btw.net Weblog

	Saturday, December 14, 2002

debit-style IDs gain popularity

Albany Times-Union: Colleges adopting a card for all reasons. Alan Wechsler reports on the University of Albany's deployment of a campus card system. [source: Scott Loftesness]

The smart card revolution is so popular that there's even a National Association of Campus Card Users. The Alabama-based group is holding a four-day conference in March in New Orleans with seminars like "Penn State ID+: What Worked, What Didn't" and "Banks Are Great! But I Wouldn't Want to Marry One ..."

12:54:17 PM

Network Business Model

It's the neutrality, smarty.
Larry Lessig on Net neutrality: It would be a strange and bad thing if the electricity grid discriminated against Sony television sets by serving reliable electricity only to Panasonic TVs. [source: The Doc Searls Weblog]
Financial Times: A threat to innovation on the web. Lawrence Lessig. But increasingly, the providers of internet connectivity are pushing a different principle. US broadband companies are trying to ensure that they have the power to decide which applications and content can run. [Source: Tomalak's Realm]
12:50:03 PM

e-business model

Where B2B exchanges went wrong
From Knowledge@Wharto, Special to CNET News.com, December 14, 2002, 6:00 AM PT

As the dust settles in the Internet shakeout, business owners are realizing that it's the market that matters--not necessarily the technology. In a new study, Wharton marketing professor George Day, consultant Adam Fein and analyst Gregg Ruppersberger look at the winners and losers in one sector of the Internet marketplace and come up with key lessons for incumbents and entrepreneurs alike.

12:34:37 PM

E-commerce

UK is nation of eshoppers. Browsing-to-buying

More than two thirds of e-window shoppers in the UK go on to make a purchase.[The Register]

A Retailing Mix: On Internet, in Print and in Store.

The fastest growth in online sales appears to be coming from retailers that have mastered how to use the Internet in conjunction with catalogs, stores or both. By Saul Hansell. [New York Times: Technology]

9:08:41 AM

digital Money

New Wall St. Pitch: Buy Low, Sell High and Pay Bills, Too. Brokerage firms are no longer satisfied with managing long-term investments for their clients. Now they want their checking accounts, too.
By Patrick Mcgeehan. [New York Times: NYT HomePage]

"We believe very strongly that the financial adviser is in transition to a balance-sheet adviser in our clients' eyes," Mr. Naratil [senior vice president at UBS PaineWebber] said. "It is going to be one of the great opportunities for brokerage firms going forward. You can give better advice to a client if you can understand more of their financial picture. One of the ways to do that is to have them consolidate all of their assets with you."

Globe and Mail: How thieves took $2,000 from my bank account.
By Jane Armstrong, The Globe and Mail Saturday, December 14, 2002

Two weeks ago, I was robbed. Twice. The bandits struck while I was out of the country, visiting the Oregon Coast during American Thanksgiving.

The first theft happened on a Friday afternoon, when I would have been climbing around a rock jetty at Rockaway Beach. The thieves got $1,000 in cash. The next day, while I lolled on a deck chair overlooking the Pacific Ocean, they stole another $1,000.

They didn't break into my house or steal my purse. They ransacked a savings account using a counterfeit debit card. My own card was safely tucked in my wallet.

9:04:37 AM

digital Architecture

Customizing our software worlds, Jon Udell, InfoWorld, Dec 14, 2002

I've often wondered why we insist on using the word "architecture" to describe the design of software systems. Maybe one reason is that, in a quite literal sense, we inhabit them. "For millennia," Williams writes, "the fact of settlement -- humans living with other humans in a place over time -- has shaped our ideas and practices of work, family, time and space, and society." The transition from nomadic to settled life must have taken generations. Now, of course, we're going the other way.

I've traveled a lot since joining InfoWorld six months ago, but have yet to visit the home office in San Francisco. A number of my colleagues are elsewhere, such as Texas, New York, and Virginia. Like many virtual teams, the "settlement" we inhabit is an artificial world made of business processes and sustained by technology.

We're often surprised by how much people care about the architectures of these artificial worlds.

5:56:55 AM

What better way to unite people spread out geographically for common cause than access?

English countryside doing it for themselves: This story by Ben Hammersley, written in October for the Guardian (but missed by me), tells of how rural areas in England are prompting entrepreneurial efforts, often involving Wi-Fi, to bring high-speed connections to areas that British Telecom says are too far below their radar. In Wales, a community effort inspired by Dave Hughes is rapidly transforming the picture of connectivity, and the secondary effects are apparently already cropping up. What better way to unite people spread out geographically for common cause than access? [source: 80211b News]

5:43:14 AM