched two weeks ago in Japan amid huge publicity and frenzied demand, could manipulate it to watch Digital Video Disc software sold overseas.
Wired News: Making Online Census Sense.
For an agency that routinely dispatches armies of temporary workers to bang on doors across America, the bureau has taken a distinctly low-key approach in its first attempt at collecting census data online. That has shown in the results.
NY Times: I.B.M. Makes Breakthrough in Memory for Computers.
A group of I.B.M. scientists said yesterday that they had achieved a technological breakthrough that could result in disk drives capable of holding more than one trillion bytes of data -- more than 100 times the capacity of today's most typical hard drives.
News.Com: Cell phones may upgrade automatically.
The commission has taken particular interest in software-defined radio as a way to better manage the nation's airwaves. The technology enables devices to seek out pockets of the airwaves that are not being used locally and adapt to those frequencies.
InfoWorld: Fireclick sparks faster Web site performance.
However, Patrick Harr, director of product management at Novell, is a bit wary about declaring predictive caching to be the caching market's future. "It's my belief that you have to be very careful in doing predictive behavior because of the tendency toward unnecessarily utilizing bandwidth..."
PC Week: Call centers 2.0.
Swamped by e-mail queries, Uniglobe.com was forced to rethink its online customer service strategy. Last October, the dot-com company installed a new suite of software to Web-enable its call center.
NY Times: When E-Mail Messages Come With a Tail of Legalese.
The disclaimers typically say that the message is confidential and should be destroyed if it has reached the wrong person. Some say the company is not responsible for any number of things, including the statements of their employees or any viruses they may accidentally be sending out.
March 18, 2000
Project Cool: Trib Gets It ... And Does It.
Despite having a past history (something that seems to make a company suspect in the realm of new media), The Tribune has been a model for the future, starting a few years ago when the name of the company was changed from the "Chicago Tribune Newspaper Company" to "The Tribune Company."
InfoWorld: Open Ratings touts trust for Internet commerce while preserving privacy.
Open Ratings aims to increase trust, without violating privacy, by using anonymity. Similar to the method used at Firefly Networks, participants identify themselves with aliases. Buyers and sellers can have several aliases, separate or linked, but these are not associated with their coordinates in the real world.
InfoWorld: Fear of a customer-driven planet: Are you scared by what your customers say?
We've all heard about how the Internet levels the playing field. Thumbing through my handy Cliche-to-English dictionary, that means that the little guy has a voice, too. Anybody, or very nearly anybody, can have a Web site.
NY Times: E-Commerce the Japanese Way.
With no further room to expand physically in this densely packed country and with competition intensifying as new stores cannibalize old, the neighborhood convenience store, or "conbini," is betting on the new economy in Japan, moving to embrace technology.
March 19, 2000
Washington Post: Puffing Up Performance?
And it isn't just dot-coms. The pitfalls of Internet accounting are part of a growing unreality in corporate America's financial statements, regulators and other observers say. Some businesses use accounting methods that pass muster with auditors and regulators but strain common sense.
Washington Post: Firestorm in Cyberspace.
At issue is whether giant companies should be able to patent the software that creates the architecture of the Internet economy. And if patent law strikes you as a boring subject, then you risk missing what could be one of the hottest legal and political issues of the next few years.
SJ Mercury: With redesign, Deja.com drifts from its humble Usenet roots.
Perhaps the most puzzling part of the new arrangement is this: The company seems to recognize that it has two distinct products, yet it's sticking with one brand name and one Web domain for both.
Useit.Com: Why You Only Need to Test With 5 Users.
Some people think that usability is very costly and complex and that user tests should be reserved for the rare web design project with a huge budget and a lavish time schedule. Not true. Elaborate usability tests are a waste of resources.
SJ Mercury: Computing's strides coming exponentially.
Dan Gillmor. Human experience makes perspective on this growth difficult, because nothing else in history has changed this way. But it's a near-dead certainty that not too many years from now, disk drives will hold thousands of gigabytes of data...
NY Times: E-Commerce Tenants Spur the Need for Warehouses.
The demand is coming from conventional as well as a small but growing number of e-commerce tenants who in response to a soaring economy are opening new centers to meet their expansion needs or consolidating operations to increase efficiency."
March 20, 2000
Industry Standard: Field of Dreams.
Hal R. Varian. Everyone is hoping that broadband to the home is the next killer app. The problem is that broadband isn't an app; it's an infrastructure that enables applications. We're still waiting for the killer app, and there are plenty of reasons to be skeptical about the contenders.
Forbes: I Got It @7-Eleven.
One of North America's most pervasive retailers, 7-Eleven Inc., will be installing ATM-like machines in its stores that will be Web-linked. These personal transaction terminals will be tied into a delivery and payment system that promises to make 7-Elevens a depot for e-commerce.
Industry Standard: Amazon.com Takes Kozmo.com Stake.
Amazon.com announced this morning it has snapped up a $60 million stake in one-hour delivery service Kozmo.com. The deal had been expected. As part of the deal, Amazon.com has struck a nonexclusive, three-year alliance to offer its customers a one-hour delivery option, powered by Kozmo.com.
NY Times: Insurance Companies Cautiously Enter the Internet Waters.
Executives acknowledge the Web's potential for simplifying the byzantine process of finding insurance quotes and applying for coverage, but they also note the downsides. For one, they say consumers cannot use the Web to speak with real people in real time about the complexities of coverage.
TechWeb: Net Tax Myth: Tech Is A Barrier.
Online merchants can't realistically be expected to calculate and collect sales taxes for 7,600 different tax jurisdictions, each with hundreds of arcane classifications for how goods are taxed, the argument goes. But many already do, with relative ease.
Industry Standard: A Taxing Problem.
But as the commission stumbles toward its April 21 deadline for submitting its recommendations to Congress, it appears likely that the pessimists – those who view the commission as an expedient way for Congress and the Clinton administration to avoid a touchy issue – will be proven right.
NY Times: Difference in News Cycles Is Testing the New Media.
The different treatment underscores the different demands of the two kinds of media, and what could happen to a newspaper's information when it is conveyed in the real-time world of electronic journalism, especially in the environment of business news...
Industry Standard: Auction Sites Walk Legal Tightrope.
EBay and others are finding themselves tangled in a brier patch of ancient legislation that restricts – and sometimes prohibits – auctions. The companies are forced to rely on dubious legalese to keep themselves among the competition – and they out of court.
Editor & Publisher: Are Message Boards Going the Way of the Dodo?
Unable to deal with "outrageous violations of its guidelines, including foul language and threats by users against users," LATimes.com, the online site of the Los Angeles Times, shut down its message boards. And The Sun's site in Baltimore could be next.
News.Com: New Web strategy for CompUSA.
CompUSA is reworking its Net strategy again by combining its online and retail sales efforts and quietly closing Cozone.com.
New York Law Journal: Law Firms Taking Equity in High-Tech Clients Stirs Ambivalence.
In many cases, the reluctance is there simply because partners are too risk-averse to view investing in a start-up as a wise business decision. Another concern, at least equally troubling to many attorneys, is the possibility of facing ethical dilemmas...
News.Com: Andersen Consulting boosts compensation plan.
The investments are made through the firm's recently formed venture fund unit, Andersen Consulting Ventures. In turn, the money generated by these investments will be distributed to employees as "eUnits," essentially options in the fund...
Forbes: The Seacher.
SFGate, a news Web site, relies on Autonomy software to sift through thousands of incoming stories from different media outlets every week and automatically file them by subject. "It's more like a sixth grader" than an experienced journalist at sorting through the reams of data, says John Coate, SFGate's general manager.
March 21, 2000
Online Journalism Review: A Post-Mortem, With Great Prejudice, of the Online Journalism Conference.
Yet it was strangely invigorating to hear this smug megacorporation executive lecture on his own importance, and how all journalists will play by AOL/Time-Warner's rules from now on, because, as Sacks said, "We're the biggest guys. We're big, and we're bad."
New York Post: The Return Exchange: Spy or Service?
The Return Exchange is compiling a database of customers' return habits and plans to share it with the retailers who use its services. According to the plan, each customer would receive an aggregate "score" based on how many returns he or she has made recently and the amount of money involved.
Wired News: Net Speed Ain't Seen Nothin' Yet.
Setting a new record, researchers at Lucent's Bell Labs have for the first time managed to push an astonishing 3.28 terabits per second of data over a long stretch of fiber-optic cable.
Upside: A call for universal registration.
In the physical world, I whip out my credit card and I'm the same person each and every time, with the same payment and identification experience. On the Web, I've got so many aliases that I have to write them all down. There is no consistency to your identity as you move from site to site.
InfoWorld: Internet task force rejects wiretap proposal.
The new policy states that the international standards development group is the wrong forum for designing protocols to meet the wiretapping or privacy laws of specific countries.
News.Com: E-commerce firms step back from early strategies.
Last week, eToys led the pack by sharply scaling back its affiliates program, eliminating commissions on sales and paying business partners only one time for a customer referral.
Salon: My dot-com business mags have fallen on me and I can't get up!
Magazines guarantee advertisers a fixed ratio of content to ads (often around 45 percent editorial to 55 percent advertising); as advertisers targeting Net-savvy business people buy more space, the pubs bulge with both more editorial and ad pages.
NY Times: Agreement on Internet Taxes Eludes Deeply Divided Commission.
A commission advising Congress on whether and how Internet commerce should be taxed fell into disarray today, with members trading heated accusations and increasingly likely to go back to Congress with no recommendation at all.
News.Com: Airline's mistake exposes email addresses.
TWA began sending the weekly "Dot Com Deals" last night when a staff member noticed each bulletin listed hundreds of customers' individual email addresses. Typically, subscribers cannot see the addresses of other recipients.
Wired News: MicroStrategy Under Microscope.
The problem wasn't that MicroStrategy claimed to earn more than it actually did but that it recorded receiving the money too early. A company that sells software often can't record a sale as one lump sum because it gets paid over a period of time or has to spend money updating and revising its products...
Forbes: MicroStrategy's Curious Success.
Searching for some kind of rationality in the Internet era, you are led to revenues as the driving force for market values. MicroStrategy is trading at a mere 65 times revenues, undiluted. Then you ask yourself: How much do this stock's fans know about the revenues?
March 22, 2000
Forbes: Tellme Networks Wants To Reinvent The Telephone.
Although some may think of Tellme as Moviefone on steroids, McCue equates the experience to "radio on demand," a confluence of speech-recognition portal and search engine designed to save time and money.
NY Times: Marketers Try Infecting the Internet.
Since companies running viral marketing programs often pay users based on the number of referrals they bring in, the temptation is to bombard strangers with marketing messages for personal benefit.
Freedom Forum: Newspapers, book publishers sell themselves short online.
Jon Katz. We will never know how interesting or successful newspapers might have become if they'd taken all the money they've spent on tepid, unprofitable Web sites and simply made their papers better. All that's really clear is that year by year, newspapers have become less vital.
Editor & Publisher: Online Journalism: Have We 'Arrived' Yet?
Steve Outing. Co-produced by the journalism/communication schools at USC and UC-Berkeley, this academic conference in sum did a nice job of identifying where the field of online journalism sits in the year 2000, and identifying some of the key issues this still-fledgling industry faces.
News.Com: Science-fiction staple new entry in high-speed Net.
Unlike competitive technologies such as cable or copper broadband connections, fiber optics, or high-speed "fixed" wireless dishes, lasers do not require costly wireless spectrum licenses, access to rooftop rights-of-way, or trenches under city streets, proponents say.
SJ Mercury: Sunnyvale's patent library a victim of Information Age.
Yet despite the lofty name and pantheon of ideas, the 37-year-old patent library desperately needs to reinvent itself. The Internet is threatening to put it out of business. Online competition arrived in 1997, offering wannabe inventors free searches of the database of U.S. patents from 1971.
News.Com: Could cell phones be the Palms of the future?
It's not yet a fair fight. Cell phone screens are tiny and far more difficult to use online than are Palm organizers. But each device is changing to act more like the other, and some analysts agree that the two devices will eat into each other's markets as consumers decide they no longer need both.
Good Experience: The Laughing Computer.
I wasn't at the symposium, so I may be misunderstanding what happened there. But I have to laugh when I think of a roomful of computer science profs and Intel researchers, all discussing the coolest ways to create even more technology for us to deal with every day.
PC World: Navigate the Internet by Images.
Sony is hoping that the old saying "A picture is worth a thousand words" holds true for Internet users. The electronics firm is establishing a new company, Cybergene.com, to sell an image-based information navigation system called IP3.
Forbes: Jazz, Classical Music Winners On Web.
Why are genres like jazz and classical so popular online? "Consumers in rural or less-metropolitan locales are subject to a limited selection of classical music--"Greatest Hits" collections by well-known artists at stores such as Borders or Wal-Mart," says Seamus Mulconry, the report's author.
Industry Standard: Accompany Wins Group-Buying Patent.
The PTO, though, disputes that separate rules should apply to online ventures, saying the existing ones work just fine and that the patents are rarely as broad as they sound. "I just know from our number that [patents] are anything but stifling," says PTO spokeswoman Brigid Quinn.
News.Com: Judge sides with Volkswagen in Net name lawsuit.
Volkswagen attorneys successfully argued in federal court that VirtualWorks, a one-man operation in Reston, Va., engaged in cyberpiracy and trademark theft and should therefore immediately stop using the "VW" initials.
March 23, 2000
Red Herring: Lab Rat: Excite@Home's interactive TV isn't that exciting.
Yes, I'm impressed with the melding of some Internet attributes with TV. For instance, I like Net-inspired gizmos such as CNBC's scrolling stock ticker and the fluorescent first-down marker Fox uses during football games. But I can't keep from feeling that combining the Net with TV is something that makes both a bit less enjoyable.
CIO WebBusiness: Going Global the Centralized Way.
Louis Rosenfeld. One of the first major sites to embrace globalization was, not surprisingly, fedex.com. From Albania to Zimbabwe, Federal Express maintains a presence in over 200 countries. And regardless of which national site you visit, you'll experience a look and feel that is remarkably consistent.
NY Times: Helping Webmasters Land in Search Engines' Nets.
In search of some kind of mutual accommodation, more than 300 designers and marketers from all over the country gathered at the New York Hilton on March 9 for a one-day conference on the ins, outs and secrets of search engines and to meet some of the people behind the engines.
ZDNN: Disney wants to block AOL-Time Warner.
The deal, which would marry the world's biggest online and media companies, has come under fire from some members of Congress and consumer groups, but few content providers publicly voiced the concerns they have expressed privately.
New York Law Journal: Can Feds Keep Up With E-Patents?
Q&A with PTO chief Q. Todd Dickinson. One problem is, how do you define what constitutes a business method or software? [Beyond that, his argument fails to take account of] the fact that patent owners won't pay to keep their patents active if the technology becomes outdated. [Every four years a patent owner must pay a maintenance fee to keep the patent alive]. The problem will correct itself.
ZDNN: Napster changes tune to appease colleges.
Now, when a user of the revised Napster software asks for a file, the software will first look for that file on the user's campus network, and then on the faster Internet. In either case, the file can be downloaded much more quickly than it could be from the public network, which will be searched only as a last resort.
News.Com: March Madness spurs online ticket sales.
Depending on whom you ask, these cybersales may skirt local laws in Indianapolis and Philadelphia, where the games are played. Both cities specifically prohibit reselling Final Four tickets. eBay argues that the auctions are legal if both the buyer and the seller are not located in those cities.
USA Today: FTC may broaden focus to privacy off-line.
Until now, Pitofsky has listened patiently to complaints that the FTC has unfairly scrutinized e-commerce. But he seems to have decided to turn the tables on those complaining - asserting that in fact all American businesses should undergo the same close scrutiny that online businesses have.
Industry Standard: TRUSTe Cracks the Whip.
It's not nice to fool with TRUSTe, MotherNature. That's the message the online privacy program is sending to health-product site MotherNature.com, which continues to display the TRUSTe seal of approval even though its license expired in January.
March 24, 2000
NY Times: In Spam Case, Another Defeat for State Internet Laws.
It signals at least the fourth time in three years that a federal or state judge has concluded that a state's attempt to regulate Internet activities within its own borders ran afoul of the Constitution's commerce clause.
ABCNews.Com: For Sale: Customers.
So, in addition to selling more stuff, why not pull an America Online and find some way to capitalize on its 17 million customers? That’s just what Amazon is doing, most obviously through deals with companies such as drugstore.com and Living.com, giving the newer companies play on Amazon’s site...
Computerworld: Study: Web-only banks lag on customer service.
Banks that have both a virtual and physical presence do a better job of servicing their customers on the Internet, according to a new study conducted by Atlanta-based Speer & Associates Inc. The survey ranked 41 online banking sites on their levels of interactivity.
SJ Mercury: Gap introduces new Maternity line on Web site only.
``The Internet is uniquely positioned to test something new. If it grows into something more substantial, they can add it as a line extension in stores,'' said Lazard Freres retail analyst Todd Slater. The maternity clothes are the only Gap products to be offered only on the Web site. Gap said it has no current plans to bring the line to its stores.
EE Times: DVD content illegally copied off Playstation 2.
Sony Computer Entertainment acknowledged here on Wednesday (March 22) that problems with copy protection can arise from the use of an analog RGB interface, but said the company did nothing wrong and that the RGB interface on the Playstation 2 complies with the DVD specs.
Salon: Google: We're down with ODP.
Now, working in tandem with the Open Directory Project, the company is moving to broaden its base by introducing a hybrid search strategy -- mixing smart-missile accuracy with the ODP's massive team of human editors.
ZDNN: ACLU slams Cyber Patrol tactics.
The civil rights group's charges stem, not from the Mattel lawsuit accusing two international hackers with violating the copyright agreement of its Cyber Patrol software, but with the tactics of Mattel's lawyers in pursuing a temporary restraining order in the case.
Stating the Obvious: Just One Question for Jeffrey Veen.
Music is undergoing the same transformation. Sign up at Launch.com and you can see the Firefly recommendation engine done right. As you listen to a high quality audio stream, you rate the bands, songs, and albums (with an exceptionally unobtrusive Flash-based interface, by the way).
News.Com: Visa offers guide to keep credit card numbers safe.
Visa's "best-practices" guide, which will be released within the next several weeks, will be similar to those the credit card giant has created for catalog companies that accept credit cards by mail or telephone without signatures.
Salon: You've got marketing!
A New York start-up, RocketBoard.com, in which AOL holds a minority stake, will on April 3 begin providing free keyboards (plus $7.95 shipping and handling) to anyone who wants one; all you need is an e-mail address. The catch: three keys on that keyboard will link directly to A-O-L.
Wired News: Privacy Pervasive in Policy.
At the end of a meeting on Thursday to launch the Congressional Privacy Caucus, Congressman Joe Barton (R-Texas) predicted that "every" major piece of legislation considered this year will have a privacy components.
March 25, 2000
InfoWorld: The marketeers want your personal information, so why not just sell it to them?
Already we have companies such as AllAdvantage.com trying to make a business out of providing an incentive for you to watch their ads. Why not take this and apply it to demographic and private data? Can't we develop a system to automate the transaction of my personal information in exchange for services?
Fortune: Forget 2001. HAL Will Never Get What You're Talking About.
Michael Schrage. Can all these powerful constituencies be fundamentally wrong? You bet. While much of the voice-communications research is superb, I believe it represents brilliant technical innovation that is doomed to fail in the unforgiving marketplace of human interaction.
March 26, 2000
SJ Mercury: Heady dreams for diversity go unfulfilled on the Internet.
Alexa also looks at Web traffic. By examining usage patterns among its users -- 500,000 people in 109 countries -- the company can draw a pretty good bead on who's going where. What the company found recently may come as something of a shock: Eighty percent of all Web traffic is going to one half of one percent of all sites.
ZDNN: Are you being spammed by friends?
In particular, the popular "tell-a-friend" e-mail trend - where people get some kind of incentive for notifying others about an e-tailer's, marketer's or Web site's special promotion - is raising eyebrows among consumers and industry types, even as it booms in popularity.
March 27, 2000
Fast Company: Web Sight - Let Your Customers Lead.
Q&A with David Siegel. This is true of most new media: The first books were nothing more than imitation manuscripts, and the first films were a lot like stage plays. Online, companies are using HTML to re-create their physical stores and processes. And that makes for a lot of bad customer experiences and missed opportunities.
NY Times: Technology Has Made Some People Money, but Is That All There Is?
Denise Caruso. But even to my somewhat jaundiced eye, it appears that something is shifting. Venture investors, the rocket fuel of the Internet economy, have started to question the path that so many Internet companies have taken -- despite the tremendous profit they make from the present state of affairs.
Business Week: Customer-Data Software That We Could Do Without.
This entails a lot of profiling, layering of data from other sources, and creating rules to pick out what customer attributes you think are the most important to your business. All of this is really slick stuff, but it can go too far, winnowing out customers based on arbitrary rules that you've been led to establish because of technology.
Wired News: Webcasters in License Limbo.
If you can't figure out how to legally broadcast music online, you're not alone. Webcasters seeking to establish legitimate businesses are wading through a challenging set of royalty rules and copyright conundrums that only the IRS could love.
NY Times: US Airways Strike Threat Shows Drawbacks of E-Tickets.
While other airlines and even Amtrak said they would try to accommodate US Airways passengers with paper tickets, travelers with e-tickets could not expect such service. Computers at different airlines do not yet communicate well enough to share information on tickets that have been issued electronically.
LA Times: Companies Strike While Wireless Prospects are Hot.
The ease of setting up a wireless network, and the potential cost savings of connecting homes and businesses without running miles of wire, have positioned the broadband wireless industry to experience a burst of growth in the next few years.
Industry Standard: Procter & Gamble Faces the Future.
The $38 billion packaged-goods giant never devised a coherent Net strategy. And, while it has built Web sites for scores of its products, ranging from Tide to Crest to Pampers, it hasn't figured out how to make money online.
NY Times: Wall Street Uses Webcasts to Reach Investors.
Wall Street Webcasting stands to further blur the line between financial service companies and the traditional media -- a process that began years ago when some of the big brokerage firms started sending television stations recorded interviews with analysts and video news packages featuring the firms' big clients.
Business Week: Wall Street's Hype Machine.
The bull market has caused a revolution in the role of the analyst, who is fast becoming less of a researcher than a celebrity pitchman--for both his employer and the stocks he or she follows. In this world, nearly every stock is a buy.
MSNBC: An ex-reporter tackles the future of Net media.
At a recent journalism conference in Los Angeles, Mr. Sacks offered some insights into how he plans to tackle his burgeoning job. He described a business model in which content, commerce, communications and lots of interactive software are mixed together into what he calls “journalism with something else.”
USA Today: Respect eludes Net media.
Many journalists who gather news for online media say they are being discriminated against, especially at big events, and they want respect. Event organizers say the proliferation of Web sites that profess to disseminate news make it tough to know which sites are legitimate news organizations...
NY Times: A Media Machine Gets Too Close to Home.
But some who did not were dismayed at what came next: "Beginning in early April, public relations professionals will be able to know which journalists opened their releases on the Press Room site. Reports will be available that will say who, what media organization and when a particular news release was read."
BizReport: PR site drops reporter-tracking plan.
Rigorous complaints about a proposed public relations news service's policy to automatically identify any journalist accessing its online press releases have forced the policy to be abandoned.
Business Week: Selling Sofas Online Is No Snap.
But even as the big players move online, the hurdles are high. Many top furniture makers are wary of letting their goods go to online retailers for fear of undermining their store partners. They also don't want the bother or the cost of shipping ''onesies'' to individiuals.
Industry Standard: Seeing Double.
Review of Watts Wacker's new book. Those who have watched Wacker in action harbor some doubts about his future-gazing. "He presents a greatest-hits album of provocative thinking," recalls a marketing executive and decade-long follower of the futurist who declined to be identified.
Computerworld: New Tools Help Lockheed Martin Prepare for Takeoff.
OLAP lets users from engineering, purchasing, manufacturing and other areas in the company examine data relative to aircraft design and manufacturing from a multidimensional view. The system has helped cut analyst labor costs by as much as 15% to 20%...
March 28, 2000
ZDNN: Should 'e-words' be trademarked?
Now Kahn has a new quest -- to keep commonly used ``e-words'' such as "e-ticket" and "e-commerce" -- in the public domain. Kahn's third company, LightSurf Inc., is filing a lawsuit in U.S. federal court against Belgian imaging giant Agfa-Gevaert Group for trademarking the term "e-photo."
Columbia Journalism Review: A Journalist's Life: Covering Crime the Internet Way.
What APB does is still rare in online journalism: hire real reporters and editors, arm them with the interactive and multimedia muscle of the Internet, and turn them loose. The result is a daily diet of original reporting on crime, safety, and criminal justice stories...
Information Week: Developers Brace For Wireless Boom.
[Bob Egan, VP of mobile and wireless computing at Gartner Group] While the action to date has focused mainly on the devices themselves, wireless ultimately will succeed or fail on the strength of the applications that emerge. "Unless the application challenges are resolved, wireless will die," Egan says.
ZDNN: The Web is wonderful for kids.
The study, which was also backed by the Childrens Television Workshop and Microsoft Corp., also contradicts some previous reports that using the Web makes people less social. Ninety-five percent of the parents surveyed said family interactions have either increased or stayed the same, despite Net usage.
News.Com: Booksellers disavow content of controversial book.
The online booksellers also said they agreed to post their own statements that say they don't endorse the views expressed in "Illuminati's Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion."
ZDNN: SEC Web snooping plan draws fire.
The mechanism would monitor public Web sites, message boards and chat groups. Anything deemed suspicious -- like the phrase "get rich quick" -- would be copied into a database, analyzed and then indexed for use by SEC investigators in bringing civil proceedings against people suspected of wrongdoing...
Wired News: Mattel Can Go After Mirrors.
U.S. District Judge Edward Harrington's order released Tuesday afternoon says anyone who is acting in "concert" with the authors of a program that reveals Cyberpatrol's secret blacklist must take down their Web sites or face the consequences.
Editor & Publisher: Single Publication Ruling Protects Web Publishers.
In an attempt to prevent his suit from being tossed out for being too late under the statute, the plaintiff argued, among other things, that each day the report was available on the Internet constituted a new publication triggering a new accrual date for his libel claim.
News.Com: Airlines hit snag with online customer service.
Many airline sites are difficult to navigate, offer little more than flight information, or are too slow, according to Gomez Advisors, an e-commerce research firm, which today released results of its Spring 2000 Internet Airline Scorecard.
Salon: Why leave your 'marks online?
Maybe I'd quit that habit if automatic filing worked as well. But it doesn't. I tried five services: Blink, Hotlinks, Clickmarks, Backflip and BookmarkSync. My hopes were high, but I ended up largely unimpressed.
Computerworld: 7-Eleven to install Net-enabled ATMs.
7-Eleven Inc. customers will soon be able to cash checks, purchase money orders, send and receive wire transfers and even buy tickets and do other online shopping through automated teller machines at 7-Eleven convenience stores.
Washington Post: MCI WorldCom Plans Wireless Test.
Sprint has MMDS plans as well. Together, the two companies have spent roughly $3 billion to amass the right to transmit through the skies using MMDS in areas around the country that hold more than 50 million people, about half in rural areas.
Wired News: Broadcasters and RIAA Lock Horns.
The National Association of Broadcasters said Tuesday it has sued to prevent the recording industry from charging special royalties to radio stations that stream their signals to the Web.
USA Today: Yahoo! a mutual fund?
Yahoo!, which at first glance doesn't have much in common with fund managers such as Fidelity Investments, has stock holdings in other Web companies that soared to such values they represented at least three-quarters of Yahoo!'s total assets. For this and other reasons, Yahoo! risks falling under the legal definition of a mutual fund.
March 29, 2000
NY Times: New Species, Old Struggle.
Of the organisms that have crawled out of the primordial electronic muck, a rough consensus has emerged as to which types are eventually going to be profitable. Of course, evolution on the World Wide Web is happening so fast that generalizations get out of date quickly, and even dodo birds get lucky sometimes.
ZDNN: Patent Office to change its tune.
Amid a growing debate over patents that stake out broad claims for basic methods of doing business on the Web, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office is expected Wednesday to unveil an overhaul of the way it examines applications and awards patents for many online practices.
USA Today: Judge OKs deep hyperlinking.
A federal judge ruled that online companies can legally offer links to rival Web sites, a service many new Internet firms use to attract new users. The ruling was in favor of upstart Tickets.com, which was the defendant in a lawsuit filed by Ticketmaster Online-CitySearch Inc. that alleged so-called ''hyperlinking'' should be banned.
News.Com: Many Web sites will pay high price for children's data.
The phones at Surfmonkey.com ring nonstop with thousands of parents calling each week to give the online playground permission to collect personal information from their young children. And each week, a team of about five staffers does little else but deal with the dizzying avalanche of calls.
NY Times: To Put G.E. Online Meant Putting a Dozen Industries Online.
Early last year, John F. Welch, the chief executive and chairman of General Electric, set an ambitious goal for the managers of the huge company's businesses -- establish a strategy for using the Internet and put it into effect before the end of 1999.
NY Times: Spinning Off Can Mean Big Money, but Big Danger Too.
The greatest danger of spinning off an Internet business may be that it represents the company's future, said Professor Allen of the University of Virginia. [...] "There's a temptation for people to say 'Don't worry about the future, I'll just go ahead and take whatever I can get right now.' "
InfoWorld: UCITA passes Maryland house, moves to Senate for vote.
The Maryland House of Delegates has passed and sent to the Senate a controversial bill that has the support of large software vendors, but has upset consumer advocates for software users, along with libraries and small businesses.
Salon: What'n the heck is MobShop?
Mobshop is a company name that could invite smirks for any Web start-up, whatever its business. But it's particularly eyebrow-raising for a company that's all about bringing customers together in groups to get cheaper prices.
Industry Standard: That Was CDnow, This Is Then.
CDnow reports that it has $40 million in cash and assets at its disposal. But the math does not favor the Fort Washington, Penn.-based retailer. Its quarterly burn rate – the rate at which the firm is spending cash – hovers at about $15 million, meaning that its reserve will run out in roughly six months.
NY Times: Costco Brings Its Big Box Onto the Web, but Cautiously.
There are about 1,800 items for sale on the site. And there is growing overlap with items in the stores, although Costco executives are still wary of cannibalizing the stores. Many products are more expensive versions of products sold in the stores.
News.Com: Net firms get creative to keep coffers full.
E-tailers, such as Amazon.com, and financial sites such as E*Trade and Ameritrade, are increasingly relying on financial instruments called convertible bonds.
- Industry Standard: From February 28, 2000; Debt Wish
NY Times: The New Economy's Currency Is Stock, Stock and Stock.
While law firms have long taken slices of their clients' companies on top of regular fees, consultants are now doing the same, along with public relations agencies, executive search firms and commercial landlords. Even independent engineers and building contractors are participating in the equity swap meet.
ZDNN: Stephen King e-book pirated.
[Len Kawell, president of Glassbook Inc.] "The reality is there's no such thing as an invincible copy protection system," Kawell said. "It's impractical to make it both invincible and usable."
March 30, 2000
Salon: Napster -- friend or foe?
Scott Rosenberg. One way of looking at the music industry wars today is to see a battle between entertainment corporations, whose revenue depends on keeping intellectual property secure and costly, and new technologies that tend to unlock intellectual property and drive its price down. Note that in this picture, both artists and fans aren't the primary combatants...
Business Week: Weblining.
That's good news for companies: The more finely they can dissect your data profile, the more closely they can tally what you are likely to cost them against the profits you bring--and cut you off if you don't add up nicely.
Business Week: Reinventing Herman Miller.
''Going forward, the advantage isn't going to be just product differentiation,'' says the lanky 44-year-old Volkema. So he looked to technology to improve three crucial parts of the business: Design, order entry, and manufacturing.
Freedom Forum: Opened-up Oscars shows new interactive avenues.
Jon Katz. Go online all you want, but if you don't alter your relationship with the people who consume your product, whether its a newspaper or a box of cereal, you may not make it in an interactive world. It's odd that the Oscars presented an interesting opportunity to catch a glimpse of how interactivity seeps into even the most entrenched institutions.
NY Times: Federal Agency Rethinks Internet Patents.
The agency said today that it would tackle those challenges by increasing review of its examiners' work, and by inviting representatives of the software industry to help educate the agency's staff.
Forbes ASAP: The Number Runners.
...Levitt fingered "the zeal to satisfy consensus earnings estimates and project a smooth earnings path" as the impetus for slippery earnings reporting. Conclusion: The upward sloping ramp is a powerful intoxicant.
Industry Standard: Real Mall Owners to Go Virtual.
Chicago-based General Growth Properties plans to launch Mallibu.com in June. The site would group together the 136 malls it manages. GGP says that customers would be able to hit their favorite local mall on the Web, ordering goods from stores for delivery or in-person retrieval.
Washington Post: Word Power.
The language experts are examples of the non-tech people technology companies are hiring to work at their companies, and more broadly, show how tech is burrowing its way into every occupation. Most of the linguists thought they'd become teachers or researchers.
BBC News: Demon settles net libel case.
A UK internet service provider has settled a libel case in a move which could have wide-ranging implications for online publishers. Laurence Godfrey will be paid £15,000 plus legal costs - which could top £200,000 - by Demon Internet after allegedly defamatory postings about him appeared in newsgroups.
Freedom Forum: 'This minute's news': how CBS MarketWatch works.
[Neil Chase, managing editor, broadband of CBS MarketWatch.com] "An editor has the Web page up on the screen 24 hours a day, most of the time in San Francisco," he said. "When there’s nobody in the San Francisco newsroom, it’s somebody in Tokyo or London or New York who has the Web page open on the screen using Microsoft Front Page."
March 31, 2000
ClickZ: Internet Branding and the User Experience.
In the Internet space, branding means creating a great user experience. Internet branding moves beyond logo, tagline, key messages and graphic identity into the customer's real-time interaction with the brand, for the entirety of the online experience.
USA Today: Dot-coms tidy up ad clutter.
Internet start-ups' love affair with splashy advertising - TV, radio and even Web banner ads - is cooling as many tilt their marketing budgets to less-glitzy but more-effective vehicles, such as electronic mail.
Business Week: A Site for Boomers That Can't Match Its Marketing.
More than one savvy entrepreneur has tried to use this on the Web by creating sites just for boomers, the latest of which is ThirdAge.com. Unfortunately, ThirdAge.com has the TV image of boomerdom down pat, while its Internet offering comes up short.
Computerworld: Ticketmaster accuses Tickets.com of misrepresenting judge's 'deep-linking' ruling.
The judge has agreed to proceed to trial with these complaints. He dismissed Ticketmaster's breach of contract, trespass, unjust enrichment and state copyright laws. But even though Tickets.com is claiming the judge's ruling speaks directly to the issue of hyperlinking, Ticketmaster CEO Charles Conn said in an interview yesterday that Tickets.com's perception of the ruling is misguided.
Law News Network: Is Stephen King's New eBook Riding the DMCA Bullet?
Mike Godwin. But suppose a King fan purchased a copy of the Wintel-based downloadable story and asked a friend to reverse-engineer a way of reading the story on his Macintosh or Linux computer. That bit of inventiveness might create liability for the friend under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, according to several DMCA experts.
News.Com: Feedback system's weakness may hurt online auctions.
That's what more than 100 eBay users found out earlier this month when a seller allegedly defrauded buyers out of thousands of dollars. As first reported by CNET News.com, the seller allegedly duped his victims into bidding on his high-priced auctions by manipulating his feedback rating.
Industry Standard: Online-Coupon Companies Battle Over Patents.
While companies wage Internet patent battles daily, the online-coupon space provides the latest peek into how treacherous these wars can be. Although coupons help people save money, this seemingly pleasant little business niche is far from immune to legal turmoil.
NY Times: Judge Says Old Rule on Libel Suits Applies Online.
In one of the first rulings of its kind, Judge Francis T. Collins of the Court of Claims in Albany ruled that the continuing presence of a report or article on the Internet constitutes a single publication that begins life on the day it was first posted.
Washington Post: Auction Sites to Link to Recall Lists.
Two of the largest Internet auction sites have agreed to team up with the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission to make it easier for consumers to know if they are selling or buying defective products that have been recalled.
InfoWorld: Garden.com sees flowers blooming on Web.
Q&A with Andy Martin, CTO of Garden.com. We've really perfected our supply chain, and [that] has really set up a barrier to entry for competitors. I don't wake up in the morning thinking that Amazon's going to put another tab on their site that is called Gardening.
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