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May 1, 1999
Microsoft Backstage: Creating an Effective Web Interface Requires Careful Planning and Testing.
Learn about the process we use to find that overlap between design and function, the sweet spot where the user can quickly accomplish necessary tasks.
SJ Mercury: Double standards on Net tax.
Dan Gillmor. As Internet commerce accelerates -- and it will, because there would be some genuine advantages even in a tax-neutral world -- the undermining of the tax base will force Congress to deal with the matter.
DaveNet: Who Owns .Com?
Esther poses the possibility that we could have another Internet, one that wouldn't be based on .Com names.
NY Times: World Body Proposes Outlawing 'Cybersquatting' on Internet Addresses.
The report to the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) is the first attempt by any official governing body to draft an international set of rules for registering domain names.
Web Page Design for Designers: Body Language.
Regardless of the contents of a Web site, it has a visual personality. Replace all the words with 'Greeking' and that personality still shines through.
InfoWorld: Dubious marketing ploys at Buy.com expose the seamy side of e-commerce.
So is this on-the-fly editing of terms another technique we can be expecting other e-businesses to add to their repertoire?
Forbes ASAP: Ditch Your User Names and Passwords.
Keeping track of all these aliases and their accompanying magic words has become a major problem: More than 50% of web site customer support calls concern lost (i.e. forgotten!) user names and passwords...
NY Times: Israeli Scientist Reports Discovery of Advance in Code Breaking.
An Israeli computer scientist is expected to shake up the world of cryptography this week when he introduces a design for a device that could quickly unscramble computer-generated codes...
May 2, 1999
ZDNN: Will it be deja vu at Deja News?
Although no timeframe has been set for an IPO, sources close to the company say Deja News wants to raise enough capital to build the site into a leading Web brand, reworking it into a kind of chatty "Consumer Reports" of the Web.
Industry Standard: Brands Aren't Everything.
The lesson here applies to all emerging e-commerce markets: Web-based brands that stand the best chance of being relevant are the ones that simplify people's lives.
NY Times: Companies That Ignore Online Security Are Risking Costumers.
Many companies so fear being overtaken by a competitor who got to the Web first -- of "getting Amazoned," in the industry vernacular -- that they rush past security issues in their zeal to establish a Web site.
Editor & Publisher: Post-mortem: Web Coverage of the Columbine Tragedy.
Steve Outing. Be prepared for the worst, because if your Web site and network infrastructure can't handle the massive load when a major story breaks in your back yard, "you might as well not be writing anything" if no one can get to your site.
NY Times: New System for PC Music Stirs Recording Industry's Piracy Concerns.
...Real Networks, a leading maker of Internet audio software, plans to announce on Monday a system designed to let consumers copy, store and play audio CD's on personal computers.
NY Times: Alexa's Crusade Continues Under Amazon.com's Flag.
While questions remain about what Amazon.com intends to do with Alexa and its technology, Kahle insists that the acquisition will give his company plenty of independence.
Industry Standard: Turning Crime Into Commerce.
ThingWorld.com, says Barlow, has "turned what traditionally was the stealing of branded content into a business."
Forbes: Barbed wire on the Internet.
Trademarks aren't good enough for Jay Walker, the inventive mind behind Priceline.com. He wants a patent on his clever Internet ideas.
Salon: Words in your ear.
This is, of course, a problem for most of the new portable content devices on the market; the technology still doesn't offer totally intuitive content transfer from the Web.
Salon: Xerox PARC loses a "ubiquitous computing" guru.
Acting with the blazing speed typical of life in the core of techno-capitalism, the Stanford University Library has put up a memorial in honor of the recently deceased Mark Weiser, chief technologist at Xerox's Palo Alto Research Center (PARC).
Mozilla.Org: Sidebar Flash Specification.
The Flash Panel is a panel in the Sidebar that contains up-to-the-minute information about events that are of direct importance to the current user...
May 3, 1999
Today's Links Story: Tweaking Slate
CMF: Building Web Sites Constituents Will Use.
I participated in the review of a short list of Congressional sites along with David Birdsell a professor at Baruch College and Mike Nelson, Program Director of the Internet Technology Division at IBM.
SJ Mercury: Australian bid all wrong in censoring Net.
Dan Gillmor. But as the U.S. Supreme Court understood when in 1997 it overruled the Communications Decency Act, making the Net absolutely safe for children risks making it useful only for children.
Salon: Pathfinder, we hardly knew ye.
Scott Rosenberg. In the Net era, it's not ownership of wires that makes a company a public resource and forces it to take on public responsibilities -- it's ownership of credit card numbers and markets and minds.
Industry Standard: AOL Needs an Ombudsman.
An ombudsman wouldn't solve these thorny privacy concerns, but at least we'd know our questions were being fired in the right direction.
Byte: Slovenly Traffic Prediction Damages Web.
Do you want to raise your cost of business and keep your customers happy now, or irritate many of them so they'll never come back?
News.Com: How Pathfinder will become Web legend.
Though Time Warner fashioned Pathfinder as the future of the Web, its size, lack of navigability, and repurposed print content made it an example of what not to do online.
CIO WebBusiness: The Bots are Back.
...a new generation of Web intelligent agents—tools that help buyers evaluate products from a diverse set of merchants—is emerging. That's great news for merchant sites that understand how to work with bots, bad news for those that blindly decide to block them.
USA Today: Rewards net cybermarketing results.
Review of Seth Godin's book Permission Marketing. Give customers something they actually care about -- such as a coupon or discount or freebie or even relevant advice -- and they'll give you permission to market directly to them.
Industry Standard: From the Ether.
Or let's do what Postel recommended. He foresaw Web browsers, search engines, and directories dealing with Internet names. He saw DNS plumbing fading back into the woodwork from which it has inappropriately burst.
CIO WebBusiness: Office Depot Clears the Aisles.
For more than 10 percent of visitors, the log-in page was the last page they viewed before leaving the site. Those stats and user feedback made it clear that visitors disliked having to create an account just to browse.
Internet World: Deals, Technology, and Regulatory Frustration Point to Wireless.
Wireless will change how users get data, how sites are designed both visually and architecturally, and how basic services such as messaging and commerce function.
Advertising Age: P&G visionary views Web as mission critical.
Q&A with Denis Beausejour, Procter & Gamble. What we do not want to do is blast 25-second download monsters at people when they're trying to get something done. This is why this medium is so fantastic. But it's also the crux we haven't gotten through yet.
NY Times: Mixed News at Online Ad Conference.
Yet a study to be released this morning by the Association of National Advertisers has found evidence that mainstream advertisers continue to feel uncertain about the medium.
CIO WebBusiness: Don Tapscott: The Opportunity Gap.
Q&A with Don Tapscott. Advertising is not the right revenue model for electronic commerce. We've taken the old paradigm, the banner ad in a newspaper or the equivalent of a 30- second television commercial, and we've plunked that into the new medium.
Wired News: Volunteer Army to Fight Patent.
On Monday, the World Wide Web Consortium began marshalling Net users to help search for previously existing examples of technology underlying the Platform for Privacy Preferences.
Industry Standard: Big Bird and Kmart Do Business on the Web.
[Tina Sharkey, Children's Television Workshop] "We would never integrate editorial and merchandising," she says. "This is a media sponsorship, not an advertorial."
ABCNews.Com: Information Overload.
Billington warns there’s a difference between information — the stuff made so abundant by digital technology, and knowledge — the insight we get when we’ve had a chance to sort through things and figure them out.
ZDNN: Nytimes.com catches the portal bug.
"We will create a quality network, a kind of knowledge portal, where our readers can get access to Times journalists, to outside experts and, perhaps most importantly, to each other..."
News.Com: Merchants pull out of Amazon Auctions.
The merchants say shoppers, confused by auctions for goods that are also available at retail, are bidding too low and complaining that minimum bids, set by the merchants, are too high.
Wired News: Electronic Ink Makes Its Mark.
Based on research from MIT, electronic ink rivals LCD display technology and may eventually lead to thin, flexible books, magazines, and newspapers in which content is updated electronically by a wireless connection.
News.Com: Web sales create export, warranty woes.
...consumers in Dubai or Kiribati can now buy discounted computers and peripherals from U.S. companies directly or through dealers. The problem is that the companies aren't necessarily prepared to handle the situation.
Internet World: Latest Acquisitions Show Amazon Aims To Redefine Retailing.
...viewing the acquisitions through a highly speculative lens provides a science fiction version of retail that promises deep connections between buyer and seller, with broad implications for the nature of sales of all kinds.
Byte: The Inmates Are Running The Asylum.
Review of Alan Cooper's new book. Cooper describes well the tendencies of programmers to keep doing what they have done before, and how time pressure on the programmers can make things truly ghastly for the users.
Industry Standard: Searching for an IPO.
Direct Hit is set to release a full-fledged search engine sometime in the next month, as the company readies for an initial public offering.
Interactive Week: MSN Set To Join The (Online) Club.
The idea, according to analysts briefed by the company, is to use the category-specific sites to build online communities more relevant to users of the niche sites.
Business Week: Can BackWeb Soar Where PointCast Stumbled?
Latter-day push companies are reemerging with "systems-management applications" that use push technology to let client companies disperse timely information and software to their employees, consumers, or business clients.
InfoWorld: MySAP.com anchors SAP's evolving Net strategy.
"You cannot pop up with gray screens in an Internet world," Plattner said. People who are used to looking at Yahoo and other graphically oriented programs, he said, won't stand for ugly screens.
Interactive Week: Online Ad Revenue Doubles In '98.
Web advertising revenue totaled $1.92 billion during 1998 -- a $1 billion increase over the $907 million in Internet ad sales from the year before...
May 4, 1999
devhead: How to Structure Your Website.
Jakob Nielsen. Giving users a sense of place is essential for Web usability. It is very disconcerting to users when they begin to feel lost in cyberspace.
News.Com: Justice Department expands NSI antitrust probe.
NSI last week received a Justice Department letter confirming the government agency's intention to look into NSI's publicly available Whois database.
ZDNN: Mainstream brands target the Web.
But the game is different for Web sites, few of which are willing to put unnecessary barriers between themselves and potential audiences -- and that includes detailed registration processes.
Web Techniques: Next-Generation IP Service Platforms.
Smart networks factor out common functions -- authentication, billing, security -- move them from the individual servers into the network, and provide them for all content services in a simple, standard manner.
ZDNN: Micropayments draw Big Money names.
The two -- Bloomberg business news service and Morningstar, an investment information service -- are part of "Sell Anywhere," a new affiliate network for content publishers that aims to generate revenues from one-time visits to sites.
Red Herring: Qpass takes a cut of digital content.
...Mr. Willis says that to become profitable, the Qpass network requires at least several hundred content creators and several thousand consumers.
NY Times: Record Label Will Distribute Music Online.
"The demand is there, and demand is being filled now by independent labels and illegal content," Kenswil said. "It's crazy for us to not recognize demand and move."
PC World: My Agent Will Call Your Agent.
Scientists there are using computer simulations and mathematical theories to model an "information economy" consisting of billions of preprogrammed intelligent agents that roam the Internet...
The Economist: The end of privacy.
Privacy is a residual value, hard to define or protect in the abstract. The cumulative effect of these bargains—each attractive on their own—will be the end of privacy.
News.Com: Computing companies urged to simplify.
[Donald Norman] "Embedded processors promise a revolution in consumer goods, but only if you adopt human-centered design philosophy..."
News.Com: Hybrid deals growing in online ads.
In these hybrid deals, which accounted for 54 percent of ad revenue, the advertisers paid lower rates for each banner but paid the Web sites a "bounty" when surfers clicked through their ads.
Editor & Publisher: International News Markup Language is Endorsed.
"NITF makes our life enormously easier and our customers can spend more time improving their content rather than converting data."
PC World: All the News Fit to Post.
[Arthur Sulzberger, chairman of the New York Times] "Trust is not just about content," he said. "It's about delivery and speed ... it's a wire-service mentality."
Adweek: Ford Marketing Chief David Ropes.
When you allow customers to engage and help themselves ... they feel empowered. And they feel good about you in the process.
Editor & Publisher: NY Times Publisher Gives Advice For Digital Age.
The first epiphany is listen to creative ideas, implement change, and embrace those changes.
Business Week: A Marketing Force as Wide as the Web: E-Mail.
Topica, which launched its service in February, is creating a megalist of E-mail discussion groups that advertisers can use to reach the audience they want.
News.Com: W3C, others seek accessible Web.
Contrary to some published reports, section 508 does not apply to Web sites created by companies that do business with the federal government.
Wired News: Buy.com Rolls with the Punches.
At the heart of the issue is whether Buy.com's business model is practical. The company sells goods below cost, hoping to make up the loss with advertising revenue.
Boston Globe: Web search site says it'll be most comprehensive ever.
Burns also said the new search system developed by his firm will enable the company to eventually create the first index of the entire World Wide Web.
Wired News: Net Overloads US Patent Agency.
Critics fear the Patent and Trademark Office (PTO) -- despite its key role in the information age -- just doesn't get the Internet.
Wired News: AOL Reworks Spam Team.
...anti-spam experts worry that recent job cuts by AOL will gradually weaken the Internet service provider's ability to snuff out junk email campaigns launched from its accounts...
Upside: Keeping the E-book Shut.
If standardization and pricing aren't handled right, the electronic book industry runs the danger of repeating the fate of the PDA...
PC World: Why Bother With Berlitz?
The only obvious difference between the two implementations is that Go Network's is more direct. With Go, each page is translated automatically as you click through links.
Interactive Week: DejaNews To Stop Tracking Addresses.
Rather, DejaNews officials say, they kept the logs to track how often people clicked on e-mail links to respond to others' postings, an important measure of the service's success.
May 5, 1999
Salon: We are all page-view whores now.
But some of the biggest dangers could be for content providers. The more we learn about exactly how much and why you like us, the less excuse we'll have to rely on our own judgment.
MSNBC: Web media leaders eye online sales.
[AOL's Bob Pittman] "What is advertising and what’s commerce? I can’t tell you. I don’t think there is such a thing as advertising," on America Online, separate from e-commerce. "They’re one thing now."
News.Com: Disabled Net users win accommodations.
[Tim Berners-Lee, director of W3C] "The bar has been set, and technologically it is not a very high bar..."
Upside: Pittman's Marketing Mantra.
Despite the fact that there's no accurate way to measure their effectiveness, Pittman says online advertisements not need be as aggressive as TV commercials.
Builder.Com: Critique of Garden.com.
Providing more than just a pretty face, the site's extensive functionality assists shoppers through every step of the purchasing process.
Time Digital: The Next Generation of Search.
But size isn't everything, and search results are useless if they aren't accurate. Consider the case of Google, a search engine developed by Stanford grad students.
RCFoC: The Net: Tremendous Wealth Creation, and Destruction.
[Ray Lane, President of Oracle] "...companies must recognize that 'customers will be kings,' because on the Internet, customers have 'click loyalty. They'll stick around as long as they like the prices or what's being said.'"
FEED Magazine: The Uses of Sim Sidewalks.
Steven Johnson. But if SimCity's "collectivist machine" has a more life-like sensibility to it, it's still hard to imagine those algorithms giving birth to a Frank Gehry, or even creating room for one to flourish.
ZDNN: Zingo! Lucent makes a wireless portal.
Lucent's new portal, named Zingo, will serve as an Internet start page for traveling professionals and a testing ground for wireless equipment providers.
News.Com: Microsoft sees cable in its software future.
"Microsoft wants to be the provider of the infrastructure from the software point of view [for set-top boxes] as well as providing the content and information flowing through the pipes."
Industry Standard: Secure Online Music: To Be or Not to Be?
However, the question still remains as to whether any delivery system other than the labels' own will be able to provide legitimate, popular content to consumers by the time these digital music players are available.
DaveNet: Swimming with the Music Industry.
The industry cartel will eventually break because the Internet as a distribution system is way too powerful and opens huge new possibilities for creative people (the musicians).
News.Com: Art and dot-commerce: Getty takes on Corbis.
But with Art.com, Getty is heading into a consumer market that Corbis has been mining for two years.
Wired News: IBM's Microdrive: Power to Go.
The matchbook-sized microdrive can store up to 340 MB of data, enough high-capacity storage to support a variety of memory-hungry mobile products.
Wired News: Real Media on Parade.
He said that digital distribution of music, "deep personalization," and universal broadband access represent some of the most important shifts for presenting media on the Internet.
Interactive Week: Real To Introduce Soft-Selling Software.
Real expects the ad software to allow publishers to incorporate multimedia advertising within their streaming presentations, in much the same way that TV commercials are interspersed throughout broadcast programming today...
Wired News: Truste Boss Plots His Course.
Bob Lewin quietly assumed the post of executive director in mid-April. He said his top priorities include increasing the organization's profile in Washington and Europe.
ZDNN: It's bargain-basement time online.
"Shopping.com is aggressively trying to establish itself as a leader in customer service, while Buy.com is aggressively trying to position itself as a loss-leader."
Red Herring: Lucent bets on Net conferencing.
Persystant officials hope that a server-based approach to Internet conferencing will eliminate some of the barriers to voice- and data-conferencing, which have not yet been widely adopted.
News.Com: NSI is still sole registrar.
One of the chief sticking points is a requirement that the companies obtain $100,000 in insurance that is payable to NSI under what some of the companies describe as very liberal terms.
Forbes: Cache-ing in.
[Michael Brown, Quantum Corp] He foresees a world where all manner of new storage devices will be linked to the Web, serving a new generation of non-PC gadgets.
May 6, 1999
TechWeb: Designers See Same-Old, Same-Old Web Face.
"It was designed by engineers for engineers," he said. "It's going to take a long time to overcome their metaphors."
PC World: Web Makes Nobel Laureate 'Grouchy'.
[Arno Penzias] "Sorry to sound so grouchy, but I see the Internet as being about empowerment of individuals--and so far the people in business have only given lip service to it."
DaveNet: Money on the Table.
To the high-tech VCs, here's your business model. Start the Internet music label. Contract with the big name performers that the current labels are leaving behind.
SJ Mercury: AT&T deal provides no help to consumer.
Dan Gillmor. AT&T and other cable companies understand the power of owning the first screen of digital information.
News.Com: Math professor wins landmark crypto ruling.
U.S. export limits on encryption are unconstitutional, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled today.
News.Com: Starbucks, media firms fund Talk City.
...CEO Howard Schultz said the company planned to create an online venture in a "multibillion-dollar" category and would promote the venture at the company's 2,200 cafes.
Wired News: Who Owns Whois Database?
The company contends the database is its own property to do with is as it wishes. It vehemently rejects the description of its agreement with the government as a contract that somehow makes the Whois database government property.
Washington Post: The Web Prepares for Oral Exams.
"Computers are going to get more pervasive, and a lot of these devices don't have keyboards or displays. That's where speech will be moving over."
Online Journalism Review: Print Sites Still Wary of Chatting It Up.
In reality, most print media Web sites -- with a few notable exceptions -- run their message boards with benign neglect. They're decidedly dull and little-used.
Fast Company: The Email Prescription.
One reason why so many of General Interactive's clients are eager to do better at analyzing incoming messages is that they want to get smarter at responding to customers.
Microsoft Press Release: Microsoft Joins WAP Forum.
Microsoft will work with WAP Forum members to accelerate the deployment of wireless mobile devices...
News.Com: 3Com readies new wireless technology.
Analysts say 3Com is entering the market at the right time as standards are being finalized and technology is improving.
Wired News: A Personal Data Privacy Bureau?
Privacy and consumer groups on Thursday will urge White House officials to take aggressive steps to regulate what online businesses can do with consumers' personal information.
ZDNN: MS, AT&T marry on digital cable.
In return, AT&T will agree to use Microsoft's Windows CE operating system in its digital set-top boxes.
Wired News: Customers Rule on the Web.
[SmithKline CEO Jan Leschly] Pharmaceutical companies will have to respond to a consumer revolution, driven in part by Web sites that provide health information directly to patients...
Editor & Publisher: USA Today Accepts Ads on Front Page.
Page One ads are unheard of among daily newspapers because most publishers consider the front page sacred — a place for news only.
May 7, 1999
TechWeb: Guru: Engineers Won't Design Next-Gen Systems.
[Donald Norman] Instead, future systems will be designed "by psychologists and social scientists working in combination with engineers and technologists," he said he predicted.
Web Review: Why do so many Web sites suck?
Michael Swaine. Web site design produces a product that you can't hold in your hands, that can be altered in seconds, and that probably will be changed in a day or so and completely replaced in a few months.
Editor & Publisher: Milestone on the Road to Digital Paper.
Steve Outing. With digital display devices that don't punish our eyes, the information revolution might actually lessen our use of real paper.
TechWeb: NSI Retools For Better DNS Service.
The goal: near 100 percent uptime that will let millions of prospective e-businesses securely and instantly access the database.
Webmonkey: The Web Accessibility Initiative.
The issues coming out of this ongoing civil rights struggle are almost identical to the issues facing the Web authoring community at large.
Wired News: Sites Must Retool for Disabled.
"But technology and new computer languages, like XML, are emerging so quickly now that a more useful approach would be to work with and adapt the new technology to enable the users, rather than restrict the old technology, which seems disabling..."
XML.Com: The Evolution of a Privacy Standard.
Soon all major Web sites will be expected to post both a human and machine-readable description of their privacy practices online.
Industry Standard: Excite Does a Little Portal Trendsetting.
But last week Excite signed a deal with Seattle-based Punch Networks to get the capability to publish and share personal files, such as text documents, spreadsheets and graphics, via the Web.
Interactive Week: 3Com Cuts The Wires.
This summer, 3Com plans to launch Palm.net, a combination wireless data service and portal site for its Palm VII handheld device.
Freedom Forum: Video games hit mainstream with advent of virtual property.
Jon Katz. The idea of virtual property is radical, almost completely unforeseen by the legions of futurists and cyber-theorists studying the Internet.
Industry Standard: Does Big Brother Live in Redmond?
Good intentions or not, Microsoft's software dominance creates troublesome privacy issues.
Web Review: The Emotion Engine.
"What you see in the Playstation II is a workstation-class computing platform; you'll definitely see additional functionality and applications besides just playing games..."
Red Herring: Will cable crimp Internet advertising?
With the accelerated rollout of digitally compressed content, cable is beginning to offer advertisers targeted delivery of TV ads.
News.Com:Idealab may buy PointCast.
Idealab not only would contribute money to the company, but provide management expertise and allow PointCast to do business with the other Internet companies in its portfolio.
News.Com: Slate expands with multimedia, e-commerce.
The political- and social-satire magazine will highlight the Microsoft brand name with links to the company's MSN network of Web sites...
PC World: Electronic Books for All.
Electronic Book Exchange (known as EBX) is a comprehensive e-book standard developed for book publishers, sellers, distributors, libraries, and consumers alike...
ZDNN: AltaVista opportunity slipping away?
"They're spinning their wheels. You haven't seen the kind of changes you would expect if they're trying to pull the sites into a portal."
May 8, 1999
NY Times: Making an Ally of Piracy.
Excerpt of Jaron Lanier's manifesto, "Piracy Is Your Friend." The real question should not be, "How can I keep my fans from hearing my music for free?" It should be, "How can I best make money from my fans?" Those are two different questions.
InfoWorld: Internetworkers need `synchronets' to help them work and travel.
Chief among the infrastructure requirements for effective internetworking is the capability to rapidly and easily synchronize data stored in different locations, across what I will call (for lack of a better term) "synchronets."
Advertising Age: Portal envy.
Alan Siegel and Andrew Zolli. The portals are presented with an incredible opportunity to innovate. The first one that stops senselessly piling on commodity technologies and delivers site visitors a true branded and integrated experience will reap extraordinary rewards.
[clip]: Picture-Perfect Data Mining.
While spreadsheet tools have long allowed users to chart and graph data in 2-D and 3-D, today's advanced visualization technologies incorporate aspects of data mining and computer modeling...
InfoWorld: Residential broadband deployment will bring convergence down to earth.
Pendse's answers are that product complexity drives abandonment. Shoppers too often reach a point online where they can't ask a quick question of a knowledgeable human, so they punt.
[clip]: Revolutionary Thinking.
Q&A with Guy Kawasaki. I can't say how many plans we read that say, "We'll have great content, get a lot of eyeballs, sell sponsorships and advertising and see what happens." It's got to be a little more lucid than that.
Industry Standard: Too Much Bandwidth.
Service providers must exploit the window of opportunity and bring to market high-value-added applications that enable "teleliving" and "telecommerce."
Upside: Will Consumers Ignore Ebates.com?
...ebates.com executives were camped out in a suite full of room-service carts, jawing with journalists about the thought of paying customers rebates of up to 25 percent for each item they buy online.
Industry Standard: Netmogul! The Musical.
Carl Steadman. "I've got a dream! An Internet dream! Well, it's more of a scheme! My Internet dream!"
May 9, 1999
NY Times: An Upfront Approach to Internet Privacy.
In Godin's lexicon, that cooperation is the essence of permission marketing, which has three basic components: It is anticipated, it is personal and it is relevant.
NY Times: Targeted Marketing Confronts Privacy Concerns.
"The Internet has changed the characteristics of information," Williams said. "It used to be that a bank robber would go to a bank to steal money. Now the information about customers is almost as valuable as the financial assets themselves."
NY Times: Publishing Industry Contends With the Uncertainties of E-Books.
The culture of technology has collided with the slower-moving book industry, which is engaged in a tense, early clash over how to divide up the spoils of an infant business that is still difficult to picture in scope and potential.
SJ Mercury: MP3 sets new tune for recording industry.
Dan Gillmor. The record label of tomorrow will trust the Net, not fear it. This company will use the Web to seed, not tease, the market. Technologies like MP3 will be an ally, not the enemy.
CBS MarketWatch: Internet ad specialists hail the soft sell.
"The Web's a venue, a network, a community that needs to be nurtured and not marketed at," Bloom said. "Don't re-create what was our past."
NY Times: Turning 'Sticky Traffic' Into Advertising Dollars.
To ask Tom Phillips, the chief executive of Deja News, to describe the makeover he has given his business is to get a primer on Internet buzzwords.
NY Times: Defining the Online Chief at eBay.
"I was looking for a brand builder to help make eBay a household name. Understanding technology was not the central ingredient. You have to get the emotional component of the customer experience in your gut."
CBS MarketWatch: Ad people just don't get the Net yet.
To be sure, the conference speakers were not entirely to blame for the dearth of insight. The attendees and organizers, whose roots lie largely in the old media ad-sales world, demonstrated little understanding of the Net's interactive potential.
NY Times: US West to Offer Web-Linked Screen Phones.
US West Corp. intends to announce Monday that it will introduce a phone developed by Alcatel of France that includes a color screen, pop-out keyboard and one-touch access to the World Wide Web.
NY Times: Sports Retailers Join Together to Win at E-Commerce.
But the retailers hope that by joining forces with some of their traditional rivals, they will be able to block any of the Internet-only sporting goods companies...
ZDNN: Gaming's Next Move: E3 Expo Preview.
New video-game consoles, renewed scrutiny over violence and Internet-enabled games everywhere -- the game industry is changing.
SJ Mercury: WebTV's role in the PC and television of the 21st century
Q&A with Steve Pearlman. They need to think like a consumer electronics maker. And they have to stop testing things they design on their friends.
MSNBC: Investors find Priceline a deal, but travelers aren’t so sure.
But while investors enjoy the ride, most travelers are giving the service mixed reviews, enjoying the bargains when they can get them but upset with the hassles, hidden fees and restrictions that often come with online buying.
May 10, 1999
Scientific American: Hypersearching the Web.
Members of the Clever Project at the IBM Almaden Research Center. We have developed an automatic technique for finding the most central, authoritative sites on broad search topics by making use of hyperlinks, one of the Web's most precious resources.
Scientific American: Your 0.002 Cents' Worth.
Once they got out of the pilot phase, micropayment schemes suffered from the dark side of the law of increasing returns: consumers didn't want to download unproved e-commerce software without an attractive range of things they could buy.
MSNBC: Can you picture your data? They can.
There’s been a flurry of recent attempts to transform the Internet, and even your home computer, from lists of files and folders that you open and close into physical space that you move around in.
NY Times: FTC Appoints Team to Monitor Advertising Online.
"When Web sites, particularly Web sites marketing products to consumers, link to other sites, what are the implications of that information? It could well be that the other sites are operated by the same marketers, but they fail to disclose that..."
NY Times: Hospitals Reaching New Patients Online.
...a handful of health care organizations have put their imprimaturs on information-rich Web sites accessible to anyone with a modem.
PC World: Who Will Rule Instant Messaging?
"Microsoft's purchase of Flash Communications [an instant messaging technology company] last year and Lotus's acquisition of both DataBeam and Ubique last year illustrate how serious they are about real-time software."
Interactive Week: Google On Searching: Do It Fast.
Brin thinks the search engines of yore - now known as portals - were led astray by their focus on page views. "Page views are a red herring..."
Interactive Week: Search Engines Chase Profit.
Ad revenue is not the panacea it was once proclaimed, and there's the escalating cost of getting attention.
News.Com: Microsoft, Nextel in $600 million deal.
Microsoft today said it will take a stake in Nextel Communications and announced plans for a new wireless portal via its MSN network of Internet services.
SJ Mercury: Yahoo's surfing team sets course for content.
The ``uniquely valuable thing'' boils down to editorial judgment, in Srinivasan's view. Basically, she says, Yahoo's surfers operate much as a newspaper or magazine would.
Salon: MSN UK's "naked" experiment: E-shop or die!
Scientific behavioral study or shameless marketing ploy?
Interactive Week: Web Traffic Stats Don't Add Up.
"The real story is that measurement is all over the map," said Jim Nail, online advertising analyst at Forrester Research. "In terms of getting reliable data, we're nowhere yet."
Interactive Week: Broadband On The Run.
...content publishers today are on the hunt for the right formula for delivering a new type of online experience to users with network links that can shuttle data at 10 times the speed of today's users of dial-up links to the Web.
Business Week: Web Advertising's Newest Tool: Your Cursor.
"I suspect that the first few times consumers run across it, they'll find it entertaining and appealing," he says. "But [a changing cursor] will lose its appeal if it becomes too common. Too much of it can be confusing and annoying..."
DaveNet: Dreams or Teams?
To the user the music business is simple but the content is complex. Today we're using the Silent Web. I can't wait for singing and talking sites.
Industry Standard: NBC Snaps Up Xoom.
The new venture, to be called NBC Internet, combines the Snap.com venture of CNET and NBC with Xoom.com and NBC Interactive, which includes NBC.com.
News.Com: Pointcast acquired by Idealab.
Terms of the deal were not disclosed. But sources peg the price at about $10 million in cash and stock...
TechWeb: German RealNames System Debuts On Fireball.
In the fast-growing overseas market, he said, Centraal has an opportunity to train millions of novice users in the RealNames way of surfing the Web.
Industry Standard: Small Shops Battle Back With BookSense.
The ABA's weapon is an e-commerce initiative called BookSense.com – a storefront provided by the ABA to its members that will contain a common, fully searchable database of 1.6 million books and a means to purchase those books...
Business Week: The Delivery Dilemma Could Box In E-Commerce.
"If the residential delivery marketplace is to become a reality of the E-commerce revolution, then most companies will be required to service it..."
News.Com: Revamped Deja News debuts.
"Ads aren't doing it for them. Subscriptions don't seem to work on the Web, with very few exceptions. So what's left? E-commerce."
Internet World: What Do You Name a Net Firm? Hurry, the Choices Are Dwindling.
"They cannot find a name that's also an available URL, or if they do, it's something similar to a competitor's registered service mark, and they can't use it."
May 11, 1999
Freedom Forum: ShutUp Software: Net threat from within.
Jon Katz. I think it's ill-considered, a way of Balkanizing sites and communities, of exposing people only to the echoes of their own ideas, of distorting reality and discouraging real communication.
Computer World: Real-time inventory management still an online rarity.
Many online retailers are spending heavily on customer acquisition, with less attention to customer service and back-end systems.
Computer World: ... but a few stores do offer instant inventory info.
The problem for online retailers is that most start out with a legacy processing system and stick a Web site on the front end...
Computer World: Future.Com.
The future of the Internet is bound up in myriad technical issues, but the ability of the Net to accommodate skyrocketing traffic dominates all else, says Vinton G. Cerf...
MSNBC: Sony Music to sell ‘virtual singles’ using technology from Microsoft.
The Internet singles will be available this summer and are expected to cost about $3.49 a piece, the same price as in stores.
TechWeb: Start-Up Brings Web Access To Handheld PCs.
AvantGo will offer consumers and businesses connectivity to HTML-based personalized content, interactive applications, and popular websites, tailored for handheld computers.
Forbes: Downhill for Deja News.
So when Deja News premiered its e-commerce makeover yesterday it was much more than just another content site desperately looking for profits that it couldn’t generate via advertising.
NY Times: I.B.M. Sets a New Record for Magnetic-Disk Storage.
The advance is significant, said IBM researchers, because it contrasts recent remarkable progress made by magnetic storage systems with that of silicon memory chips...
Business Week: And Now from RealNetworks, E-Commerce and Streaming Media.
...the company plans to announce a partnership called Buy@Once with two other Net companies to provide a technology that can embed a purchase offer into streaming media embedded in E-mail...
InfoWorld: Chief scientist at Rational calls for Web app discipline.
...Grady Booch, chief scientist at Rational Software, said that as the complexity of Web sites increases alongside scalability problems, the challenges facing developers are only going to increase.
ZDNN: FTC focuses on Web ads.
The FTC on Friday will detail its proposal to "clarify how existing laws apply to advertising and commercial transactions on the Internet...
Forbes ASAP: Stealing traffic online.
Although the decision sets a course for the rest of the nation, we're still a long way from solving the problem of brand erosion and trademark infringement on the Internet.
News.Com: Global group seeks movie-like Net ratings.
...formed the Internet Content Rating Association (ICRA) to promote a system that lets Web publishers review and rate their online material...
News.Com: AOL turns on TV deals.
...the online giant hopes that its AOL TV product will bring interactivity to the television experience while extending AOL services through television.
Wired News: Log on, Tune in, Buy Now.
GetMedia's new Web-based system allows radio listeners to view song titles as they play on a station along with the chance to buy the CD on the spot.
News.Com: Artists pre-release albums on Amazon.
Companies will soon be experimenting with a number of different types of online promotions, many of them involving digital music downloads, trying to see what will work.
PC World: Together We Search, United We Find.
To demonstrate how personal computers can cooperate for the common good, the Electronic Frontier Foundation is offering a $50,000 prize to the first person to find a million-digit prime number...
May 12, 1999
TechWeb: Berners-Lee Says Patents Obstruct An Open Web.
"We have to change the ethos," he said. "When the person from the patent department comes around and asks if you have invented anything, just say you have invented a lot, but nothing that hasn't been invented before. Now just go away, and let me do my job."
- Useit.Com: From December 27, 1998; Predictions for the Web in 1999.
Companies that don't claim their stake in the future will wake up in five years and discover that their competitors own all the patents they need to be on the Web.
- NY Times: From December 27, 1998; Behold the Technology Patents! Behold the String of Lawsuits!
"Regrettably, the only way to look credible in this game is to play hardball," Quinn said. "The name of the game is to take no prisoners."
Harvard Business Review: Welcome to the Experience Economy.
Economic offerings, not forms of intelligence, comprise the substance of buying and selling, and we argue that experiences represent an existing but largely unrecognized form of economic output.
CBS MarketWatch: Apple sets stage for e-commerce.
Sherlock II, for example, according to Jobs, will let users comparison shop across multiple e-commerce outlets straight from the computer's desktop (and bypassing the portals).
News.Com: Will Apple become an e-commerce portal?
So far, Apple executives are playing down the idea that they are seeking new revenue streams outside of selling hardware and software.
Red Herring: Rooftop sees the Internet on your chimney.
Rooftop's supporters say that wireless Internet technology will enable ISPs to beat most telecom companies to the market for Internet access at rates from 100 Kbps to 500 Kbps...
News.Com: Study: Data privacy policies fall short.
More Web sites are posting privacy policies, but most of the notices are inadequate...
Business Week: Roger Black Has Designs on the Web.
...Black feels developers are only beginning to analyze people's "clickstreams" -- the paths they take, the buttons that intrigue them, where they get lost, what words turn them off.
Wired News: A Real Dilemma for Webcasters.
Still, when RealNetworks recently began promoting a new version of ad-blocking software, some of its clients were aghast. After all, Webcasters depend on banner advertising to survive.
PC Week: MIT's LCS: A Whiff of 'Oxygen'.
Dubbed "Oxygen," this effort is designed to create the environment that will be as important to our lives as the element.
PC Week: Listening to customers can be dangerous.
As tempting as it is to listen to customers' concerns, you can learn the hard way that many of them don't really know what they want.
Webmonkey: Designing Web Sites for PDAs.
...but to really fulfill the promise of the PDA, Web sites need to be made available. Beware: no content, no PDA party.
News.Com: Redmond bids for Swedish Net firm.
Sendit was founded in 1994 and its main product is Internet Cellular Smart Access (ICSA) which gives users access to the Internet and email through mobile telephones.
News.Com: Net number system at a crossroads.
And the perceived scarcity of addresses is just the beginning. As more computers connect to the Net, the databases that map the numbers are growing larger and becoming unwieldy.
News.Com: Shortage of CE color screens may drag on.
"All these different segments of growth occurred at a time when the industry chose not to expand..."
News.Com: Visa, Mastercard try to revive SET.
Authentication is SET's strong suit, but the way it's done is cumbersome, which is the chief knock against the payment protocol.
TechWeb: PGP Creator Squashes Key Recovery.
[Phil Zimmermann] "Not only can we keep key recovery out of PGP, but we can extend that to other products that are not in our purview. So, there is absolutely no danger of key recovery ever getting into PGP."
ClickZ: CEO E-Biz Survival Kit.
People who've got more business experience in their little finger than a whole room of 20-something cyber-entrepreneurs, but somehow had a major blind spot when it comes to taking the business into the next century.
MSDN Online: The Essential Bookshelf for Good UI Design.
To follow is my short list of recommended books and resources to use as a starter kit for anyone who wants to make useful products or Web sites.
May 13, 1999
News.Com: Peapod delivers more than groceries.
"Groceries as the core enables you to put trucks on the street," said Peapod chief executive Andrew Parkinson. "Then you can add other products to deliver, and you can do it cheaper than to drop-ship them," a reference to using an overnight delivery service like UPS or Federal Express.
TechWeb: Amateurs Lead Web Community-Building.
Rheingold said high-quality communication, a registration process, and trust are keys to online community, as well as a technology that engenders a free flow of conversation, not just a bulletin board.
TechWeb: IBM Guru Warns Of Explosive Net Growth.
Patrick said the new standard needs to be approved to expand an IP address system that is limited by its 32-bit size to a total of 4 billion addresses for the end spots on a network. With the new system, every proton in the universe can get an IP address...
NY Times: Prime Web Addresses Still Elude Some Companies.
The concern is that having a less-than-obvious Web address could be costly as the Web becomes a mass medium and corporate sites turn into virtual storefronts.
Red Herring: Keynote wants to be Kleenex of the Net.
....she's saying that the site performance measurement service may become so well-branded that the name Keynote will become synonymous with performance measurement...
TechWeb: Fraudsters Attack Internet Ad Model.
The scientists said people were embarking on new methods to cheat on click-through ad models while others were putting up bogus advertisements to embarrass vendors.
Builder.Com: Critique of TheStreet.Com
As a content provider, I am fascinated by any company that actually gets people to pay for its site's content.
RCFoC: The Potential European Internet Explosion!
How might European Internet use (and Ecommerce) explode if ISP prices go down and, more importantly, people can surf for hours on end without any phone charges?
News.Com: Amazon details its shopping habits.
Amazon.com spent $250 million to acquire Alexa Internet, a substantial sum for a company whose net revenue was little more than $370,000 last year...
Wired News: EFalcon Preys on Credit Fraud.
For the last six years, Falcon, software based on neural networks, has been analyzing the purchasing patterns of more than 260 million credit cards. Over time, it has learned to spot the telltale signs of fraud.
Freedom Forum: Immediacy, original content make online news for real, journalists say.
Eroding that skepticism today is a marriage of immediacy and original information, said Heller and fellow panelists during the discussion, "Online News: What Is It Good For?"
PC Week: 100 innovators in Internet technology.
This PC Week Fast-Track tallies the North American companies that are most aggressively using Web-based technologies to restructure themselves and their industries.
Freedom Forum: Proposed U.S. government Web site regulations approved
Recommendations for strict new federal regulations to make government and some private Web sites more accessible to the disabled were approved unanimously yesterday...
ZDNN: Are Web auctions classified killers?
Newspapers -- which earn as much as 40 percent of their revenue from classified advertising -- are nervous about what the growing industry might mean for their future.
News.Com: Sears to sell appliances on new Web site.
The appliance retailer said in a statement that it will sell more than 2,000 brand name appliances over the Internet, which is more than four times the size of the company's nearest online competitor.
May 14, 1999
New Scientist: Paper goes electric.
In the US, two groups of researchers--one in California, the other on the East Coast--have created electronic versions of paper and ink.
Wired News: When Tech and Music Collide.
According to a source who attended the SDMI meeting last week, participants discovered that the Internet and music industries have precious little in common.
Wired News: Bringing the Web Closer
...duplicates content from popular Web sites -- a news site like CNN Interactive, for example -- onto the Akamai network. Intelligence built into the server network determines when and where a site's content should be relocated.
CNNfn: WWW Conference - IBM Search Engine "Trawls" Web.
Entitled "Trawling the Web for Emerging Cyber Communities," the paper describes an approach that uses patterns of interconnections among Web sites to discover communities that one might not expect.
Business Week: Paul Allen's E-Commerce Play: Bring the Buying Club to the Net.
What if you could gather consumers together on the Net, concentrate their demand for certain products, and get volume discounts for those goods?
SJ Mercury: Yahoo has designs on corporate market.
...it will collaborate with Tibco Software Inc. to offer businesses an easy way to create intranets, or Web-based corporate networks.
Advertising Age: SportsLine USA develops way to create loyalty and grow database.
SportsLine hopes the program will help solve two of the Web's most vexing problems today: how to turn occasional site visitors into loyal customers, and how to learn enough about those customers to market to them on a one-to-one basis.
ClickZ: Can I Buy You A Drink?
I believe that incentives and points are great ways to attract attention. But I don't think they have what it takes to create and maintain customer loyalty.
Upside: No News, Just Deja.
...Deja Ratings is barely better than the kind of well-rounded consumer advice you can get from talking to strangers on any form of mass transit.
Forbes ASAP: Recipe for e-commerce success.
RoweCom Inc. is using the net to quietly transform the way corporations and institutions purchase and manage their subscriptions to magazines and professional journals.
Web Review: The State of Streaming Media.
Streaming media tools and technologies are tumbling down the pipeline toward us now.
ZDNN: Overcoming the Web's credibility gap.
The Suite is essentially a workflow management application, but it includes a certification server that lets users attach a digital certificate to the content.
May 15, 1999
InfoWorld: Corporate portals help early users control data deluge.
If the intranet was developed as a place where corporate content could reside, the portal is designed to dynamically organize that information.
Useit.Com: Spotlight of the rapidly growing flow of press releases and PR email.
The Web is a new publishing paradigm with eternal archives (at least on welll-designed sites) so it may require new thinking among PR strategists to learn how to best deal with persistent publishing...
Computer Shopper: When Freedom Hurts.
In response to content creators' fears, some vendors are creating digital-rights management products, which can be viewed as fail-over protection for our collective common sense.
Computer Shopper: Cisco and Motorola to Create Open IP Architecture.
This type of network could deliver truly unified messaging and allow the consumer to use a single Web-based mailbox to send and receive voice mail, e-mail, and fax messages.
SJ Mercury: Valley is long on ideas, but desperately short on management talent.
Dan Gillmor. Maybe there's a better question: Are there that many good companies that can turn the good ideas into real businesses?
Forbes ASAP: Startup turning browsers into buyers.
"It turns a web site into a geographical place and contextualizes the experience," says John Hanke, president of The Big Network. "People can shop together. We think it will really appeal to the ICQ generation."
InfoWorld: Internet Epidemiology meets Pay-As-We-Go at signs of slowing growth.
Bob Metcalfe. The reality is that without payment systems such as SoftLock.com's, a lot of premium online content will be not free, but unavailable.
NY Times: Small Campaign Web Sites May Collide With Election Laws.
Critics of the FEC argue that applying existing election law to the Internet will stanch the cascade of political expression that the medium makes possible.
May 16, 1999
Useit.Com: Who Commits the "Top Ten Mistakes" of Web Design?
Major websites violate 16% of the top ten mistakes in Web design on the average; huge corporate sites have many more design mistakes than the most popular sites.
Advertising Age: E-commerce: Magazines' new darling.
Subscription models have had limited success and pure ad sales haven't been able to foot the bill. Now, though, publishers realize they can't view the Web just as a place to get more readers and advertisers for their print products.
ClickZ: Europe Who...?
I have always maintained that Europe is so far behind in its use and understanding of the web that it's not worth exploiting. The question is: Has the situation changed?
May 17, 1999
NY Times: Path From Old Media to New Becomes More Crowded.
What was daring and risky when Kinsley did it is now, just over three years later, so vogue it is edging toward commonplace.
Information Week: Customer Centricity In The Post-Y2K Era.
Global competitors appear every day, says Hjelm, and companies that provide the best customer service reach and keep customers at the expense of their competition.
Information Week: Behind The Numbers: A Customer By Any Other Name.
Most businesses not only fail to aggregate crucial customer data, they don't share a common customer definition. Even worse, many companies don't bother to clean out error-laden data records regularly.
Information Week: Closeness Counts.
For instance, a self-service Web application can let a small company provide attentive support without having to operate a huge call center.
News.Com: The battle of the banks
Banks seem to search for opportunities to charge incremental fees rather than finding ways to please the customer. This attitude will not win on the Web.
Webmonkey: Wait for it.
Peter Merholz. This is particularly true with e-commerce sites, where "image compels, text sells." Search engines that automatically return product thumbnails offer a far richer understanding of the product and provide visual cues that are used throughout the shopper's browse.
NY Times: AT&T Digital Music Unit Loses More Than Half of Its Workers.
The group will join Reciprocal Inc., a privately held company that creates software for managing rights to digitally distributed material, where they will start a new division dedicated to music.
Internet World: Solutions for Storage-Starved Sites
Storage isn't just an afterthought. If the Internet virtualizes a business into a set of information-exchange processes, then your data and what you do with it is critical to your business.
Red Herring: New mediator.
With a Third Voice client, a user can highlight text on a Web page and footnote the excerpt with a message. When another surfer with Third Voice's client visits the page, he or she can click on the footnote and read the previous person's comments.
Wired News: Readers Speak with Third Voice.
The free browser utility "snaps onto" the bottom of a Web browser window, and invites people to annotate a site with their views on news, products, and politics.
News.Com: Online, brick-and-mortar retailers join up.
...as so-called brick-and-mortar merchants scared of being "Amazoned" increasingly collaborate with online start-ups in an effort to establish their brands among Internet shoppers.
Interactive Week: Trivnet Taps ISPs For Micropayments.
Newcomer Trivnet is set to launch a micropayment system called WISP June 1 that makes it possible for cyberbuyers to be billed for their goods on their monthly Internet service provider statement.
NY Times: What This Has Been All About.Com.
"The old name was fine," she said. "In fact, I liked it more than some people. But About is simple and easier to remember."
Wired News: Canada Won't Regulate Net.
"The CRTC has no role to play in the development of the Internet in Canada -- not now, not later," said commission vice-chair David Colville.
TechWeb: Intel Joins Display Consortium.
Apparently seeking to accelerate adoption of microdisplay technology, Intel has joined the U.S. Display Consortium...
Information Week: E-Commerce And Customers.
Over the next few weeks, software vendors from a variety of backgrounds will introduce products that combine E-commerce and customer-relationship management capabilities.
Interactive Week: Paradox: Browsing The Future.
Thus was born a current Internet paradox: As browsers become bigger and ubiquitous, they have to become smaller in some cases.
Interactive Week: Portal Sites Get Very Specific.
Internet use has started dispersing from desktop computers, in many cases with dial-up access, to a much more diverse constellation of devices and connection speeds...
Reboot 2.0: Archive of Reboot 2.0 Presentation.
- Jeff Veen. LSD design: Logo, Search Box and Directory. Real streamed video; 28.8 and 56.
- Jonathan Steuer. Real streamed video; 28.8 and 64.
- Harlan Hugh. The Brain software. Real streamed video; 28.8 and 64.
Interactive Week: Speed Is Of The Essence.
For all that DSL technology promises, however, broadband wireless holds even greater potential, with its ability to circumvent the local copper infrastructure altogether.
ZDNN: Berners-Lee warns against Net patents.
Berners-Lee said one solution could involve companies' creating a code of ethics, where they would not patent or restrict the use of technologies that could expand the use and universality of the Internet.
Forbes: Webster boutiques.
As EDS and other huge consulting firms look to e-business as their next lucrative market, a few pesky obstacles stand in their way: tiny competitors.
NY Times: Interest in Online Bill Payment Grows.
...with some of the nation's biggest billers adopting online systems and one of the Internet's most popular Web sites expected to offer similar billing services by the end of the summer.
Interactive Week: Signing On The Dotted E-Line.
[Sen. Spencer Abraham, R-Mich] "Over 40 states have enacted electronic authentication laws, and no two laws are the same..."
May 18, 1999
Computer World: Retailers, manufacturers find ways to co-exist on electronic frontier.
"Any company that thinks it can dictate where a customer finds and buys goods online will end up with declining market share..."
Wired News: Europe: Flat Rate, or Else.
The lack of flat-rate Internet access is stalling Europe's ability to catch up to the United States in the global digital marketplace, a new report says.
Red Herring: Xerox packs an electronic briefcase.
The spin-off, named Uppercase, will commercialize a PARC-developed technology called E-Case. Rick Thoman, president and CEO of Xerox, said it would serve the functions of an actual physical briefcase.
Microsoft Press Release: Microsoft, Xerox to Bridge Digital and Paper Worlds.
In addition, Microsoft has licensed the Xerox PARC-developed WebForager, a user-interface technology that enables Web surfers to leaf through the virtual pages of the Net...
Time Digital: Amazon Invests in Home Delivery Grocer.
Right now the Homegrocer.com delivery service is limited to Seattle and Portland, but a national roll-out might provide Amazon.com with a new way of getting "books, music and more" to customer homes.
[clip]: Community Building.
Not only does it strengthen brand awareness and loyalty, it also provides insights into the customer experience without going out and hiring a market research firm.
[clip]: Marketing Online.
Q&A with Jim Sterne. And customer experience equals brand. When you talk about integrating traditional marketing with Web, it's recognizing that it's all about brand.
ClickZ: Project Personalization.
The company's goal is to deliver a user experience consisting of speed, convenience and highly personalized service. Outpost.com embarked on its personalization projects about two years ago in order to accomplish this goal.
USA Today: Twosome tells wired world what's news.
Brooks writes the headlines that greet the 1 million visitors to Yahoo!'s home page every day; Abrams performs a similar function for portal Lycos' 536,000 daily visitors...
PC World: Third Voice: Invisible Web Graffiti.
This kind of ongoing public commentary may seem like a good idea in principle, but then again chat rooms are a marvel of digital egalitarianism as well--and we all know the general level of discourse there. It's the old lowest common denominator problem.
TechWeb: Third Voice Could Change Web, Analysts Say.
The Group function could be the service's saving grace, because it lets a limited group of individuals have private conversations.
USA Today: The Net holds us together.
"The Internet transcends all of that," as Internet Society President Donald Heath told me in a recent interview. "People take what they find on the Internet and they protect it."
Wired News: EFF Tunes In to Digital Music.
In a platform statement released by the foundation, the group called on the recording industry to embrace open formats that the group said may "encourage the full flowering of individual expression."
Internet Week: Why Web Sites Fall Short.
The predominant reason most Web sites fall short of expectations, says CSC, is that business strategists and IT organizations are out of synch with one another.
Forbes ASAP: Customer loyalty programs on the Net slow to develop.
"Major sites and portals have been so focused on customer acquisition that retention has not been a top priority..."
SF Examiner: Intranet stores cut companies' costs on business resources.
More Intranet bookstores and knowledge stores are expected to pop up in the future as businesses increasingly look to manage their purchasing of knowledge resources online.
TechWeb: Philips To Invest $1.6BN In LG's LCD Business.
The move is further evidence of how increasingly high LCD development and production costs are forcing suppliers to pool resources.
Forbes: WebTV takes flight.
In the next generation WebTV device, the hard-drive size is expected to be boosted to nearly 18 gigabytes--which can store more than 90 minutes of TV programming--and will also have high-speed Internet connectivity.
May 19, 1999
Freedom Forum: Electric Media: Part 1.
Jon Katz. The e-community is an integral part of new media, and probably provides its most significant direction. It is, in most ways, the antithesis of conventional journalism — it's bottom-up, personal, passionately non-objective, anti-confrontational, and intensely linked and interactive.
PC World: Fit an Ocean on Your Palmtop.
AvantGo is betting that these devices--preferably, wireless versions of them--will be the newspapers of choice for mobile professionals.
Washington Post: Content vs. Commerce Online.
Despite Kinsley's sniping, Slate and Salon are soul mates. Both are taking on the so-far-confounding task of trying to build a profitable business around serious online commentary.
NY Times: Internet Fuels Revival of Centralized 'Big Iron' Computing.
Internet datacenters are sprouting up across the country in a sure sign of the trend toward once again housing information and computer power centrally -- a seeming reversal of the last two decades of computing.
ClickZ: Advertising In The Digital Age.
Being everything to everyone's not an asset. Try to keep things simple and be complete. The Net's a big, big place.
Industry Standard: How Not to Name your Net Play.
Each week, it seems, another Internet company changes its name, sacrificing millions of dollars in branding to be called something else.
Microsoft Press Release: Knowledge Workers Without Limits
...Gates outlined the concept of a "digital dashboard," which would provide people with a single place to go for all personal information such as email, schedule and tasks, as well as external data from web sites and corporate memory data...
IBM AlphaWorks: Micro Payments.
Micro Payments allows buyers, sellers and billing systems to sell content, information, and services over the Internet, for small amounts.
W3C: W3C Slides from WWW8.
From the W3C Track at the 8th International WWW Conference in Toronto.
Interactive Week: Gimme An E-Com Exec.
I think there's little question that a single, powerful change agent within the organization is needed to ensure that Web, computing and networking technologies; sale and marketing efforts; and payment, supply and delivery systems all work with a single purpose.
NY Times: Britain's Psion Challenges Microsoft in Developing 'Smart' Cell Phones.
The stakes are huge because the winner of this race will control the technology that cell phones and other high-speed wireless devices use to connect people to their e-mail, online stock brokers and myriad kinds of data on the Internet.
Industry Standard: Japan Explores Web Procurement
Japan's largest computer and consumer electronic vendors are turning to the Internet as part of broader moves to reduce their procurement and sales costs...
ChannelSeven: Jupiter: European Online households triple by 2003, but usage will remain low.
"Telephone usage is metered and that alone will continue to hold back the growth of online advertising, content and commerce ventures in Europe by inhibiting Internet usage."
ZDNN: AOL overhauls shopping center.
The company said today it will create Shop@AOL, a platform that dumps its current proprietary format in favor of using HTML.
May 20, 1999
Interactive Week: 3Com To Launch Wireless Palm.
Analysts said the way the pricing is structured, Palm VII users can expect to pay a healthy premium to get wireless data.
Time Digital: Monday Debut of Palm VII Heralds Era of Wireless Internet.
Additional transfers will run 30 cents per K, suggesting that spam victims will have to pay a dollar for each accidentally downloaded stock scam or porn promo.
ZDNN: What e-commerce really means.
If you think of the Web as a communications device and as a database front end rather than a cheap substitute for paper, you'll come up with many more ideas, and they'll be much more interesting.
- Useit.Com: From March 8, 1998; Better than Reality.
Instead of impoverished facsimiles of reality, design from a basis of strength and go beyond reality to things that are impossible in the physical world.
Online Journalism Review: Is Reliance on the AP Draining the Life from Online News?
As the same article gets posted on 20 different brand-name news sites, the differentiation between those brand names becomes smaller.
EE Times: Tomorrow's computers will let the dead speak, panelists say.
The four science-fiction authors, two of whom are also math and engineering professors, debated the future of user interfaces at the CHI 99 panel...
PC World: Shoppers Band Together on Mercata.
"Channel conflict is the biggest fear about this concept," said Shepard. "They [manufacturers] are afraid of the reaction in the traditional distribution chain."
News.Com: Merchants pay the price for portals.
Many Net merchants pay millions of dollars for premium placements on portal sites. But as e-commerce has matured, the value of those deals has become less clear.
Red Herring: Bloomberg builds a bigger black box.
Bloomberg officials see the ECN as a obvious extension of their original corporate vision, which is to provide an electronic pipeline of news, data, and content for the financial markets.
Business Week: A Conversation with Vinton Cerf, Part 2.
Q&A with Vint Cerf. The Internet community is waking up to the importance of fashioning Internet-based services so that they can be readily used by people with a variety of disabilities.
News.Com: What does the future hold for NSI?
Critics of the current system say it is inappropriate for NSI to serve as both a registry and registrar...
Wired News: The End of the American Mansion?
Susanka believes that technology and the Web will soon change the way people in the market for a new home find what they seek.
Forbes: e-Window shopping gets better.
Like Macromedia, MetaCreations is heading for a phase when revenues from its ongoing products will come under pressure as the company becomes more web-centric in its focus and repositions itself as a "creative web" company.
News.Com: AOL contemplates German flat rate.
The company's German unit, AOL Deutschland, is testing new pricing models with a flat monthly fee and low telephone charges for Internet access...
Interactive Week: Is Web Usage On The Decline?
But with a difference so small, some Web publishers are likely to blame the dip on statistical vagaries in measuring audiences on the Internet.
May 21, 1999
Business Week: Computing for the People.
Q&A with MIT's Michael Dertouzos. The way revolutions are made is by truly bringing this stuff into our lives. For example, the motor. You never say "motor," you say "refrigerator" to keep your food fresh, you say "car" for going to pick up your kids.
Upside: Bribing Your Customers.
Brand loyalty still exists, especially among certain consumer goods. But it is a dying concept, and the Web is helping to kill it off. Good riddance.
Freedom Forum: Electric Media: Part 2 — weblogs.
Jon Katz. Weblogs are a signicant step in the evolutionary chain of new media. They show us many of the things about the interactive culture that younger people like.
ClickZ: Mommy, Where Does Content Come From?
Spend enough time on the web, and pretty soon you start to see the same information over and over again.
Advertising Age: Web ad disclosures examined.
Marketers and ad agency executives attending the hearing worried that too strict a tie to print rules would, on one side, eliminate much of the Internet's usefulness...
Builder.Com: 10 Reasons No One Is Buying Anything on Your Site.
It's relatively easy to keep improving your Web site--and your e-commerce strategy. More to the point, it's essential if you want to survive in e-commerce.
Industry Standard: Sony Tries to Lock in Artists.
According to sources close to Sony, the label has slipped a clause into its contracts that gives the label control over an artist's official site...
Wired News: Web Museum, Yes, But Is It Art?
Stone defines Web art as "anything created for the Web, with a function that must be Web-related.
Upside: Hollywood Gets Three Dimensions.
[Rick Noll, founder of Activeworlds.com] "Three-dimensional worlds are the next generation of the Internet, as opposed to clicking through pages..."
AtNewYork: As Agency Model Wanes, Web Shops Look to New Ways.
Jason Chervokas. The challenges are enormous: First of all, interactive agencies by and large make their money in one-time fees for project work.
Forbes ASAP: Discussion group companies' business models are diverging.
"Consumers don't go to a site specifically to participate in a discussion group," says Munroe. "They go to a site like Amazon to purchase books and then get lured to participate in a discussion."
News.Com: Copyright bill may protect database owners.
With the proliferation of the Internet and CD-ROMs, which make it easier to copy information, database assemblers are lobbying for new safeguards for their current businesses and future ventures.
SJ Mercury: Intel develops `2001'-style portable computer.
``Just the fact that these devices are consumer products now is so different from the vision of 2001, and it's so different from what people's expectations were even a decade ago..."
PC World: Why Do Giant Sites Keep Crashing?
Unexpectedly high demand keeps overloading systems pieced together without sufficient testing, say analysts and companies that run the sites.
Wired News: Palm VII: 'A Definite Lemon'.
"Hardware and software elegance have been hallmarks of Palm products since the beginning. However, if the content of what comes in the box is a watered-down version of the Net, I believe that's going to turn [users] off."
May 22, 1999
MSDN Online: Personalization and Customization: Where Are They Now?
What's the difference between personalization, customization, and membership? In this article, we'll review the meanings of these often intertwined and hard to distinguish concepts.
Upside: The Handheld Future.
[Donna Dubinsky, the co-creator of the PalmPilot] "[The handheld] is going to be the paperback book of the Internet. We don't even know yet what the content will be."
ZDNN: AboveNet close to buying PAIX.
Most large networks avoid the public exchanges altogether and trade traffic privately among themselves.
Online Journalism Review: Downloadable Audio News: A Model for the Post-PC Future?
While most publishers view their involvement with Audible as more of an experiment than an engine of significant revenue, they are intrigued by the possibilities.
InfoWorld: Web father Berners-Lee shares next-generation vision of The Semantic Web.
Such a platform, Berners-Lee says, will give all our computing power and intelligent software something to climb around on.
InfoWorld: SpeechWorks CEO spells out good customer service.
Q&A with Stuart R. Patterson, CEO of SpeechWorks. [Amazon.com] and all of the big Web-commerce sites will eventually have support for phone access, just as there is [access] to support the Web.
- Useit.Com: From December 27, 1998; Predictions for the Web in 1999.
A flexible Web user interface would allow the user easy access to fixing the problem without having to call anybody.
InfoWorld: Push: The rumors of its demise have been greatly exaggerated.
In fact, push is more alive than ever -- it's just that content is being pushed through tried-and-true e-mail technologies, as it has been for years.
May 23, 1999
Editor & Publisher: Online Content: Growing Up, At Last.
Steve Outing. Well, it looks like 1999 is the year when content slowly begins to get its due. At least two events are scheduled this summer and fall that will focus exclusively on Internet content issues.
Internet Week: Egghead.com: E-Mail Handles Many Queries.
The company realized that e-mail was the answer. "Call centers are expensive to staff and not what most customers prefer..."
Internet Week: Mergers At Net Speed.
Although corporate mergers have always placed a heavy burden on IT staffs, the combination of pure Web companies means an even more crucial role for technology. For Web commerce sites, IT decisions don't just support the core business, they are the core business.
SJ Mercury: IBM Opening Access To Software.
...IBM is providing free access to powerful software that can translate data into pictures, helping researchers find hidden meaning and uses for the mountains of otherwise mundane information gathered every day.
- IBM Almaden Research Center: IBM Visualization Data Explorer.
It employs a data-flow driven client-server execution model and provides a graphical program editor that allows the user to create a visualization using a point and click interface.
PC Magazine: Palm VII.
Received messages are stripped of attachments because of bandwidth limitations; you can choose to receive from 250 to 8,000 characters of any e-mail message.
Suck: Ad it up! Does that banner yet wave?
And subsequently, the search for some kind of magical online ad revenue Viagra, capable of invigorating limp CPMs, eliminating unseemly ad inventory buildup, and overcoming the many shortcomings of the banner ad, persists.
May 24, 1999
PC Magazine: The All-Things Approach.
John C. Dvorak. And then there is this confused portal business, with every growing Web site trying to copy AOL, too. The irony is that many of them should have been specializing in one thing or another but couldn't resist trying to be AOL.
News.Com: Consumer sites offer lessons for e-business.
eBay, he noted, has moved from flea market status into high-end auctions with its acquisition of Butterfield & Butterfield and into vertical segments with its purchase of classic-car auction house Kruse International.
Webmonkey: Why Ask Why?
Too many Internet product ideas still come from Field of Dreams: "If we build it, they will come." These are ideas that sound brilliant to investors and reporters but oftentimes flop miserably when presented to real customers.
SJ Mercury: `Pioneers' put a human face on capitalism.
Q&A with author and columnist Tom Petzinger Jr. These ``pioneering companies,'' as I like to call them, are actually figuring out ways to deal with their customers as individual, sovereign, autonomous human beings.
NY Times: A Behind-the-Screens Glimpse of an Internet Retailer.
Contrary to the myths, rei.com says: Running brick-and-mortar stores has turned out to be not a liability but a huge advantage. The operating costs of the Web site have consistently gone up -- not down.
Wired News: Palm VII Goes to the Mall.
While online comparison-shopping services generally compare prices only among Net-connected retailers, Rolfe said that the PocketShopper will allow wireless PDAs to compare prices at stores without e-commerce operations.
Interactive Week: Shelving The Future.
Despite all the publicity about Jeff Bezos and his ever-expanding ambitions to sell online just about anything that doesn't move and lots of things that do, the bricks-and-mortar guys still are staring at his back bumper as he speeds away.
Interactive Week: Cascading Portals Feed Supply.
"Manufacturers will enable their resellers and share resources so that a small retailer or reseller can have the appearance of a running a multimillion-dollar site."
Salon: What does it take to make a buck off of Usenet?
No longer satisfied to serve as a nifty Usenet interface, the new Deja.com is angling for a more commercial identity, combining discussion areas with a participatory product ratings service a la Consumer Reports.
Interactive Week: Big Blue Gets InTouch With Speech.
"You can dial into the system and check e-mail; get news, weather and sports; and listen to RealAudio from Web sites, using simple voice commands..."
SJ Mercury: Wireless companies pitching data services.
Rather than connecting users to the full-blown Internet, they pass on just those bits of information that the users have said they want to receive.
News.Com: Huge leaps predicted for handhelds.
This growth will largely result from increased application development, including wireless and wired Internet access, and lower prices for the devices themselves.
Internet Week: Usage-Based Bandwidth: Pay As You Go.
...analysts say a pay as you go model is inevitable and will play a critical role in the natural evolution of the Internet becoming more like a utility.
PC Week: InfoSpinner patent for generating dynamic Web pages may ruffle feathers.
Keith Lowery, InfoSpinner's CTO, said the patent covers the process used in generating dynamic Web pages rather than a specific technology.
InfoWorld: Macromedia spreads its authoring tool wings.
Macromedia is also releasing the source code for the Flash 4 player, enabling any platform or application developers to integrate Flash playback capabilities into their products.
Industry Standard: Poor Rich Media.
The vendors of rich-media tools would like us to believe that rich-media ads are the wave of the future. But, in the meantime, fortunes are being earned on simple text and graphics.
Industry Standard: Coding Privacy.
The solution is to enable choice without words – to rely not on computers talking to humans, but on machines talking to machines.
A List Apart: The Illusion of Speed.
Jeffrey Veen. the near future, we'll be optimizing pages, squeezing every last byte from our sites, and doing whatever we can to make our designs load as quickly as possible.
Information Week: E-Commerce: New Sense of Urgency Companies rush for online market share.
Pressured by Internet startups that are rapidly amassing market share and loyal customers, established companies are making bold moves to build a bigger presence on the Web-fast.
NY Times: CDNow Struggles to be Heard.
Martin and other analysts said that Internet retailers are being increasingly taken to task by investors for the exorbitant amounts they have spent to acquire customers...
Forbes ASAP: Startup aims to turn copyrights into cash.
After it's official launch this fall, it will enable publishers to generate revenue from online content or any other content through the web.
Interactive Week: DoubleClick Elbows Into E-Commerce.
Highlighting the new initiatives are the equivalent of "syndicated stores" in which DoubleClick generates and serves custom, cobranded storefronts that can be promoted on its clients' Web sites.
News.Com: Big Blue's problem solving gets deeper.
"Deep computing combines the best of business and scientific computing techniques to find the value buried in all this data and to apply that information to solve real-world problems..."
Interactive Week: AboveNet To Buy PAIX.
...many in the access industry were dismayed to hear the PAIX would be run by a competitor, rather than a long-haul telecommunications carrier.
Industry Standard: Beyond the One-Man Band.
The app server crunches away behind the scenes, volleying instructions between the Web server and the legacy mainframe, monitoring transactions, creating and managing content that gets published on the site, storing data and more.
May 25, 1999
DaveNet: Edit This Page.
What's needed is a way to put the right software in front of the right keyboards, so people who love to write for the public and who do it well, have an easy way to do it.
SJ Mercury: Slashdot almost addictive for those who care.
Dan Gillmor. On one level, Slashdot is news. On another it's a discussion. But it transcends traditional genres and boundaries, creating something different -- and important -- from its mix of the old and new.
ClickZ: The Secrets Of Peppers and Roger.
"The biggest mistake companies make when implementing one to one," Peppers told me, "is underestimating the degree to which a web site needs to be integrated with other systems and data."
MacWeek: UCON show opens with Flash.
Burgess also said Macromedia plans to develop technology that will allow businesses to levy small charges for e-commerce transactions. "You don't have to charge much if millions of people are your marketplace..."
EE Times: Designers learn a thing or two from Barney.
"These technologies are helping to redefine computer-human interaction," said Druin. "They have an interface that begins the moment the child sees the toy..."
Red Herring: I'm gonna sue your ass!
Large, deep-pocketed companies have more resources to devote to legal and patent issues, and as a result, they have the power to obstruct, or even halt outright, the progress of smaller companies by embroiling them in legal disputes.
PC Week: Startup to propose alternatives to Internet Exchange Points.
...will reveal its intent by year's end to construct three new domestic "Internet Business Exchanges," where ISPs, content providers and other Internet vendors can locate their equipment and exchange traffic.
Microsoft Press Release: Four New Initiatives Build on Vision of "Knowledge Workers Without Limits".
Essentially, these portals will use Microsoft Office 2000 to build windows into external, corporate and personal data allowing for a complete set of information from inside and outside the company.
Wired News: E-Books Taking Shape.
The Microsoft-led Open e-Book 1.0 draft specification is based on HTML and XML, and defines a standard method for formatting and delivering content to electronic reader devices.
Red Herring: Radical wireless technology may have its time.
According to the company, the system can carry several orders of magnitude more data than conventional communications technology and support an essentially unlimited number of users.
Computer World: The power of electronic play.
Don Tapscott. If they play their cards right, game creators could end up driving the entire entertainment, learning and IT industries.
Industry Standard: Inside the Department of E-commerce.
At the first-ever government conference devoted to measuring the economic impact of information technology, federal beancounters were the first to admit that current indicators don't work.
InfoWorld: Is Microsoft waffling on Wireless Application Protocol?
If Microsoft wants its Office and Exchange products to be accessed by these phones, it will have to make its products able to work with WAP.
ZDNN: WebTV: And then there were two.
On Tuesday, the Mountain View, Calif., company announced that Perlman would be the first to move on from WebTV...
ZDNN: Infoseek ready to get GOing.
Over the next year, the company plans to beef up the site up with such features as event guides, member directories, chat, instant messaging and an e-commerce platform.
Business Week: Hello, Internet.
But as wireless-data speeds increase 100-fold with the advent of so-called Third Generation technology, Net phone capabilities will soar.
May 26, 1999
USA Today: Anthropologists adapt technology to world's cultures.
Like everyone else, anthropologists and ethnographers increasingly are finding jobs with high-tech companies, using their highly developed skills as observers to study how people live, work and use technology.
Industry Standard: Home (page) on the Range.
Today, the Internet is about to bring more sweeping changes to U.S. farming – which, while depressed, is still a $250 billion industry.
InfoWorld: Andreessen singles out consumers as key to Web future.
"You can't determine whether to build a bridge by counting the number of swimmers," Andreessen said. "Consumers don't care about technology at the end of the day."
Forbes: Internet Alchemy.
Compaq wants to reduce the time it takes to funnel customer inquiries to the right individual from ten days to 24 hours.
NewMedia Magazine: Strengthening Your Weak Links.
Both online and brick-and-mortar companies need to look at how they can improve every point of contact they have with the customer.
Information Week: Slow Down Transactions.
...E-commerce requires real-time transactions at certain points. But at other points, it also requires browsing, shopping, mulling over, and trying out nonbinding "what if" scenarios on the way to a full-fledged commitment.
NewMedia Magazine: Think Globally, Act Locally.
A successful international Web project first requires top-notch translation. Second, it has to be appealing and useful in a foreign market--a taller order.
Useit.Com: Spotlight of USA Today's use of different headlines in their printed newspaper and on their website.
There is an odd dual goal of attracting readers to the article while still protecting users from clicking on anything they won't be interested in...
InfoWorld: Microsoft pushes standards for electronic books.
Now, several members of the authoring group are abandoning their own proprietary formats for book content, hoping that e-books finally will take off commercially.
News.Com: Intel molds chip mindset for Web thrust.
Intel's $200 million investment yesterday in Williams Communications is the chip giant's first tangible step toward becoming a Web hosting firm...
PC Week: IT.com supersites.
All elements held equal weight, except for one--customization--which really makes or breaks the user experience. "There is a difference between a site that is pushing products and a site that is trying to serve the customer..."
ZDNN: When is a hit not a hit?
Analysts don't know whether the portals are drawing interested users, or simply harvesting clueless surfers who left their browser on the default home page.
Wired News: Australia Poised to Bury Porn.
Australia is close to joining the ranks of China, Iran, Burma, and other nations that censor a broad range of adult-oriented material on the Internet.
NY Times: Australia to Vote on Internet Curbs.
Passage "would put us out of sync with our major information economy trading partner, the U.S.," he said. "Content regulation is effectively the same as commerce regulation."
PC World: Cerf's Up for Net Entertainment.
Q&A with Vinton Cerf. You can't stop technology. It just doesn't work. So you have to figure out how to live with it. And so in this case, the way in which producers of music are compensated [in future] may be very different than the way it has been done.
Wired News: Music for the Masses.
The foundation called the meeting to refine a platform, develop educational and legal strategies to protect open standards in the digital music space...
Upside: Agents Cater to Your Needs.
The key to Cheyer's approach is open agent architecture (OAA), a high-level framework that aids communication among far-flung programs.
The Chronicle of Higher Education: A Virtual Environment Will Let Brown U. Researchers Walk Through Their Data.
Humans, he says, also have "a tremendous capacity for detecting even small visual patterns. That's what we're leveraging when a scientist tries to visualize data," he says.
New Media Magazine: Ask Jeeves Answers Corporate Needs.
The editors are critical to Ask Jeeves' power. "Humans are very good at cognitive decision making," says Warthen. "When we designed our system we were very conscious of how to get human value added."
PC Week: Microsoft's Vizact 2000 creates dynamic documents.
...Vizact 2000 uses HTML+Time, a specification developed by Microsoft, Compaq Computer Corp. and Macromedia Inc. that adds XML tags to HTML for activating type, graphics, video and audio based on time.
NY Times: Encryption Company to Enter Market for Assuring Web Transactions.
John Ryan, the president of Entrust, said this week that Entrust would charge about 15 percent less for its certificates than VeriSign.
May 27, 1999
FEED Magazine: The Web's Dying Metaphors.
Steven Johnson. All of which leads us to the great irony of the web's war on metaphor: even as the ad sales departments and the evangelists rumble about the web's legitimacy as an entertainment medium, the brand names regress into ever-more banal variations on a Yellow Pages theme.
Red Herring: eBay makes strategic shipping investment.
...as eBay grows it will need to expand its role beyond introducing buyers to sellers, to other services involved in facilitating transactions, such as handling payments.
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