Staples Inc., the US$9 billion office supply superstore, is constantly refining its Web site. In its most recent redesign, which launched May 7, the focus was to make it easier for customers to find products online and to help them complete their purchases quickly. To achieve those goals, the Framingham, Massachusetts-based company added more information to some parts of the site, simplified other parts to speed navigation and designed new tools such as a favorites list to facilitate the purchase process.
"Abstract concept." That's about the best way to describe the process of designing and maintaining an effective e-commerce site today.
Microsoft Corp. and Xerox Corp. today announced a joint partnership in an e-commerce spin-off, named ContentGuard Inc., that will design software to protect digital documents, books, music, entertainment and other media.
Microsoft Corp. and Xerox Corp. today announced a joint partnership in an e-commerce spin-off, named ContentGuard Inc., that will design software to protect digital documents, books, music, entertainment and other media.
It's May 1995: You're using browser-based chat, available only at online community Theglobe.com, to chat with a friend in Australia. You submit a message to the public chat board, then hit reload about 20 seconds later to see if she's responded. Of all the posts made in that time, you see one near the top with a purple cartoon icon. It's her reply. You come back often. You become part of a valuable asset - an audience Theglobe.com and the few other dedicated community sites can sell to their advertisers.
Content may be king, but for retail sites, it doesn't pay the bills. Online retail startup Foofoo.com Inc. learned to surround its products with relevant content, rather than the other way around. Another thing the company learned as it redesigned its site: Build an architecture that makes it easy to change, because you'll always be reinventing yourself.
Microsoft Corp. announced today the creation of HomeAdvisor Technologies Inc., a new company which will release software to streamline the home buying and selling process. It also announced partnerships with several large lending institutions.
Theoretically, the value of a company is the sum total of all the assets it carries on its books. So why is the total stock value of some companies - especially technology firms - as much as 50 or 100 times greater?
Take it from a 70-words-per-minute keyboard snob: It's industrial design award time.
Brand
Beautiful - that's the only word for Santa Clara, Calif.-based Palm Inc.'s new IIIc, the first-ever Palm with a color screen. Mind you, I've been using a Palm for more than a year, and I was skeptical that color could really enhance what is essentially an electronic date and address book.
In December, Computerworld interviewed three companies about how they scaled their sites to - hopefully - survive the onslaught of online holiday shoppers ["Surviving E-Christmas," Technology, Dec. 20]. Well, the news is in: They and their Web sites survived, with minimal or no damage.
Site logs are useful, but the numbers they generate can tell you the wrong things.
After the motion picture industry spent years negotiating the encryption standard for digital video discs (DVD), a small group of Norwegian hackers recently released a program, called DeCSS, that can break the encryption on almost any DVD disk. "This is a troubling situation," said Rick Clancy, a spokesman at Sony Corporation of America. He said Sony is still gathering information on the purported hack and added that "Sony is of course a strong advocate of content protection."