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THE STANDARD'S M E D I A G R O K A Commentary on What the Press Is Reporting and Why ===================================================================== | http://www.thestandard.com | Friday, June 1, 2001 TOP GROKS: * Clippy's Comeback * Why Not Run Another Online Auction Story? * Lessons From an Imaginary Life and Death MORE NEWS: * Ready, Set ... Office XP * KPN Shares Dive 20 Percent on Issue Talk * StarMedia's Stock Supernova * U.S. Jobless Claims Hit Their Highest Point in a Month /=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= advertisement =-=-=\ Save time and $$$. Enroll in Hertz' Business Account Program http://click.email-publisher.com/oaaacjqaaP8GobVAtCeaaaacSb/ \=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=/ TOP GROKS ~~~~~~~~~ Clippy's Comeback Remember that splashy, multi-million-dollar ad campaign Microsoft rolled out for Office XP, in which it claimed that Clippy, the annoyingly chirpy office assistant, had been booted to the curb? Well, so much for advertising. In what some reporters seemed to find the most significant news coming out of yesterday's XP launch, Bill Gates & Co. announced that Clippy lives in the Office update - but only if you want him to. (Figuring out exactly what kind of person would install Clippy intentionally is a task beyond our capabilities.) Beyond poking fun at an animated paper clip, the voluminous coverage of the product's launch was fairly uniform. As Joe Wilcox of News.com pointed out, the new features receiving the most attention, including what Redmond calls "smart tags" that access external information from within a document, use XML. That's because, as Gates told Good Morning America, "A big theme here is about sharing." Another big theme is helping MS's big customers - many of whom seem reluctant to shell out the dough for XP when Office 97 seems to do the job just fine - make more money by enabling their employees to do more work, faster. According to Reuters, Gates said at the main launch event in New York, "By making Office just 10 percent better, we can save hundreds of millions of hours in the workplace." The press wasn't all hearts and flowers. Barbara Rose of the Chicago Tribune led with Steve Ballmer's comments at the Chicago launch about Microsoft's renewed efforts to play nicely with industry partners in the wake of its antitrust suit. "The industry didn't really rally around to our defense. I noticed that. We all noticed that," Ballmer said. Computer Reseller News charged that MS has "avoided dealing with any of the licensing questions surrounding the new product." It's curious it put it that way, since the Los Angeles Times' Joseph Menn managed to file an entire story on the new - and much grumbled-about - licensing plan, which charges corporate customers for buying the software, plus 29 percent of the full price during each of the next three years. Analysts commented almost exclusively on Microsoft's uphill struggle to get corporate customers to sign on the dotted line. "There is no easy, compelling core value in upgrading to Office XP. Microsoft is fiddling with the deck chairs, but the ship runs nicely, thank you," Forrester Research analyst Frank Gillett told News.com. "We'd all rather go home and play with our kids than learn a new version of Office." Something tells us that's not the kind of sharing Gates was hoping for. - Michaela Cavallaro Ready, Set ... Office XP http://www.thestandard.com/article/0,1902,26787,00.html?nl=mg Microsoft Launches Update to Office (Reuters) http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/technology/tech-tech-microsoft-d.html (Registration required.) Born Again: Clippy Pops Up in Office XP http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/news/0,4586,5091942,00.html Retailers, PC Makers Join Office Party http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1003-200-6130762.html Microsoft, Corporate Friends Push New Office http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1003-200-6119819.html Microsoft Adds Annual Fee for New Office XP Software http://www.latimes.com/business/columns/techcol/todays.topstory.htm Microsoft Launches Office XP, Ignores Licensing Issues http://www.crn.com/Sections/BreakingNews/dailyarchives.asp?ArticleID=27004 Office XPectations http://abcnews.go.com/sections/scitech/DailyNews/officexp010531.html Microsoft Noticed Cold Shoulder http://www.chicagotribune.com/tech/news/article/0,2669,ART-52149,FF.html Gates in Big Apple to Unveil Microsoft's Office XP http://www.atnewyork.com/news/article/0,1471,8471_776491,00.html --------------------------------------------------------------------- Why Not Run Another Online Auction Story? How do you get your editor to let you spend hours on the Internet, exchanging e-mails with strangers and futzing around on eBay? Convince her that there's a story - a big story - in the wacky world of online auctions. Somehow, three Wall Street Journal reporters managed to do just that, filing two separate pieces on varying aspects of e-auctioning. Their findings? "Cookie jars could sell to dead people," according to the Journal's Robert J. Hughes and Daniel Costello, who wrote an entertaining piece about their attempts to sell off items including tickets to the Broadway hit "The Producers" - gone in nine minutes - and an Elvis clock that, sadly, went unclaimed. In the second piece, reporter Nick Wingfield went to the West Columbia, S.C., warehouse of ReturnBuy Inc. to discover the groundbreaking news that "big businesses have discovered the Internet's biggest flea market." There must have been something in the air: This morning's news was littered with reports and rehashes of the auction biz. An Associated Press story picked up by numerous outlets pegged its report to eBay's recent decision to charge subscription fees for software that helps sellers manage auctions. Implementation of the subscription-based software makes obsolete a different, eBay-sponsored system many sellers bought a few years ago, and this predictably has sellers crying foul. Too bad, the AP said, it's the wave of the future, citing one Net researcher who noted, "There's a limit to good will. EBay is hardly alone in starting to charge for things." A Reuters report on what's happened to Yahoo since it started charging small listing fees certainly backs that up. The portal's auction unit reports that the percentage of listed merchandise being sold has skyrocketed, as has overall bidding activity - even though analysts estimate the site lost 90 percent of its U.S. listings when it introduced the fees. "They are doing very well, it is just that now it is on a much smaller scale," Safa Rashtchy, an analyst with U.S. Bancorp Piper Jaffray told Reuters. "They are clearly no threat to eBay." The sum total of all this chin-stroking? The online auction world is healthy but changing, and small sellers (who were almost universally described as mom-and-pop) seem to be losing ground to the big guys. What doesn't seem to be changing at all, though, is the media's penchant for the next big auction. This week's example: the world's oldest hockey stick, which Toronto's Globe and Mail called "a crude length of hickory." Owner Gord Sharpe hopes it will sell for $2 million. In what is perhaps the most cogent analysis we've seen of the entire online auction market, Sharpe recounted a comment from an appraiser who had just been involved in a $2 million sale of a pair of antique French candlesticks: "And they said hey, there are a heck of a lot more hockey fans out there than candle-holder fans." - Michaela Cavallaro Goods From IBM, Disney Help eBay Post a Surge in Profits http://interactive.wsj.com/articles/SB991340890181239693.htm (Paid subscription required.) Online Auctions Continue to Boom, But Falling Prices Are Hurting Sellers http://interactive.wsj.com/articles/SB991350495337273297.htm (Paid subscription required.) Controversial Fee Move by eBay Likely to Be Followed (AP) http://www.siliconvalley.com/docs/news/svfront/081069.htm Yahoo Auctions Says Smaller Is Better http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1007-200-6145352.html Owner of World's Oldest Hockey Stick Hopes to Score on eBay http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/RTGAMArticleHTMLTemplate/D,C/20010601/gthockeystick?tf=RT/fullstory_Spt.html&cf=RT/config-neutral&vg=BigAdVariableGenerator&slug=gthockeystick&date=20010601&archive=RTGAM&site=Sports&ad_page_name=breakingnews-sp /=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= advertisement =-=-=\ **Standard U -- Executive Education for Today's Leaders** Lead by the faculty of Stanford Graduate School of Business and top industry leaders, Standard U is designed to equip Sr. managers with the skills they need to prosper. To get more information and apply: Call 800-945-0880 or visit http://click.email-publisher.com/oaaacjpaaP8GlbVAtCeaaaacTb/ Mention special tuition code, TISCCC and get 25% off tuition. \=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=/ Lessons From an Imaginary Life and Death What can you say about an imaginary girl who died? Two weeks have passed since the "death" of the nonexistent Kaycee Nichole Swenson, and the torrent of words written about the affair has barely slowed. In recent days journalists have been finding new lessons in the aftermath of this convoluted Internet hoax. Kaycee's tale was widely followed among Web loggers for more than a year. When her death was announced on May 15, the bloggers plunged into a frenzy of speculation and investigation. MSNBC was among the first of the mainstream outlets to recount the deception and its unraveling. The New York Times' Katie Hafner turned in what may be the definitive account on May 29. The reporter traveled to Peabody, Kan., to interview Kaycee's creator in her home. Hafner noted that the good gray Times itself was taken in by Kaycee last year, quoting her in an article on computer use by college students. And Hafner elicited from blogger Rogers Cadenhead the perfect quote to describe the whirl of investigation following Kaycee's demise: "It was like a story being reported by locusts. They swept in and just pulled facts out of the air." Editorializing on the site of NUA Internet Surveys, Kathy Foley drew a lesson for Internet businesses from the Kaycee hoax: "Do not pretend to would-be online customers that you are something you are not." And the Register, of all outlets, found hope among the ashes. Its Washington reporter, Thomas C Greene, not ordinarily a sentimental sort, ended his piece this way: "Whether she was real or not seems beside the point; surely the experience of compassion and the impulse to do good ought to be relished regardless of the impetus." - Keith Dawson The End of the Whole Mess http://vanderwoning.com/mess.shtml A Painful Affair of the Internet Heart http://www.msnbc.com/news/576899.asp A Beautiful Life, an Early Death, a Fraud Exposed http://www.nytimes.com/2001/05/31/technology/31HOAX.html (Registration required.) FBI Drops Net Diary Hoax (AP) http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1005-200-6136629.html Weaving a Tangled Web http://www.nua.ie/surveys/analysis/weekly_editorial.html Plucky Leukemia Weblog Girl 'Dies' http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/6/19353.html /=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= advertisement =-=-=\ GET 4 FREE ISSUES OF THE INDUSTRY STANDARD The Industry Standard is the only weekly newsmagazine devoted to covering the New Economy--and you're invited to sample 4 issues--absolutely risk-free! Click on the url below to order today. http://click.email-publisher.com/oaaab7saaP7YtbVAtCeaaaacUb/ \=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=/ MORE NEWS AT THESTANDARD.COM ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Ready, Set ... Office XP By Dominic Gates Microsoft's new suite of productivity applications is unleashed on the world. But will it be all the company makes it out to be? http://www.thestandard.com/article/0,1902,26787,00.html?nl=mg KPN Shares Dive 20 Percent on Issue Talk By Reuters The Dutch telco sees its shares hit their worst level since January 1997 after reports of a rights issue aimed at cutting an $18.6 billion debt mountain. http://www.thestandard.com/article/0,1902,26821,00.html?nl=mg StarMedia's Stock Supernova By Daniel Helft - Latin American Editor The No. 1 Latin American Net company secures $36 million in funds and sees its shares shoot up nearly 40%. http://www.thestandard.com/article/0,1902,26814,00.html?nl=mg U.S. Jobless Claims Hit Their Highest Point in a Month By Reuters The pace of hiring seems to have slowed, according to a government report that depicts a weakening labor market. http://www.thestandard.com/article/0,1902,26791,00.html?nl=mg --------------------------------------------------------------------- MORE LINKS ~~~~~~~~~~ Synergy and the Day of Infamy http://ojr.usc.edu/content/story.cfm?request=589 Judge OKs FBI's Russian Hack http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/news/0,4586,2767013,00.html National Book Awards Takes E-Books http://www.msnbc.com/news/581087.asp Another Suit Jogs the Industry's Memory of Napster http://www.internetnews.com/streaming-news/article/0,,8161_776321,00.html New 'Pop-Under' Web Advertising Earns Attention http://www.siliconvalley.com/docs/news/svfront/062170.htm Bounty Set for Sex.com Scammer http://www.wired.com/news/business/0,1367,44177,00.html PowerPoint Invades the Classroom http://www.nytimes.com/2001/05/31/technology/31POWE.html (Registration required.) Failed Dot-Com President Scores Big (AP) http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/business/AP-Japan-Loser-President.html (Registration required.) Virginia Gets Dot-Com License Plates http://www.washtech.com/news/software/10141-1.html STAFF ~~~~~ Written by Deborah Asbrand (dasbrand@world.std.com), Michaela Cavallaro (mcavalla@maine.rr.com), Keith Dawson (dawson@world.std.com), Jen Muehlbauer (jen@englishmajor.com), Lori Patel (loripatel@hotmail.com) and David Sims (davesims@sonic.net). Edited by Jimmy Guterman (guterman@vineyard.com). Copyedited by Jim Duffy (jduffy@thestandard.com). GET THE MAGAZINE ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ 4 RISK-FREE issues at this URL: http://click.email-publisher.com/maaack0aaP8MFbVAtCeb/ GET MORE NEWSLETTERS ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ The Standard newsletters cover the media, stock market, e-commerce, music, law and more. To SUBSCRIBE to other newsletters, click here: http://click.email-publisher.com/maaack0aaP8MGbVAtCeb/ To unsubscribe, click here: http://thestandard.email-publisher.com/u/?bUrKAM.bVAtCe ADVERTISING INFORMATION ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ For more information on advertising in The Standard Newsletters, contact: Erik VanderKolk (evanderkolk@thestandard.com) FEEDBACK AND PROBLEMS ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Send letters to the editor to letters@thestandard.com. Please contact us with any problems that arise: http://www.thestandard.com/service customerservice@thestandard.com You can also contact us via phone or mail: Standard Media International, Customer Service 866-776-9890 (phone) Copyright 2001 Standard Media International
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