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"If space aliens want to learn who we are as humans, they shouldn’t read our newspapers and they
certainly shouldn’t watch our TV programs. They should browse the Web." ONE TO SCREW IN THE BULB, AND.... This joke found its way to our inbox recently: Question: How many people does it take to change a light bulb in cyberspace? Answer: 1 to change the light bulb and to post to the list that the light bulb has been changed. CONSIDER THE SOURCE In our quest to rid our inboxes of get-rich-quick schemes, Viagra pitches, and worse, we took notice of the following promotion for an antispam product: “Detect & eliminate spam BEFORE it gets to your mail client! Tired of the hundreds of unsolicited commercial e-mails (UCE) infiltrating your mailbox everyday? Now you can do something about it! Seek and destroy all unwanted junk e-mail at the click of a button, BEFORE it reaches your mailbox!” But then we considered the source. How did we hear about this offer? We were spammed, of course.
Telephone companies have always been creative about finding ways to charge customers more money, but a recent incident in New Zealand may be the first of its kind. When an Auckland businessman opened his cellphone bill he was shocked to discover a single charge for 337.50 New Zealand dollars. He was even more surprised to see that the charge was listed as a “penalty for being an arrogant bastard.” Speaking to a reporter for the New Zealand Herald, he asked: “How can they speak to their clients like this?” He said he couldn’t recall making any enemies at the company and didn’t think he had any friends who worked there who might be playing a practical joke. A spokesman for Telecom New Zealand (www.telecom.co.nz) said the company was “absolutely aghast” and launched an investigation. “As far as we were concerned, it couldn’t happen,” the company said. No word yet on how it did.
A new phenomenon known as “Web rage” strikes more than half (54%) of all Internet users in the U.K. at least once a week, according to a study by Market & Opinion Research International, the U.K. polling firm (www.mori.co.uk). In the heat of the moment, 7% of those surveyed admitted to hitting the keyboard or mouse, while 4% hit their desks, and 2% say they have hit the person next to them in their frustration. One I/T manager admitted smashing up a £2,500 laptop after a Web page failed to recognize his personal information after six attempts. The study, which involved 1,000 interviews, quotes a 27-year-old female respondent as saying she takes out her frustrations on the Web sites that she finds irritating. When a TV she ordered never turned up despite repeated e-mail inquiries, she retaliated by ordering £1 million of goods from the site using a false credit-card number. A 43-year-old male said that when he becomes irritated while shopping online, “shouting helps, along with rapid hammering of the mouse button.” He has replaced his mouse several times. NOTHING BUT 'NET John Patrick is so bullish about the Internet that he even disputes the widely held notion that the Internet bubble burst. Patrick, who was chief Internet technology officer at International Business Machines Corp. (www.ibm.com) until he retired last December, sees the dot-com bankruptcies of the past two years as part of the normal rise and fall of businesses. Meanwhile, he thinks that we haven’t even come close to tapping one-tenth of the potential of the Internet. Patrick, author of Net Attitude: What It Is, How to Get It, and Why Your Company Can’t Survive Without It, talked recently with Context Managing Editor Pegeen Hopkins to explain why he is so optimistic.
JOHN PATRICK: We currently use about 3% to 4% of the Internet’s potential. You can arrive at that number in different ways: the percentage of the world’s population doing something on the Internet this minute, the percentage of mobile devices connected to it, or the percentage of the available bandwidth that people use. The most important metric, though, is the percentage of things that you’d like to be able to do on the Internet compared with what you actually can do. It’s impossible to measure precisely, but the percentage is very small. To give a simple example, in most states you have to get in your car, drive, and spend half a day to renew your driver’s license. A gap is forming between what people expect and what they get. At the official U.S. Olympic merchandise site, for example, people looking to buy merchandise were asked to follow three steps: print out a form, choose the desired items, then call an 800 number to place an order. CONTEXT: What has changed since you finished writing Net Attitude in 2001? PATRICK: The idea of integrating distinct computer systems and making sure they can talk to one another has been important for a while, but it’s now clear that it is the Holy Grail of e-business. New technology standards, called Web Services, will solve all kinds of problems because they will allow communication between incompatible systems. Consider what happens when systems don’t communicate. Most hotel chains have slick Web sites where you can reserve a room. But if you want to pay for a room with airline frequent-flier points, forget it. You can’t even pay for a room with the hotel’s own points program because different computer systems handle reservations and the points program. You have to call the hotel during regular business hours, give your credit-card number, and wait for the hotel to send a coupon for you to use. Airport gate scheduling systems don’t communicate with flight arrival systems, either. That’s why there is often no gate available to park an airplane when it arrives at an airport. The examples are endless. CONTEXT: Given the weakened economy and the bursting of the Internet bubble, are companies backing off from e-commerce and technology plans? PATRICK: Absolutely not. Even to say the bubble burst is somewhat misleading. About 1,000 Internet-only companies failed—10% of them. That’s a small number. In the U.S., 4,000 to 6,000 companies have gone bankrupt steadily every month for the past 20 years. Besides, the failures had nothing to do with the Internet. They had to do with poor business models; for example, buying a 20-pound bag of pet food on the Internet and shipping it across the country either doesn’t make sense for the consumer or for the company. E-commerce is really about all companies, not just Internet-only ones. The tens of millions of companies that exist globally have to get ready because people will expect information and service 24/7. These organizations have a big advantage over start-ups: their logos, access to capital, people, training programs, distribution networks, and business partners. But they have to get with it.
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