In this section:
Amy Jo Kim's Community Building on the Web treats the idea of "community" seriously. All power to her.
The era of visual innovation is ending at mainstream Web sites. A few designers will need to re-skill..
ASPs were an Internet-boom hit. Now they must struggle to stay alive. Right now, many potential customers find them just too risky.
While the newspapers and news sites fill their space with dot-com layoffs and closures, the Web audience continues to quietly grow.
Australian markets often behave differently to their US counterparts. Most of Australia's shrewdest business analysts understand this. Local would-be Web entrepreneurs will profit from understanding it too.
Online advertising can deliver users at the lowest price around. But like all marketing, its cost-effectiveness depends on management.
A small tribute to the mother and father of all dot-com disaster stories.
One day the economics of broadband may make its Australian providers rich; right now, it's making them frustrated. One broadband supplier says it's not worth a home user's $A70.
Everyone's worried about Australia's low broadband penetration. Are Australia's consumers deluded? Does the country's regulatory regime allow broadband to be overpriced? Or is this just a solution looking for a problem?
Just in case you haven't been reading the business pages: the broadband dream is dead. Now for the new broadband, as exciting as your electricity supply.
A Web site full of useful information seems so twentieth-century - but the users seem to want it.
The challenge is not "Internet time", but the sheer breadth of the Web development task. So suggests Jessica Burdman's recent book Collaborative Web Development.
A custom-built Web content management system can produce far better returns than today's costly, inflexible commercial package. That dawning realisation should produce changes in CMS pricing and management behaviour.
A Forrester Research report suggests the content management community is right to complain about today's off-the-shelf software. Forrester's blunt view: current content management systems are "immature".
... the "magazine model" for content is in trouble - as are two others. But two more thrive, largely unrecognised.
The irreverant Crikey.com.au may be closer to profitability than any other Australian online publishing venture.
Web designers need to grow up, leave their inner artist behind and embrace the challenge of usable design, says guest writer Kent Dahlgren.
For almost all Web developers, documentation equals dullness. Thus few Web projects get properly documented. Which helps explain why so many fail.
As in the British Railway industry of the 1850s, so in the Internet industry of the early 2000s the builders and visionaries are ceding ground to the managers. The parallels are useful.
Automating your email responses turns out to be far harder and more costly than the technologists tell you. Might you be better off just using the phone?
Spam and other commercial messages are throttling email's simple appeal. And no-one is offering a credible remedy.
Many content sites need to empower their users to achieve goals. Such empowering content looks more suited to the Web medium than information provision or attempts to provoke emotional response.
Web design assumptions based on print media experience can lead you to exactly the wrong conclusions about text. On the Web, users want words before pictures.
The 2000 US presidential election ballot teaches what not to do in creating a usable Web site. Here are 12 specific rules for avoiding your own version of the Florida ballot debacle.
Web site design began with a burst of wild innovation. Now experimentation is ceding ground to convention - agreement among users about where they expect page functions to appear. And where the users go, the designers will have to follow.
The Web is a low-margin medium which requires low-cost content. Here's how to get it.
The true "hypertext" is dwindling; in its place is rising the Web-sized piece of information best dubbed the hyperchunk.
Writing for the Web is no masterpiece, but any intelligent book on Web writing is better than nothing. And this slim volume does contain a few lessons.
A slew of reports shows that the Internet has ensnared half the Australian population - and that it's still growing strongly.
Until recently a pricey half-solution, Adobe's Photoshop is now morphing into a complete Web graphics toolkit. Version 6.0 looks attractive despite its continuing shortcomings.
Australia's December 2001 privacy law changes lack teeth, but will succeed if they improve corporate culture. Here's hoping they can.
You want to redesign that Web site, but the cash river of 1999 is a distant memory. Here's how to manage a redesign on the cheap.
Relaunch that site, and visitors may find comfort somewhere else. Here's when to relaunch, and when to think again.
The next time someone suggests a big new cutting-edge Web interface project,the only line you'll need is: "Remember Boo.com". (But you could add that they lost $US120 million.)
A new Jupiter report argues Flash, Java and 3D technology is needed to save online shopping. But the evidence is weak.
The dream of making money from Web site subscriptions has returned. It probably won't stay long.
Anyone expecting endless new changes to the operation of the Web is in for a disappointment. The medium is maturing fast.
Some Web businesses will survive; many will not. A slightly jocular guide to divining the future of a Web business.
Hard data contradicts the common belief that entertainment is the future of the Web. Real users use the medium to get things done.
Vignette's software has emerged as the leader in the software space. But is it worth the price? Possibly not.
The Web browser dominates thinking about interfaces for Internet-based applications. Remember the benefits of a native Windows app.
Bringing XML to today's HTML-based Web, XHTML justifies the "breakthrough" label. It will rise slowly but surely.
