Window on the Web

By Daniel Friel

daniel.friel@nationsbank.com

Welcome to Window on the Web (WoW). This column is intended to literally be a "Window on the Web" for business economics. The focus will be on information content, not the hardware/technology of the internet per say, but the information it will bring us. As a frequent user of the internet my hope is to pass along information that is useful to fellow Business Economics’ readers. The goal of this column is provide readers with relevant information available on the internet. The 1^st WoW column is devoted to surveying readers on their current internet usage. The road to relevancy will be paved through your feedback. In addition to the survey below, an electronic version is available (and is the preferred mode of communication) through the NABE Web site at http://www.nabe.com/wow/websurvey.htm. Moreover, the entire WoW column will be available on the Web site with the appropriate "hot links" to any web sites discussed. A special thanks to Bruce Kratofil, the NABE WebMaster, for his technical skills in making this information available on our Web site.

The WoW columns will (hopefully) provide a valuable compliment to John Quall’s PC Corner column that focuses on PC hardware/software issues. The genesis of WoW followed discussions with both John Qualls and Ed Mennis (Business Economics editor) at the NABE annual meeting in New Orleans and follow up discussions with Bruce Kratofil. John’s last article pointed to a valuable resource for economists, Bill Goffe’s web site (see the NABE Links page for the link to the site).

The following regular features of WoW are planned: 1) Friel’s Favorites: A review of the most useful internet sites. 2) Friel’s Flops: Some sites to avoid. 3) Superior Software: A review of internet software.

The survey below is in lieu of 1) & 2).

Feedback is the foundation of this column. You can contact the author: via email daniel.friel@nationsbank.com or through the NABEtalk section of the NABE Web site.

Superior Software: HEADLINER

As some of you have already painfully discovered, probably the most disturbing aspect of the Internet is the time it can take to find relevant information. For example, the number of news sites available on the Internet is mind numbing (see http://www.nabe.com/wow/newssites.htm for a hot linked list of some of my favorite news sites). "Surfing" these sites to find relevant news can be very time consuming. To borrow a phrase from the yellow pages tag line, I let my computer do the surfing (c.f. let my fingers do the walking). A slick piece of software called Headliner will literilly go out and search Web sites in the background and pull in only relevant headlines (as I have defined them). See http://www.zdnet.com/cshopper/content/9709/cshp0208.html (the article orignally appeared in the September issue of COMPUTER SHOPPER) for a more complete review of the software. To try Headliner out for yourself go to http://www.lanacom.com/.

How does it work for me? When I log on to the Internet in the morning Headliner literely goes out and searches hundreds of sites for which I have defined for key phrases. 100 or more "hits" each moring are typical. For example, Headliner will return all the headlines that include "Greenspan" from most major newspapers and news wire services. Moreover, Headliner performs its magic in the background. That is, I can still access internet pages while Headliner works behind the scenes.

The company that distributes Headliner was recently acquired by BackWeb technologies (which is scheduled to be a publicly traded company this year).

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