Spotlight Features

E-commerce -- recently created by the Internet and Web sites -- is now a fully matured mammoth and has connected with a few big punches in the first round of fights between the old and new economy. What once had been just a simple information page for a business on the Internet is now, in a majority...

Megacities with populations larger than entire countries are changing the physical and economic landscape of the globe. Megacities have economic engines that are powering the future of the world. Megacities have larger markets than many developed countries. The megacities are coming. They are the fu...

Recently, while replying to e-mails from readers of my book, The Design of Sites, I came across a comment from a designer who claimed that my recommendation to use pop-ups was hopelessly out of date. Did this reader not understand me, my recommendation -- to use pop-ups primarily in situations when ...

What do New York and Nigeria have in common? Something far more serious than beginning with the letter "n." Both of these regions have earned the dubious distinction of ranking among the riskiest places in the world for e-commerce, according to a survey by CyberSource Corporation. The Big Apple was ...

There are three common myths about corporate image and name identity: Big money will buy you a big image, customers are just sheep, and constant bombardment will bring constant sales. Corporate image and name identity form the backbone of any business. Without them there will be no growth, no IPOs,...

We've come a long way, baby! Indeed, e-commerce has evolved from online billboards to a fully functional, personalized shopping experience over the past decade. While there were admittedly a few bumps along the road, the path from 1994 through the 2004 holiday shopping season is full of crucial mile...

Well, we have yet another definition to add to our technology lexicon: click hijacking. With the advent of powerful and profitable search engines, like Google, Internet schemers have come up with yet another way to illegally make a buck. This article looks at this new phenomenon, what gave rise to ...

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) will use RFID chips on a trial basis to track the arrival and return of visitors from abroad. The testing phase, which will begin this spring and is expected to last one year, will occur at selected points of entry across the U.S., and it will complemen...

Your logo is not that important these days, as most customers have no motivation to remember the subtle intricacies or bizarre approaches to logos that are intended to stimulate demand. They are already flooded with colorful graphic look-alikes and continuously regenerated blasts from every corner.

Ninety-one percent of American consumers will walk out of a store and shop elsewhere if they cannot find the particular gift they want, according to a recent Sun Microsystems survey on consumer shopping patterns. Adults who shop online are equally unforgiving of online retailers that do not have the...

The e-mail mistake. Anybody using a computer has been there and done that. You add your name to a business message and click the Send button. The message leaves your screen just as your eye catches a glimpse of an error. It used to be too late; that message was gone for good -- the Uh-Oh e-mail! No ...

Using e-mail for personal and business correspondence has become as commonplace today as the VCR and the office water cooler. All three items are often taken for granted. Consumers have come to expect certain constants when it comes to computing: antivirus and firewall software are must-have securit...

For any corporation with plans to hit the markets with an IPO in 2005 or beyond, here are some key points. Just as how your latest technology and other corporate assets are essential to develop great financials for a potential IPO, your corporate image and brand name recognition are equally importan...

Popular style guides such as Strunk and White's 1918 classic The Elements of Style and the original 1906 Chicago Manual of Style were published before the advent of computers or e-mail. As such, their rules are not always relevant to the exigencies of e-commerce and electronic business communication...

You probably remember what happened to the tech bubble when it burst in 2000. It was quite a disaster. How could a sector that showed so much promise become so decimated? Exactly what went wrong? And, why does the future now look promising for this once devastated sector? In a previous article, I ta...