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The advertising
industry is on
the verge of
being shattered
into a thousand
fragments due to
the knowledge explosion
and the proliferation
of new technologies.
There are no
more grand theories
that hold sway
over the entire
industry.
Michael Strangelove


Advertising is
one of the minor
arts, so don't
be intimidated
by it. Try
not to lose
your sense of
playfulness.
Keep it fun.
Robert Bly



Reality
is more
complex
than
it seems.
John Gall



The System
is its own
best
explanation.
John Gall



It's better to
do a few things
really well than
than to do
a lot of things
badly.
If you can't
make the necessary
commitments of
time and energy
to your
electronic
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scale back
your plan.
John Sumser


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June 13, 1997

Using eMail

When used together with conventional PR (mail, paper, phone and fax), eMail can be a most effective tool for getting coverage of your site in conventional media.

The problem very often is obtaining the eMail addresses of journalists and correspondents.

The US All Media E-Mail Directory is a comprehensive listing of over 7,000 media e-mail listings for magazines, newspapers, radio, TV and syndicates nation-wide.

The directory costs $49 for either a hard copy or an electronic copy in MS Word format. An ASCII database is $79. Both versions include six monthly updates.

The site - although rather ugly in our humble opinions - contains some useful hints for writing eMAil press releases called "The Ten Commandments for Sending E-Mail to the Media".

At the site, you can also subscribe to "Internet & E-Mail PR News".

The US All Media Jumpstation contains links to over 3000 magazines, professional journals, trade & consumer publications organized by category.

This is a comprehensive, well-organized site which is well worth checking out. --John Blower

June 12, 1997

The New Morality?

A couple of years ago, the way we learned HTML was by finding a page we liked, downloading the source, messing around with it, inserting our own content and using it.

We generally sent a short note to the original author, complimenting them on their design and asking for permission to use it. Invariably, permission was granted, such was the ethos of sharing in those days.

Now, however, it seems that times have changed. The topic of site "theft" is a common one in a newsgroup to which we subscribe, comp.infosystems.www.authorin g.html.

In point of fact, there's literally nothing that one can do about one's design being approriated by another. Except complain to the offending party. And if they're thick-skinned enough, you'll probably be ignored.

This habit has now, apparently reached new heights. Reader Hal Pawluk reports:

"...It's site theft, and they're getting bolder and smarter. Following are a few methods used recently to steal my site, and a few suggestions about dealing with this.

The worst offender as far as my site goes is:

Alex Carvalho
alex.c@mpc.com.br (ALEX C)
Organization: MPCBBS - Informacoes por Teleprocessamento S/C Ltda

He took all of my site and posted it at: http://www.geocities.com/Eureka/1020/. He left my name, my copyright notices and even my picture! Scanning the pages, I was unable to find his name anyplace on the site - it all looks like I'm trying to sell his book (he accepts credit cards). About a week ago he sent me an e-mail saying "sorry" and that he was going to remove my material, but hasn't yet. I'm working with the ISP on this one, but it's taking much longer than I'd like.

Another site in the UK took my entire home page and used all the text in white-on-white type on his home page to make it "invisible." The page scored high on search engines for certain keywords because the engines indexed my content. Once called on it, they removed the material.

Some folks in the US came up with a clever variation on this. They took pages that indexed high from a number of sites, including mine, and created pages with a bit of their material at the top and the misappropriated materials several screens down. The clever part is that when I went to the page with my material on it, I saw it, then clicked through to see the main site. But when I tried to get back to the page with the stolen material, it had been erased. (I immediately retrieved the copy out of disk cache, so still have the evidence.)

So if you value your content, a certain amount of vigilance is called for:

1. Insert unique phrases and even nonsense words in your site (bury them in the header, in image ALT tags, after the tag), then search for these periodically.

2. If pages show up near yours in search results and sound much like yours or look like they don't belong, check them out. If there's very little at the top of the page, do a "view source" to see what's really there.

3. Don't buy the story that your descriptions and titles and other content are "not protected under British copyright" or that "Web content is not copyrighted in Brazil," the excuses I got, because that's just not true. Reciprocal treaties exist, and a new law on Intellectual Property rights went into effect in Brazil May 15, 1997.

4. Contact the site hosting services. They cannot afford to host illegal materials and will generally be very helpful (if sometimes slow).

To find site hosts from domain names:
http://rs.internic.net/cgi-bin/whois

For more information on copyright law:
http://www.bitlaw.com/copyrigh t/index.html"

You have been warned! --John Blower

June 11 1997

Odds 'n' Sods

ClickZ bills itself as "The Daily Stop for Web Advertisers".

Each day, they feature an article about a facet of advertising on the Web. Previous articles are archived, and there are resources indexes covering "Ad Networks", "Interactive Agencies", "Rep Firms", "Site Promotion" and "Software".

It's an attractive site, easy to navigate and filled with plenty of interesting stuff.

The Global Internet Project is "an international group of senior executives committed to spurring the growth of the Internet worldwide".

It has some pretty heavy hitters on board, and is headed up by Jim Clarke of Netscape.

The project takes a broad, long-term view of the Internet as a whole and recognizes that the implications of the New Medium spill over into all aspects of our lives.

While not directly concerned with Marketing and Design (although there is a section of the site devoted to "Commerce, Society and the Future of the Internet"), we believe that groups like this one will have an influence on how the Internet will evolve in the future. As such, it's definitely worth a look.

Finally, Salutation believes that "the vision of accessing information any time, any place is upon us", but that there's a missing link in the ability of machines to communicate with each other.

The result is a raft of software which facilitates just that. We found the site a little difficult to navigate and the language somewhat arcane, but nonetheless, this is a concept which, one way or another, will effect us all. --John Blower

June 10, 1997

Fastest Modem in the Universe.

Transend Corporation advanced modem speeds to new heights, without the need for digital connections at either end, with their announcement of the Transend Sixty-Seven(TM), delivering speeds of 67 kbps both upstream and downstream, over existing analog phone lines.

The Transend 67 solves the increasing speed and bandwidth problems of today's users, while utilizing the existing ubiquitous analog network. This makes the Transend 67 the perfect solution for remote access applications such as work-at-home and telecommuting, as well as, high-speed Internet access. The Transend 67 also makes widespread, economical video teleconferencing possible for all size companies.

The Transend 67 increases the speed and throughput of modems to that of single channel Integrated Services Digital Network (ISDN) connections, but without the installation and associated expense. The Transend 67 is simply plug-and-play. It works over plain old phone lines, anywhere to anywhere, without regard to digital-to-analog conversions or routing through the network. The simplicity of the Transend 67, along with its immediate availability, makes it the world's fastest, most cost-efficient modem for both businesses and ISPs.

Yet another inducement to load up sites with 176k images.

We presume the 115.2 modem is just around the corner.

Keep your eyes peeled... --John Blower

June 09, 1997

Which Search Engine?

In a survey covering a million visits to 132 sites, online store software suppliers Viaweb Inc, have come to some surprising conclusions regarding the amount of money spent by online shoppers coming from different search engines.

Per capita spending differed by as much as a factor of 3, with Yahoo! recording the highest amount and Webcrawler the least.

The data emphasizes the importance of tracking tools for online commerce. To maximize Web profits, merchants need to focus not on hit counts but on the sources of hits that bring in the most sales. And to learn which sources of hits are most profitable, they need tracking tools.

The study examined over a million visitors arriving at 132 sites made with Viaweb software during a 120-day period from mid-December 1996 to mid-April 1997. Viaweb's tracking tools showed that traffic from search engines generated an average of 17 cents per visitor in online sales, with individual search engines ranging from 10 cents to 31 cents:

SourceVisitorsSalesSales/
Visitor
Excite 226,321$26,478 $ .12
Infoseek 217,44826,170.12
Webcrawler 179,55117,943.10
Yahoo!170,52253,553.31
Altavista164,36937,067.23
Lycos 24,8955,302.21
Hotbot16,9172,513.15
Total1,000,023$169,026$ .17

The study contradicts the commonly held view that search engine traffic is worth a constant amount, regardless of the source. As shown above, hits vary in value.

"A Web merchant without access to this kind of information would be at a big disadvantage", said Viaweb president Paul Graham.

But don't expect to be able to submit a new listing to Yahoo! for some time.

Webcrawler, on the other hand... --John Blower


Take a look at the Archives. We've indexed all the past issues with topic pointers.



Check out the Archives....130 Weeks of Back issues including:

Week Ending June 01, 1997
  • Events
  • Hard Copies
  • Banning Junque
  • Another Survey
  • Networds
Week Ending June 01, 1997
  • Shop Til You Drop
  • Coffee Time
  • Jaundiced
  • Push To Shove
Week Ending May 25, 1997
  • Microscope
  • Gadfly
  • Marketing Your Site
Complete Indexed Archives(24 months of marketing and design) Complete Indexed Archives(24 months of marketing and design)

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