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The Internet 800 Directory - http://www.inter800.com
The Internet 800 Directory Newsletter
This issue is for Friday, August 01, 2003
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Table of Contents
01. Goolge vs. Yahoo vs. Microsoft
02. Inventiveness
03. Tip Of The Week
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Before getting started with this week’s newsletter, I want to share a
couple of things concerning previous articles. Several weeks back Steve
talked about Nigerian E-mail hoaxes, this caused Larry Jones to send him
a link to "The 3rd Annual Nigerian E-Mail Conference".  If you have some
time and feel like a good laugh visit:
http://j-walk.com/other/conf/index.htm
Thanks Larry!

Also this week the Mozilla Foundation (http://www.mozilla.org/) released
Mozilla Firebird 0.6.1 and Mozilla Thunderbird 0.1.

Firebird is a standalone browser, which when I tested it seemed very
fast and has some interesting features. The Mozilla people say it’s has
many stability improvements and bug fixes in this release, along with
some extra features. Things like, extra toolbar buttons, pop up blocker,
tab browsing, and integrated search (powered by Google).

Thunderbird is Mozilla's standalone mail client, designed to compete
with Microsoft's Outlook Express. This release is only a 0.1 and it is
built on Mozilla Mail. Some of its features are spam filtering, themes,
and customizable toolbar.
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*01 Goolge vs. Yahoo vs. Microsoft

Last Newsletter I covered the browser war and the defeat of Netscape and
now I want to talk about a different war. This war is over how and from
whom, we will find information on the Internet. Make no mistake, this
battle is for big dollars, the winner of this battle will bring in
billions in advertising dollars.

Microsoft, Google and Yahoo have been fighting for years to gain online
users, even by becoming partners.  As an example Yahoo used Google
results in their site for many years, this relationship assisted Google
in gaining its current dominance.  But then Google’s growth caused Yahoo
to acquire Inktomi search technology, allowing them to stop using
Google. Yahoo relied on Google, and this may have lost millions of
searchers to Google, but Yahoo may not have made it through the last few
years without the Google search technology.

Enter Microsoft, who is beefing up its MSN search engine to go
head-to-head with Google, but at the same time has no immediate plans to
cancel its agreement for paid search listings with Overture Services,
which was recently bought by Yahoo.

Given the fact that Explorer dominates the browser market and every
Explorer browser is defaulted to MSN search, could the term “Google It”
be a thing of the past?

Chuck Arning -chuck@inter800.com
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This week we want to highlight a long-time customer who evidently is a
lot of hot air - in their balloons, I mean. PJ's Balloons and Flowers
provides up all sorts of flowers, gift baskets and uplifting items for
birthdays, anniversaries or whatever.
Check them out at
http://www.pjsballoonsandflowers.com
Or call 800-646-2110.
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*02 Inventiveness - is that a word or a train of thought?

If I could only subscribe to 1 magazine, it would be the Smithsonian,
which I have read cover-to-cover for over 30 years. In the February 1995
issue, in an article written byJay Stuller, (which shows how far I am
behind in my reading) there is a very interesting piece about the war on
whiskers.

It seems that we (the homo sapiens) may have been shaving for various
reasons since at least 7,000 years. One of the biggest reasons is so
that your opponent couldn't grab your hair for an unfair advantage in
hand-to-hand combat. I don't know about the Iraqis. However, today, even
though there are women that are attracted to men who wear a beard, over
70% of women rate clean-shaven men as sexy. But that's another topic.

What triggered my interest was the fact that the disposable razor has
been considered by many to having been the advent of, and is still the
symbol of, the "Throwaway Society".

It seems that a guy by the name of King Camp Gillette was working in
1895 for a bottle cap company. His employer had invented the cork-lined
bottle cap, which is still a pretty nifty invention. His advise to
Gillette was, "Why don't you try to think of something like the Crown
Cork, which, when once used, is thrown away, and the customer keeps
coming back for more. And with every additional customer you get, you
are building a foundation for profit."

Heretofore, only straight razors were being used, although the safety
razor had been invented, but with a permanent blade that needed
sharpening. But Gillette's diabolical scheme would allow the blades to
wear out but not be re-sharpened.

His problem was finding a cheap, inexpensive sheet metal that held a
sharp edge.
Another inventor, William Nickerson - whose name didn't really fit with
the final product - solved that problem.

So, in 1903 Gillette offered the razor and 20 blades for $5. That first
year he sold a whopping 51 sets and 169 additional blades. However,
perhaps being akin to Col. Sanders, by the third year he sold 250,000
razors and 100,000 blade packages. The rest, they say, is history. (An
interesting side-story to this tale of the disposable society is that
blade disposal became a problem since so much trash was used in hog food
at the time. Therefore builders stared putting slots in bathroom
cabinets so blades could be dropped into walls. Remember those?)

So do I have a point? Well, maybe a couple. It seems to me that
inventive styles of thinking can be achieved at all levels of business,
even if one doesn't invent the paper clip. Some of our problems come
from doing the same things over and over when we might be missing the
boat on a lot more profits with a little inventiveness.

Oh yeah, and how about perseverance?

Steven Jackson - sjackson@inter800.com
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Once every second someone searches the Internet 800 Directory looking
for someone to supply them with goods or services.

Will they find you or your competition?

Call 800-299-1879!
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Tip of the Week

The week’s tip is from Dick Larkin, who writes an incredible newsletter.
Check it out at http://www.dicklarkin.twpsite.com/
Thanks Dick!

Internet Explorer Shortcuts

There are probably a handful of websites that you visit more than any
others.  Here’s a super fast way to get to them.

While visiting the site, from the “Favorites” menu, click on “Add to
Favorites”

Without putting the link into a folder, rename it with a single letter.
For example, I renamed Google as simple “g”.

When you want to go to the website, type the single letter (in this
case, “g”) in the IE address bar and hit enter.  You’ll go directly to
the site.

If you have any tips or shortcuts that you think the readers of this
Newsletter will find useful, send them to sjackson@inter800.com

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