Friday, October 08, 1999

BITS AND BYTES - 10/8/99

Nicholson NY launched Reader Digest's first Internet-based business, gifts.com where you can choose among 400 different products, including brands like Escada, Laura Ashley, Burberrys, Lenox and Nautica, as well as non-branded specialty items. It also features a customized Gift Finder, a Gift Calendar with e-mail reminders, and other personalized features, such as hand-written or customized gift-cards, to help shoppers find and send the most appropriate gift possible in a hassle-free environment.

After reading about Bolt.com's ecom site, Isabel Walcott of SmartGirl wrote in that they have 10,000 products catalogued in the SmartGirl reviews section. "A product doesn't even show up in our index unless a girl has chosen to put it there. We're looking forward to making everything available for purchase over the next 6 months." And, they've been building this buyer's guide for the past three years! Go SmartGirl.com!

Rachel Kaberon of ARKay Productions clued me in on a novel way to feed someone. Instead of sending $20 to the commercially adverstised organizations, go to The Hunger Site at the U.N-- http://www.thehungersite.com. All you do is click a button and somewhere in the world some hungry person gets a meal to eat at no cost to you. The food is paid for by corporate sponsors, but, you're only allowed one click per day!

Jupiter Communications, Inc. announced that the projected price range of its initial public offering of 3,125,000 common shares was raised to $18-$20 per share from $15-$17 per share.
Networkers from Guy Kawasaki's BootCamp in San Francisco is generating lots of eager beavers spamming the entire contact list with offers. And we're not taking it anymore! Unfortuately the idea of sharing the list for attendees isn't working so well.

Gist TV Listings, www.gist.com, the premier source of customized TV listings and related editorial content on the Internet, showcases its daily local grid schedules personalized by specific channels, program categories and times, on iWon.com (www.iwon.com), a new CBS-backed destination Internet portal combining world-class search, content and functionality with the Internet's largest guaranteed cash giveaway.

Continuing its aggressive business growth, FEED magazine (www.feedmag.com) announced a content partnership with MSNBC.com (www.msnbc.com), the number one news site.
Prompted by my siting of Warren Beatty, David Friedensohn of BigStar sent in the results of BigStar's poll of whether Warren Beatty should run for President. And the results were: Votes = 1250. Yes 52.1 % No 47.8 %

Eric Goldberg of Crossover Technologies will be introducing Tom Brokaw of NBC News for NYNMA's panel "And That's The Way It Will Be: How The Internet Is Changing The Way We Get Our News & The Business Of News" on Thurs., Oct. 14, at FIT, Haft Auditorium, 27th St. & 7th Ave.
Veon has launched an interactive video design competition and the prize is a digital camcorder and it will be awarded at the Veon developer conference in New York in mid-January. Their software is free and Mary Jo Fahey has written a tutorial that's available in HTML on her Web site (www.echonyc.com/~mjfahey/veon/tutorial).