NewsScan Daily, 23 August 2004 ("Above The Fold")

NewsScan Daily, 23 August 2004 ("Above The Fold")
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"ABOVE THE FOLD"
       Universities Beef Up Anti-Downloading Tactics
       Nielsen/Netratings Zeros in on Industries
       Amazon to Buy Chinese Web Site
       New Service Tracks Car Radio Listening Habits
       'User Testing -- The Ultimate Reality Check'
       XP Service Pack: Mixed Reaction from Tech Pros

FEATURES
        Flash Card
        Honorary Subscriber: William Benton

UNIVERSITIES BEEF UP ANTI-DOWNLOADING TACTICS
      Many U.S. universities are greeting returning students with tighter 
restrictions on using campus networks for illegal music downloading and 
file-swapping. Until recently, universities had relied on a soft approach 
-- lecturing students on copyright issues and making them sign pledges to 
abstain from illegal downloading -- but many are now taking a more hardline 
stance. Virginia State University recently installed network firewalls that 
block download sites such as Kazaa and eDonkey -- a move that officials say 
instantly reduced bandwidth usage from 95% to 51%. The University of Nevada 
at Las Vegas has installed technology that automatically deletes files 
saved to communal computers whenever the machines are turned off. "We're 
not content police. We're bandwidth police," says UNLV associate provost 
Lori Temple. "We make it so downloading music is a horrible idea." And the 
University of Florida has developed its own software, Icarus, to detect 
illegal downloading by scanning network traffic for peer-to-peer files. A 
first violation cuts off the student's for 15 minutes -- the second time, 
the penalty goes up to five days. Meanwhile, other schools are taking the 
carrot approach, striking deals with legitimate music services, such as the 
reincarnated Napster, to offer free or very inexpensive access to streamed 
music. All these measures are necessary, say college administrators, in 
order keep their schools off the RIAA's growing lawsuit list. (Wall Street 
Journal 23 Aug 2004)
<http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB109321894728898103,00.html> (sub req'd)

NIELSEN/NETRATINGS ZEROS IN ON INDUSTRIES
      Nielsen/NetRatings is launching a new service that will track how 
consumers use financial Web sites -- the first of several offerings that 
will target specialized industries. The new service, dubbed MegaView 
Financial, will focus on the online financial activities of some 40,000 
panel participants. Nielsen/NetRatings data suggests that when consumers 
visit financial Web sites, it's to perform specific financial transactions, 
rather than take advantage of a multitude of options. That means either 
consumers aren't interested or institutions have done a poor job of selling 
additional services to customers, says Ken Cassar, director of strategic 
analysis at Nielsen. (CNet News.com 22 Aug 2004)
<http://news.com.com/2100-1024-5318789.html>

AMAZON TO BUY CHINESE WEB SITE
      Amazon.com has agreed to buy Joyo.com Ltd, China's largest online 
retailer of books, music and videos, for $US72 million. Joyo, which was 
founded in 2000, will become Amazon's seventh global website. Amazon said 
yesterday its entry into China would allow it to service the more than 80 
million consumers already online there. (The Age 20 Aug 2004) rec'd from 
John Lamp, Deakin U.
<http://theage.com.au/articles/2004/08/20/1092889329465.html>

NEW SERVICE TRACKS CAR RADIO LISTENING HABITS
      Wake up, Arbitron -- a new service offered by Navigauge is combining 
global positioning technology with continuous tracking of the radio dial to 
measure radio audiences in cars. While Arbitron has long been the dominant 
audience information supplier, relying on paper diaries filled out by 
consumer volunteers, Navigauge executives are betting there's room for 
improvement. "For a long time, the radio industry itself has lamented the 
fact that it gets a large percentage of consumers' media consumption but a 
disproportionately small share of advertising revenue," says Navigauge CEO 
Tim Cobb. "That's based on the fact that they cannot articulate to 
advertisers the value that they are delivering." Navigauge is hoping that 
its capacity to track participants cars through GPS technology will add new 
layers of useful information for marketers. For example, the company will 
be able to tell marketers where drivers stop for lunch and whether radio 
commercials change people's destinations or driving habits. The system can 
also be used to measure the amount of traffic moving past billboards, 
assisting the outdoor ad industry in determining its signage exposure. (New 
York times 23 Aug 2004)
<http://www.nytimes.com/2004/08/23/business/media/23adco.html>

'USER TESTING -- THE ULTIMATE REALITY CHECK'
      Usability expert Jakob Nielsen says "survival of the easiest" will 
weed out overly complicated Web sites, leaving us with the sites that are 
simply designed and straightforward to navigate. He says sites like Google 
(which displays a simple box to type a search term into) and Amazon (whose 
one-click purchase technology makes buying easy) are good examples of what 
he's talking about. If you're looking to improve your own Web site, Nielsen 
says nothing beats human testing: "Just get ahold of about five of your 
customers and sit them down in front of a computer, one person at a time 
and give them a task to do, ask them to find some information or buy a 
product on your Web site. And you sit back and you watch them, and you will 
suffer, because I guarantee when your customers try out your Web site, they 
will fail again and again, they will complain bitterly about many design 
elements that you never even through to question, and that's why user 
testing is the ultimate reality check. Any Web site should do that, it 
should be a crime to release anything on the Internet that has not been 
tested with real people, so go and do that." (CNN.com 23 Aug 20040
<http://www.cnn.com/2004/TECH/08/09/jakob.nielsen/index.html>

XP SERVICE PACK: MIXED REACTION FROM TECH PROS
      Fourteen percent of tech pros who installed Windows XP service pack 2 
have had major problems thereafter, a poll at the SANS Institute website 
says. Half of this number had no option but to reinstall the system in its 
entirety. (The Age 20 Aug 2004) rec'd from John Lamp, Deakin U.
<http://theage.com.au/articles/2004/08/20/1092889334896.html>

*****

FLASH CARD
      "Don't waste life in doubts and fears; spend yourself on the work 
before you, well assured that the right performance of this hour's duties 
will be the best preparation for the hours and ages that will follow it." 
(Ralph Waldo Emerson)

HONORARY SUBSCRIBER: WILLIAM BENTON
      Today's Honorary Subscriber is the American businessman and 
politician William Burnett Benton (1900-1973), who was assistant secretary 
of state from 1945 to 1947 and a United States senator from Connecticut 
from 1949 to 1953.
      Prior to entering public life Benton had a successful career in 
advertising and educational administration. In 1929 Benton teamed up with 
Chester Bowles, later to be governor of Connecticut and ambassador to 
India, to found what turned out to be the highly successful Benton & Bowles 
Advertising Agency. In 1936 Benton sold his interest in the agency to 
become vice-president of the University of Chicago, a position urged on him 
by his Yale classmate Robert M. Hutchins, who was the university's 
president. In 1943, Benton added the responsibility of serving the 
university as publisher and chairman of the board of Encyclopaedia 
Britannica. (Benton had convinced the Sears, Roebuck Company, EB's previous 
owners, to donate the publishing enterprise to the university, but had to 
put up his own money as working capital before the trustees would accept 
the donation.)
      In 1945 Benton left the university to join the U.S. State Department, 
until he was appointed to a vacant U.S. Senate seat in 1949. He finished 
his public service as a member of the executive board of UNESCO (United 
Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization), which he joined 
in 1963.
      Benton was born in Minneapolis, the descendent of Connecticut 
farmers, educators, and ministers. He grew up in Minneapolis and in 
Montana, where his widowed mother had become a homesteader. After a year at 
Carleton College in Northfield, Minnesota, Benton transferred to Yale 
University, where he excelled academically, becoming chairman of the Yale 
Record and graduating in 1921.
      For the next eight years Benton worked in New York and Chicago 
advertising agencies, striking out on his own with Chester Bowles in 1929. 
His life thereafter was a series of successful accomplishments. By 1935 he 
had turned Benton & Bowles into the sixth largest advertising agency in the 
world, mostly by writing innovative advertisements for the radio 
entertainment programs so popular during the Great Depression of the 1930s. 
When he moved to the University of Chicago, he used his advertising and 
radio background to develop the "University of Chicago Round Table" into an 
extremely popular national radio forum.
      When Benton was secretary of state for public affairs, he converted 
for peacetime use the U.S. Information Service, the cultural exchange 
programs, and the Voice of America. He also lobbied the Fulbright 
Scholarship Act and the Foreign Service Act of 1946 through Congress, and 
succeeded in organizing U.S. participation in the establishment of UNESCO, 
on whose board he would later serve. While in the Senate, Benton supported 
Truman's foreign aid and Point Four programs and was active on behalf of 
civil rights. He was also among the first to decry the tactics for which 
Senator Joseph R. McCarthy of Wisconsin was eventually censured.
      Benton's lifetime interest in "the high significance of the media 
communications" to education and citizenship is reflected in the ongoing 
activities of the Benton Foundation, which focus on the Internet's 
potential as an "open university" devoted to helping ordinary citizens 
become more civically engaged, leading to the enrichment of the entire 
community.
      The Foundation is now chaired by its founder's son, Charles Benton, 
chairman of Public Media, Inc., and a longstanding champion of public 
broadcasting, public information and public debate.

See 
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0226365484/newsscancom/ref=nosim 
-- or look for it in your favorite library. [Note: We donate all revenue 
from our book recommendations to adult literacy programs.]

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