n From
the Fall issue of the newsletter of the Richard T. Farmer School
of Business at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio, come these predictions
and facts about the Internet: "Stocks traded on-line will
mushroom eightfold by 2001 and account for 60% of the discount
brokerage industry within four years. (Piper Jaffray)
"Entertainment and travel tickets sold on-line will top $10
billion by 2001. (Forrester Research)
"Automobiles sold with the help of on-line shopping services
totaled 1.5 million cars. (J.D. Powers & Associates)
"Total 1997 transactions were $9 billion with $7.4 billion
coming from business-to-business sales. (Forrester Research and
Cowles /Simba)
"Computer products sold on-line totaled $3 million per day
in 1997. (Dell Computer Corporation)"
Let us check back at the end of 2001 and see if these comments
still hold.
n From
the October 11 issue of InfoWorld magazine is news of disappearing
e-mail messages. "Taking aim at fears of incriminating e-mail
messages left on computers around the office, Disappearing Inc.
offers a client-independent e-mail management system that 'makes
old e-mail vanish everywhere.' E-mail messages are encrypted with
unique keys, and recipients must authenticate themselves before
viewing the messages. Once a specific key is destroyed, the file
becomes unreadable. Disappearing Inc's systems tracks all e-mail
access and, when a message is deleted, erases all copies, including
any stored on backup resources or forwarded to another account.
Companies can enact policies to keep particular types of messages
on file permanently, while deleting others after a predetermined
amount of time. Over the past few years, the outcomes of major
court cases, including the Department of Justice's case against
Microsoft and the prosecution of former government officials in
the Iran Contra case, have been determined by the ability to reclaim
e-mail files after they were deleted."
n From
the October 4 issue of Informationweek magazine, "Corp-orate
Software & Technology might have just what small and midsize
companies need to alleviate software purchasing anxiety - a new
Online Software Licensing Calculator. CS&T says the tool,
previously available only to large companies, supplies information
regarding volume software purchasing programs and tips on which
options might be best suited for a company.
"Ideally, users are getting a tool that not only does pricing
calculations but provides saving tips," says Marilyn Truglio,
a Gartner Group analyst. The free service has information on software
from Microsoft and Symantec. Data on Computer Associates, IBM,
Lotus, and Novell will follow shortly."
n While we in the Lower Columbia region struggle to gain T-1 phone line capabilities to upgrade our connectivity, information disseminated at a recent technology forum provides sobering comparison data. A chart compares how much of the 3-hour, 14-minute movie 'Titanic' could be downloaded by differing modems and data lines in 7 minutes, 23 seconds: Cable Modem, 100% of the movie completely downloaded in the given amount of time; Digital Subscriber Lines, 80% of the movie, a complete download would take 9 minutes, 14 seconds; T-1 lines, only 15%, complete download 49 minutes and 20 seconds; Integrated Service Digital Network, 0%, a complete download would take 9 hours and 14 minutes; Regular Phone Lines - what most of us here at the coast use - 0%, with a complete download taking as long as 42 hours and 30 minutes....I guess I'd rather rent the movie or check out the Cliff's Notes from the nearest public library :<
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