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It seemed only yesterday that I was accessing email at 2400 baud on a dodgy line to Oz-Email in Australia having given up with Compuserve's even dodgier and more limited connection at around $30 Aussie dollars per hour. Forget about the Web - Mosaic had just been released, and the idea of downloading anything other than plain text seemed just plain gila. It's different now. The internet is mainstream, soon everybody will have a home page, and cyber culture has moved from a minority to a majority concern. Today, "Dot Com's" seem to dominate finance news. Internet access was initially slow to grow in Asia and the Pacific, but now we see Singapore, Hong Kong, Japan and Australia among the top nations in terms of internet access per head. Malaysia, Thailand and now even China are fast embracing the Internet as a communication, information, education, advertising and even entertainment medium. However, most governments in Asia are concerned that Asian business has not been as fast to cotton on to E-commerce as expected, even in the intelligent island of Singapore where computer savvy, a dense population in a small place, a ruling administration moving fast from contol to openness, and an educated middle-class combine to present perhaps the most fertile environment in the world for a connected population. This week's review is based on articles from two journals that focus on information management. Internet Research covers research about the Internet and Inter-lending and Document Supply documents the massive change in information management for librarians and information managers in particular. Where there's fast change (not to forget money!), there's reseach... So to a very small selection of the most relevant articles from this week's free selection... First of all The effectiveness of commercial Internet Web sites: a user's perspective, by Hudson Bell and Nelson K.H. Tang (Internet Research; 08: 3 1998; pp. 219-228), discusses: "...an (on-line) survey of 60 companies, predominantly from the user's perspective, that use the Internet currently; and examine(s) the effectiveness of their current Internet Web sites. It was found that 30 percent of the companies had facilities for conducting transactions online and only 7 percent charged users for Web site access. Overall, the Web sites rated highly in terms of ease of access, content and structure but scored poorly for their number of unique features. Of the six industry sectors surveyed (electronic commerce, entertainment and leisure, financial and banking services, information services, retailing and travel and tourism), it was the retailing sector that showed the best overall performance. The best individual Web site in the survey was the Financial Times (http://www.ft.com)..."Ming-te Lu and Wing-lok Yeung suggest A framework for effective commercial Web application development (Internet Research; 08: 2 1998; pp. 166-173)- The World Wide Web (WWW) or the Web has been recognized as a powerful new information exchange channel in recent years. Today, an ever-increasing number of businesses have set up Web sites to publicize their products and services. However, careful planning and preparation is needed to achieve the intended purpose of this new information exchange channel. This paper proposes a comprehensive framework for effective commercial Web application development based on prior research in hypermedia and human-computer interfaces. The framework regards Web application development as a special type of software development project. At the onset of the project, its social acceptability is investigated. Next, economic, technical, operational, and organizational viability are examined. For Web page design, both the functionality and usability of Web pages are thoroughly considered. The use of the framework should result in more effective commercial Web application development.And some articles specifically on Singapore - In Differential effects of occupation on Internet usage, (Internet Research; 08: 2 1998; pp. 156-165) Thompson S.H. Teo, notes that research focusing on the Internet in Asia is relatively sparse, and proving that he is a doer, and not just a writer, describes his own research into Internet usage in Singapore. His questionnaire too was published on the Internet (see other articles below on on-line surveys), resulting in a respectable sample size, and allowing for the positing of several conclusions regarding differential effects of occupation, task preferences and factors and what makes an "enjoyable Internet experience". Long time friends of the forum will also recall another Singaporean internet survey featured as our Article of the month a couple of years back. That article is available again for free this week as The use of the Internet for business: the experience of early adopters in Singapore by Christina Soh, Quee Yong Mah, Fong Jek Gan, Daniel Chew, and Edna Reid. (Internet Research; 07: 3 1997; pp. 217-228). You also may want to view the article Evaluating Internet information services in the Asia-Pacific region by Paul A. Watters, Maya F. Watters, and Stuart C. Carr (Internet Research; 08: 3 1998; pp. 266-271). We're sure that there is some practical information in the article World Thai Expert Link: a proposal in progress, by Terry Edwards and Siriluck Kedseemake (Internet Research; 07: 1 1997; pp. 32-42) though the abstract is... well... obtuse... Proposes World Thai Expert Link (WorldTEL), to exploit new Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs), or telematics, as a main means of creating social groups and thus task-oriented workgroups in terms of motivational advantage and in a context of the psychology of interpersonal relations in a new geography of virtual space. Introduces the concept of "diaspora" communications in terms of the widespread distribution of special interest groups (e.g. experts, managers), highlighting related corporate communication issues, while concentrating on the Thai Expert diaspora. Touches on the critical philosophical issues and introduces a new relativity of space arising from the idea that, already, ICTs can enable spaces to move and people stay.The article must be better, (we just didnt get time to read them all this week) with two stars awarded by the reviewing crew at Emerald for everthing apart from Readability which got a "top of the herd" three. The abstract writer obviously needs some pointers from the authors. In Perceptions of the Internet: what people think when they search the Internet for information (Internet Research; 09: 3 1999; pp. 187-199), an Australian researcher, Harry Bruce argues: "...people relate to information services and systems metaphorically. In other words, they identify the system or service as analogous to something perhaps more mundane or commonplace. These are known as wild metaphors. They help to explain the unknown or unfamiliar and help us to learn new things. They arise from our individual beliefs and backgrounds but they are also inevitably influenced by our collective experience of contemporary media characterisations of the Internet...".A study focusing on academic use of the internet, the study relates the analogies that academics in Australia report for the Internet with the satisfaction that they derive from information seeking on the network. It provides some insight into how academics in Australia perceive the Internet when they use it to search for information. In an article rated three stars for "originality", Corporate Web sites in traditional print advertisements by Carol J. Pardun and Larry Lamb (Internet Research; 09: 2 1999; pp. 93-99), the way marketers are creating bridges between traditional advertising and the Internet is examined. The abstract reads... A content analysis of 1,249 ads in 20 magazines found: 42 percent included Web addresses; Business Week ads were most likely to include Web addresses; 98 percent of print advertisements for autos included Web addresses, while office equipment advertisements (including computer ads) included Web addresses only 10 percent of the time; and that 68 percent of Web sites were used to develop a database of potential customers.There is also some good material on Web strategy this week, including practical advice based on research, on how to improve corporate Web prescence. Going with the flow: Web sites and customer involvement by Deon Nel, Raymond van Niekerk, Jean-Paul Berthon and Tony Davies (Internet Research; 09: 2 1999; pp. 109-116), investigates a structure of commercial Web sites, and then attempts to analyse various patterns that emerge which may be of future use as a guideline to businesses that intend establishing a Web presence. Key to the understanding of these patterns is a clearer grasp of the implications of human interaction with the new medium. The focus is on an experiential construct, namely flow, and how this might vary by Web site, and on using this to begin to unravel the secrets of good commercial Web site design and its implications for business.Vassilis Prevelakis, in Managing large WWW sites (Internet Research; 09: 1 1999; pp. 41-48), applies theories of hypertext networks (e.g. versioning, varants etc) to the problem of designing and maintaining web sites containing thousands of pages, and then describe how their model is used in a prototype system at the University of Genenva. Then in an excellent article on a very relevant subject, Joseph M Jones and Leo R Vijayasarathy report on Internet consumer catalog shopping: findings from an exploratory study and directions for future research (Internet Research; 08: 4 1998; pp. 322-330) - Internet shopping has received considerable attention in the popular press as the future of in-home shopping. Although actual sales figures attributed to this direct mode of shopping are relatively modest in comparison to predictions, there are too many potential benefits to consumers and retailers alike to ignore Internet shopping as a fad. The authors present findings from an exploratory, empirical investigation of perceptions of Internet catalog shopping and more traditional print catalog shopping. The study extends previous research on strategy developments for direct modes of shopping and examines two factors (personality and important other people) that might influence perceptions. Preliminary results suggest that there are significant differences in individuals' perceptions of Internet catalog shopping and print catalog shopping, and perceptions differ by individual differences in personality (levels of need-for-cognition) and influence of important other people. Finally, the authors present research propositions that deserve further attention.How are banks managing their Web strategy? To give us some clues Niels Peter Mols in The Internet and the banks' strategic distribution channel decisions" (Internet Research; 08: 4 1998; pp. 331-337) argues that: "bank customers are divided into an Internet banking segment and a branch banking segment and that the former is growing and the latter is declining. This development is predicted dramatically to change the distribution channel structure in the retail banking sector. Two important strategic distribution channel decisions face banks. The first is whether to target the branch banking segment or the Internet banking segment. The other regards the geographical area banks aim to serve. This can be the local/national area or several nations. Based on this, four pure distribution channel strategies and a dual strategy are identified and their advantages and disadvantages are discussed."Excellent material on Web strategy here, expecially on international web communication management. Finally some recalcitrant views. Believe it or not, there are now reformed internet browsers, who have been there, done that, and now given the Internet the "bums rush". In an article that must make traditional librarians breathe just a little bit easier, Edward W. Christenseon and James R Bailey in Task performance using the library and Internet to acquire business intelligence (Internet Research; 08: 4 1998; pp. 290-302) found that task performance decreased and time to completion increased when using the Internet rather than a library on a "strategic business information acquisition experimental task". Both groups probably took half their time to work out what a "strategic business information acquisition experimental task" was even before they got started. All smartie pants comments aside, some interesting alternatives to the common wisdom are indicated, even though there are more questions than answers... Another three stars for originality, (we're sure not all due to the title) are awarded to File not found: the problems of changing URLs for the World Wide Web by S. Mary P. Benbow (Internet Research; 08: 3 1998; pp. 247-250), a case study which examines how corporate Web sites can make "intangible vision and mission pledges more tangible" and help employees and managers "share ideas and vision". The case is the geographically-spread consulting firm, James Martin & Co.. As Asian operations are usually spread out geographically, this has particular relevance to us.
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