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Dear Subscribers:

It's good to be back with you. We hope all of you who celebrated Thanksgiving had a wonderful one. Here's our lineup for this first week of December:

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Holiday e-shopping package

For wish lists, product research, and armchair (or deskchair) shopping, the Web has a lot to offer gift-givers and -receivers this year. Here's a roundup of all aspects of the e-shopping experience:

  1. Shopping by/for kids

    Toy-Shoppe, recommended by parent-activism nonprofit Connect for Kids, offers "a complete collection of non-violent toys, classic playthings, learning aids, hobbies & collectibles. A real plus: Standard UPS shipping, handling, and gift-wrapping are free. FYI, according to the "Internet Toy Store Scorecard" at Gomez.com, a rater of e-commerce sites, the top-ranked toy e-shops are eToys.com, Amazon.com, KBKids.com (we couldn't even get into this site last time we went), SmarterKids.com, and ZanyBrainy.com; SmarterKids.com leads the Educational Toy Buyer category.

    The Mall in Surf Monkey's kids portal offers children a gift registry of their own, with "pre-screened and hand-picked" kids' products in eight categories - toys, music, videos, arts/crafts, to name a few (the full inventory is searchable). EToys.com has a gift registry, too, but the site targets adults. Unique to Surf Monkey is its safety technology. If a child emails her Wish List to Grandma or anyone else, parents automatically get a copy (having originally registered the child), which they can revise anytime.

    As for teens, a number of e-tailers are after this $141 billion consumer market, but with their parents in mind, reports CNET. For example, a teenager's "RocketCash" can only be spent at e-merchants approved by his parents (we're wondering how popular this will be among teens, though - the friendly neighborhood mall just may win out). The CNET story has some analysts' comments on such online "gimmicks," as well as other e-tailers targeting teens. If there's a young person in your house or classroom who'd like to comment on these sites, we'd love to hear his or her thoughts - via feedback@netfamilynews.org.

  2. Design-your-own wrapping paper

    Our own Larry Magid offers a fulsome rundown on ways the Web and various software products can make holiday greetings and giving not only easier but more creative. Examples include design-your-own gift wrap, stickers, tags, bags, and ribbon; personalizing greetings and wrappings with your own photo(s); and Web sites for Christmas and Hanukkah e-greetings.

  3. Locating that lowest price

    There are now two ways to comparison-shop online: "push" and "pull." That's Internet lingo for either having "bot" software working for you in the background and "pushing"/sending the pricing info you've requested, or actually going to a Web site to get that information (the "pull" method).

    In the first category, there's lots of new "bot" software out there ready for us surfers to download. Using it is like being at the mall and having a little birdie whisper in your ear, "You can get a shirt like that $10 cheaper at the Gap." In a short piece, ZDNet mentions three such bots that work with your browser and are downloadable in their respective Web sites. USAToday has a longer piece all about bots, complete with links to a bunch of them. The New York Times mentions a few and explains the technology.

    A "pull" service that we like is CNET's "Top 1000 Most Popular Products" (mostly computer hardware and software). It offers at-a-glance price comparison in bunches of online stores (a different set of stores for each product). Click on the product name, and you go to a page that provides prices, links to stores, shipping costs, toll-free numbers, whether the product's in stock and if it can be sold overseas.

  4. Buyer-customized dolls, shoes…

    Barbie did the trailblazing in this area (we wrote about the custom Barbie last Christmas, in her early days). Now Nike and a new design-your-own doll site have joined the fray. According to CNET, Nike fans can pick a basic shoe style (Air Turbulence or Air Famished) and accent colors, then add a nickname or some other ID. Nike says your shoes show up in two-to-three weeks, and they cost about $10 over their shoes-for-the masses. And for doll customizers, the New York Times reports that a company called iDolls "empowers" the young shopper by letting her design a doll from scratch, "choosing facial features, clothes and accessories in any of 69 billion possible combinations." The Times says the order is manufactured to her specs in China and shipped within two weeks. We hear that custom cars are next, courtesy of Ford and Microsoft. We think this is very smart use of the Web, don't you? We'd love to hear about any experiences you have with iDoll.

  5. Wish lists, the online version

    They're everywhere! In fact, the New York Times says, "Letters to Santa are no longer necessary". Whether or not that's true, it is true that it's becoming most convenient not only to compile a wish list, but also to let friends and family know exactly what one wants! In fact, two gift registries - WishClick and IveBeenGood.com (fun URL, huh?) - give users incentives (gift certificates) to send out their wish lists.

  6. Help with gift ideas

    If you've already bought 43 presents and you feel like your creativity is running out, even for this problem there's help on the Web. Buried in a Seattle Times piece is a description of the ShopNow Network, a site that actually employs "a handful" of staff people (yes, human beings, not software) who "respond instantly via the keyboard to queries from shoppers desperately seeking gift ideas." It's live chat with a gift-finding mission, and if your surrogate creative-gift-thinker-upper can't think of something during your chat, s/he will take your email address and, reportedly, get back to you shortly with an idea.

  7. Bah, humbug!

    Finally, despite the number of e-shoppers doubling this year over last (by some reports, 35 million people), 75% of all US consumers haven't yet shopped with a mouse. That's according to NFO Research, via Computerworld's Online News. And the New York Times says e-commerce has a growing credibility problem. So, it reports, there are two new organizations at work giving consumers a voice (People for Internet Responsibility) and helping them cut through hype about the Internet (Internet Policy Institute). For those of you interested in Net consumer advocacy, Times writer Denise Caruso summarizes nearly a year of interviews with Internet companies "about disclosure and credibility practices."

  8. Uncle Sam likes e-commerce

    This week Vice President Gore announced the White House's initiative to "expand and improve electronic commerce," according to ComputerCurrents.com. This follows President Clinton's Thanksgiving Day address applauding the Internet's impact on the economy. Through a "working group" to be established, the administration soon will invite comment from the US public, local and state government, and federal agencies on e-commerce-related laws and regs. The body will then "recommend revisions meant to facilitate online commerce while ensuring that consumers and the surfing public are protected at a level equivalent to that in the offline world," Computer Currents reports.

  9. E-commerce security: Two views

    Last year Newsweek declared 1999 the year e-commerce took off. This year e-sales are supposed to double over '98 holiday e-shopping figures - to somewhere between $6 billion and $9 billion, depending on who does the research. Even so, concerns about using credit cards online remain. In its latest "essay" - corporate commentary Microsoft tries to place in newspapers around the US - the company acknowledges those concerns and offers its perspective on both the state of secure transaction technology and consumer perceptions. Cutting through the promotional message, there's some useful information on what the Internet industry is trying to do about consumers' concerns.

    Meanwhile, a new survey by market researchers International Data Corp. found that one in five large companies (1,000+ employees) is likely not to have a secure transaction option, according to ComputerCurrents.com. For small companies (10-99 employees), the ratio is one in three. FYI, your browser software usually has a window that pops up and notifies you when you're clicking to a secure-transaction server, and Netscape's browsers have a little padlock in the lower left-hand corner that is closed when you're visiting a secure server (that encrypts your credit card data).

  10. Most popular e-shops

    Apparently, auctions are hot holiday-shopping destinations on the Web. With a million visitors a day, EBay topped traffic-measurer Media Metrix's list of most-visited e-commerce sites last week, says ZDNet. It was trailed by Amazon.com, ToysRUs.com, eToys.com, CDnow.com, and Buy.com, in that order.

If any of you have had e-commerce experiences you'd like to tell us about, feel free to email us.

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Search engines and the meaning of life

Search engines are morphing again. First Yahoo! added search to its stellar directory. Then all the search engines became "portals" and added Yahoo!-like directories. Later human-language searching like that of Ask Jeeves came into vogue. Now - maybe it's this reflective time of year? - search engines are getting all philosophical.

In a somewhat tongue-in-cheek but rather thoughtful piece, the New York Times says search engines are becoming "spiritual advisers and drive-by psychoanalysts." (Don't ya love it?!) Think of it, writer Jenny Lyn Bader suggests, seeking truth right at one's desk!

Her piece is worth a perusal - at least by the librarians and research advisers among us - because it does a good job of putting the current search-engine experience in context. And of course it reveals Jenny's favorites (don't miss what she says about Answers.com toward the bottom). Feel free to tell us your favorite search engine(s) - especially what you like about it/them.

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In other news (Web News Briefs)…

  1. School Net use keeps on growing

    There was lots of news this week about the Internet in school. Schools and libraries have been promised $1.92 billion for Net connectivity in this second year of the "e-rate" federal subsidy program. That brings to $3.6 billion the two-year total of funds distributed by the Schools and Libraries Division of the Universal Service Administrative Co., which is run by the Federal Communications Commission (lots o' layers!). "The division released its figures a week after FCC Chairman Bill Kennard announced that the [e-rate] program … had connected more than 1 million classrooms to the Internet," reports the Associated Press, via the New York Times. And the Bulletin of the Association of Online Professionals reports that the neediest schools, which receive discounts of 80-90%, accounted for more than 54% of the promised money.

    And an annual ed-tech survey by Market Data Retrieval has just been released. It shows that in the '98-'99 school year there was, on average, one computer for every six students (one for every 11, five years earlier); 90% of US schools have Net access (32% three years ago); and about 71% of US schools have Net access in at least one classroom (showing that connectivity is moving beyond libraries and media centers). There's much more in the New York Times's report, including the views of activists against the technology "digital divide" between higher- and lower-income schools and critics of technology in education.

  2. ThinkQuest's young winners

    You may have heard of ThinkQuest. It's a nonprofit organization that promotes learning with an annual contest that gets students and teacher-coaches worldwide to design educational Web sites through collaboration across the Internet. Winners receive college scholarships. ThinkQuest says its library of student-created Web sites is the most heavily trafficked educational destination on the Web, getting some 20 million hits a week.

    Last week ThinkQuest held its fourth-annual awards ceremony in Los Angeles. The team that won Best of Contest for its Electricity Online is made up of students and coaches in Orlando, Florida; Bombay, India; and Hellevoetsluis, Netherlands. Australia, Singapore, France, Germany, Japan, South Africa, Russia, Switzerland, Azerbaijan, South Korea, Jamaica, Canada, Denmark, Bulgaria, Peru, and the UK were other countries represented by the winning Web sites. In many cases students and teachers who collaborate on sites for the contest never meet each other in person. Here's ThinkQuest's press release on its winners, and Wired News's report on the contest. If you have ThinkQuest participants in your house or school, we'd love to hear their story - tell them to email us.

  3. No free lunch, er, PC

    Nice while it lasted, maybe - or at least a nice idea for computer buyers. The free PC is dead. And, if the demise of Microworkz is any indication, the ultra cheap PC isn't doing too well either. CNET's News.com has a roundup of stories on the subject, and the New York Times goes into some detail on eMachines's acquisition of Free-PC. Meanwhile, News.com reports on why Microworkz "is toast."

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Mom goes to law school

Want to know what it's like to be in law school … or to be a former-full-time-parent-cum-full-time-law-student? Check out Alice Marie Beard's monthly chronicle of the life 'n' times of a first-year law student in Jurist, a Web site for the legal community. Alice, who is studying law at Catholic University in Washington, D.C., "began law school after 20 years as 'just a mom'," according to Jurist. "Her son is now a US Marine Reservist and in college; her daughter is in 10th grade."

The writing is pretty steam-of-consciousness (as a personal journal would be) and personable. Alice doesn't hold much back, so you'll get some insights. And for any of you going through similar situations, there's a companion e-discussion just below the column.

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That does it for this week. Have a great weekend.

Sincerely,

Net Family News


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