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Net Gains (Sep 17, 97) |
Putting up a corporate website is not a decision that can be
made over a cuppa tea or a board meeting. It's an exercise that
requires a lot of thought and even introspection. One of the worst
reasons anyone can give for getting a web presence is "Everyone
else is going online".
In an ideal case, the company should have the tecchie department
spend time understanding the medium, study if getting a website
will help or harm them, and then make the decision of getting
a web site or not. Many times, hiring an independent Internet
consultant would be very useful. His job would be to help you
evaluate the feasibility, and need of getting a web site. He would
not have anything to gain by the company's final decision of going
online or not - he wouldn't be trying to sell the company a website
(developed by his organisation). Which would help the company
get an unbiased judgment.
Onto a couple of commercial websites for this week :
The Tata Web Site (www.tata.com) is one of India's largest web
sites - believe me, you can really lose yourself in these pages.
It took me a couple of hours on a 28.8 Kbps connection to try
to browse through the site in all its entirety. What this site
has in store is information on various organisations under the
Tata umbrella. From a management student's point of view, an ideal
source of information. An attractive feature is a daily time slot
for online chats, where anyone can log in and discuss. They even
have a section for offer of tie- ups, done with a view of global
business.
The site uses Java, VRML, audio and video, so you'd be better
off not even trying a shell account to access it - when I did,
I got a blank screen !
Reader Rina Tagore, an InfoTech lady, wrote in explaining why
she found the Cyber India Online site (www.ciol.com) very helpful.
The site boasts of daily national and international IT news, features
and interviews. It also provides a big listing of over 500 current
IT job opportunities, and a free weekly email newsletter on the
Indian information technology industry.
CIOL has been awarded the Best of Asia-Pacific Web Award - an
award that recognises content-rich websites from the fast-developing
Asia-Pacific region. Incidentally, CIOL also hosts the web editions
of PC Quest, Dataquest, and Voice & Data.
Next week, we'll continue looking at some more Indian URLs that
readers have sent in, so stay logged in !
More signs that the Net has got you in it's Net :
- When filling out your driver's license application, you give your IP address.
- You no longer ask prospective dates what their sign is. Instead, your line is "Hi, what's your URL?"
- You "ping" people to see if they're awake, "finger" them to find out how they are, and "AYT" them to make sure they're listening to you.
- You introduce your wife as "[email protected]" and refer to your children as "client applications."
- At social functions you introduce your husband as "my domain server."