Ads and Affiliates: Rushing Blindly into E-Business Failure
From: www.wilsonweb.com

"Rushing into any business is a recipe for diaster. This article discusses the problems with expecting to earn money from an extremely competitive affiliate-based product. Date: Oct 20, 2004, 08:49 PST"

Miscellaneous: Take the Business Ethics Pledge
From: www.wilsonweb.com

"Dr. Wilson encourages Internet businesspeople to take the Business Ethics Pledge developed by Shel Horowitz, author of Principled Profit. It begins, "I pledge allegiance, in my heart and soul, to the concepts of honesty, integrity, and quality in business." Date: Oct 13, 2004, 14:42 PST"

Site Promotion: Automated Reciprocal Linking Management Programs
From: www.wilsonweb.com

"Explores link management systems that help automate reciprocal linking, link swapping and exchanges. Favors those which allow you to host the link pages on your own website. Examines LinksManager.com and Links4Trade.com. Date: Oct 6, 2004, 15:12 PST"

E-Commerce: Marketing Your Products via Drop-Shipping
From: www.wilsonweb.com

"Explains some keys to becoming a drop-shipper to market your products. Discusses automating reseller account set-up, communication, product photos, info, and inventory, and setting realistic expectations. Gives an example of information contained in the Drop Ship Source Directory. Date: Sep 29, 2004, 16:43 PST"

Conversion: Conversion Rate Optimization using Offermatica (Case Study)
From: www.wilsonweb.com

"Link Description: This article describes various tests -- A/B split-testing and Taguchi Method experiments designed to optimize the conversion (subscription) rate on forms to subscribe to a free Internet marketing newsletter. As a result of testing, the subscription rate in one form was increased 37%, another 25%. Offermatica.com was the testing system used. Date: Sep 29, 2004, 09:56 PST"


Amazon's Third Quarter Results
From: www.webpronews.com

"Operating cash flow was $490 million for the trailing twelve months, compared with $284 million for the trailing twelve months ended September 30, 2003. Free cash flow grew 76% to $420 million for the trailing twelve months, compared with $239 million for the 2003 period."

Ebay's Third Quarter Results
From: www.webpronews.com

"eBay reported record consolidated Q3-04 net revenues of $805.9 million, up 52% year over year; operating income of $253.9 million, up 63% year over year; and pro forma operating income of $272.6 million, up 58% year over year."

Talk Via Google Instant Message?
From: www.webpronews.com

"Google continues to introduce new services, and programs. 2004 has seen the release of their email service, Gmail; they also bought Picasa, an image software company; and the Google Desktop Search utility was just recently made available."

Online Advertising Spending on the Increase
From: www.webpronews.com

"New eMarketer projections indicate 2004 will be another boom year for online advertising, with spending expected to increase 28.8% overall from 2003."

FindWhat Ranks High on Fast 500
From: www.webpronews.com

"FindWhat.com ranked number 21 on the 2004 Deloitte Technology Fast 500, a ranking of the 500 fastest growing technology companies in North America. Rankings are based on percentage revenue growth over five years, from 1999-2003."


Google Wows Wall Street
From: www.wired.com

"Google impresses investors with its glowing quarterly earnings report. Also: Yahoo creates web mail to try and compete with Google & hellip;. Oracle awaits the decision of the EU to take over PeopleSoft & hellip;. and more."

EBay Brings in Big Bucks
From: www.wired.com

"Despite recent PayPal glitches, the online business say it's growing strong. Also: Kazaa loses its foothold as most popular music download site.... Sharp Electronics moves away from U.S. market.... and more."

Humans Aren't So Complicated
From: www.wired.com

"New research reveals that humans have only about 25,000 genes instead of the 100,000 originally guessed. Researchers scratch their heads. By Kristen Philipkoski."

Beam Me Up Some Baseball
From: www.wired.com

"XM Satellite Radio buys broadcasting rights to major league games for 11 years. Also: Microsoft creates a watch complete with streaming information.... Kodak prepares for the transition to filmless photography.... and more."

Google Might Be a Big Brother
From: www.wired.com

"The company's new software could let private information go public. Also: A new website pays you to help your friends buy products.... LAN operators start to gear up.... and more."


Just Say No to Poorly Designed Software
From: webword.com

" ACM -- "Hannon contends that designers often disregard users' wants because the customer who asks for the system in the first place is usually looking for an affordable, easily deployable solution that interoperates with other campus systems, rather than fulfills users' needs. "Ease of use" is not highly prioritized by the customer on the list of system requirements, while user satisfaction is hardly ever a major criterion used by CIOs to assess the performance of integration teams."

Read more..."

Hidden Cost of Baseball Fever: Edgy, Weary Workers
From: webword.com

" "In Boston and New York, employees have openly admitted to arriving late or missing work over the last few days because of games that set length records. Employers, meanwhile, have noticed sluggish, distracted workers seeming to need more caffeine to function properly."

Read more...

p.s. "Sleep deprivation has been shown to negatively affect a wide range of cognitive, behavioral, physiological, and emotional measures (Dinges, 1992; Mertens & Collins, 1986; Naitoh & Townsend, 1970; Pilcher & Huffcutt, 1996)." (reference)

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User Strategy Vol 1 Digital Behavior
From: webword.com

" User Strategy -- "Firstly, what we perceive as commercial behavior doesn t necessarily include activities that become embedded into our normal daily routine. Secondly, e-mail and other such digital technologies have been particularly successful in becoming ubiquitous in a very short period of time. These communication mediums have made their way into our lives so quickly in fact, that we now don t even classify them as alternative channels, they are just normal."

Good article. Covers several different topics and it is worth reading. I wish the font was larger on the HTML version!

Read more..."

Discoveries in User Centered Design and Small Business Support
From: webword.com

" Cre8pc Blog -- "On the Usability front, sadly, I find there are less approachable people in the industry. We're familiar with Jakob Nielsen, Jeffrey Zeldman, Jared Spool...but none of them run forums, or project themselves as being happy to receive an email from you if you have a question. (Though of them, Mr. Zeldman is willing to talk about himself and share precious insights into, for example, the thrill of becoming a new father.)"

In large part, Kim is right. However, there are some good folks in the usability game but they don't get the publicity of Nielsen and Spool. Too bad.

Read more..."

Collapse-to-Zoom: Viewing Web Pages on Small Screen
From: webword.com

" "Overview visualizations for small-screen web browsers were designed to provide users with visual context and to allow them to rapidly zoom in on tiles of relevant content. Given that content in the overview is reduced, however, users are often unable to tell which tiles hold the relevant material, which can force them to adopt a time-consuming hunt-and-peck strategy. Collapse-to-zoom addresses this issue by offering an alternative exploration strategy. In addition to allowing users to zoom into relevant areas, collapse-to-zoom allows users to collapse areas deemed irrelevant, such as columns containing menus, archive material, or advertising. Collapsing content causes all remaining content to expand in size causing it to reveal more detail, which increases the user s chance of identifying relevant content. Collapse-to-zoom navigation is based on a hybrid between a marquee selection tool and a marking menu, called marquee menu. It offers four commands for collapsing content areas at different granularities and to switch to a full-size reading view of what is left of the page."

Read more... (PDF)

p.s. Patrick Baudisch has many other publications available. Don't miss them."