INTERNET CHANGES BUSINESS

The Internet. Where is it headed? What's the financial outlook? I know many businesses are contemplating the latter as they try to fashion their Internet business plans.

You can find just about anything on the Internet - including news about the World Wide Web. Today, I'm going to show you a number of sites that may lend you insight on the Internet and e-commerce.

www.thestandard.net

I've heard this site referred to as the "Bible of the Internet industry."

You can find the Internet headlines of the day, such as the fact Hotmail has seen its Chinese users rise by 50 percent, or that Priceline's forecast is worse then excepted.

The site bills itself as "Intelligence for the Internet Economy."

Like many others, this site has a magazine version, but information is naturally updated more often on the Web site.

This is a great site to learn more about the Internet. Make sure you especially check out the "Metrics" heading under Research on the left-hand side of the front page. Here you'll find Internet facts and figures you can count on.

E-mail was the feature on Monday, and the numbers were very interesting.

This site predicts that business e-mail users will grow by 69 percent by 2005. This year 124 million Americans and Canadians are using e-mail for business communication, according to this site.

One article points out that e-mail is outpacing the Web, and that net surfers are sending 10 billion e-mail messages a day. The projection is that number will more than triple in five years.

Wow.

If you want to learn more about the basics of e-commerce, you might want to check out Internet.com's sub site.

ecommerce.internet.com

This site offers a lot of information and advice. It talks about the companies competing for the $12.5 billion that is projected to be spent online during this holiday season. But here's their words of advice: "This year, online holiday shoppers are expecting decent customer service, and if you can't deliver those goods, the only thing you'll be getting is last year's fruitcake-doorstop."

It's so true. Last year people were just excited about being able to shop online. The oddity has worn off, and people are expecting the same customer service (or better) than they get in person.

I also learned this amazing fact: A new domain name is registered every two seconds. No wonder the search engines are becoming bogged down.

I also read an interesting story about a new application called "iPrivate Eye," which acts like an invisible video recorder. It is capable of secretly taking screen snapshots as frequently as once per second -- unbeknownst to the computer user.

But it's not businesses deploying this technology -- it's spouses concerned about online cheating in chat rooms. One testimonial told of a woman who used it to discover her fiance's 17 girlfriends online. That's one busy guy.

And apparently this software, from a company called SpectorSoft, will work on a regular home computer.

But I'm getting sidetracked. Don't forget to check out some very helpful resources on the left-hand side of this site including EC Tips, EC Trends and EC 101. If the Web jargon drives you batty, there's even a "Webopedia."

I've heard the next site referred to as the "Business Week of the Internet." This site is full of great information about Internet facts and trends.

ecompany.com

This site has a number of free e-mail newsletters to which you can subscribe with names like "Barely Managing," "Site Unseen" or "The Law." These newsletters provide good information about Internet trends.

One of the big stories on this site deals with the holiday shopping season "that only a grinch could love." Apparently, the holiday slowdown that regular merchants may encounter will hit the Internet businesses as well. So instead of growing at 100 percent, the Internet holiday sales are ONLY projected to grow 50 percent more than last year.

But there's also a list of e-retailers that have already bit the dust, including such well-known names as MotherNature.com and Pets.com. The latter was the site with that cute little sock puppet.

For the news junkie, it also links you to headlines by CNNFN, CNET and The Street.com.

Another interesting site you might want to visit is CIO.com, which calls itself the leading resource for information executives.

www.cio.com

Again, this is a site with a print version. But there are still lots of information online.

Check out their Research Centers on the left-hand side for good information. You can learn more about ASPs, which is the new industry buzzword. These are companies that provide applications those with Web sites, as opposed to ISPs, which provide Internet service. ASP was certainly the hot word at a recent conference I attended about the Internet.

Make sure you check out Cyber Behavior to learn more about what people are doing online and why. More than 8 million Americans have high-speed Internet access, a figure double of last year. But until that figure climbs even higher, a lot of the really fun technology won't take off.

I learned some interesting facts and figures about the average Internet surfer under their "Metrics" heading.

For example, did you know the average U.S. Internet user is over age 40?

Here are some other facts about the average Internet user that you might find surprising:

"In the United States, the average Internet user is gender neutral, 41-years-old, married, with 2.81 children, earns $65,000 per year and uses a PC at work."

The site tells us that 127 million adults use the Internet, up from 108 million in 1998. It also says that 70 percent of all Internet users have been online since 1998 or earlier.

If you're just interested in e-commerce, then head to All E-Commerce.com.

allec.com

This site bills itself as the navigational hub of e-commerce news.

You can learn that the U.S. Federal Trade Commission has issued letters to online businesses, warning them not to make delivery promises they cannot keep. They're hoping to avoid some of the unpleasantness from the last holiday season.

There's also an interesting story about eBay, which is rolling out a new application that will allow other businesses to use their auction technology.

You can also check out this site's daily columns, special reports, success stories and small business adviser.

These are just some of the sites that focus on the Internet industry. What are your favorite sites to learn what's going on? E-mail me at jonia@sehosp.org

See you in Cyberspace.

Joni Adams is the Webmaster at Southeast Missouri Hospital in Cape Girardeau, www.southeastmissourihospital.com