Cyber-Serfdom
Then there was the panel about the 21st-century corporation, during which participants described this age of
digital Darwinism in chilling terms: The key to winning in business today is adapt or die, get wired or get
killed, work 24 hours a day from everywhere or be left behind. Finally, during the question time, Howard
Stringer, chairman of Sony America, stood up and said: "Doesn't anyone here think this sounds like a vision
of hell? While we are all competing or dying, when will there be time for sex or music or books? Stop the
world, I want to get off."
href="http://www.nytimes.com/2001/01/30/opinion/30FRIE.html?pagewanted=all

Violence Finds a Niche in Children's Cartoons
A pug-nosed thug kicks in an elderly
storekeeper's face. Then he punches a
young heroine in the eye and cracks her in
the small of the back with a heavy bar stool. Her
limp frame collapses to the ground as he stands over
her with his gun drawn and pointed at her head.

Two young boys are in a fistfight on a moving
boxcar. A friend tries to intervene. But an older and
very respected boy advises: let the fight continue.
Sometimes, he says, friends need to bare fists in
order to strengthen the bonds of friendship. They
resume.

A little girl karate-kicks another little girl so hard
that she flies through the air. Her head smashes into
a cement post. She is knocked cold.
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/01/28/business/28TOON.html?pagewanted=all

ClickZ : Top Reasons for Abandoned Online Purchases
Apparently online retailers are losing approximately $3.8 billion in revenue due to the fact that four out of five consumers give up before completing an online purchase.

The reasons given for abandoning purchases are varied. Of consumers who bailed out of a purchase, 52 percent said that too much data was required.

http://clickz.com/cgi-bin/gt/article.html?article=3178

A Vision for Books That Exults in Happenstance
… the World Wide Web, contrary to gloomy predictions, may be the best thing to happen to literature and book publishing since Gutenberg. While publishers tear their hair out over slender profit margins and worry that the Internet will be the end of books as people know them, Mr. Epstein says he believes that the Web will save the book business, enable books to be published more cheaply, and bring bigger royalties for corporations and authors.
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/01/13/technology/13EPST.html?pagewanted=all

streamingmedia.com : business - technology - content
Once the nesting ground for a pre-pubescent South Park, the Web has become a bastion for animation. Contributor Steve Tanner tells us how animation has made its mark as the dominant form of entertainment content on the Web.
http://www.streamingmedia.com

Do You Stream in Color?

Then You Need This Website

streamingmedia.com : business - [technology] - content Creating Rich Media with QuickTime, Part I
http://www.streamingmedia.com/tutorials/view.asp?tutorial_id=107

Link Analysis Can Help (or Harm) Your Web Site

Search engines look not just at your site but at other sites that link to yours. The search engines count those linked sites toward your site's ranking.

All other factors aside, if one site has 10 sites linking to it and another has 500, the one with 500 does better in search engine
rankings. But that's not all.

http://www.workz.com/content/2094.asp

Something to Make You Go Hmm…

internet.com's Electronic Commerce Guide - EC Tips : Don't Try This at Home

Before you go ahead and buy the entire "Web Design for Dummies, Idiots, Novices and Amateurs" collection, realize that there is a better method for approaching this important component of your e-business.

Using a professional Web designer could add a tremendous amount of value to your online appearance. For instance, did you know that it has become a standard to click on a company logo to be taken back to the home page? Or it could be counter-productive to the efficiency of the site to make each click yield a new browser window?

Those are the type of details that contribute to the sum product of the Web site. A professional designer will invoke industry standards while incorporating the personality of the e-business to create a unique and efficient site.

http://ecommerce.internet.com/solutions/ectips/article/0,1467,6311_548951,00.html

An Interview with Paco Underhill Author of “Why We Buy”

BW Online | January 4, 2001 | "E-Commerce Failed on Its Own Merits"

Almost everything I predicted two years ago in terms of why we buy has come true. The Internet bubble has burst. And the things that sell well on the Web generally have no taste, feel, or smell. The Web has succeeded where there's a fundamental, profound disconnect between the manufacturer and the bricks-and-mortar retail chains. For example, books, where publishers are imminently closer to the authors than the reading public. Music, since the labels are closer to the producing artists than to the consumers. Movies. Pornography. And stocks.

People also felt the Net was going to be some global community, and that's proven not to be true. The future of the Web isn't global -- it's local. It's a way on a very tactical level for people to facilitate their lives as the technology exists wherever they are. For example, here in the U.S., we have a wonderful delivery system for products: mail, FedEx, UPS. Whatever criticisms we may level at it, it's remarkably effective and remarkably cheap. We have a nation that's spread out, and retail has to follow where people live.

http://www.businessweek.com/bwdaily/dnflash/jan2001/nf2001014_088.htm

A Source for Firewall Reviews on ZDNet

ZDNet: Sm@rt Partner: Personal Firewalls Personal Firewalls
By Matthew P. Graven, PC Magazine
January 3, 2001 4:46 PM ET

While you browse the latest headlines or purchase a cashmere sweater on the Web, some hacker could be lurking in the background, stealing your credit card numbers or rifling through the data stored on your system. Simply put, your Internet connection is a wide-open path to your PC that anyone connected to the Web with malicious intent and technology skills can skulk down. Broadband connections, because they're always on, are most vulnerable, but dial-up access also carries risks.

http://www.zdnet.com/sp/stories/main/0,10228,2669359,00.html

Hemming in the World Wide Web
If the Internet is anything, at least according to its prophets, it is a place without boundaries. Real world geography, with tiresome passports and tedious border checkpoints, does not matter.

This is not an appealing notion to many of the world's governments, which would much prefer to control the flow of information across their national borders, just as they try to control the flow of everything else, from people to money. Their distaste for borderlessness, in fact, may soon give cyberspace the same jigsaw-puzzle appearance as the terrestrial world.
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/01/07/weekinreview/07GLAT.html?pagewanted=allb

The Y2K Issue Shows Up, a Year Late The Y2K computer problem hit Norway's national railroad a year later than expected.

The problem was discovered when none of the company's 16 new airport express trains or 13 high-speed, long-distance Signatur trains would start early in the morning of Dec. 31.

Apparently, the computers on the trains did not recognize the date, something not anticipated by experts who had checked the systems thoroughly before Jan. 1, 2000, a spokesman for the train manufacturer said.

The problem was quickly solved temporarily by resetting the computers to Dec. 1, 2000, and the trains started upon ignition.
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/01/03/world/03NORW.html

The Search Engine Report, January 3, 2001, Number 50 Survey Finds Search Engine Referrals Low

New statistics from WebSideStory's StatMarket service show that search engines generate only 7 percent of traffic to web sites, far below the leading methods of direct navigation or following
links. The low figure is very surprising, because other surveys have consistently found that people report search engines as one of the top ways they find web sites.


The StatMarket survey found that either direct navigation or using bookmarks was the most popular way of reaching web sites, generating 47 percent of traffic. Following links was the
second most popular, generating 46 percent of traffic. Included in the links total were clicks on banner ads.

The statistics are gathered by measuring traffic to 200,000 sites that use WebSideStory's HitBox tracking service. These sites include everything from large businesses, to hobbyists, to porn
sites. The statistics are as measured on Dec. 17, 2000.

(A longer version of this article is available to Search Engine Watch "site subscribers." Learn more about becoming a site subscriber at
http://searchenginewatch.com/about/subscribe.html?source=0101ser-smkt)
http://www.searchenginewatch.com/sereport/current.html

The Search Engine Report, January 3, 2001, Number 50 Paid Submission & Other Changes At NBCi

NBCi has rolled out a paid submission service that allows faster review of sites for inclusion into its main directory. In addition, the service, formerly known as Snap, has also made some
changes to how sites are listed in its results.
(A longer version of this article is available to Search Engine Watch "site subscribers." Learn more about becoming a site subscriber at
http://searchenginewatch.com/about/subscribe.html?source=0101ser-nbci)


Go Gains Paid Inclusion System

Go.com has become the second major crawler-based search engine to roll out a paid inclusion program. Its new US $199 "Premium Service" will add any URL submitted to its crawler-based
results within 48 hours and revisit that URL on a weekly basis, for one year.
(A longer version of this article is available to Search Engine Watch "site subscribers." Learn more about becoming a site subscriber at
http://searchenginewatch.com/about/subscribe.html?source=0101ser-go)

LookSmart Ups Basic Submit Price

The price of LookSmart's "Basic Submit" service has been increased from $79 to $99. Basic Submit guarantees that a site will be reviewed within eight weeks for possible inclusion into the directory.

Pay For Placement?
http://searchenginewatch.com/resources/paid-listings.html

You'll find past articles about the LookSmart program and similar paid submit systems on this page.



http://www.searchenginewatch.com/sereport/current.html

ZDNet: Sm@rt Partner - Disclosure Revisited
Sm@rt Partner: Very briefly, what is the disclosure debate all about, and why has it been so divisive?
Marcus Ranum:There are a few reasons I think my views are so unpopular. One, security practitioners are curious people and tend to be control freaks, so they really want to know what's going on. Two, there are a lot of folks out there who are trying to have their cake and eat it, too. Really what these people want to do is have all of the privileges and practices of being hackers with none of the downside. They want to play, they want to act tough, they want to go to DefCon and dress like goths. They want to do all of this nonsense, and they also want to get paid big salaries and be treated like responsible practitioners. I'm trying to call them on that, and they get defensive.
http://www.zdnet.com/sp/stories/column/0,4712,2664306,00.html

CNET.com - News - E-Business - For 2001, futurists are being a bit on the shy side "I predict the Internet...will go spectacularly supernova and in 1996 catastrophically collapse," Bob Metcalfe, inventor and 3Com founder, said in 1995.
http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1007-200-4238476.html"