After several months of trying to force interoperability between its own MSN Messenger chat software and AOL Instant Messenger, Microsoft has finally backed down. Now the companies will have to come to a business agreement (and how likely is that?) before users of the two chat clients will be able to talk to one another.… Read the rest
Month: November 1999 (Page 1 of 2)
YOUNG PEOPLE ARE THE FUTURE: 41% of American Internet users are buying things online — a third more than last year. 75% of those surveyed say the Internet has improved their lives. 52% are rearranging furniture to make room for their computers.… Read the rest
“Want to bet on the Net? Consider investing in radio stations,” this story suggests — pointing out that radio conglomerate Infinity Broadcasting is winning a big piece of the Internet action: ten percent of its revenues this quarter will come from dot com advertisers.… Read the rest
A U.S. Internet tax commission, which was charged by Congress with investigating the issue of taxing Internet access and e-commerce, is moving towards a verdict, according to the Industry Standard. It looks like the commissioners opposed to Net taxes have a strong lead.… Read the rest
Link: Getting personal
Link broken? Try the Wayback Machine.… Read the rest
Creative Good’s Mark Hurst is publishing a Weblog at goodexperience.com, where he highlights current Web site usability and customer-experience stories. You can also download a copy of Creative Good’s useful and timely white paper here, the Holiday ’99 E-Commerce report, which critiques some prominent e-commerce sites and contains many practical tips on improving site usability.… Read the rest
Fleeting fame: “The Tweeny Report” is the first of six featured sites on “Six Pack To Go,” today only. I’m not sure who does this site, but hey, at least they spelled my URL right, if not my name.
Microsoft is discovering that, in addition to the annoyance of Justice department anti-trust lawsuits, there’s yet another downside to tightly integrating their browser and mail client into the Windows operating system: Email viruses. A new email-borne virus, nicknamed “Bubbleboy,” has been found — and it can infect Microsoft Outlook users even if they don’t open the virus-bearing email message’s attachment.… Read the rest
Egregious opt-out-only marketing from AOL: This message from AOL was forwarded to me by Chris Sandlund. Apparently, you can refuse pop-up advertisements — but you need to keep repeating your refusal if you want it to stick. Chris writes that he’s been an AOL user since 1992, but he’s losing patience: “I’ve put up with a lot of
crap to make sure that I didn’t have to change e-mail addresses, but this is pure B.S.”… Read the rest
RealNetworks announced this week that it’s really, really sorry about its recent invasions of customers’ privacy — and that it’s working with privacy guarantor TRUSTe to implement a five-point privacy plan. The plan includes a third-party audit, appointing a “privacy officer” to RealNetworks’ staff, and making all customer information sharing strictly opt-in.… Read the rest