Welcome back My Mac’ers!
The Internet boomtown is a growin’! The time has come for all of us, (not just those super surfers) to stake our claim out here in the wilds of cyberspace. Only now, you need a real interactive experience to get noticed. With so many sites popping up everyday, companies can’t afford to call a resurrected print brochure posted on the Web the new place of business. Remember, most likely you’re not the only game in town on the Web… all your competitors are just a click away. Companies need compelling points of presence out here on the Internet, virtual customer service booths where they make valuable contacts with Netizens interested in their product. For this they need interactivity. And to make sure that the data they collect from their Website is utilized, companies need to connect their site to a back-end database.
In times past, this meant hiring someone to build a bridge to carry this data. Development firms such as Square Earth, Think New Ideas and others sprung up to help aspiring Web builders. These data bridges were extensive custom programs that often took several months to complete. The alternative was learning these tools in house, but the time this would have taken was a huge drawback. Early adopter sites such as Amazon and CDnow were among the first to get the job done right–and these sites are coded almost entirely in C. And there is nothing wrong with that. C is a great language. It’s fast and powerful. But reliable C and C++ programmers are in short supply.
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The Future of E-Commerce
On August 12-14th, My Mac invaded the Jupiter Communications Online Advertising 2 Seminar in New York City. This seminar bought together some of the true industry heavyweights to discuss the current state of online advertising– as well as where it might be headed.
As usual, your intrepid Web surfer was there to meet and greet the digerati. One of the highlights of the conference was the pre-conference seminar “Online Shopping”. The keynote address was given by Walter Forbes of CUC International. Entitled “Direct Response Is Online Shopping”, it was a sometimes scary but always interesting peek into the future.
Forbes thinks that Internet retailing will far exceed current expectations and rate of growth. Therefore, the entire retailing world is about to be set on its ear, if they don’t wake up and smell the digital coffee.
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If you surf the Web at all, you probably know about C-Net. With over 1,400,000 registered users on eleven Websites, it’s the recognized leader in content delivery about everything related to Web. Maybe you’ve seen their TV programs on the Sci-Fi channel or USA Network. Come on, any Sofie Formica fans out there?
If you haven’t hit any of the C-Net family of sites, you are missing a great information source that can help you out with questions about games, site design, multimedia, or whatever else you are looking for. C-Net also boasts search.com, probably the best metasearch tool around. And if you need shareware, the size and speed of Shareware.com will get you to what you need with time to spare.
C-Net has been in the news lately, and not just for its award-winning design or editorial coverage. On Monday, June 23rd, C-Net launched the prototype for Snap! Online. CEO Halsey Minor touts Snap! as a Web-based, platform-independent online service. Translation: If you have a computer with Web access and a CD-ROM drive, you can get Snap! With C-Net’s expertise in computer tutorials, it will have thousands of newbies jacking in and surfing it up. Probably the best part about this service is the price. Snap! is free for the user. You still have to pay to connect to the Net, but if you’re reading this, you already do that.
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Every month or so, a segment of the Internet gets hot. Rarely, however are these sites able to maintain the watershed of hit-rates after the media frenzy wears off.
One exception to this rule might be the current crop of travel sites. The travel industry has emerged as one of the fastest growing segments of the Internet. According to published figures by Jupiter Communications, online spending for travel services will reach 1 billion by the end of 1997 and continue toward an estimated 3 billion in the year 2000.
Travel is tailor-made for the Internet. The complexities of fares and schedules are perfect for a web-based system that can present constantly updated material. So your intrepid web-surfer took a trip of his own. I went to all the sites out there and picked out a few that might be worth your time…and your money.
EXPEDIA
I strapped into the barcalounger and headed off to http://expedia.msn.com. I’ll be honest. I wasn’t quite sure what I might find here. I mean, sure Microsoft has a lot to offer, but would I book a vacation here?
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Bells and Whistles…
You may want to add audio and video to your Web site. Many people do. But before you add all those bells and whistles, you might want to consider this.
The network or “backbone” of the Internet wasn’t designed to handle all of this noise. It was put in place to handle a limited number of users and very simple text-based information streams. The growth of this “World Wide” Web was unexpected and unprecedented–and is really causing some problems. Internet usage is disrupting phone service in some cities. Because areas with heavy concentrations of dial-up netizens are experiencing longer average call times, phone company circuitry is being maxed out! One of the main reasons that the Internet bandwidth is getting used up so fast is that people are putting jazzy little extras into their sites. People have to wait for the video and the sound to download and this keeps them online longer.
I’m back from several months of surfing in darkest Africa and have returned an older, wiser Webhead.
In the last year the Web has grown exponentially. It has taken some of the questions I posed in my first few articles and made them reality. (I was jazzed about Real Audio 1.0!) It has also exposed some of the ideas that I might have held in high esteem at that time to be downright silly.
One of the biggest concerns that I had as an Internet retailer was how to lure customers into my store. The prevailing idea a few months ago was that “content was king”. Although this is still one of the main tenets of Web retail, it is no longer a race to put up the biggest site with the most bells and whistles. The focus has shifted–the stores now try to just sell product. If you need help in another area, such as adding content, you look for help. The Web has begun to crystallize. Where there were sites that Continue reading »
did it all a year ago, now we have started to see that Web sites can specialize in what they do best.
As much as I love the web, I know that some things about it, well…as Butthead might tell you..suck. (I can say that thanks to the new U.S. District Court decision on the CDA!) The web is extremely good for information dissemination. If you have a list of facts or figures that you need to distribute, there really is nothing to stop you from throwing that info out onto the web for all to see.
But if you create your own newsletter, catalog, or album of pictures, the web really isn’t a great place to put it. Why? Because it is real hard to make sure that your web pages look anything like what you started from. Think about it. If you have a grammar school newspaper or a corporate catalog, you might use Word Perfect or Microsoft Word to set the type. You can make your headlines in Bold and your bylines in Italics. You can change the fonts and place pictures in the appropriate spots. If you use a Continue reading »
program like PageMaker or PowerPoint, you have even more control over your layout. You can throw in all sorts of fancy pictures and typesets. But unless you learn scads of HTML coding, let’s face it, if you put that newspaper on the web, it will look boring, maybe even just plain bad. HTML gives you some control over font size and now font color. It lets you go Bold or Italic, and it gives you some layout control, but it just doesn’t do enough for you.
VRML-The Winner by a Node?
The web has grown exponentially in the last few years. But the buzz is always onward and upward. The killer app of yesteryear is definitely NSCA Mosaic, the browser that became Netscape. But what is the next killer application to take the web world by storm? Many people believe it might be Virtual Reality. Virtual Reality is an application based on an open standard called VRML.
First off, VRML is another computer language that does pretty much what it says. Just as HTML means “Hypertext Markup Language” and contains the instructions to create hyperlinked text or images that cross reference documents, VRML or “Virtual Reality Modeling Language” contains the instructions or “tags” to construct your very own 3-D world or “realm”.
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HOUSTON, WE HAVE A PROBLEM…AUDIO TRANSMISSION IS TOO SLOW …PLEASE ADVISE…OVER…
ROGER THAT MY MAC, WILL ADVISE…
BEGIN TRANSMISSION
Listen up! As the web moves closer to true interactivity, people are beginning to want multimedia effects that catch the eye and the ear. And as is the wont of the web, they want it– NOW! No more waiting for downloading AIFF, AU, or WAV files. It just takes too long to hear the stuff, right? Put it this way. The average joe is connecting to the net with a 14.4 dialup. No snickering! To download a 20 second clip of audio, we’re talking a bunch of downtime. Hardly instant gratification.
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A normal day at work has me on one or two computers, a PowerMac and a PC, effortlessly porting work from one OS into another. A “normal” day at work rarely occurs, however. Even with the recent Java release for the Mac, I still find that many web plug-ins don’t work as well or at all on my PowerMac.
Take the case of the Real Audio Encoder version 2.01. Since the Powermac has multimedia capabilities built in, I decided it would be easier to use it to capture audio off a CD. With the help of Kaboom!, and the Mac’s own audio player, I did so. Then I took the resulting .wav files and encoded them with the Real Audio Encoder. Real Audio is an amazing tool. You can shrink a 200K .wav files down to about 8 or 9K. The files sound like mono FM, sure, but they download quick, and they take a bunch less room on already overcrowded web servers. So the upshot of this is–when I tried to listen to the clips over the web, the information came across garbled. Sounded sort of like a guy gargling and playing a steel guitar. A quick call to Progressive Networks (The Home Of Real Audio) gave me the solution. Somewhere in the encoding process, something had gone wrong.
“Thanks. I sort of figured that.” said I.
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