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So you've read all the books on site design and architecture, your graphics are suitably skinny, your prose has been shaved to within an inch of its life, your METAtags are faultless and your keywords fit to a tee. Promotion was a hassle, but has been carried out willingly - nay! enthusiastically!
But does your site do its (presumed) job of selling your product or service?
Alan J Zell, the self-styled "Ambassador of Selling", will let you know.
"While many
of the people developing websites for themselves or for
others have the technical and artistic skills necessary to
build a website, they often don't know how to apply good
selling techniques to the medium.
"Other web site critique programs are pointed to
technical and graphic problems and solutions, and not to
why the site was developed . . . to make sales. Hence, the
Attitudes For Selling Web Site Critique Service aims to help
identify common (potential) pitfalls of web site development,
and to identify ways to increase the effectiveness of the
site from a sales point of view," said His Excellency.
Mr Zell will provide you:
Mr Zell has been in the selling business for 28 years. The Attitude For Selling's website was voted one of the top 25 web sites by Saleslinks.com
Oh yes - prices start at $450. Unless you're a non-profit...
It seems to us that there is a renewed - and very welcome - focus on website content abroad in the land.
This is evidenced, in part, by the emergence of the Online Writing discussion list (which we have mentioned in this column). The list is, by all accounts, enjoying incredible popularity, to the extent that participants are now limited to two posts per day.
Now there is Contentious, a site run by the list moderators.
The site aims itself not at the HTML-wielders but those who actually generate the textual substance of sites.
Editor Amy Gahran suggests that the geek community simply doesn't recognise writing skills to be indispensable to online success, a position with which we find it difficult to disagree. This Web monthly will also deal with payment and copyright issues and offer advice on the unique demands of the medium.
There are examples of "fluffy" vs "meaty-but-lean" sites - some surprises there - as well as profiles of Web authors as a distinctive breed.
We recommend a visit to this site to see what is required of writing in the New Medium. Remember - it ain't print...
The European Commission has said its differences with the United States over who will govern the Internet in the future are
moving towards a resolution.
Speaking at the seventh annual World Wide Web conference (WWW7) being held in Brisbane, Australia, the EC's
Information Market Policies director Frans de Bruine said he now thought there was no chance of "Internet wars" developing.
Last month, the EC Industry Commissioner Martin Bangemann had said in a response to a US Green Paper on the issue:
Europe objected to suggestions in the Green Paper that trademark issues and other disputes relating to the Internet should
be subject to US jurisdiction. It also said American companies could control the issuing of new domain names for Internet
sites.
The European Commission wants international private sector participation and global organisations involved instead.
Mr De Bruine added that the United States was supportive of the European idea of a Global Internet Charter, which he said
would provide a coherent framework for policies but was not an attempt by Europe to regulate the Internet or set up a new
international body.
HTML is in a constant state of flux, with new browser-specific tags being devised with each reiteration of the two major browsers.
In general, it's a hassle keeping up with them all.
No more. The latest version of Ron Woodall's excellent HTML Compendium has just been posted (dated February 1, 1998).
This resource lists pretty much every tag ever devised and provides indicators of which versions of which browsers support it.
The site itself is well-designed, offering the user a variety of mirrors depending on their geographical location, and, more importantly, a choice of framed or non-framed versions.
Bookmark this site and return regularly for updates!
The symbol TM is pretty well unversally recognized as denoting a registered trademark.
But perhaps no more.
That well-known centre of planetary Internet activity and innovation, the Republic of Turkmenistan, has claimed the suffix ".TM" for domain names lodged in its national registry.
The registry is operated by household name NetNames, the celebrated "global domain name registry".
Turkmenistan is the latest outpost of digital culture to swell its coffers (and presumably, the coffers of their registration organizations) by offering domain names for the standard $50/year. (Others include:
Now, there's nothing inherently wrong with anyone anywhere offering weird and woderful domain name suffixes to anyone who wants them.
However, it does tend to make things more than a trifle confusing, and serves to point up the total lack of imagination and leadership current in the doamin name quagmire.
The Internet was never inhtended to carry the amount of traffic it currently does - and will increasingly. The DNS was never designed to carry the proliferation of organizations it does.
As we have pointed out in the past, the DNS is in need of a fundamental rethink.
NetNames and their Central Asian chums are merely compounding a confused and confusing situation.
Oh yes - we tried to register "pepsi.tm". The Turks were having nothing of it. They told us that:
Take a look at the Archives. We've indexed all the past issues with topic pointers.
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