The U.S. Postal Service is in fact working on an “e-post office box,” as I suggested last month. This article has few details about the proposed service (the explanation of how it will work is a little confused and the article doesn’t say when it will be available) but it does indicate the service will target businesses as well as consumers, and will include bill presentment and payment features.… Read the rest
Year: 1999 (Page 2 of 8)
Online merchants may be throwing away 25% of their business this holiday season, an Andersen report suggests. In the study, Andersen employees made 480 orders on 100 different e-commerce sites this month — and only 350 of those were completed. Web site crashes, buggy forms, and other problems familiar to Web surfers blocked transactions in the rest of the cases.… Read the rest
Online sales are pretty much on track, merchants report in a new IDC study:
Most Web merchants to meet sales forecasts (12/20/1999)… Read the rest
In a survey of the top 100 e-commerce sites, the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) discovered that many of these sites aren’t adequately safeguarding the privacy of their customers. 18 of the 100 surveyed sites had no privacy policy at all, and many of the posted policies were confusing or inconsistent.… Read the rest
Link: Just in time
Link broken? Try the Wayback Machine.… Read the rest
In the biggest domain sale yet, eCompanies bought the URL “business.com” for $7.5 million. Are they insane? Can an address really be worth that much? In a word: Yes. But let’s see what eCompanies can make of it.
THE REGISTER: Big bucks URL is the business(.com)… Read the rest
It’s a bit more than a week old, but if you missed this Thanksgiving week story on Amazon’s beleagered customer service staff, you’re missing part of the total Amazon picture: Not every member of the Net economy is a dot com millionaire.… Read the rest
Maybe there’s no such thing as a free PC any more?
EMachines Will Purchase Free-PC; Pioneer Will Lose Its Independence… Read the rest
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
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