Digital Wallets, including Microsoft's Passport and Novell's DigitalMe, hope to attract millions of would-be Internet shoppers with a simpler way of ordering online. Instead, you'll be able to use a commercially available human-like software robot. The wild, grassroots success of Napster suggests they should invest more time looking for Net-born weeds. Luckily, a wave of new sites in the US and Australia has clearly established the main techniques. Quality assurance should work to get the site going in a good direction from the get-go.
Some users are actually stupid.
Capita Research Group will measure how effective banners are in causing an emotional response in Web users, and how that translates into click-throughs and brand recall. But beginning Tuesday, the government's National Library of Medicine will open a Web-based registry to help. It never gives out personal information. Even the brash founder of iCraveTV, Bill Craig, says he's developing technology that will show sites where you are when you log on, so they can build pages targeted to people in that region. All rights reserved.