Plain Words eLetter
August 2003
Lead Stories
Fat Pipes Still Thin On The Ground
Extra
E-Business news
Internet Fraud Threatens Merchants, Not Banks
New IEEE Spec For Wireless Streaming
Plain Text Email More Effective Than HTML
Technology round-up
Self-Service Supermarket Check-Outs
Off-beat news
Lead stories
Spam: Good, Bad, Or Ugly?
Junk email - we all hate it. But today's aggressive spam filters are harming legitimate online firms who have embraced email marketing as a cheap, effective way to maintain strong customer relationships without paying for more traditional (and costly) media campaigns. More...
Fat Pipes Still Thin On The Ground
Although critical to the expansion of e-commerce, broadband roll out in Britain is lagging behind. Robin Terrell, UK managing director of Amazon, says reliance on slow 56 Kbps Internet connections, rather than fast broadband (or "fat pipe") connections, could have prevented many people from buying online. More...
Extra
Put Your Catalogue Production On Auto-Pilot - Save Time And Money!
If you market hundreds of spare parts or products in multiple languages and currencies, it can take months to publish catalogue revisions. What's more, most firms today run on so-called "Internet time" and technology can change faster than you can publish updates.
Plain Words have come up with an MS Access solution that puts catalogue production on auto-pilot. All you have to do is point and click and your catalogue can be produced in less than a day! Click here to discover more.
Next issue, look out for a case study detailing how the Plain Words catalogue production solution helped Mars Electronics International (MEI) bring parts catalogue production and distribution down from 8 weeks to one day.
E-Business news
Internet Fraud Threatening On-Line Merchants, Not Banks
Small businesses are facing a bill for Internet fraud that is rising so fast it threatens e-commerce, according to the Federation of Small Businesses. The FSB is calling for a shift in liability to make the issuing banks pay for fraud instead of on-line merchants.
Currently, when "cardholder-not-present" fraud takes place, it is the retailer rather than the issuing bank that is liable. In practice this means that retailers face a charge (known a charge-back) if card details have been fraudulently obtained, even if the transaction has been correctly authorised.
Internet fraud now costs the British economy £28m a year, compared with £3.8m in 2000 and is acting as a disincentive to trading on-line, says the FSB. More...
Gloom Lifts On IT Spending
New sectors will push to the forefront of IT spending during the next four years, according to a new report from research firm IDC.
Despite the economic downturn, certain industries, such as banking, will offer opportunities for information technology vendors in the next few years. In particular, the communications and media industry will rank among the top three worldwide in IT hardware spending. More...
IEEE Issues New Spec For High-Speed Wireless Streaming
The next generation of digital entertainment products will run off a new wireless networking standard, designed by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE).
"[The new standard] will ensure that digital content, streamed over a wireless network, will have a guaranteed level of service," said Robert Heile, chairman of the IEEE's 802.15 working group and chief technology officer of Appairent. "The standard essentially guarantees that nothing will interfere with a stream, after a link is established between a client device and the network," Heile said.
The standard, which was officially completed in June, allows data to be transmitted at 55Mbps for 100 yards and operates in the 2.4GHz frequency band. Networks using the standard will also be able to switch channels automatically if interference is detected from cordless phones or other networks. More...
Plain Text Email Messages Prove More Effective Than HTML
After Lucid Marketing learned that America Online subscribers prefer to receive plain text email marketing messages as opposed to HTML formatted messages, Lucid ran a live direct email-marketing test and discovered that plain text messages are also better at generating a campaign response compared to HTML. More...
Smartphone Sales Rocket
The global market for phones with PDA functions has tripled compared with last year, according to a report from market research firm IDC. Second quarter shipment figures for PDA-phones show a growth of 330.7 percent over the same quarter in 2002.
"With form factors and operating systems improving, this market is poised for steady growth," said Ross Sealfon, research analyst in IDC's mobile device program.
One reason for the huge jump is converged handheld devices or "smart phones" are starting from a very small base. The market now makes up 1.7 percent of the total mobile phone market, compared with 0.5 percent in the same quarter one year ago, according to the report.
However, research firm Allied Business Intelligence puts a higher figure on smart phone sales. It estimates that nearly 3.6 million units of smartphones and smartphone-PDAs were sold in the second quarter, representing about 3.3 percent of the overall handset market. More...
Technology round-up
Supermarket Trials Self-Service Check-Outs
A new supermarket check-out system is poised to be launched across Britain, which relies on shoppers doing all the work themselves. The self-service check-outs allow the customer to scan items, put them in carrier bags, pay, and even get cash-back - all without the need for a cashier.
The first of the check-outs have been installed at the Sainsbury's store in Stockport, Greater Manchester, and will be followed by a wider trial in six additional branches.
The chain say if the concept is a success they will launch it across the country later this year. The self-service checkouts are already in use at the Sainsbury's-owned Shaw's chain of supermarkets in the US, where they process more than one billion transactions a year. More...
At Last, Really Useful Computers...
Instead of developing computers that solve complex problems, researchers are dedicating themselves to inventing machines that will solve everyday problems for us.
A consortium of European universities is working on the Smart-Its Project, which aims to develop sensors for everyday objects. One application would sense how many things are on a table or a shelf and what those things weigh.
Another would integrate intelligence into build-it-yourself bookcases so that they could warn owners when they do something contrary to the assembly instructions.
The sensor technology is being developed in universities in Finland, England, Germany, Switzerland and Sweden, but the furniture itself is available now. "We bought it at Ikea," said Gerd Kortuem of the University of Lancaster. "It is about turning existing artefacts and actuating them." More...
Off-beat news
Yeti No Mystery - It Exists...
A Japanese expedition equipped with sensor-activated cameras and led by an amateur cryptozoologist is heading to the Himalayas hoping to track down the Abominable Snowman.
Seven climbers will spend six weeks in Nepal trying to capture images of the legendary human-like creature also known as the Yeti, more than 10,000 feet up the world's seventh-tallest mountain.
Yoshiteru Takahashi, the expedition leader, who climbs as a hobby, is on his second Yeti hunt. He says he found human-like footprints made by a "rather large animal" in a cave about 15,000 feet up Dhaulagiri on a previous expedition in 1994.
"I don't consider this a mystery," Takahashi said. "The Yeti exists. I just want to figure out what kind of animal it is," he said. More...
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