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Table of Contents
Basic questions for developing an Internet business strategy by Richard Seltzer
Dharma and Greg and Internet business by Richard Seltzer
The two faces of Internet business: traditional and revolutionary by Richard Seltzer
Aim for more than just delivering training. Create a learning environment by Richard Seltzer
Letters to the Editor -- Making a Web site accessible for the blind
If you were hooked on the first generation of video games -- with PacMan, Space Invaders, Asteroids, Centipede, DigDug, DonkeyKong, etc. -- you're going to want to get Retrocade or Mame. These are emulator programs which make it so you can play these old games on your PC. Getting the files and installing them is complicated by concerns for property rights. The folks who developed the emulator offer that software for free, but the developers of the original games are uptight about the distribution of the specific software that imitates their game ROMs. Under the current compromise, you have to download the emulator and related files separately from the ROM (game) software, and you are only "authorized" to get and play games for which you own the original version. In any case, I found Retrocade reasonably easy to download and install. Get it from www.monroeworld.com (select retrocade). Download version 1.1 of the emulator retro11.zip and unzip it to a retrocade directory of your choice. Then get the various .pak files either from the same site or (as happened to be the case when I was doing it) from www.daveclassics.com and extract those to the pak directory under your retrocade directory. Then fetch the 106 available games either as a single zipped file or separately from either of those two sites. If you get the single file, unzip into a Roms directory that you create under your retrocade directory. The resulting files are all zipped. Leave them that way. The first time you run it, you have to designate where you have put the Rom files. So your run command might be c:\retrograde\retro -romdir c:\retrograde\roms It runs under DOS, and works with the arrow keys and mouse (for the shooting button) or with a DOS-compatible joystick connected to a game port.
Each game has its own peculiarities, and there are no directions. But if you are familiar with the original, you can easilyfigure out what to do. (The F1 key often serves as the "Start" button, but often you need to press "3" first, which often selects "one-player game," before hitting F1.) The action on some of these games is remarkably like the originals. (In the Star Wars one, you even get hear realistic voices of Luke and Obie as you pilot your tie-fighter against the Death Star.) It would be a fun extra surprise to get this set up in time for Christmas.
Mame, which you can also download from the two sites mentioned above, is another emulator that delivers the same kind of functionality. Many more game Roms are available for Mame, but I found it far more difficult to sort out what I'd need to do to get started. Retrocade works just fine for me.
Downloading is a lot easier now than it was a year ago -- using SmartDownload
I'd been using Netscape Navigator Gold 3.0 for a couple years. It worked great, and didn't take up too much disk space, unlike the bloated 4.0 browsers from Netscape and Microsoft. But, for reasons I still don't understand, recently that version of Navigator kept crashing on me. It may be due to fancy new tricks that many Web sites are using these days. (Why can't they just give me content? Why do they have to keep throwing flashing, splashing, dancing effects at me?) So I reluctantly decided to download the latest and greatest -- Netscape's Communicator 4.5. I got. It works. And I have far fewer crashes.
What struck was not the browser and all its new bells-and-whistles, but rather the new mechanism for downloading, "SmartDownload." The file I want was over 14 Mbytes. In the past, if I tried to download anything bigger than about 3 Mbytes, I used to have incredible problems. Something would always happen to interrupt my connection, and I'd have to start over again. With SmartDownload, you can easily recover from a dropped connection. You can pause and resume downloads (which comes in handy if the download time is more than an hour). And the folks you are getting the software from can display useful info about the software while the download is taking place. It all went very smoothly.
This rapidly growing list includes all the sites mentioned in the book Online Shopping the Lazy Way which I am now writing for Macmillan. Cars, books, music, and videos are there now. Other categories coming soon. Suggestions/additions welcome. seltzer@samizdat.com
AltaVista Photo Finder www.altavista.com
Need a picture -- either for a Web site or a printed piece? For instance, my mother wanted to add some graphics to her annual Christmas letter. So I pointed her to the AltaVista Photo Finder. At the AltaVista home page, right under the tan box, click on AV Photo Finder. Then just type in what you want to find (e.g., Santa, reindeer, snow...) You should see a bunch of thumbnail size photos as your result. If you see something that is close, but not quite what you want, then click on "Visually similar" to see more choices. When you see one you like, click on the picture to go to the site where it appears. Check to see if there are issues of ownership of that image that would prevent you from reusing it in the way that you plan. (If you have any doubts, email the Webmaster, asking for permission.) When you have decided on an image, simply click on it with your right mouse button, select "save image," and decide where to put it on your computer.
This capability is far from perfect. The "Visually similar" function will often bring you images that seem to bear no relationship at all to what you are looking for. But it only takes a glance at the thumbnails to do your own filtering, and sometimes you'll get matches that are truly amazing and extremely useful.
[Note that in my use of the phrase "electronic books", I not only mean online books, but books formatted to be read offline on pc's, palm-tops, etc., and the recently marketed electronic book reader appliances, notably the RocketBook. Within 20 years I predict over 90% of all new books sold will be electronic and not paper.]
The future of electronic books promises to greatly alter the current author/publisher paradigm.
I see the possibility we'll see the current system of filtering out works before publication being replaced by a system where the filtering will be done *after* publication. (This will include not only books, but scholarly articles -- peer review will occur *after* publication, a whole 'nuther thread best left for the scientific newsgroups.)
Such a post-publishing filtering system will rise out of necessity -- and that it will be better for everybody. As more and more writers self-publish (with or without the assistance of cooperative publishers such as my business) because a) it is easy and inexpensive, and b) they can't get a "publisher" to publish their work for whatever reason, there will be a real need to help the reading public to sort through the expected onslaught of available titles.
And where there's a need, there'll be companies to fill the need. For example, assuming the onslaught of electronic titles will occur as I predict, two different services will arise.
The first is a centralized Web site to catalog all available electronic books, where an author/publisher would register their electronic book with the Web service (probably for a small fee, such as $5) -- the interested reader will then be able to visit the site and search for a list of titles that meet his/her criteria. The catalog information can even include snippets from the book (if not freely online), reader ratings, critics ratings (if it gets any, etc.) (Note that this service will have few similarities to ISBN -- ISBN is oriented towards the book *selling* industry -- my service would be oriented towards the consumer -- the book *buyers*.
And it won't simply be a dry library cataloging system -- it will aid the book buyers in decision making. As far as I'm concerned, in the e-book era the concept of ISBN as currently structured will become useless.)
The second service is a promotional company which will scour the Internet looking at the already published books for works to promote for a percentage of sales. Sort of like a professional sports team sending agents out to "sandlots" to look for new talent. This is where the real "sorting" will take place. Of course, this is what current paper book publishers do as part of their service. I think this will become a stand-alone business in the coming e-book era -- it will probably become highly competitive.
BTW, I am now working with a few people in northern and southern California to realize the first business idea above -- a central registry of electronic book titles (for all formats and platforms). If you are interested in this business, or prior to reading this have been planning a similar thing, let's work together -- I have thought about this for a while and have many ideas that go beyond the generalities I give above). Contact me via private e-mail.
Of course, I am looking for angel capital investment, and maybe a CEO (I have no driving need to be the "big man" in this promising business idea).
Jon Noring, OmniMedia Digital Publishing, http://www.awa.com/library/omnimedia,omnimedia@netcom.com
There are three key questions you should ask yourself when developing an Internet business strategy.
In the latest episode of Dharma and Greg (November 25, 1998), Dharma decides to open a store. She doesn't know what she will sell or if she will sell anything, but there is this great storefront that's empty, so she rents it. She and her friend clean the place up and furnish it -- creating a friendly, inviting atmosphere. Before she's done, people start wandering in to ask if she has this or that; and she encourages them to stay a while, and relax, and share what they have with one another. Soon the place is swarming with happy people at all hours. Greg still can't understand. He hounds her like she is totally clueless, "What are you going to sell?"
A city inspector stops by to tell her that she can't open a business without a license. And she cheerfully replies, "I'm not selling anything." He's incredulous, "Then what are all these people doing here?" She explains that this one is waiting for the bus, that one is reading a newspaper that he borrowed from someone else, etc. They are all just hanging out, very comfortably, sharing with and bartering from one another all the little things they might happen to need or crave. Soon thereafter, Starbucks buys out her lease, and she winds up making a good profit very quickly, without ever having sold anything.
No one says the word "Internet" during this show, but this non-business of Dharma's is an excellent example of a successful Internet business. Her first step is to build an audience. Then she has a choice of either selling that audience to another business, or offering for sale goods and services that this audience needs. Her instincts are right on target.
Some people see business on the Internet as an extension of traditional business. Others see it as a new realm, with new rules, that opens unexpected opportunities. It is sometimes very difficult for people who are used to looking at the world in the one way to communicate with those who see it the other way. They tend to start with very different assumptions, speak different languages, and interpret the same events very differently.
To people in the traditional mode:
To the traditionalist, "community" is a set of software applications to be added to a Web site. Such a person adds those applications because consulting firms and respected publications say they have value, and later pulls back because they are more difficult and costly to run than originally anticipated, and don't seem to produce business results.
To the revolutionary, "community" has nothing to do with software. It is the mindset, the starting point, the very essence of an Internet-based business.
Many companies of all sizes are waking up to the potential of the Internet as a way to deliver training to their employees. They want to deliver their traditional training in a new, more convenient, more effective, and less expensive way. They also want to give their employees easy access to courses that will help them be mroe effective in their work (including technical certification programs). To accomplish that, they immediately research what hardware and software they will need. I'd suggest that they should first consider what human elements they will need to be successful. And rather than consider the Internet as just a more efficient means of doing what they have done in the past, they should consider the possibility of reshaping their corporate culture and creating a learning environment that could provide far-reaching long-term benefits.
By a "learning environment" I mean a company-wide social environment which fosters mutual help. This environment would be based on a technical infrastructure that allows everyone access to the interaction areas and information they need. It would have discussion areas and capabilities geared to the unique needs of particular courses and departments; but it would be available for the participation of all, and open to the incorporation of new technology, if and when that feels right to meet a particular need.
On one level, we're talking about chat and forum -- text-style discussion in which students can freely interact with one another as well as with instructors. That is no big deal technology-wise, but it's quite a challenge from the human perspective -- making sure you have facilitators (who draw people out and get them involved) as well as moderators (who keep the discussion focussed on topic), and instructors (who are content experts and yet are comfortable operating in a mode of free on-line discussion). Some people take naturally to the on-line environment, and others need handholding, encouragement, and time to get used to it. (It's like at the waterfront, where some dive in and others slowly wade in.)
Ideally, even when the content is available pre-packaged on CD ROM, this same interactive environment is available for students to discuss the content with an instructor and with one another.
Ideally, this environment of mutual help and sharing and learning extends beyond the intranet, and becomes part of your corporate culture.
For instance, when you want to do language training, yes, you can have text-based discussions, but you also would want audio. So, say you contract with a language training company like Berlitz or Pimseler to make their audio tapes available over your intranet in RealAudio, or your simply buy a bunch of copies of their CD ROMs. But that wouldn't be enough. Very few people have the talent and the initiative to effectively learn a foreign language by just listening and doing text-based interaction. What's needed is live audio interaction with native speakers. This could be done on-line with applications like Internet Phone. But where do you get native speakers, and how do you deal with people who aren't yet equipped for two-way audio over your intranet?
That's where the corporate culture and the overall learning environment come into play. Companies for which language training is important typically have offices around the world. In that case, for every language an employee needs to learn, there are other employees who are native speakers. With the right corporate environment, you could get volunteers to play native speaker for language training, with the blessing of their supervisors. And in instances where the bandwidth or the limitations of particular desktop PCs are an issue, they could perform that part of the language training over the telephone.
The goal is a corporate culture that fosters continuous learning through mutual help -- a learning style that is also a work style. The means you use to make sure your people have the skills they need to do their jobs helps build relationships, habits, and styles of work that help them do those jobs more effectively through through mutual help and cooperation.
by Richard Seltzer, seltzer@samizdat.com
Apparently, a professor at Stanford and a respected NASA researcher are convinced that life on earth originated in underground tunnels on Mars. They believe microscopic life forms from Mars arrived on Earth by way of meteorites and then evolved.
Perhaps it isn't just Mars. Perhaps the seeds of life (micro-organisms), or the seeds of the seeds of life (components that when combined under the right conditions lead to generation of micro-organisms) are everywhere -- present in outerspace, throughout the galaxy and perhaps throughout the universe. That would mean that extraterrestrial life might be abundant and wide spread and might have much more in common with life on Earth than was previously thought.
This possibility reminds me of the parable...
"A sower went out to sow. And as he sowed, some seeds fell along the path,a nd the birds came and devoured them. Other seeds fel on rocky ground, where they had not much soil, and immeidately they sprang up, since they had no depth of soil, but when the sun rose they were scorched; and since they had no root they withered away. Other seeds fell upon thorns, and the thorns grew up and choked them. Other seeds fell on good soil and brough forth grain, some a hundredfold, some sixty, some thirty." Matthew 13:3-8
And perhaps the seeds were sown throughout the universe.
Quoth the Lorax
by Richard Seltzer, seltzer@samizdat.com
And the Lorax said, "May the forest be with you."
reviewed by Richard Seltzer, seltzer@samizdat.com
Issue #64 of the magazine Granta focuses on Russia, with a unique collection of articles (by British and Russian journalists) and two remarkable short stories -- "Moscow Dynamo" by Victor Pelevin and "The River Potudan" by Andrei Platonov. The pieces hold together remarkably well, painting a convincing picture of present-day life in Russia, in the context of Russian history as remembered -- from the Siberia and the aftermath of the Gulag to the tragedy of a mother search for the body of her soldier-son killed in Chechnya, to alcoholism, and to the burial of the Romanov's (from several perspectives.)
Love that quote: "A plenitude of information leads to a poverty of attention"
review by Richard Seltzer of "States and the Information Revolution" by Robert Keohane and Joseph Nye, Jr., in Foreign Affaris, Sept./Oct. 1998
This article provides a balanced, reasoned, unimpassioned view of the impact of the Internet on world politics. The emphasis is on "the resilience of states," counterbalancing enthusiastic expectations that the Internet will immediately transform the world. But it wasn't the general thesis that grabbed me here, but rather the authors' insights into the shifting value and power of information:
"A plenitude of information leads to a poverty of attention. Attention becomes the scarce resource, and those who can distinguish valuable signals from white noise gain power. Editors, filters, intepreters, and cue-givers become more in demand, and this is a source of power.... information power flows to those who can edit and credibly validate information to sort out what is both correct and important."
"As Adam Smith would have recognized, the value of information increases when the costs of transmitting it decline, just as the value of a good increases when transportation costs fall, increading demand by giving its makers a larger market. Politically, however, the most important shift has concerned free information. The ability to disseminate free information increases the potential for persuasion in world politics."
So the more information is available, the more valuable the function of the editor/interpreter. And a free newsletter and a Web site full of free information might make a difference in shaping the future world politics. Now that's an intriguing idea...
(Cf. the sci-fi novel Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card, 1985, the first novel I know of where the [Inter]net plays a major in world politics. "There are times when the world is rearranging itself, and at times like that, the right words can change the world." explains 12-year-old Peter Wiggin to his co-conspirator ten year-old sister, p. 139)
(Cf. Kevin Kelly in New Rules for the New Economy, p. 59, "The only factor becoming scarce in a world of abundance is human attention. ... As Nobel-winning economist Herbert Simon puts it: 'What information consumes is rather obvious: It consumes the attention of its recipients. Hence a wealth of information creates a poverty of attention.' Each human has an absolute limit of 24 hours per day to provide attention to the millions of innovations and opportuniteis thrown up by the economy. Giving stuff away captures human attention, or mind share, which then leads to market share.")
from the Gutenberg Project ftp://ftp.prairienet.org/pub/providers/gutenberg/etext99/http://promo.net/pg/
(Adding dozens of new ones every month, Gutenberg has already made over 1500 etexts available for free over the Internet. These include classic works of literature and history, as well as out-of-print and little-known works by great authors. If you can, connect by ftp, rather than the Web, to get the most recent ones. Here's a list of those recently added, alphabetized by author. The file name is useful for fetching the text from the ftp site. Many of these are also available on diskette from PLEASE COPY THIS DISK for those who cannot get them themselves. For the current catalog, check http://www.samizdat.com/catalog.html or send your email request to seltzer@samizdat.com)
The 1997 CIA World Factbook (world9710.txt)
Lucius Apuleius -- The Golden Asse (gldns10.txt)
Balzac
Arthur Judson Brown -- New Forces in Old China (ldchn10.txt)
G.K. Chesterton
Thomas Dixon -- The Foolish Virgin (fvrgn10.txt)
Arthur Conan Doyle
Mary Wilkins Freeman -- Copy-Cat & Other Stories (cpyct10.txt)
Emile Gaboriau -- The Mystery of Orcival (orcvl10.txt)
E.C. Gaskell -- Life of Charlotte Bronte, Volume 2 (2locb10.txt)
George Gissing -- New Grub Street (nwgrb10.txt)
H. Rider Haggard
O. Henry
George Iles -- 19th Century Actor Autobiographies (aauto10.txt)
Martin Luther King, Jr. -- I Have A Dream (dream10.txt)
CharlesKingsley
George MacDonald -- Lilith (lilth10.txt)
George Meredith -- The Egoist (egost10.txt)
E. Phillips Oppenheim -- The Vanished Messenger (vmsgr10.txt)
Plato
Mary Roberts Rinehart
Sir Walter Scott
Nathaniel W. Stephenson -- Lincoln's Personal Life (lsplf10.txt)
Thomas A Kempis -- The Imitation of Christ (mcrst10.txt)
Burbank Todd -- Hiram The Young Farmer (hrmyf10.txt)
Sojourner Truth -- The Narrative of Sojourner Truth (sjrnr10.txt)
Jules Verne
The Survivors of the Chancellor (tsotc10.txt and tsotc10a.txt)
Wagner/Burgoyne -- The Light of Egypt, Volume II (2tloe10.txt)
Charles Whibley -- A Book of Scoundrels (abkos10.txt)
Kate D. Wiggin -- Story Of Waitstill Baxter (tsowb10.txt)
Henry Smith Williams, A History of Science, vols. 1-4 (1hsci10.txt to 4hsci10.txt)
from the Internet Public Library www.ipl.org/reading/books/
The IPL Online Texts Collection contains links to over 7700 titles that can be browsed by author, by title, or by Dewey Subject Classification. They continually add new texts, some of the more recent include:
Ron Androla -- Underground Beneath the Dust of Mars
Brian Percy Bunting -- The Rise of the South African Reich
Yusuf Mohamed Dadoo
Criativa Expressao -- Sao Paulo Centro Almanac
Ferdowsi -- The Epic of Kings (Persian)
Andrew Ford -- Spinning the Web: How to Provide Information on the Internet
Philip Greenspun
John Wesley Hanson
Omar Khyyam -- The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayam_.
Govan Mbeki -- South Africa: The Peasants' Revolt
Olof Palme -- Liberation of Southern Africa: Selected Speeches of Olof Palme
Solomon Tshekisho Plaatje -- Native Life in South Africa, Before and Since the European War and the Boer Rebellion
Plutarch -- Lives of 15 Greek Heroes (abridged)
Ron Press -- To Change the World! Is Reason Enough?
Edward Roux -- Sidney Percival Bunting
Sa'di -- The Gulistan of Sa'di (Persian)
Harold Jack Simons -- Class & Colour in South Africa 1850-1950
Edith Stein -- The Hidden Life: Hagiographic Essays, Meditations, Spiritual Texts
G.T. Stevenson -- Time and Eternity - A Biblical Study
Snorri Sturlson -- Heimskringla: The Chronicle of the Kings of Norway
Oliver Tambo -- Oliver Tambo, Selected Articles, Papers, Speeches, Statements and Other Documents, 1960-1993
Henry David Thoreau
Joseph E. Wilder -- Read All About It: Reminiscences of an Immigrant Newsboy
from Samizdat Express/PLEASE COPY THIS DISK www.samizdat.com/catalog.html
Back issues of this newsletter (Internet-on-a-Disk), as well as Internet books and fiction by Richard Seltzer are now available on diskette as well as on the Web. Check the catalog for details, or send email to seltzer@samizdat.com
We are a group of young people who would like to contribute to humanity and are constructing our site now.ie. WWW.GEOCITIES.COM/ATHENS/ORACLE/4151/INDEX.HTML Deference Foundation.We would be very keen to see that our sites can be enjoyed by all ie..Blind, people having slow machines etc. Can you guide us what precautions to take?
MAHAVIR MOHNOT
Reply from Richard Seltzer, Nov. 6, 1998
A few quick suggestions:
1) have a non-graphics, non-frames version of your pages
2) when you use a picture, include ALT text that describes it
3) go to www.webable.com which is dedicated to the subject of accessibility and www.yuri.org, a foundation for the blind and disabled. From those sites you will see links to "bob" an automatic service that checks your pages and rates them from the perspective of accessibility by the blind and other useful resources.
NB -- If you decide to create a plain-vanilla, text-only version of your pages, be sure to go to AltaVista and other search engines and enter URL/add a page for each and every one of your new pages. That will greatly improve your position in searches -- Web crawlers act just like blind users. (Also, add to each of those non-graphic pages a hyperlink to the regular version, for those folks who are not blind and find you by search engines and would prefer the spiffier version.)
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