About EPSS & Technology - Web Applications: articles about e-commerce and other browser based systems and Web sites.
Please Santa, grant me these special holiday wishes, and improve Web commerce too
"In my adventures online, it seems like every new site I go to is a new adventure in frustration and inconsistency. There are a few things I'd like to see on each and every single Internet-commerce site." (1999-12-27)E-Business Must Consider Its Customer
One of the biggest causes of e-business failures is the inability of companies to build a system from the customer's viewpoint. (1999-12-27)Levi strategist comes clean about Web failure
Mark Hurst, president of US ecommerce consultancy Creative Good, said: "Customers shop online for convenience yet Levi.com slows customers down by displaying irrelevant pictures of its pouting models. No wonder Levi.com proved to be a bad return on the company's investments," (1999-12-20)Improving Information Retrieval with Human Indexing
"As company intranets grow in content, it becomes increasingly difficult to find the exact information that an intranet user may be looking for. Companies have traditionally used search engines to locate information on their intranets. However, many are finding that search engines (even the newer, so-called "intelligent" ones) are just not enough." (1999-12-20)Designed to Fail
In this article, Michael Goldhaber describes the experience of looking for information about printers. "The only way to find out about each laser printer on the H-P site is to choose from a list that tells you virtually nothing but model number. Electing a model leads you to some details about that model. It's like being in a store and seeing lots of closed cartons which you open, one after another, hoping to find what you want inside. Who, outside the Soviet Union, has ever shopped for anything this way?" (1999-12-12)Using the Net for Brainstorming
Today, increasing numbers of companies are using the Internet to stimulate and manage innovation--and to put the brightest new ideas into the hands of the people who can turn them into products the most quickly. (1999-12-12)"E" technology: The convergence of IT and business
The "e-revolution" has arrived at a break-neck pace, providing little time for top management to engage in the usual careful planning, for fear that an unknown e-commerce-enabled competitor will capture market share, steal loyal customers, and damage hard-earned profitability. Little time is available for companies to research the issues surrounding "e" technology, and put it all into perspective. (1999-11-28)XML experiences growing pains
Although the signal-to-noise ratio surrounding most emerging technologies is typically quite low, the potential of Extensible Markup Language (XML) seems to be off the chart. What began as, and still is, a simple tagging language, has emerged as a powerful e-business enabler -- a mechanism for data interchange that is being infused into all levels of corporate infrastructures. (1999-11-28)Web users wonder: How do I use this gizmo?
According to this article: "Most of the time, today's site-builders assume that users will know how to handle a gizmo - a search engine, a checklist, a calculator, whatever. The gizmo is there, the site has that all-important "functionality", and that's enough. The result is a slew of Web sites that leave some users feeling inadequate and short-changed." The author relates his own experience with the problems caused by a small mortgage rate calculator. (1999-11-07)Creating Good Customer Experiences
A Motley Fools article about the usability of e-commerce site. The article "../estimates that $6 billion in potential revenues will be lost this holiday season as a result of the "customer experience gap" -- the difference between what customers want and what they get. Many shoppers will become frustrated by the process of shopping online and will turn to traditional channels for their purchases." (1999-11-07)Making the Right Technology Decision
In this article Bruce Tognazzini cautions that "...web browsers are an appropriate mechanism for application delivery only when an application must be made available to the public (or rather all networked computer users) at large. While the approaching universality of web browsers is unmatched by any other platform, that singular advantage comes with an amazing set of disadvantages." (1999-08-07)10 Questions about Information Architecture
According to this CNET article: "With today's complex, superfly, dynamically driven database Web sites and networks, information architects have become critical to--if not the cornerstone of--most large Web design projects. Blending the technical and the visual with a keen sense for organizational structures and usability, IA is a multidimensional field that puts place in space." (1999-07-03)Intranets Fail To Deliver Business Value
According to this TechWeb article "Large corporate intranets are failing to deliver business value and return on investment, forcing companies to reassess their strategies for these internal information networks." (1999-07-03)About Browser-based EPSS
This EPSScentral article describes some of the Web Browser features that can be used to develop an electronic performance support system.HP works to make the Internet more automatic for users
This InfoWorld news story Hewlett Packard's new global strategy to transform the Internet into a "do it for me" network. According to the story HP wants to make the web an environment with an "implicit, intuitive access to services " See the HP website for more information about this vision. (Mar-20-98)Push technology has new pull as an idea that's truly practical
This article by Dan Gillmore explores some of the potential uses for the Internet Push technology. Its now becoming a way to deliver just-in-time information. (Mar-06-99)Web Components
This Byte Magazine articles examines the use of browser-based application develoment components like ActiveX, Java Applets and Java Beans. (Aug-06-97)