Plain Words eLetter
2004 issue 1
Lead Stories
Extra
E-Business news
Wi-Fi connecting entertainment
IT directors' thumbs up to outsourcing
Technology news
Royal Mail launches digital stamps
Off-beat news
Lead stories
Catalogues in a click
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Top five tips for producing powerful Help systems
Dr. Stephen King of Plain Words provides five "must-dos" for producing user-friendly Help systems that will bring an eerie silence to your technical support helplines. Discover more...
Who ever said it was simple?
Setting up and maintaining an effective company web site is no easy matter, but with careful pre-planning the pitfalls can be avoided, writes Andi Williams of internet development group, Kyosei Systems Ltd. Discover more...
Extra
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E-Business news
UK firms set to spend more on IT
After years of tightened belts, British companies are set to increase their investment in technology, according to research published earlier this month.
The survey of 150 top UK executives, conducted by the Economist Intelligence Unit on behalf of Telewest, found that many firms are planning to increase investment in high-tech systems and services in the hope of cutting costs and improving customer service.
Fifty-eight percent of those surveyed expected to spend more on ICT this year, compared to around 29 percent who expect investment to be flat, and 12 percent who predict a decline.
According to the report, outsourcing of ICT services will be a big priority for 2004. The public sector seems to be showing more interest in managed IT services - 14 percent of executives expect to spend between 50 and 100 percent of their total ICT budget on outsourcing this year, compared to 9 percent in 2003.
Discover more at: http://slink.com.com/slink?217653
Wi-Fi to Connect Home Entertainment Apps
The home entertainment market is moving into a new phase of wireless convergence between PC and TV applications, which will change the way devices are used, according to telecoms analysts BWCS.
"The Wi-Fi networked home brings together many different interest groups, including ISPs, electronic goods manufacturers and content providers," said Peter Kingsland, senior analyst at the firm. "Wi-Fi provides a route for all these groups to offer new consumer content and applications."
As wireless chips drop in price and become more powerful, other devices such as cameras and MP3 players will also adopt Wi-Fi, allowing files, video clips and photographs to be shared throughout the home.
Discover more at: http://www.vnunet.com/News/1151959
Stressed IT directors give thumbs up to outsourcing
According to a new survey, IT directors continue to find their job stressful, but now look towards outsourcing as a means of lightening their workload. With 44 per cent reaching the upper end of the European Working Time Directive's 48-hour working week limit, many now consider it more as a means of helping them in their jobs, rather than resisting its use.
Russell Flower, managed services director at Synstar, which conducted the survey, said: "Last year IT directors felt their jobs were a lot more under threat and that outsourcing was a challenge to their business models. But this year there has been a big shift, focusing on selective outsourcing as a way of assisting the IT director in their management of the day-to-day tasks."
Flower puts this change of heart down to the increased pressures of the job and its impact on work/life balance. Two out of five respondents often skip breaks and miss lunch to make up work backlogs, 83 per cent lose sleep through worry about their jobs, and 62 per cent exist on a diet of ready meals.
Discover more at: http://www.vnunet.com/News/1151911
Portals open up new doors to profit
Statistics show that enterprise portals can increase the bottom line, as well as bring benefits to staff and customers. 
Portal adopters report that employees work more efficiently, managers get better access to information and achieve faster resolution of internal problems, and customers come back time and again. In many cases, this has led to a clearly demonstrable return on investment (ROI), more than justifying companies' investments in portal technology.
A recent analysis of enterprise information portals (EIPs) by VNUNET cited the experience of $7bn global oil and gas services giant Halliburton, which set up its MyHalliburton.com portal as a way of concentrating internal knowledge and external customer contact into a single interface.
At a cost of around $7.2m over the last three years, the investment was not small. But the portal has generated an estimated ROI of 559 percent in direct savings - through better access to documents, faster payments, and increased sales. More to the point, the availability of the portal has been named by Halliburton clients as having influenced around $220m in new business.
These kinds of numbers are enough to make any business manager take notice, which is why portals have generated marked enthusiasm in an otherwise lacklustre IT spending market.
Discover more: http://slink.com.com/slink?217515
Top firms fail Internet challenge
A third of Britain's top firms are failing to operate a satisfactory Web site, according to a study published early in January. The report, called The Third Annual Report on The Home Pages of the UK's Top 100 Companies' Corporate Web Sites, studied the Web sites of the members of the FTSE 100 - the 100 biggest companies listed on the London stock market. It found that a large section of this group is failing to give online visitors an acceptable experience.
Interactive Bureau rated each Web site using a range of criteria - including whether home pages had "must have" elements like news and contact sections, overall site design, navigation and technical performance (including speed of loading and cross browser compatibility).
Nineteen of the 100 companies didn't even give visitors a brief explanation of their mission or activities on their home page, said Web design company Interactive Bureau, which published the report. A fifth didn't display their current share price, an omission that Interactive Bureau says is "astounding", while 21 firms didn't link to a recruitment section.
(Note: Plain Words are experts in information management and website usability. Call us now on 01635 202013 for a FREE , no commitment assessment of your company website).
Discover more: http://slink.com.com/slink?217639
Technology news
Web inventor becomes Sir Tim
Tim Berners-Lee, widely acknowledged as the father of the World Wide Web, is now Sir Tim Berners-Lee after receiving a knighthood in the New Years Honours List for "services to the global development of the Internet."
It was Berners-Lee who, in 1989, developed the document identifier now called the Universal Resource Locator (URL), which triggered the creation of the World Wide Web.
Berners-Lee was working as a software engineer at the European Particle Physics Laboratory at Cern in Switzerland when he proposed his URL format. At the time, he was seeking a way to share access online to the mass of technical documents Cern generated.
The following year he wrote "httpd," the first web server, and the "World Wide Web" browser-cum-editor. He is also credited with driving some early web protocols, including HTML for linking web pages. Berners-Lee went on to help found the World Wide Web Consortium and is now its director.
On learning that he had been named a Knight-Commander of the Order of the British Empire in the New Year's Honours List, Berners-Lee said: "I'm very honoured, although it still feels strange. I feel like quite an ordinary person and so the good news is that it does happen to ordinary people who work on things that happen to work out, like the Web."
"To a certain extent it's an acknowledgement of the profession as well, that it's useful and creditable and not a passing trend. There was a time when people felt the internet was another world, but now people realise it's a tool that we use in this world," he added.
Discover more at: http://edition.cnn.com/2003/WORLD/europe/12/31/britain.honors.webman/
Royal Mail launches first digital stamps
The first ever digital postage stamps - aimed at small firms - are being launched by the Royal Mail.
The so-called SmartStamps can be bought over the internet and printed directly on to envelopes from a desktop computer. Businesses will be able to add their own logo designs to the envelope, which can be taken directly to post-boxes.
Alison White, Royal Mail's head of small business, said the service would suit people working from home or from a small office. The service isn't just for businesses, however. Anyone can make their stamps at home, but the service costs £4.99 a month or £49.99 a year to subscribe.
The new service has many implications. It's another sign that business and communications are becoming more and more digital - to the point that the much-vaunted "paperless office" may well become a reality. It also shows that the Royal Mail is finding new ways to compete with e-mail, which has increasingly taken over from printed mail in the majority of organisations.
Discover more at: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/3397469.stm
Off-beat news
Are sweet dreams made of this?
Japanese toy company Takara says it has developed a device - called the Dream Workshop - that will enable people to control their dreams.
To work the gadget, the owner stares at a photograph of what they would like to dream about and then records, in their own words, how the dream is supposed to unfold.
Once users are sleeping, the gadget goes to work by combining the voice recording, lights, music and aromas to stimulate sleepers whenever it detects rapid eye movement - a sign that someone is dreaming.
Eight hours later, users are gently awakened by soft lighting and music to ensure that pleasant memories of the night before are not instantly erased.
But Takara says it can't guarantee complete customer satisfaction: "We are still experimenting, mainly with company employees," said marketing executive Kenji Hattori. The gadget will go on sale in the spring at 14,800¥ (£75).
Discover more: http://www.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,4057,8395640%255E1702,00.html
The Plain Words eLetter is purely a technology and e-business news source. It does not endorse any of the companies, products, or services that are mentioned in news shorts and articles.
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