From: Gleanings
To: intreped readers
Subject: Gleanings: I'm no Oprah but

OPENING THANG

My sister got back from Iowa yesterday and handed me a book she had read on her trip. She said: "Read this, it's great" and she was right. I started it at 7:30 and finished it at midnight: I couldn't put it down.
"Set in a London ad agency desperate to land a coveted big account, e follows the bureaucratic bungling, cutthroat maneuvers, and outrageous sexual antics of a group of Miller-Shanks employees as they scheme, lie, lust, and claw their way up (and down) the company ladder." Doesn't matter if you've never worked in advertising, I recognized the characters from every job I've ever worked at. It's told entirely in e-mail thus the title of the book: "E" is British slang for e-mail. Go read it now. We all work too hard and deserve some good fiction.
E, a novel by Matt Beaumont
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0452281881/eleganthack/102-7519945-7583354

NEWS

REALNETWORKS DROPS ON AD WORRIES: Amid fears of a slowdown in online advertising, shares of RealNetworks plunged today after the company
said it expects ad revenue to fall 20 percent in the fourth quarter.
RealNetworks, which makes audio and video software, reported
third-quarter results on Tuesday that matched analysts' expectations,
but warned that ad revenue would fall during the fourth quarter.
Shares of RealNetworks closed Wednesday down $6.81, or 31.4 percent,
to $14.87.
http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1005-200-3227303.html?tag=st.ne.1430735..ni

Checking the Pulse of the Internet Economy
By Industry Standard Staff
The latest earnings reports carry more weight for the Internet Economy
than any that have come before. The markets are in disarray, and deep
currents of uncertainty run through once-confident companies. So
what's the prognosis for the Net's leading players?
http://www.thestandard.com/article/display/0,1151,19470,00.html?nl=ias

EVENT

"Putting 3D to Work on the Web"

Who: Discreet http://www.discreet.com
& Pulse Entertainment http://www.pulse3d.com
When: Thursday, October 19, 2000
Time: Social Hour 6-7pm; Program from 7-9pm
Place: Autodesk Atrium, 111 McInnis Pkwy, San Rafael
Cost: Members free; Non-members $15;
Students $10 with valid ID
RSVP: Not necessary
Contact: Cheryl Downing, 408-257-1049, cdowning@best.com
or NBMA Hotline, 415-721-1780
URL: http://www.nbma.com/events/calendar.html

APROPOS OF NOTHING

"Bush and Gore -- You Can Hear the Difference"
http://www.modernhumorist.com/mh/0010/choose/
posted by Christina Wodtke 10/19/2000 8:49:04 AM

From: Gleanings
To: Great Minds
Subject: Gleanings: Fat and Sassy

OPENING THANG

We got a big Gleanings today, due to a good Tomalak, a kicking Nua Internet Survey and lots of liveliness on the lists I'm on. Enjoy!

Lots of good lively discussion on CHI-WEB this morning.

There's this on copyrights online

"A good starting place to read about online copyright issues is Brad
Templeton's "10 Big Myths about copyright explained" at
http://www.templetons.com/brad/copymyths.html - it was originally
written with Usenet postings in mind but also applies to the web.

Then there is the Copyright FAQ which is supposed to be at
http://www.tjc.com/copyright/ but isn't - you can find an old version
at http://www.faqs.org/faqs/law/copyright/faq/part1/
Meanwhile there's another FAQ at http://www.rexx.com/~jaguar/copyright.html "

And some great posts on html newsletters, both from a technical and a usability point of view.
http://www.acm.org/archives/wa.cgi?A1=ind0010b&L=chi-web#37
http://www.acm.org/archives/wa.cgi?A1=ind0010c&L=chi-web#26
http://www.acm.org/archives/wa.cgi?A1=ind0010c&L=chi-web#24

Speaking of email, Email marketing to be worth USD4.5 billion. That's some moolah.
http://www.emarketer.com/estats/dailyestats/advertising/20001009_email.html

and

IDC Research: Daily email output to reach 35 billion
http://www.idc.com/software/press/PR/SW101000pr.stm

USABILITY MATTERS

IBM Developer: The user experience.
Designers learned a great deal through 15 years of evolving the graphical user
interface. It certainly isn't perfect, but its evolution has all but stopped.
In many cases Web designers are repeating past sins when they blindly adopt
GUI approaches for Web-based applications.
http://www-4.ibm.com/software/developer/library/w-berry/

Survey shows that sites, like Americans, are overweight
News release from Zona Research
http://www.zonaresearch.com/info/press/99-jun30.htm

ECOMMERCE MATTERS

Red Herring: Nordstrom.com says execute, don't innovate.
A month and a half ago, his company launched a redesigned Web site, touting
some new features, most notably live chat help, but largely things that
already are de rigueur in e-commerce, such as improved search features, better graphics, and streamlined checkout.
http://www.redherring.com/industries/2000/1017/ind-shoptalk101700.html

New York Times: PC market shows signs of saturation
http://partners.nytimes.com/2000/10/09/technology/09SHIF.html

BizReport: Russian ecommerce market set to soar
Russian ecommerce revenue is set to increase ninefold in the coming
year, according to a new study from International Data Corp. (IDC).
http://www.bizreport.com/international/2000/10/20001006-2.htm

BBC Online Network: UK is ecommerce leader
UK businesses lead the world in Internet transactions, according to a
recent UK Government survey.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/business/newsid_964000/964710.stm

Boston Consulting Group: Ecommerce skyrockets in Latin America
Online retailing in Latin America will be worth USD580 million in 2000,
an increase of 400 percent from last year.
http://www.bcg.com/media_center/media_press_release_subpage27.asp

NEWS

Digital Subscriber Line (DSL) is set to lead the broadband revolution,
according to a new report by Cahners In-Stat Group.
Subscribers to the high-bandwidth connection will grow from 4.5 million
this year to 64.7 million by 2004. New subscriptions will increase by
71 percent next year to 7.7 million.
http://www.zdnet.com/anchordesk/stories/story/0,10738,2638773,00.html

Wired News: Gnutella Development Gnotted.
The open-source heir apparent to Napster may not survive long enough to claim the crown. Conflict from within the open-source family of developers creating Gnutella, and not its current technical difficulties, could be the file-
sharing network's downfall.
http://www.wirednews.com/news/technology/0,1282,39420,00.html

Media Metrix: US Napster use soars
With over 8 percent of home users now hooking up to Napster, the
program is the fastest-growing home software application ever.
http://www.mediametrix.com/press/releases/20001005.jsp?language=us

The Register: SDMI was cracked, and is doomed: count on it.
Chiariglione's outburst to Inside is entirely consistent with this, and by a bizarre and miraculous coincidence the RIAA announced it was starting development of its own digital ID system on the day of the SDMI plenary meeting that did/didn't discuss the results of the tests.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/1/14057.html

EDITORIAL from Nua
"It's official -- people are bored with Internet hype. They don't want to hear another word about a dotcom startup, and they reckon a discussion about the Internet is about as interesting as listening to someone describing the features of their new vacuum cleaner."
Catherine McDonnell in 'World Wide Yawn'
http://www.nua.ie/surveys/analysis/weekly_editorial/archives/issue1no148.html
posted by Christina Wodtke 10/18/2000 8:30:39 AM

From: Gleanings
To: Boxes and Arrows
Subject: Gleanings: Hitting the Right Note(ation)

OPENING THANG

Jesse James Garrett, owner of the best name in the IA biz, has matched his earlier brilliance of this
http://www.jjg.net/ia/elements.pdf
with this
http://www.jjg.net/ia/visvocab/
the beginnings of a standardized language for IA notation.

thank you Jesse.

USABILITY MATTERS

Found on CHI-WEB
ACM research paper:
Readability of Fonts in the Windows Environment.
(http://www.acm.org/sigchi/chi95/proceedings/intpost/tst_bdy.htm)

"There were significant differences between the
various font/size combinations in terms of reading
speed, accuracy, and subjective preferences."

Small fonts proved significantly slower to read

Speaking on invisible things, I dug up a bunch of links on banner blindness recently for an argument I was having about Adobe's font page (don't ask). I've done the research, I might as well share. ;-)

Benway, J. P. (1998). Banner blindness: The irony of attention grabbing on
the World Wide Web. Proceedings of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society42nd Annual Meeting, 1, 463-467.
http://www.ruf.rice.edu/~jan/BannerBlindness.pdf

Webreference's placement study:
http://www.webreference.com/dev/banners/

The banner blindness study:
http://www.sandia.gov/itg/newsletter/dec98/banner_blindness.html

NEWS

Internet World: Deconstructing OpenTable.com. Terry Swack and Mark Hurst. business was founded on the concept of "allowing people to book tables the way they book airline tickets." Now I understand why I was asked to register and give credit card information! When was the last time you called a restaurant that required your personal info to hold a table?
http://www.internetworldnews.com/article_bot.asp?inc=101500/10.15.00Decon&issue=10.15.00

Business 2.0: Darwin, Linux, and Radiation. Clay Shirky. So it is with Linux–after a decade of computers acting as either clients or servers, new classes of devices are now being invented almost weekly–phones, consoles, PDAs–and only Linux is adaptable enough to work on most of them.
http://www.business2.com/content/magazine/breakthrough/2000/10/16/20785

APROPOS OF NOTHING

20 ways the world could end.
http://www.discover.com/oct_00/gthere.html?article=featworld.html

betty again
http://www.bettybowers.com/bashpaulk.html
posted by Christina Wodtke 10/17/2000 8:40:39 AM

From: Gleanings
To: faithful listeners
Subject: Gleanings: A Fly on the Wall

OPENING THANG

My glassdog "overheard" came in the email inbox this morning with quite a few funnies, including this one

"OVERHEARD for Monday, July 17, 2000

The Setting: The DMV (Department of Motor Vehicles)
The Players: Guy in line two people ahead of me and woman with the DMV
The Witness: I was further back in line

OVERHEARD:
He said: I wish for once in my life, going to the DMV
would be an easy thing rather than hard.
She said: You don't understand at all sir. This is the DMV."

more here
http://glassdog.com/overheard/

USABILITY MATTERS
Designing a General Solution to the Problem of Text Input in Small Devices
http://www.allnetdevices.com/developer/white/2000/10/11/designing_a.html

NEWS

The Register: This music will self destruct in 5 plays: RIAA looks to the
future.
The RIAA tries to pitch its system as a positive move for "future on-line
music commerce," but there's a more ominous quote a little further down the
food chain: "Very soon, license terms will be associated with the digital
information asset itself, and content protection technology will require that
consumers comply with those terms."
http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/1/14006.html

Advertising Age: 3-D or not 3-D that is the question.
Top dogs at Bombay Co., Home Depot and Target Stores' Target.com echoed that
sentiment at a National Retail Federation conference late last month. They
told attendees at the San Diego gathering about their lack of enthusiasm for
adding 3-D and streaming video options to their sites.
http://adage.com/interactive/articles/20001009/article3.html

Advertising Age: Latest Web strategy spreads Levi content.
Levi Strauss & Co. is experimenting with an Internet marketing approach that
refashions the World Wide Web with the emphasis on "Wide." In a new fall
campaign for its high-end Silver Tab line, Levi Strauss plans to develop more
than a dozen Web sites that interweave stories of the journey of three
fictitious Americans...
http://adage.com/interactive/articles/20001016/article1.html

and yet you can't buy jeans on the website. more on levis
Darwin: From August 2000; Scaredy Pants
http://www.darwinmag.com/read/080100/ecosys.html
posted by Christina Wodtke 10/16/2000 8:34:05 AM

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