BKINTBSG.RVW 940914 "The Internet Business Guide", Resnick/Taylor, 1994, 0-672-30530-5, U$25.00/C$34.95 %A Rosalind Resnick rosalind@harrison.win.net %A Dave Taylor taylor@netcom.com %C 201 West 103rd St., Indianapolis, IN 46290 %D 1994 %G 0-672-30530-5 %I SAMS Publishing %O U$25.00/C$34.95 317-581-3718 fax: 317-581-4669 75141.2102@compuserve.com %P 418 %T The Internet Business Guide: Riding the Information Superhighway to Profit There is good advice here for the business that wants to make use of the Internet. It may, however, be frustrating for the busy reader to have to mine that information out of verbiage and repetitive material. The book starts strongly. Right up front, business people are warned that "You can't distribute empty puffery," and that the decentralized nature of the net may make it frustrating to deal with. Chapter one is a decent, quick introduction to Internet applications. Chapter two provides an idea of the options for getting a connection. Beyond that, however, much of the material is vague, verbose and repetitious. The organization is poor. (Chapter two comes before later discussions of the benefits of providing information on the net, and so those needs are not addressed.) Chapter three, "Risks and Realities", deals only with security issues. The perils of generating "bad will" are raised elsewhere, but there are more hazards involved in a business/Internet confrontation than the theft of credit card data. In any case, the chapter is of little use at best, and misleading at worst. The sunsniffer trojan incident is juxtaposed with credit card number theft. (The concern for credit card data is maintained even though the very experts they quote suggest the fear is invalid.) Sending email from a commercial online service is seen as "Staying Off the Net" and therefore safe; a piece of illogic that boggles the mind. Although there is discussion of marketing, advertising and client support, the hundreds of pages devoted to it provide remarkably little information or analysis. While it is often repeated that you should provide "information" in your posts, and while a few examples, good and bad, are given, nowhere is the business person given solid guidelines as to the nature of the audience and the expectations of the net community. Case studies and "profiles" are strewn thickly throughout the book, but they are very brief and come nowhere near giving enough detail for a company to make an informed decision about Internet participation. Some of the examples used do not show that the original intent and plan failed completely. Every story, in fact, seems to be given a happy ending. Even horror stories like Canter and Siegel and other net abusers are said to be happy with the business results. One shudders at the "I don't care if the net is trashed, I got business" tone of one quote. (Interestingly, the book promotes the growth of "commercial" areas of the Internet. These are seen as "flame proof" areas for advertising--and they are. The only problem is that they aren't very interesting, so they aren't used. Not very effective advertising.) The Internet can be of significant use to business, and business can provide value to the Internet. This book gives some guidance to business in joining the net community, but it needs work. copyright Robert M. Slade, 1994 BKINTBSG.RVW 940914 ====================== DECUS Canada Communications, Desktop, Education and Security group newsletters Editor and/or reviewer ROBERTS@decus.ca, RSlade@sfu.ca, Rob Slade at 1:153/733 Author "Robert Slade's Guide to Computer Viruses" (UK contact: viv@svl.co.uk)