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Web tips
Internet imposters Huge companies have sometimes tried to register Internet domain names, only to discover that squatters have beaten them to it. But two court cases this spring, one in Britain and one in the United States, have ruled that cybersquatting is not only extortion, but a form of trademark dilution, as well. The victories, for Panovision and Marks and Spencer, will also help solve an even more odious problem: companies that register names similar to yours as a way of generating traffic to pornography sites. Stress-busting Web site With "March madness"
upon us here in Ottawa, the "Edge Weekly" has become a little less weekly. Nevertheless, when deadlines swarm and stress mounts, there is always the
The best part? The site misspells the word "hamster." Cutting-edge Web sites Many of us who are responsible for Web sites are gulled by our information technology people into adding the latest features, and we are convinced by our designers to add lush
graphics. The resulting site looks great and feels cutting edge. And it won't work. Phil Terry is an American e-commerce consultant whose clients include Time and American Express. He ran a study in which 40 percent
of participants failed to buy what they wanted online, usually because they were frustrated with a site. As Terry tells the newspaper PR Tactics, "As the Web goes mainstream, the percentages of techies becomes
quite small, and the novice or mainstream user is now the majority." People with slow modems or old computers, or who are uncomfortable with technology, are making up more and more of your audience. The sites that
impress us may not impress our audiences. In fact, a study from Forrester Research shows that quality content will lead to return visits from 75 percent of Web surfers, while ease of use will bring back 66 percent,
fast download speed will lure 58 percent and frequent updates will attract 54 percent. Content consistently outdraws graphics and technology in these surveys. If you're looking to boost visits to your Web
site (and who isn't?) visit < Are you master of your domain? Internet domain names -- the letters and numbers after the "@" symbol or "www" -- have become
hot property. Because anybody can register anything, some people make a hobby of registering other people's trademarks. Martin Grossman, a student in Arizona, picked up 7up.com, which he gave up in exchange for a
T-shirt and a case of the product. And calling up what appears to be the home page for the UN High Commission for Refugees actually leads one to an investment scam. According to The Economist, the problem has
become worse now that Web pages are spreading around the world. A New Mexico Internet provider called Roadrunner registered roadrunner.com in Tunisia to get around Warner Brothers' trademark on its cartoon character.
Trademark is also becoming an issue for the content of pages. Paramount Pictures has taken a friendly attitude toward "rogue" Star Trek sites, urging proper use of trademarks and links back to Paramount's
official Star Trek web site. [Editor's note: after Star Trek moved to the Microsoft Network, Star Trek sites started receiving threatening legal letters.] Talk about not getting the joke! A Halifax company called Hip Hype launched its company with an April
Fool's joke: a news release advising Web site operators that they were required to register their sites with the "Canadian Internet Licensing Board." It sent the release to Internet reporters,
posted it in newsgroups and even registered a Then the Internet Crimes Division of the local police called, threatening
to charge Hip Hype. Naturally, this became fodder for another release, which earned more publicity than the first one did. Beware Web sites offering cookies The struggle to find a way to evaluate Web sites may have led to a threat to your piracy. Web page designers
can now arrange for you to trip over a piece of computer code called a magic cookie. This cookie goes to your hard drive and comes out every time you re-visit the Web site. In theory, a cookie simply tracks where you
go on a site and how often. But it could also be used to gather information from your files and send it back to the people who run the Web site. Protect your privacy online Think nobody will ever know that you visit the Sesame Street Home Page every day? Don't count on it. If, like most
people, you surf at work, then your boss is probably already figuring out ways to watch where you go (and proper thing, too). But even at home, many sites will secretly upload "cookies" into your computer
(less secretly if you have Netscape 3.0). These cookies record where you go, what your e-mail address is and, in some cases, the kind of computer you have and the page you were on previously. (Don't believe us? Look for
COOKIES.TXT in your browser directory.) These cookies can helpfully track preferences, but cookies can also be programmed. Rumours circulated last year that Microsoft was using visits to its MSN site to search
visiting computers for pirated software. Of course, the cookie could always just look for NETSCAPE.HST, a useless file that does nothing but record your movements and hog disk space. Delete this and edit
down the cookie file regularly. ZD Net's
For a demonstration of the kind of privacy Web sites can yank from you, visit Clean up your MS Word files If
you're using Microsoft Word 6 or 7, you may want to give FileCleaner a try. This $30 program cleans up common typographical problems in electronic manuscripts, including the bad habits of double spacing after periods or
using two dashes instead of a long dash. The program, which runs as a macro or a pull-down menu, can also turn underlining into italics; change straight quotation marks and apostrophes into curly ones; put
periods and commas inside quotation marks; and standardize formatting. To download a copy, visit the A new font for the Web Edge readers will know that we're hardly fans of Microsoft, but we did some find something useful on its Web page. It's a font designed to make it easier to read documents on screen. Called Georgia, the font looks like a rounded version of Times New Roman. Information overload A Pitney Bowes survey of the Fortune 500 found that new communications technologies are being used to supplement rather than
replace old technologies. As a result, seven interviewees in 10 feel overwhelmed by information. The average interviewee sends and receives an average of 178 different messages every day by more than a dozen means,
including phone, pager, fax and yellow sticky note. There are so many media that we use several of them in the hope that one message will survive the maze. The "paperless" office The Wall Street Journal also reports that adopting e-mail will make your printers 40 percent busier. This is probably due to the peculiar tendency of some workers to print out all of their e-mail. Ottawa leads Web use According to the Print Measurement Bureau, half a million Canadians use the Web more than four hours a week. Of these, one in four is aged 18-24, half are University educated, 70 per cent are male, and one third have household incomes of at least $75,000. Ottawans are the most likely to use the Net (15 per cent of us do, compared to eight per cent nationally). No future for Internet ad revenue? Hope to make money by using your site's circulation to sell online ads? Think again. While ad revenue may increase 30-fold, to US$5 billion by 2000, New York's Jupiter Communications says that two thirds of that revenue will go to the top 10 sites, with the top 25 get-ting 85 per cent of the business. Many hopping off info hypeway According to Clayton/Curtis/Cottrell, a management firm, only a third of US consumers have tried the Internet. More interesting, for every household now online, another household has tried the Net and dropped off. Of these, a third say there wasn't enough compelling information. Listservs for PR pros A listserv is like group e-mail. A moderator keeps the listserv running smoothly (and cordially) and members can see everyone else's messages. One such listserv is PR Forum. To
join, send a message containing only the words SUBSCRIBE PRFORUM to this address: When you want to contribute, use this address: Making the most of the Web A Doonesbury
comic strip deftly summarized the rush to the Web. Doonesbury asks his friend Hank what's on the company Web site. "It doesn't matter. Build it and they will come." Asked why the company needs a site, Hank replies: "Because the technology exists. Also everyone has one."
This lack of forethought may explain the growing disappointment with the Web. If you're about to join the rush to Web, keep in mind this advice from Promo, a Wilton, Connecticut, newsletter.
Sound and fury According to Rick Broadhead, co-author of The Canadian Internet Handbook, the next wave of Web pages will have sound. "You'll call up a home page and the CEO will greet you. Or give you the company's mission statement." Just what the Internet community has been waiting for &ldots; CEOs reading mission statements. Tangled in the Web The Web is a powerful resource, and a source of some powerfully bad mistakes.
Paying for the Web Right now, most information on the Web is free. And it'll
stay that way until Web spinners find a way of charging pennies -- or less -- for downloads. Although Netizens are becoming used to using their credit cards online, transactions of less than $10 are unprofitable for
vendors. And as InfoTech chairman Ted Pine told Entertainment Weekly (October 11, 1996), "The industry has done a very good job of putting a price point on the Web, which has been zero." The solution
may have been announced on September 30, when a consortium of six banks launched CyberCash. You may soon download an electronic wallet, which you could use to buy products and services from participating sites. The site
would verify the account with CyberCash, which would transfer money from your bank account. By eliminating distribution channels and such media as paper, film and discs, the Internet can dramatically reduce the cost
of articles, books, movies and music. Four items on e-mail
La toile? An October 1995 poll from Léger & Léger showed that anglophones are three times more likely to be online than francophones. But data from Cossette Communication-Marketing shows that the gap is closing.
Cornerstone is a writing and editing firm that uses marketing and PR principles to create "words you can build your business on."
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