The sky is the limit
The number of U.S. mobile Internet service subscribers is predicted to soar from 1.8 million to 4 million by the end of 2000, according a report from the Yankee Group. The report forecasts that 1 billion mobile Internet access devices will be in use around the world by 2003.
The growth of the mobile Internet is dependent on increased transmission speeds, lower subscription rates and an increase in the number of consumers purchasing Internet-enabled mobile phones. The phones must become more user-friendly if the Yankee Group’s predictions are to come true.
Leading industry developers are co-operating to develop standardized solutions to these problems.
Find your calling
There’s a new site to help small- and medium-sized businesses decide on telecommunications services. Simplexity.com allows you to compare prices from voice, wireless, data and Internet selections, and some purchases can be made off the site. For a customized quote, submit an anonymous request for proposal.
Blame it on the kids
The most-visited Web property in December was the AOL Network, with 53,788,000 visitors, according to Media Metrix. Yahoo finished second with 42,361,000.
Speed saves
The Internet is revolutionizing the pharmaceutical industry, according to a report from Andersen Consulting. Internet-based technologies will enable top pharmaceutical companies to quadruple the number of drugs they launch each year. The time it takes to bring a drug to market from the initial testing period should be cut by a third as testing procedures are speeded up.
Current procedures for clinical trials are fragmented and involve vast amounts of paperwork. Online research tools, in particular, will help to save time during clinical trials.
Electronic communication and data analysis will make the process faster and drug regulatory agencies will be able to make decisions more quickly.
Everybody’s a photographer
Need another use to justify the money you spent on your Palm device? Try out the Kodak PalmPix. This small device slides into your Palm’s serial connection and displays gray-scale images on the Palm’s screen. Press the date book button to take a picture, or press the scroll button to zoom. Pictures can be uploaded to a PC, where they can be viewed as 24-bit color images at 640×480 pixel resolution.
The emperor’s new clothes
Online sales of clothing doubled to $1.1 billion last year, according to the NPD Group. Sales were static for the first nine months, but soared in the fourth quarter, with sales in December alone amounting to $266 million. This represented 1 percent of all apparel sales in the U.S.
Online clothing sales accounted for 0.6 percent of the total clothing market over the year. Consumers in the 20- to 40-year-old age group are far more likely than others to buy apparel from e-commerce sites and NPD identifies the 35- to 44-year-old age group as a core market to target for online apparel retailers. Households earning more than $70,000 are more likely to buy clothing online, making 61 percent of online apparel purchases, as opposed to 38 percent of all offline apparel purchases.
But what’s the tax write off?
The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has been endowed with $21.8 billion for college scholarships, vaccinations and other causes.
Couch potato U
A report from Market Data Retrieval, a Dun & Bradstreet educational research company, found that the number of colleges offering degrees online has doubled in the last year. Seventy percent of colleges now offer some kind of distance learning in the form of notes, study groups or online lectures. This year, 34 percent of all colleges that are less than 4 years old offered degrees via computer, up from 15 percent the previous year.
Where did this idea come from?
Almost 75 percent of U.S. journalists use the Internet daily, up from 48 percent last year. Half of the journalists surveyed said they browse the Net for story ideas and two-thirds read online publications. More than half say they engage in online discussions with their audience, usually via e-mail.
PC pile up
The global PC market will continue to grow through 2005, when more than 200 million PCs will be sold worldwide. According to eTForecasts, growth in the mobile devices market will not affect the market for PCs.
The market for PC servers will also be strong, with sales increasing from 3.7 million units last year to 11.5 million units in 2005. Sales of notebook and handheld PCs will double to 59 million over the next five years.
About 125 million PCs will be sold around the world this year; 45 million in North America alone. Europeans will buy 38 million, but only 5 million of those will be sold in Eastern Europe. PC sales for the Asia Pacific region will amount to almost 30 million, while 6.3 million will be sold in Latin America and 4 million in the Middle East.
And I thought it was the electric razor
The Internet is the “fastest growing technology in history,” according to Harris Interactive.
A poll from the New York-based company indicates that more than half of U.S. households are online and 90 percent of those use the Internet. Just less than half of adults surveyed use a computer; 79 percent go online regularly.
Whatever you say
U.S. workers spend one-third of their time at work on a computer, but 87 percent say they do not abuse computer and Internet facilities in the workplace, according to research from the John J Heldrich Center for Workforce Development at Rutgers University.
The study was carried out with the Center for Survey Research and Analysis at the University of Connecticut and showed that U.S. workers are positive about the effects of new technologies. Eighty-nine percent have no fear that they could be replaced in their job by a computer or other technology, while 77 percent say they have the necessary IT skills to perform their jobs. Almost 80 percent believe new technologies are good for the economy.
The majority of workers (80 percent) use e-mail and word processing and 77 percent browse the Internet at work. Only 16 percent have the option of telecommuting, but 41 percent say they would like to work like this.
Clean glass was just the first step
Scientists at Manhattan Scientifics say they recently produced a fuel cell with an energy output three times greater than a lithium ion battery used in cell phones. The cell, powered by methanol and water (similar to windshield washer fluid), has the potential to deliver 30 times the energy of today’s batteries.
It’s your nickel
Internet users spend more than twice as long logged on at work as they do at home, according to a Nielsen NetRatings report. The report found that people were online at work for an average of 21 hours in January compared to 9.5 hours at home in the same month.
News, financial news and general information sites are visited more often by work users, as are high bandwidth sites such as broadcast.com and MP3.com. Not surprisingly, office users are half as likely as home users to log onto adult sites.
Amazon and eBay are the most popular shopping sites both at home and at work. Office supply sites such as Staples.com are visited far more often by work users.
I want a suite
If you need an online office suite — and hey, who doesn’t?— there are several flavors available. These suites allow you to view and edit files right on the Web through the traditional tools of word processors, spreadsheets, databases, address books, and, in some cases, even a presentation graphics program.
If online access is what you need, try these three sites: Myfreedesk.com, Nuomedia.com and Thinkfree.com.
Something besides Tetris
For personalized content for your wireless device, check out Shadowpack at www.shadowpack.com. This free download has great depth of categories and information that will allow you to fully utilize the potential of your gizmos.
Insure my virtual failings
Companies using the Internet for any reason should carefully examine their cyberliability, according to a new insurance brokerage report. E-commerce failings, in particular, can expose businesses to worldwide liability, but e-mails, information posted on sites and comments submitted to online chatrooms can all give rise to legal action against a company.
Employee e-mail is especially difficult to monitor and workers can libel colleagues, clients and competitors without the knowledge of managers. British firm Norwich Union had to pay $715,660 to a competitor, WPA, when a court ruled that a Norwich Union employee had defamed WPA in an internal e-mail.
Coyle Hamilton, author of the report, cites copyright and trademark infringement, obscenity, invasion of privacy, negligent misrepresentation and failure to provide accurate updated information on a corporate Web site as potential causes of Internet-related legal action against a company.
The report states that, as with e-commerce itself, the insurance of e-commerce is still at a formative stage, but there are firms that will underwrite wide cyberliability policies.
Phone my Web site
An ordinary telephone will soon be the only device needed to access the Internet, according to a report from Cnet. A number of start-up companies are developing speaking Internet services that can be accessed from any telephone. These services will read e-mails, share prices, news and sports headlines, and point-to-point driving instructions to users.
Companies such as TelSurf and TellMe.com hope the new technology will compete with wireless services, as it is more user-friendly. Customers no longer have to fiddle with little buttons on their telephones. They merely have to say “stocks” and their personalized list of real-time stock quotes is read to them.
The speaking Net is intended to be a mass consumer product that will facilitate those who only need to access the Internet for a brief period. Complicated multimedia Web pages cannot be communicated orally, and only simple text content will be provided by the new services. Access to personalized Web pages will, however, be possible.