((((((((((((((((( WEBREFERENCE UPDATE NEWSLETTER ))))))))))))))))))
JUNE 22, 1998
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This Newsletter is sponsored by Allaire Corporation.
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Dear Developer,
If you run a popular Web site it may qualify for acceptance in our
News Harvester 2 Free Content program: News Headlines, hot off the
presses, in a scroller you can size and color to fit your site.
Check it out at http://www.webreference.com/headlines/nh/
Thank you,
Bob Peyser, Managing Editor WebReference.com
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Now with over 34400 subscribers
http://www.webreference.com <- link to us today
http://www.webreference.com/new/ <- archive, subscribe/unsubscribe
New this week on WebReference.com and the Web:
1. DHTML LAB: Announcing the DHTML Dynomat!
2. DOC JAVASCRIPT: Embedding Sound in Web Pages
3. E-COMMERCE WATCH: Biometrics: Your Body is your PIN
4. NEW LINKS: Java Tutorials, E-Commerce Payment Software,
Advertising
5. NEW AWARD: Webref makes PC Magazine's Top 100
6. NEW BOOK: Unleashing the Killer App
Spread the word! Feel free to send a copy of this newsletter to
your friends and colleagues, and while you're at it, snap a link to
webreference.com.
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1. DHTML LAB: Announcing the DHTML Dynomat!
In a hurry for some DHTML? Try our new drive-through script builder,
the DHTML Dynomat! The Dynomat makes the process of generating the
more complex scripts from DHTML Lab columns automatic. Enter your
choices and out comes piping hot cut-and-paste customized code for
your Web pages. What a time-saver! First up, a Hierarchical Menu
Builder. By Peter Belesis.
http://www.webreference.com/dhtml/dynomat/
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2. DOC JAVASCRIPT: Embedding Sound in Web Pages
What's that you say? Want to put sound on your site? I hear you,
and so does our genial Yehuda (Doc JavaScript) Shiran. The Doc has
created a very comprehensive introduction on that very subject.
Read part 1 now, and start putting a song in your site.
http://www.webreference.com/js/column20/
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3. E-COMMERCE WATCH: Biometrics: Your Body is your PIN
Is biometrics (the use of human trait measurements for
identification) becoming the best solution for e-commerce security?
Find out as Mark Merkow examines this emerging technology.
http://www.webreference.com/ecommerce/mm/column3/
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4. NEW LINKS: Java Tutorials, E-Commerce Payment Software,
Advertising
>Java Tutorials
There's plenty of learning material available online to suit
anyone's Java curiosities. Everything from short, write-this-hello-
world-applet, tutorials to Bruce Eckel's 848 page book, "Thinking
in Java" is just a click away.
http://www.webreference.com/programming/java/tutorials.html
>E-Commerce Payment Software
What are the options when it comes to payment systems for e-commerce?
Look no further, we searched the Web so you don't have to. We have
all the latest software solutions with Wallets, POSs, gateways, CAs,
SET and more.
http://www.webreference.com/ecommerce/payment.html
>Advertising Collections
Got some good news that you want to shout from the mountaintop?
These advertising resources show you how to be heard clear down
in the valley.
http://www.webreference.com/advertising/collections.html
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5. NEW AWARD: Webref wins PC Magazine's Top 100
We're proud to announce that we made PC Magazine's Top 100 Web
Site list for June. This is the eighth time in a row ZDNet has
bestowed us with this coveted award. Thanks to all our tireless
content providers, our staff, and loyal users like you for helping
to make WebReference the valuable resource it is.
http://www.zdnet.com/pcmag/special/web100/
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6. NEW BOOK: Unleashing the Killer App
First there was "Being Digital" (bits vs. atoms), then the "Digital
Estate" (the fifth estate) then came "Blur" (the speed of information),
now comes "Unleashing the Killer App" (digital strategy). Downes and
Mui, two former Anderson Consultants, show that companies need to
discard their old atomic ways and adopt a new "digital strategy" with
the ultimate goal of creating killer apps.
A killer app is a new good or service that establishes an entirely
new category and, by being first, dominates it, returning several
hundred percent on the initial investment.
The speed of technological change precludes long term strategic
planning. Instead, companies must adopt what they call a "digital
strategy" that takes advantage of the disruptive forces of Moore's
and Metcalf's laws, plus Coase's transaction cost economics.
While some of this has been said before the authors are the first
to combine these principles into a cohesive whole.
The primary forces at work spawning killer apps are Moore's Law
(every eighteen months chip density will double while cost remains
constant), Metcalf's Law (networks increase in value as the square
of the number of its users) shows why these technologies have a
tendency to spread quickly moving from early adoption to critical
mass in great leaps, and Ronald Coase's 1937 theory of transaction
costs (complex, geographically dispersed firms are a result of market
inefficiency) that explains the economics behind the disruptive
influence killer apps have on long-standing business traditions.
Firms organize, Coase wrote, to reduce the transaction costs of
repeated and complex activities involved in creating, selling, and
distributing their goods and services. The problem is, the market is
becoming more efficient at the speed of Moore's Law and the
effectiveness of Metcalf's Law, and the cost of transactions is
decreasing accordingly, mainly due to the friction-free Internet.
The Net allows companies to achieve critical mass quickly by giving
away their products for free. (Metcalf) This increasing adoption gap
leads to what the authors call the "Law of Diminishing Firms" which
turns Coase's original observation on its head. "As the market
becomes more efficient, the size and organizational complexity of the
modern industrial firm becomes uneconomic, since firms exist only
to the extent that they reduce transaction costs more effectively."
The trends we're seeing now are firms are becoming smaller, middlemen
and "value chains" are being eliminated through disintermediation,
and virtual corporations are being created, internetworked over the
globe.
Managers must suspend disbelief, look at available technologies that
might play a role in their planning, form alliances and partnerships,
and then execute, tweaking in the marketplace, not the lab. Deploy
and learn. Design for a computer twice the speed, by the time your
project is completed, the speed will be there. The ultimate result,
is a killer app.
The authors boil all this down into the twelve principles of killer
app design.
Reshaping the Landscape
1. Outsource to the customer.
2. Cannibalize your markets.
3. Treat each customer as a market segment of one.
4. Create communities of value.
Building New Connections
5. Replace rude interfaces with learning interfaces.
6. Ensure continuity for the customer, not yourself.
7. Give away as much information as you can.
8. Structure every transaction as a joint venture.
Redefining the Interior
9. Treat your assets as liabilities.
10. Destroy your value chain.
11. Manage innovation as a portfolio of options.
12. Hire the children.
Recommended.
Unleasing the Killer App
Larry Downes and Chunka Mui, 1998.
ISBN: 0-87584-801-X
Harvard Business School Press
Boston, MA
That's it for this week, see you next time.
- Andrew King
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