When Peace Corps volunteer Jim Thorn put a personal computer in front of a group of farmers in a former Soviet republic, they just looked at it. Thorn says he was hoping the farmers in the Kyrgyz Republic would work with him to develop individual business plans. But he says the group assumed the computer could create them “out of the air,” without any input from the farmers.

So, the Peace Corps has a new mission. With so many people in the situation of the Kyrgyz farmers—convinced of the value of computers but baffled about how to use them—the Peace Corps is helping people use information technology to better their lives.

This year, 13% of the agency’s 6,700-person field force are “business volunteers,” helping introduce technology and business concepts around the world. Brendan Daly, a spokesman for the Peace Corps, says the demand for such expertise has grown rapidly, especially in the former Communist countries of the Eastern bloc. As of July 1, he said, there were 367 business volunteers in one-time Eastern bloc realms, or about a quarter of all volunteers there.

While the enduring image of a Peace Corps volunteer is of a young, bearded man in sandals helping an emaciated African make bricks, it actually makes sense that the Peace Corps would go high-tech. The personal-computer movement and, in particular, the fervor over the Internet’s ability to change the world hark back to the optimistic attitude that the Peace Corps had when it was founded in the Camelot years of the Kennedy administration. While the Peace Corps dropped from view during the more-cynical ’70s and ’80s, the need for businesses to go on-line gives the group a way to reclaim some of its old zeal and impact.

Thorn, who was just out of the University of California, Davis, when he helped bring personal computers and Internet access to the Kyrgyz Republic, says the people he dealt with were extremely naive not just about technology but also about business. The inhabitants of the Kyrgyz Republic “woke up one morning and were told, ‘You are now a market economy.’ They had no idea how to be one,” he says. The local farmers union, in the city of Osh, had been a collectivist organization; it simply mandated plans. It had to reinvent itself as a service bureau, helping individual farmers. “But they had never before been service-oriented,” Thorn says. “They didn’t know how to be useful or democratic.”

Thorn says his “clients,” an ethnic mix of Turkish and Mongol lineage, still spend a lot of time sitting in front of their new PCs, “getting up their nerve.”

Even when people come to understand the basics of information technology and grasp the idea of doing business as capitalists, some volunteers find themselves without a computer or modem. So, they have to organize skits to have local people act out how they would use a PC that is hooked up to the Internet.

But, while progress has been slow, it’s unmistakable. For example, Indianapolis volunteer Mary Bergson, 55 years old, helped a Volgograd entrepreneur secure money for a photocopier business serving the local government. That man now owns 10 centers and has become sort of the Kinko’s of the city once called Stalingrad. (“We don’t care if [local businessmen] get rich” as long as they provide a service that will “benefit the community in some way,” says Steve Taylor, who is Russia’s “country west” Peace Corps director.) Jack Walsh of Orleans, Mass., a 64-year-old retired senior vice president of Monsanto, helped three institutes in St. Petersburg build Web pages. The sites serve the local educational, agricultural, and medical communities. John Rafter, 59, a former Silicon Valley entrepreneur, helped homeless boys ages 11 to 18 in St. Petersburg create a blanket-making business to assist the elderly.

Peace Corps volunteers are also using technology to help themselves. In Slovakia, Mary Shields of Morton, Pa., has started an electronic newsletter to let volunteers in Eastern Europe share ideas. Actually, the whole experience may be helping the volunteers. Carol Wilkerson, a former business volunteer now working in the Peace Corps’ Chicago office, says many new MBAs think of a two-year stint overseas as both an international work experience and as an internship that looks good on a resume. Other officials say many business volunteers have been going to consulting firms when their tours of duty end.

Overall, more than 70% of Peace Corps volunteers use a computer overseas, according to a recent survey. This is roughly the same percentage who have electrical power, and more than twice as many as those who have a phone (34%) or TV (32%). Interestingly, 38% of the volunteers report having access to the Internet.

Years ago, the Peace Corps adopted the proverb: “If you give a man a fish, he’ll eat for a day; if you teach a man to fish, he’ll eat for a lifetime.” Today, the agency is trying just as hard to teach self-sufficiency, but, this time, people don’t fish—they surf.

GRAFFITI.COM

Tired of surfing through Web pages and being inundated with the rantings, ravings, and ill-conceived analyses of others? Well, now you can add your own two cents.

You needn’t set up your own Web page, either. Because of Third Voice, a new service, you can post your thoughts on the very pages of whatever Web site galvanizes you into action.

Or almost. That last paragraph actually takes a little explanation. So here goes:

In the past, you couldn’t kibitz on someone else’s Web page. The page’s owner controlled all the content there. But Third Voice skirts the control issue by setting itself up as a sort of community for comments on others’ Web sites, and by handling all the comments on Third Voice computers.

Let’s say a Third Voice subscriber read a Context article on the site and wanted to tell others, “What a great article!” He would write down those (remarkably perceptive) comments on a sort of electronic Post-it Note and tell the Third Voice computer to attach it to the article. Any other Third Voice subscriber who visited the Context site would see the note and could add praise of his own or, heaven forbid, say the first commenter was either a Context employee or a drug user. Because all the comments are logged on Third Voice’s site, Context and others with Web sites have no control over the comments made about them.

The setup means that only other Third Voice members can see the comments that provide the basis for what the company calls “in-line discussions.” (Does this mean we are now going to skate the Web instead of surfing it?) But Third Voice has a shot at building a large base of members. The creation of communities has been a big part of the development of the Internet, and Third Voice provides a sort of community that follows members as they roam the Web. Third Voice is building public forums by establishing a list of topics—business, entertainment, sports, etc.—and providing an inventory of the discussions.

Of course, the level of discourse depends on how people use Third Voice. People could hold serious discussions. Or they could just engage in the equivalent of graffiti. Perhaps the most interesting scenario would have Hertz going to the Avis site and posting comments such as, “We have a much better deal.” Third Voice could well have to police the comments or risk having its service turn into a shouting match. The company already has features that attempt to block spam postings.

The service is free—Third Voice relies on advertising and sponsorship messages for revenue.

For more information: www.thirdvoice.com.

SAY, ‘CHEESY’

A decade ago, when desktop-publishing software first gave computer users a vast array of fonts, sizes, and colors to choose from, enough people flaunted their creativity that, for a time, corporate documents looked like ransom notes. So, just imagine what might happen now that Polaroid is giving kids a way of taking small pictures that they can stick to everything from refrigerator magnets to school notebooks.

The new Polaroid I-Zone Instant Pocket Camera works just like any other Polaroid camera except for three things. The self-developing snapshots are just one inch by 1 1/2 inches. The pictures have an adhesive backing. And kids can write or draw on the photos as they develop. (There’s actually a fourth difference: The cameras come in unusual colors called radical red, breezy bright blue, and cool lime green.)

Kids can plaster the photos on pretty much anything that they want to put their personal stamp on. “The Polaroid pocket camera isn’t really about the photos, but what you do with them,” says Sandy Lawrence, a vice president with the camera company.

The I-Zone has three settings: indoor, sunny, and overcast. The camera is focus-free, so children don’t have to worry about blurry images, and has an electronic flash with a range of two to eight feet.

Polaroid first introduced a version of the camera in Japan, where it was called the Xiao Instant Pocket Camera. The Xiao, which means “smile,” made Polaroid managers grin with glee. So, it’s now scheduled for U.S. release in September at a suggested retail price of $24.99. This includes a trial pack of six-exposure film and two double-A batteries.

For more information: www.polaroid.com.

MODEM OPERANDUS

Some of us have trouble walking and chewing gum at the same time, but Fidelity Investments thinks people are ready to trade stocks and bonds while on the go. Its new InstantBroker service means clients don’t even have to get to a phone to make a trade; they can handle transactions via their pagers or personal digital assistants.

InstantBroker began life as a form of “push” technology that sent stock quotes and other information to customers either on a schedule they determined or based on certain triggers, says Joseph Ferra, a Fidelity senior vice president. However, the development of two-way pagers has enabled Fidelity to add the “pull” capability. So, customers can now request information or even place trades while in transit.

Fidelity began by offering its mobile-trading service only to customers who have assets of $100,000 or more and make at least 36 trades a year. But “we’ll lower the threshold” soon to include a larger portion of Fidelity’s customer base, Ferra says.

Users have to buy or rent either the Inter@ctive Pager 950 from BellSouth Wireless Data or the Palm VII, 3Com Corp.’s latest hand-held organizer, which now includes a wireless modem.

The Fidelity executive forecasts other new features for InstantBroker by the end of this year. These should include the ability to move money between accounts; to be advised on such “corporate actions” as tender offers, mergers, and stock splits; and to get the latest on IPOs.

Aside from the cost of a two-way pager or other device, InstantBroker costs $49.95 a month.

For more information: www.fidelity.com.

CHEAPER BY THE THOUSAND

Volume discounts have come to the Internet marketplace. But “cheaper by the dozen” now refers to how many folks you can round up electronically to buy the same merchandise, so you can increase your bargaining power and drive down the price.

This approach to bargaining, known formally as “demand aggregation,” has long existed in the physical world, where buying clubs negotiate good prices on behalf of members. But the on-line world seems to hold even more possibilities because so many people can coordinate their interests so quickly and so efficiently. One of the new on-line practitioners, Mercata, says the aggregation model ushers in an era of what it calls “we-commerce.” Get it? Add a “w” to e-commerce and....

Anyway, two new “aggregator” sites, Accompany and Mercata (also called Everything.com), have opened their virtual doors. Another, DealTime, an existing e-commerce site, is planning to add “DealTeam” so customers can band together and increase their buying power.

Accompany and Mercata list a series of prices that have been negotiated with a manufacturer, based on volume. In other words, the services might state that a computer will cost $1,000 if 10 are purchased, but only $900 if 100 people sign up to buy within a certain period. Customers can simply say they’ll buy at the best price that can be negotiated. Or they can specify a price and hope that enough demand develops to reach that price.

There are also some important differences between Accompany and Mercata. Accompany, which calls its process the “Buy-Cycle,” offers mostly computer products. Mercata has “Power Buys” for a broader range of consumer items. Accompany makes its money by charging suppliers a fee per transaction, while Mercata tacks a surcharge onto the price that consumers agree to pay. In addition, Mercata is focused on drawing traffic directly to its Web site, while Accompany is willing to work through the sites of leading Web communities and suppliers.

For more information: www.accompany.com; www.mercata.com.

NO CARDBOARD GLASSES NEEDED

Virtual shopping is getting another dimension. Styleclick.com is applying 3D techniques, usually associated with old horror flicks, to its attempts to make Internet shopping more closely resemble the real world of boutiques, department stores, and malls, says Linda Freedman, vice president of marketing. “Of course, there are some features of the physical world that we don’t want to duplicate, like looking for a parking space,” she adds.

Styleclick, formerly Modacad Inc., adds 3D effects through a viewer—a piece of software you can download from the site—it calls “Cool Views.” This feature enables consumers to look at accessories, like a watch, from various angles, just as you would turn it in your hand. With clothes and footwear, users can zoom in to get a closer look at fabrics and designs. The only problem with the clothes is that they appear to be on the body of a 28-year-old fitness instructor, rather than the middle-aged torso that some of us possess.

Styleclick also offers a product-search mechanism to help you find that elusive shirt, shoe, or gift. And, if you insist on actually leaving your house, Styleclick has a store locator. It lists all the retail outlets selling the item you want, and provides a map.

Next, Freedman says, will be lifelike interaction with a sales consultant and the creation of realistic “lifestyle environments” specific to certain interests, such as golf or the home. Styleclick charges fees to manufacturers and shares sales revenue to make money. It can be found at various Web shopping sites, including America Online, Excite, and Women.com.

For more information: www.styleclick.com.

BETTER THAN MAALOX

Reviewers in the new on-line Zagat Survey don’t pull any punches. Consider these comments from the guide, called “Zagat Survey Outtakes: Comments that We Couldn’t Print”:

  “If I want a fatty sandwich served by a walking attitude, I’ll go to Mom’s.”

  “The heartburn will keep you warm all winter.”

  “The cockroaches are more energetic than the management.”

  “Grandma cooked like this. Grandpa died young.”

  This restaurant is a “literary hangout that originated the term ‘writer’s cramp.’”

Basically, Zagat Survey is the electronic version of the burgundy-colored restaurant guide, which became famous by eschewing professional reviewers and inviting any and all customers to send in their thoughts. But the on-line guide offers many features that the print version can’t, including maps and driving directions to restaurants, the ability to create a personal dining diary, “breaking news,” and shopping—though this is limited to Zagat merchandise.

In addition, searching for restaurants by name includes options that help you find your destination, even using partial or approximate information. For example, you can choose “begins with,” “contains,” or “sounds like,” the last an apparent concession to French cuisine. An experiment with the “sounds like” option worked quite well. In search of a restaurant called “Dome,” the word “doom” was inserted—no disrespect intended for a pretty good eatery—and the correct name came up.

Zagat Survey was offered free until Sept. 1. At that point, Zagat said, it would begin charging a membership fee that had yet to be determined at press time.

For more information: www.zagat.com.