Tag Archives: South America

About 2486 days ago Telecom and Wireless

Time to Switch Your Business to VOIP?

Voice over Internet Protocol, or VoIP, uses a company’s broadband Internet connection to place phone calls over the global computer network instead of via traditional wire-line phones. The key appeal of VoIP for small and medium-sized businesses is that the technology has the potential to save money, but you have to weigh those savings against the risks. “This is one more way to get additional value out of that Internet connection,” says Mike Wagner, director of World Wide Marketing at Linksys. “Initially users got broadband to browse the Web, but now you can use it to make unlimited calls in the U.S. and Canada for $29.95 a month, and international rates start around four cents a minute.” There are different ways to use VoIP: either download software and use your computer with a headset, contract for a monthly service and connect using your regular phone with an adapter, or use special small business VoIP hosting services. Deciding which technology is right for your business will depend on the size of your organization, the phone features that you want, and whether the firm has numerous satellite offices that run up large phone bills through internal calls alone. Free VoIP Services A home-based business or one with only a few employees could conceivably switch to VoIP by downloading free software from the Internet from such services as Skype and making calls using a computer and a headset. Skype software is free. Calls costing only the price of your Internet connection to other Skype users, or run a few pennies a minute for domestic calls to people with traditional phones. Radio Shack’s VoSKY Exchange offers Skype software for the business office for $800. The potential business risks include having your company’s phone service down in the event of an electrical outage, a computer crash, virus or worm. In addition, the free services have no provisions for connecting emergency 911 calls. Telephone Replacement Service For a small office, the best option may be a for-pay VoIP service that enables your workers to use a traditional telephone. In order to use VoIP with a dial phone, you need an analog telephone adapter, or ATA. This device converts the analog signal (your voice) to a digital one. Most VoIP service providers — such as Vonage or AT&T’s CallVantage — offer the adapter for free with their packages. If bought separately they cost between $50 and $100. The benefit of going with a service is that is easier to reach non-VoIP members, emergency 911 calls go through and packages tend to offer bulk usage for one monthly price, similar to cellular phone plans. They also provide integration with desktop computer applications, including your address book, Web browser or Microsoft Outlook, enabling such features as quick lookup and click-to-call dialing. Caution: some adapters won’t work with every VoIP, so check with the provider. VoIP Hosting Medium-sized companies with several offices spread over a geographic region have other VoIP needs that eliminate fees for calls between locations and thus reduce overall phone bills. For these firms, VoIP hosting services, such as those offered by Covad or Packet8 and other companies, may be best. Many hosted services deploy VoIP over PBX (Private Branch Exchange) systems — telephone systems owned by a private business instead of a common telephone carrier. These features allow small and mid-sized companies to use an unlimited number of extensions in geographically diverse locations. Some of the hosting services are appealing because they eliminate high telephone bills for intra-company calls between branch offices, but they can cost between $10-80 per line per month and also come with startup fees. At the same time, they provide more reliability and guaranteed levels of service. Here are some popular VoIP service plans: AT&T CallVantage – $30 unlimited calling U.S. and Canada Offers call logs, voicemail, speed dial, call waiting/forwarding, caller ID, fax support, directory assistance, three-way calling, and do not disturb. Not all CallVantage subscribers have E911 service (works like 911), so check before you leap. Vonage – $25 unlimited calling U.S. and Canada Call waiting, caller ID and conference calling. Vonage offers basic 911 service to all subscribers, but you must provide them a physical address. 500 minutes: $14.99 per month. Vonage provides the best overall reliability. BroadVoice – $20 per month for unlimited calling No 911, but unlimited calls to Europe, China, Chile, Singapore, Taiwan and Australia over broadband Internet. The $25 plan includes 14 more countries. Voice quality is average.

About 2912 days ago Telecom and Wireless

The “Always On” Economy

I don’t envy science-fiction writers. After all, it’s getting pretty hard to stay ahead of the curve these days. Take The Golden Age, the acclaimed novel by John C. Wright. Published in 2002, the novel describes a future 10,000 years away in which people are shadowed at all times by a computer assistant ever ready to deliver dazzling tableaux of information and entertainment, as well as crystal-clear, three-dimensional visual connections to others. As it turns out, we may not have to wait 10 millennia to see Wright’s vision come to life. Three years should do it. When it comes to telecommunications, it’s hard not to feel as if we’re catching up with our own imaginations. Broadband Internet access hurls multimegabyte files at us in seconds, hand-held devices give us our e-mail on the run, Wi-Fi hot spots put us into the office network while enjoying lattes at Starbucks — mobile phones can even determine our exact location and relay it to the police in an emergency. But the networked present is about to look as out of date as a 200-pound Pong console would to a PlayStation Portable-packing teenager. A host of new technologies is on the verge of creating a new, even faster-moving “always on” business culture, in which anyone anywhere can reach out and touch almost anyone or anything else — and not just in text, snapshots, or murky video. At first ding, this might sound like your worst nightmare, especially if you already grumble about our BlackBerry culture. In reality, though, the next wave of electronic connectivity may feel less invasive, and a lot more human, than the current one — especially to the employees, suppliers, and customers of companies that master it. What will that brave new world of telecommunications look like? My guess is it will look a lot like this: 10 a.m. You’re at the airport waiting to board when you get a video call on your mobile phone from a major customer in Europe. You can tell from a twitch of his lips and his finger-tapping that he’s losing patience with the project delays. Your relaxed smile reassures him some, but not as much as the video clips you zap him of the completed mockup that came in from the subcontractors in Bangalore two hours ago. Such a scene is closer than you think. “The quality of PC videoconferencing is becoming amazing,” says Malachy Moynihan, a vice president at Linksys, in Irvine, Calif. New technology already developed by Apple and others relays about 250 times more data than you get with conventional video connections. And such transmissions will look great on the next generation of high-resolution mobile smart phones, thanks to new mobile networks already coming online that send data up to 500 times faster than conventional mobile connections, making even cable modems seem logy. 11:30 a.m. During the flight, you connect your notebook, via the aircraft’s local area network, to the screens of engineers in Minneapolis and Copenhagen, and the three of you collaboratively tweak three-dimensional blueprints of a complex new design. As you move your mouse to suggest a change, a supercomputer 2,500 miles away adjusts the design on everyone’s screen. Later, you review some freshly updated reports and video clips sent by employees and subcontractors scattered around the planet, all of which were blasted wirelessly onto your laptop just before you stepped on the plane. In fact, high-end computing vendor Silicon Graphics in Mountain View, Calif., already sells software that allows a PC user to manipulate ultracomplex images via remote supercomputer. Meanwhile, “infostations” at airports, gas stations, and other hot spots will soon use super-high-speed short-range signals to blast huge files onto passing notebook PCs and mobile devices. As for broadband networks on planes, Lufthansa has offered them for more than a year, and other airlines, including Japan Air and Scandinavian Airlines, are following suit. 2:15 p.m. You land and head over to a branch office, where you take a meeting with other top managers. Because your mobile phone now runs on a supersmart network, the device recognizes your location and knows from prior experience that you rarely take calls when you’re in this particular conference room. It knows not to interrupt you now, instead taking video messages or routing calls to others in the company. But suddenly your phone does chime — it’s a major customer in South America, someone worth interrupting a meeting for. The smart, always-on infrastructure will provide people with unprecedented control over who will be able to reach them and in what circumstances, according to Alain Briancon, chief technology officer at InterDigital, a wireless technology and applications developer in King of Prussia, Pa. Within the next five years, telecommunications networks will be able to recognize patterns in your phone use, understanding which calls you always accept and which are screened — taking into account time of day, location, and even, by noting the location of their phones, who you’re with. 5:20 p.m. In a taxi on the way back to the airport, you replenish your phone’s fuel cell with a razor-blade-size cartridge and reach your son on the school bus to ask him how the game went. Not so well, he says, beaming you a video clip taken by a teammate’s mom that clearly shows the referee wrongly calling him out of bounds on a key play. After commiserating, you call your daughter. She points her mobile phone at the math homework she’s stuck on, and you help her spot the mistake in her work. You reach your wife driving back from work; she suggests you tap into the local news back home, which is just now showing a news clip of the damage from a fire across town. Video-quality mobile phone access will become so inexpensive that you’ll probably want to give it to all your family and employees. Not only that, you won’t need separate wire phone or broadband services — you’ll do it all through a mobile network, for maybe $80 a month combined. “You’ll be able to stop thinking about what it costs to make a call or send a message,” says Michael Gold, senior research engineer at SRI Consulting Business Intelligence in Menlo Park, Calif. As for fuel-cell-powered phones, disposable fuel cells are about to hit the market as a replacement for phone batteries; refillables are a year or so off, and thumbnail-size micro-jet-engine power generators now under development at MIT and elsewhere are about five years off. 7:00 p.m. Back at the airport, your flight delayed, too tired to work, you download a movie that isn’t in theaters yet — it’s been released on the network first. The picture quality, however, is better than that in your local movie theater, which, unlike your phone, has not yet been upgraded to high definition and surround sound. Your network holds all but urgent or family calls and messages while you enjoy the show. Entertainment already dominates data usage on phones, and phone fun is only going to get bigger with rich broadband access as users fill their downtime with multimedia sports clips, 3-D games, and, of course, music. Some new music already is going straight to mobile phones. Robbie Williams’s greatest hits collection, for example, was released on memory card in December in the United Kingdom. Music videos are starting to do the same. The new, more intense, more discriminating level of interaction coming to a pocket near you may well prove so compelling that some businesses will want to restructure themselves around it. There will be a lot of ways to do it: Create closer collaborations between more geographically scattered employees and partners; develop deeper and more frequent connections with customers via always-on video selling, training, and service; even sell services delivered by mobile broadband networks. “The number of applications is going to explode,” says Sanjay Mehta, marketing director for Portal Software in Cupertino, Calif. Sci-fi author Wright needn’t fret about all this stunning progress robbing The Golden Age of its futuristic punch — he was smart enough to work in some interstellar travel. Now, there’s a technology that will safely lag our imaginations for decades, if not millennia. But here’s a bet: By the time we do make it to the stars, our phones will work there. David H. Freedman, a Boston-based writer and Inc. contributing editor, is the author of several books about business and technology.

About 2973 days ago E-Commerce

26 Most Fascinating Entrepreneurs: Trip Hawkins

Trip Hawkins for still scrapping because “optimism is essential” Imagine Henry Ford leaving Ford to start another car company, or Walt Disney establishing a realm beyond the Magic Kingdom. Trip Hawkins (who counts these two men among his heroes) has essentially done just that. He built Electronic Arts, of John Madden Football fame, into a powerhouse — then left it to start another business (which failed) and now another (which, thanks to ever-shifting industry forces, is likely to compete with EA). Hawkins originally left EA to focus his energies on a start-up he had launched called 3DO, which was trying to devise a better gaming console. Hawkins had hoped that his former firm would grant him exclusive rights to a hot new game, thus securing 3DO’s future. But after Sony unveiled the PlayStation in 1994, EA kept 3DO at arm’s length. “Chip manufacturing is expensive and political,” Hawkins says. “I should have known a company with deep pockets like Sony could pull the rug out from under us.” Eventually 3DO went bankrupt. Hawkins, now 51, shook off 3DO’s failure and soon launched another company, called Digital Chocolate. “D-Choc,” as he refers to it, creates games for cell phones. So far, over three million D-Choc programs have been downloaded. The company, which raised $20 million in financing, grossed $4 million last year. Some observers have wondered whether mobile gaming, with its rudimentary graphics, represents a technological retreat for Hawkins, but he says no. Others suggest that D-Choc’s prospects depend on how aggressively his old pals at EA enter the mobile gaming market. “I expect them to enter more directly either this year or next,” Hawkins says, but “rather than fight with them for market share, we are trying to blaze new trails.” Of his reverse entrepreneurial journey from industry icon to upstart, he adds: “It’s like being an explorer who discovered North America and then found out, hey, there’s South America and Antarctica, too.” Lora Kolodny Martha Stewart, Martha Stewart Omnimedia because she took one for the team Richard Branson, Virgin Group because he’s game for anything. In fact, everything. Michael Dell, Dell Computer for being brilliantly straightforward Jim Sinegal, Costco because who knew a big-box chain could have a generous soul? Diane von Furstenberg, Diane von Furstenberg Studio for staging an elegant comeback Julie Azuma, Different Roads to Learning for offering hope and help to the parents of autistic children Fritz Maytag, Anchor Brewing for setting limits Ray Kurzweil, Kurzweil Technologies and other companies because he is Edison’s rightful heir Craig Newmark, Craigslist for putting the free in free markets Jack Mitchell, Mitchells/Richards because his family business makes an art of customer service Frank Robinson, Robinson Helicopter for whipping an entire industry into shape Mark Melton, Melton Franchise Systems for giving immigrants their shot at the American Dream Michelle Cardinal & Tim O’Leary, Cmedia and Respond2 for rewriting the rules for husband-and-wife teams Mike Lazaridis, Research in Motion because someone had to stand up for all those frustrated engineers Trip Hawkins, Electronics Arts and Digital Chocolate for still scrapping Warren Brown, Cake Love and Love Cafe because only in America will someone quit a secure job as a lawyer to start a bakery Muriel Siebert, Muriel Siebert & Co. for being a notable first with a worthy second act Chuck Porter, Crispin, Porter + Bogusky for verging on reckless Katrina Markoff, Vosges Haut for setting a completely unreasonable goal for her business Barry Steinberg & Craig Sumerel, Direct Tire and Auto Service for showing the power of the peer group Victoria Parham, Virtual Support Services for serving as a mentor to military spouses Tom LaTour, Kimpton Hotels and Restaurants for staying at fleabag hotels so that we don’t have to Mitchell Gold & Bob Williams, Mitchell Gold for creating a true comfort zone Izzy & Coco Tihanyi, Surf Diva for kicking sand in the face of conventional wisdom Tony Lee, Ring Masters for saving 16 jobs, including his own Rueben Martinez, Libreria Martinez Books and Art Galleries for simultaneously building a business and nurturing Latino culture

About 4373 days ago Telecom and Wireless

Rent a Phone, Lose a Headache

Bulletin Board Matthew Upchurch travels a lot — a lot. As CEO of Virtuoso Travel, which provides marketing and technical-support services to luxury-travel agencies in North and South America, he roams the world to cut deals with hotels, cruise lines, and resorts. Upchurch, who has a heavy schedule of clients at every stop and must keep in touch with his 125 employees as well as his family back home in Fort Worth, needs a portable phone. What he doesn’t need is the headache of finding local providers in the tangled web of overlapping cellular networks around the world. His solution? Rent phones from IMC WorldCell, a Silver Spring, Md., company that maintains contracts and roaming agreements with service providers in more than 120 countries around the world. Like its British competitor CellHire, which offers similar services in nearly 100 countries, IMC WorldCell offers the convenience of operating in many places with one phone and one number. However, if Upchurch is traveling to Japan, Korea, Mexico, or Brazil, each of which has a cellular platform incompatible with the platforms in the rest of the world, he needs to order a separate phone for that country. IMC WorldCell delivers the phone in advance, so Upchurch knows his phone numbers in Seoul or Tokyo before he leaves Texas. After renting phones for about four years, Upchurch purchased an IMC WorldCell phone with a permanent number in countries running the GSM (which stands for “global system for mobile”) platform, the operating system used throughout Europe. IMC WorldCell’s prices are sometimes steep: calls to the United States range from 55¢ a minute for preferred customers in the United Kingdom to $5 or more a minute in Kosovo. But the company can give travelers reliable access in countries like Russia, Kazakhstan, and China, where service is otherwise hard to arrange. Bulletin Board See Bot Run Rent a Phone, Lose a Headache No Receptionist Necessary Things We Love: Home-Phone-Line Networking Log On, Turn Off, Spend Less Acronym Watch A Network for Networkers A ‘Black Box’ for Your Car Please e-mail your comments to editors@inc.com.

About 4373 days ago Search Engine Optimization

Talent Scouting

Techniques: Microcases Human Resources Problem: Finding professional staff to help grow the company Solution: Using the Web to let overseas talent bid on projects Payoff: With good teams in place, revenues triple in four years In 1998, soon after Rafael M. Lopes expanded the services offered by the Envien Group, his Los Angeles-based consulting firm, he realized he needed to find cheap programming help — and fast. Envien was pitching business-development services with an emphasis on marketing over the Web but was being continually underbid by computer whiz kids who, Lopes says, offered none of Envien’s project-management and business-development expertise. Moreover, Lopes wanted to expand beyond the United States and sell the company’s services in Latin America and in other overseas markets, but he couldn’t do so without hiring skilled workers to help him. At the same time, clients that Lopes had already cultivated and helped to move online were ready to graduate to more sophisticated Web sites that offered E-commerce and database integration. Lopes’s fledgling firm couldn’t afford to pay for even a part-time programmer with that kind of expertise. So in June 1999, Lopes started to explore bidding out projects piecemeal over the Web. He turned to eLance Inc., a company that allows its customers to post projects and review bids from independent contractors around the world online. Lopes has now assembled an international team of programmers, designers, and translators, which enables him to add streaming media, database integration, and Flash animation to the menu of features that his clients can choose for their Web sites. Now Envien can offer more competitive prices and win more projects. As a result, Lopes’s jobs are getting more ambitious, and he’s expanding his client base deep into Latin America. What’s more, his firm’s revenues have tripled. In 1998 the company had gross revenues of $40,000. In 2000, Envien billed $84,000, and this year Lopes expects the business to bill $120,000. Although Lopes won’t disclose his net income, he happily reports that profits have risen steadily along the way. According to Lopes, eLance has made it effortless for him to find affordable talent in such far-flung places as Brazil and Ukraine. After he receives bids for a job he’s posted, he reviews contractors’ profiles on eLance.com. Then he checks the company’s five-point rating system to see how previous clients have graded the contractors he’s interested in. ELance doesn’t allow Lopes to E-mail a contractor directly until he selects a winning bid. Still, he says, he has always had enough information to be confident about the bids he has chosen. And once the project is finished, Lopes has no trouble paying his international workers. When he first started using eLance, he had to send payments by Western Union. Now the site has a built-in payment system. After receiving Lopes’s authorization for payment, eLance bills his credit card and pays the contractor for him. So far Lopes has posted 11 jobs on eLance.com, and he hasn’t paid a dime to do it. Service providers pay eLance a fee of 10% of the cost of the awarded project. And if Lopes wants to work with contractors again, he signs them up directly. For example, a Mexico City-based contractor whom Lopes found on eLance is now working as a partner with him on a new venture: Mercadotecnia.com, a Web site named for the Spanish word for market. While Lopes reaps the rewards of hiring international talent, he doesn’t believe that he’s exploiting his overseas workers. “The Web allows people in third-world countries to use their technical skills to make money that’s above average for their markets,” he says. Please e-mail your comments to editors@inc.com.

About 4373 days ago E-Commerce

Best Cellars

Best of the Net Internet wine sellers offer a great selection of labels and vintages. But laws governing interstate wine shipments can put a cork in your festivities Imagine uncorking your favorite wine one night — maybe a nicely aged 1990 California Cabernet Sauvignon or a terrific bargain Pinot Noir — only to realize that you’re down to your last bottle. No problem: glass in hand, you turn to the Internet and root through virtual cellars packed with thousands of bottles of wine. At first blush, wine and the Web look like a natural match. But ordering wine online isn’t quite as easy as ordering books or CDs. The number of suppliers is not the problem. Hundreds of Web sites peddle wine, including those of Internet retailers, wineries, and established brick-and-mortar wine merchants. But state laws governing the sale of wine across state lines make the process of finding a site that both suits your tastes and ships to your state a challenge indeed. We asked three company leaders with varying degrees of wine expertise to test six wine-selling sites: those of three online retailers, two big brick-and-mortar retailers (one located on the East Coast, the other on the West Coast), and an online cooperative made up of some 50 California wineries. The panel evaluated the sites for quality and variety of merchandise, interactive features such as wine searches, and ease of use and technical performance. The reviewers purchased wine from a variety of growing regions, including California’s Napa Valley, Washington State, Italy, and Chile. Two of our panelists had in fact bought wine online previously, and all three panelists enjoyed the experience of reviewing wine-selling Internet sites, but they said they wouldn’t be ditching their local wine store just yet. “A nice complement to wine stores — not a replacement,” says Shawn Kravetz, president of Esplanade Capital LLC in Boston and a wine enthusiast for more than a decade. In stores, “it’s nice to see the bottles, clipped articles, and prices in front of you.” The main benefit of these Internet sites: the vast selection of wines available, particularly rare or high-end bottles. One site offered a case of 1865 sweet wine from France’s famed Château d’Yquem for $208,550. For the more budget-conscious, a case of Bordeaux from the legendary 1961 vintage was available for about $4,000. The enormous selection of wines online was both a blessing and a curse, according to our judges. Panelist Jim Roop, president of the James J. Roop Co. in Cleveland, complained that most sites did a poor job of allowing customers to narrow their search. Sometimes, he says, you wind up with a list of “400 different wines” instead of the “40 Merlots between $20 and $40 you’re really trying to get to.’ And those state liquor-shipment laws were a hassle, preventing two of the panelists from buying bottles from some merchants. A labyrinth of state laws restricting who could sell liquor, and how, cropped up at the end of Prohibition, in 1933, when the details were resolved on a state-by-state rather than a federal level. “Every state is different,’ says Richard Blau, a lawyer at Holland & Knight LLC in Tampa and an expert on the laws that govern the alcohol industry. Many states prohibit wineries and retailers outside their borders from shipping wine directly to their own residents. However, a dozen states, including California, Colorado, Illinois, and Missouri, are more liberal than others in permitting wineries and retailers outside their lines to make direct shipments to the states’ consumers. Those 12 states have struck so-called “reciprocal agreements,” which basically say, “If I can ship to you, you can ship to me.” Some Web sites have been known to fulfill orders in violation of state laws — a move that can trigger legal action against the supplier and seizure of the wine. (For more information about pertinent state laws, visit www.wineinstitute.org.) Our Massachusetts and Ohio panelists came up dry at both K&L Wine Merchants and Winetasting.com. Massachusetts and Ohio are among approximately 30 states that restrict or bar outright direct shipments from other states. To circumnavigate prohibitions, some online sellers make special arrangements with local wholesalers and retailers to supply wines that are already available in a particular state, or they get licensed as retailers in the state. But K&L and Winetasting.com didn’t have either of those selling mechanisms in place for Massachusetts and Ohio and so declined to fulfill Internet orders there. Delivery, too, can be an issue, since an adult must sign for the wine. And shipping costs of $13.95 a bottle, as was the case in several transactions, can make online shopping uneconomical. “For an expensive or rare wine, it might make sense. But why pay the shipping costs when I can pick up the same bottles at my local wine shop?’ asks panelist Chris Dominguez, president of Stockpoint Inc. in San Francisco. No clear-cut winner emerged from our survey, although retailer Wine .com got solid marks from two panelists for its “decent” to “great” selection and “reasonable” shipping charges. (Unfortunately, Wine.com was swallowed up by competitor eVineyard as we were going to press and was consequently cut from the rest of this article.) In general our panelists tended to prefer sites that catered to their personal regional preferences, be it Bordeaux or Napa. Dominguez’s number one choice was the Web site of K&L Wine Merchants, a brick-and-mortar retailer in Redwood City, Calif. The California-wine lover praised K&L’s site for its ease of use and “excellent” choices. Roop’s first pick was WineBins.com, an online seller. Roop, a Bordeaux enthusiast, liked the “absolutely huge range of product, particularly older French wines.” Kravetz liked best the Web site of New York retailer Sherry-Lehmann. “Seems like a wine store instead of an Internet business,” he says. And there was no obvious loser either, although our panelists did find fault with some offerings. Dominguez dinged Sherry-Lehmann. The second time he visited its site, the pages failed to load. His wine took more than four weeks to arrive, and he thought the shipping costs from New York to California were high at $13.95 a bottle — although the company agreed to waive those fees because of the shipping delay. Roop handed the booby prize to Winetasting.com, the online cooperative of California wineries. It didn’t help that the Ohioan couldn’t place an order with that site. “But most aggravating of all is that there is no pricing listed next to the wine,” he says. A browser must click on a particular wine to see its price. Kravetz said WineBins.com was his least favorite, criticizing the “average selection” and the site’s “impossible” loading time. “Maybe the wine ages while the page loads,” he jokes. Roger Fillion is a freelance writer living in Evergreen, Colo. The Savvy Entrepreneur’s Guide to Wine Online eVineyard What it’s good for Reasonable shipping fees. Good variety. Wine ratings. Don’t waste your time if You’re looking for a particular bottle. Although the site boasts more than 5,000 wines, one panelist complained of unsatisfactory selections among the California wine makers he was interested in. What our CEOs had to say “Enjoyed their variety, incorporation of Wine Spectator [magazine] ratings, and higher-end offerings, coupled with a very reasonable $4.95 blanket shipping charge for a bottle or a case,” said one CEO. But another panelist stated: “Simple, decent, a bit entry-level.” What you should know Offers Amazon.com-style recommendations by listing other wines purchased by shoppers who chose your wine. K&L Wine Merchants What it’s good for Rare U.S. and European wines. Ease of use. Tasting notes from own staff, Wine Spectator, and wine gurus like Robert Parker. Don’t waste your time if You live in a state with restrictive alcohol-shipping laws. Internet orders are accepted from just 13 states. What our CEOs had to say “Will not deliver to my state. Too bad. I like their top-10 list and their site overall. Not fancy, but good.” What you should know Web site for big California retailer in Redwood City. Site typically offers about 3,000 wines. Sherry-Lehmann What it’s good for Wines of all prices. Good descriptions. Free delivery for New York state residents who spend in excess of $95. Don’t waste your time if You live outside New York state and don’t want to pay steep shipping charges. What our CEOs had to say “A good selection of both high-end and low-end product. But you better buy only high end, because their shipping charges are through the roof, at $13.95 for one to three bottles and $55.80 for a case of 12.” What you should know Will not ship to nine U.S. states. Oenophiles can buy wine futures — lock in a price for a 1999 Bordeaux that won’t arrive until June 2002. WineBins.com What it’s good for Less expensive California bottles to older Bordeaux dating back to the 1800s. Shipping fee for one case is a reasonable $9.50. Don’t waste your time if You really dislike slow-loading pages — which one panelist complained about — and don’t want to pay the same $9.50 shipping fee for just one bottle. What our CEOs had to say “Offers by far the widest range of product of the group,” said one judge. But another criticized: “Searching by ‘flavor’ is good [only] for novices.” What you should know Virtual retailer owned by Geerlings & Wade Inc., a direct marketer and Internet retailer of wines. Offers 1,000 wines. Serves 29 states. Winetasting.com What it’s good for California wines, especially hard-to-find product such as bottles available only from the wineries themselves. Examples: Cabernets from the 1980s or Merryvale’s highly rated 1997 Profile, a red blend. Don’t waste your time if You don’t want California wines. What our CEOs had to say “Requires some effort to search. Limited selection. But very high quality. Kind of like shopping at a boutique instead of a wine emporium.” What you should know Virtual cooperative made up of some 50 California wineries. Site is a hub from which you’re transported to a winegrower’s own site. Serves 20 states. Our panelists Chris Dominguez is president and cofounder of Stockpoint Inc., a San Francisco-based provider of online and wireless investment-analysis tools and financial information. A resident of northern California for the past dozen years, he regularly visits Napa Valley. Shawn Kravetz is president of Esplanade Capital LLC, a hedge-fund-management company in Boston. A wine enthusiast for more than a decade, he especially enjoys red Bordeaux. Jim Roop is president of the James J. Roop Co., a corporate-communications consulting firm in Cleveland. Roop is past chairman of the Cleveland Wine Auction, a benefit event, and a member of Commanderie de Bordeaux, an international society of Bordeaux lovers. Please e-mail your comments to editors@inc.com.

About 4465 days ago PCs, Laptops, and Notebooks

It Slices! It Dices! It Doesn’t Do Either Very Well!

Road Warrior I have a complicated relationship with things electronic. On one hand, I want to carry as few of them as possible. I use a laptop not simply because it’s portable, but because it’s one compact piece of machinery instead of three bulky ones (monitor, keyboard, and computer). On the other hand, I tend to be suspicious of devices that claim to be two or three things in one. With certain notable exceptions (laptops, refrigerator/freezers, Ron Popeil’s Veg-O-Matic), the two or three features are usually so compromised that you’re better off with separate devices, each doing what it does best. And so I was torn when, despite the love and respect I had for my cell phone and my suspicions about multitasking gadgets, my eye began to wander. I saw people with devices that are cell phones, PDAs, and wireless E-mail modems all in one, and I longed for one. I wanted to be able to get my E-mail on the road without having to lug my laptop or log on to someone else’s computer. I wanted to have all my E-mail addresses and phone numbers and my calendar right there on my phone. And so, last month, I cheated on my beautiful, faithful Nokia. My first affair was with the Sprint PCS TP-3000 ($399). Here is a cell phone no larger than my Nokia that includes a PDA and provides Internet and E-mail access. I left my Nokia at home and ran off to Buenos Aires with the Sprint PCS. I checked my E-mail during a stopover in the Miami airport. There were six E-mail messages waiting for me. It was beautiful. Then I set about composing my replies. To do that you use a stylus and an alphabet keyboard that you tap, just as you would on a Visor. (A Graffiti-like handwriting-recognition function isn’t available on this model.) The difference is that the Sprint phone doesn’t provide the Visor’s reassuring chirp to acknowledge your selection. So half the time, you’ve moved on to the next tap when you realize the last one didn’t take, and you have to backtrack. To speed things up, you find yourself talking in license-plate shorthand. I actually caught myself writing “4 U” instead of “for you.” PU! After composing two or three messages, I gave up on capital letters and completely abandoned punctuation. The other problem was that everything — calendar, alphabet keyboard, E-mail display — was maddeningly small. Plus, I had to press fairly hard, not just tap, to have my pokes register. By the end of the third reply, I was bringing down my stylus like an ice pick, and people were starting to stare. A little Argentine girl wandered over to watch. “Es una telÉfono cellular con E-mail,” I explained. She giggled and ran away. You should, too. By the time I got to the fourth E-mail, I’d had all I could take. It was taking me a good 15 minutes to compose each reply. It was as though time had gone at once forward and back: suddenly I had the capacity to send E-mail messages through thin air, but I had to revert to Morse code to write them. On the fifth and sixth messages, I decided to just call the senders and leave phone replies instead. I shut down the browser and began dialing the phone. “Battery low,” said the TP-3000, and within minutes it shut down completely. Sending and receiving E-mail eats up a phone’s battery charge surprisingly swiftly. And I had forgotten to bring along the charger. So with a paragon of wireless-communication innovation in my pocket, I went to stand in line with the Argentines at the pay phones. And get this: the TP-3000 is apparently the best of its class. CNET.com named it the Best Web Phone, and Etown.com voted it Cell Phone of the Year. It seems it’s not simply the individual product that’s lacking but rather the entire breed. For now anyway, a cell phone can’t double as a satisfying PDA or E-mail-composing device. But what if you went in the other direction and tried to get a PDA to function as a cell phone and a wireless E-mail device? That is exactly what Handspring has set out to do. You can now buy a VisorPhone module ($299) that slides into the back of the Visor Platinum model ($299) and turns the popular PDA into a cell phone. You can then buy an OmniSky Minstrel S Wireless Modem ($299), which slides into the back of that same Visor Platinum (once you’ve removed the phone module) and lets you send and retrieve E-mail and browse the Internet. That’s what I tried next. My husband, Ed, and I took the Visor and its two sidekicks around town with us one weekend while we ran errands. The phone module worked nicely, though speaking into an organizer and tapping on pictures of phone buttons lacked the considerable aesthetic charm of using an actual cell phone. Plus, you tend to press the gadget into your cheek as you speak, which leaves smears of sunscreen, makeup, sweat, and what have you on your PDA screen. You also press buttons you don’t mean to press. Ed was checking our home phone messages and pressed the 3 key with his cheek, inadvertently erasing the message he was listening to. I have faith that one day soon there will be a single gadget that does it all, does it all well, and does it all well for a modest sum. Here’s the big reason I wouldn’t go this route: it doesn’t really cut down on your total gadget load. The VisorPhone module weighs three ounces. Ed’s new cell phone weighs about that much and is about the same size. The only real advantage to using a Visor PDA with a VisorPhone module — as opposed to a PDA and a freestanding cell phone — is that your address book is right there in your phone, enabling you to look someone up and call that person at the same time, on the same device. (That’s a function you can already perform on some existing cell phones, but I digress. …) I also tried out the OmniSky Minstrel S (the wireless modem). I started by trying to call up Web search engine Google. When I hit the Visor’s “ABC” icon to bring up the tappable alphabet keyboard, it kept giving me something else, a Go To menu. I finally figured out that the sync between the icons on my screen and whatever lies beneath them was off in some places by a couple millimeters. Hitting the E anywhere left of the center of the key gave me a W; hitting the A gave me a Tab. I imagine most Visors don’t have such a problem. I must have had a lemon. What I would rather have is a BlackBerry. The BlackBerry RIM 957 ($499) is a combined PDA and wireless E-mail and Internet modem. (It doesn’t function as a phone.) It has a three-inch-wide keyboard with real keys that you actually press, which makes writing E-mail and calendar entries relatively painless. (I said relatively.) It’s so well designed that using it is almost intuitive. I rarely had to consult the instructions. And the combined weight of a three-ounce cell phone and a five-ounce BlackBerry is four ounces lighter than a Visor with its separate E-mail and phone modules. Alas, unlimited wireless E-mail and Internet service on the BlackBerry costs $49 to $59 a month (prices vary according to the device used), which is a little steep for yours truly. (The monthly fee for the Visor’s E-mail module, by comparison, is $29 to $39, depending on whether you prepay.) I have faith that one day soon there will be a single gadget that does it all, does it all well, and does it all well for a modest sum. In the meantime, I am back with my Nokia and only occasionally indulge in BlackBerry fantasies. When she’s not queuing up with Argentines at pay phones, Mary Roach can be reached at roach@sfgrotto.org. Please e-mail your comments to editors@inc.com.

About 4555 days ago E-Commerce

How Entrepreneurship and Democracy Affect Internet Development

Rarely has a technology had a greater effect on the spread of the global marketplace than the emergence of the Internet. Many businesses have adapted their marketing and distribution strategies to accommodate a world of commerce that is spelled with three W’s. But doing business in other countries is not always as seamless as the click of a mouse might make it appear. The speed at which the Internet develops can vary from country to country, and this has serious implications for the way in which a company manages its e-commerce approach. Mauro F. Guillé n of the Wharton School and Department of Sociology at the University of Pennsylvania and Sandra L. Suá rez of Temple University’s Department of Political Science explore the economic and structural factors that affect the growth of the Internet in different countries in their paper “Developing the Internet: Entrepreneurship and Public Policy in Comparative Perspective.” The professors analyze data on public policy as well as the conditions for entrepreneurship in 142 countries, and then take a more in-depth look at these components in Singapore, Ireland, Spain, and Argentina. “The paper essentially argues that the Internet has not diffused throughout the world in a random way, but rather that there are systematic patterns to its spread,” explains Guillé n. “We found that those systematic patterns don’t have to do with privatization or competition in the telecommunications sector, but they do have to do with entrepreneurship and with how democratic a country is. The better the conditions for entrepreneurship and the more democratic freedoms exist, the faster the Internet develops.” Guillé n and Suá rez start with the numbers. According to their research, the percentage of the population that regularly uses the Internet ranges from more than 50% in Scandinavia to less than 1% in many underdeveloped African, Central American, and South Asian countries. The number of computers linked to the Internet is also uneven, ranging from more than one for every 10 people to less than one for every 10,000. Through detailed analysis of four countries, ranging from Singapore as the most successfully wired, to Ireland, Spain and finally Argentina, where the Internet is the least developed, Guillé n and Suá rez’s paper, in part, confirms conventional wisdom. “We found that the richer the country, the greater the accessibility of the Internet,” explains Guillé n. “And the more developed the telecommunications infrastructure, the more developed the Internet.” But the authors’ conclusions regarding public policy are more surprising. Most people would likely argue that the more competitive the telecommunications environment, the lower the prices would be, leading to more widespread Internet use. but Guillé n and Suá rez discover that’s not necessarily true. The four countries studied differ in terms of the nature of public policy towards telecommunications and the Internet. Ireland and Argentina, for example, are liberal and procompetition, while Singapore and Spain have been more interventionist. Even so, Argentina is the least Internet-savvy and Singapore is the most. Internet development in Singapore, states the paper, has been very fast even though the government has implemented less-than-ideal policies. “For example, state intervention in the forms of regulation and content censorship has had detrimental effects on Internet use.” Argentina, on the other hand, has full privatization and government deregulation. But while the systematic patterns of public policy don’t always matter in the development of the Internet, Guillé n and Suá rez discover that conditions for entrepreneurship, such as the ability to raise capital and whether or not the environment is risk-free, do have a consistent effect. The country comparisons reveal that Singapore and Ireland have strong conditions for entrepreneurs, even though, especially in the case of Singapore, the state has assumed the role of leading entrepreneur. Meanwhile, the conditions for entrepreneurship in Spain and Argentina are weak. Telecom firms and other large domestic firms and business groups play a prominent role there. Guillé n and Suá rez conclude, “Internet development benefits from institutional and legal conditions favoring entrepreneurship.” Adds Guillé n: “I think this confirms conventional wisdom, but it’s still useful because nobody has demonstrated this before for a large number of countries.” Guillé n and Suá rez argue that the statistical and comparative analyses reported in their paper indicate that Internet development is “a complex phenomenon shaped not only by public policy and conditions for entrepreneurship but also by specific contingencies in each country.” More research is needed, they say, to document and interpret how the Internet has developed in different countries. Guillé n says he is already moving ahead with further research on Internet development and related issues. To start with, he is building a better database of information on the 142 countries over several years as a way to capture change in their circumstances. “I’m also looking at how specific companies go about selling their products in other countries,” Guillé n explains. “I want to understand how Internet markets develop in different parts of the world and then see how companies should react in order to be profitable.” All materials copyright © 2000 of the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.

About 4616 days ago PCs, Laptops, and Notebooks

Error of Margin

Legacies EBC Computers: Class of 1999 The founder of EBC Computers knew he could continue to eke a profit out of selling commodity computer parts. He just didn’t know why he should During the past year, as he’ll readily admit, Eduardo “Edy” Bedoya began to feel different about his business: namely, he got fed up with EBC Computers Inc., which ranked #83 on last year’s Inc. 500. (This year it’s #223.) More specifically, he had grown tired of having to cast a hawk’s eye on costs just to protect a penny or two of profit — even if he was unusually adept at doing so. (For evidence, see ” Rare Commodity,” in the 1999 Inc. 500 issue.) So when Bedoya opened his second computer store, in September, he expanded beyond his core niche in the cutthroat business of selling computer components. For his new store, in Orem, Utah, he’s targeted high-end business customers who want powerful ready-made systems, laptops, and service. “I’m going after small-business users,” says Bedoya, who is based in Salt Lake City. He’s also chasing a profit margin of around 7% — as opposed to the 2% or 3% he’s conditioned to netting. For most of the 10 years since he founded EBC, Bedoya has focused on selling monitors and other components to customers who are either tinkering with machines in their garages or repairing and upgrading PCs in volume for, say, universities. His ability to make money in that business depends on how speedily his inventory turns over. A computer part can’t stay on the shelf too long, or Bedoya may have to sell it for less than it cost him. Paying as little as possible to procure inventory is also key. A shrewd buyer — rather than calling himself CEO, he prefers the title of purchasing manager — Bedoya negotiates hard with his suppliers and saves money by scouring the Web with automatic shopping bots (specialized search engines). He sometimes finds computer products online at prices that are even below what the manufacturers are offering. He buys them with his credit cards. “I got 12 free round-trips on my cards,” says Bedoya, who spends up to $65,000 on the Net every month. Even with free plane trips, though, Bedoya wasn’t getting where he wanted to go. So he began climbing the value chain, looking to attract a more profitable clientele. His new thrust should boost revenues at least 30% above last year’s sales of nearly $14 million. And he expects revenues to rise further come 2001, aided by another location he’s hoping to secure in Ogden, Utah. Bedoya buys his inventory mostly from Chinese suppliers on the West Coast and in Hong Kong, Taiwan, and mainland China — a network built on personal introductions. Two of his closest associates may end up investing in the new Orem store, “not because I need the money,” he says, “but to cement our relationship.” Bedoya traveled to mainland China in June and explored a new business — jewelry — through one of his local contacts. “I can land watches from China at $26.50 — ones that sell here for around $86,” he explains. “Well, what if I only take a 30% markup — that puts it at what, about $35? Which would you buy?” He also wants to sell wedding bands. “The markup there is like 150% or 200%,” he estimates. He has already added a jewelry Web site linked to EBC Computers’ online store. Clearly, it’s not just the drive for profit that’s steering Bedoya in new directions. This year his parents received U.S. visas to immigrate from their home in Peru to this country, joining Bedoya, who came in 1985, and his two brothers. He plans to set his parents up in a jewelry shop. “They don’t want to just sit at home,” Bedoya says, referring to the five-bedroom, four-garage home that they’ll share with him and his family in the shadow of the Rockies. Please e-mail your comments to editors@inc.com. To learn more about the Inc. 500, visit the Inc. 500 area.

About 4646 days ago Telecom and Wireless

Are Your Customers Being Served?

Techniques: Killer Tools A new kind of software helps you address the concerns of both your customers and your business A sword of Damocles hangs over Nicholas Zaldastani, president and CEO of Internet-software provider Open Horizon. All it will take to sever the cord is some lousy customer service. That’s because of a unique contractual agreement Open Horizon has with its clients, a number of which are oil-service companies with offshore operations that require continuous oversight. Rather than pay for expensive satellite links, those oil companies have opted to save millions of dollars annually by relying on Ambrosia, Open Horizon’s Internet-based event-management software. Ambrosia is the heart of a system that tracks conditions at the offshore oil rigs, automatically signaling dramatic changes in such critical operating conditions as oil pressure or prevailing temperature. If Open Horizon’s software breaks down or interrupts a customer’s operations, the company is contractually bound to get things working well within a matter of hours or pay thousands of dollars in penalties. Zaldastani asserts that Open Horizon’s protection against such calamities is the quality of its product. Still, he knows better than to tempt fate. That’s why, in 1994, a year after the company commenced operations, he invested more than $50,000 in SupportTeam database software, from Scopus Technology. SupportTeam–like ClearSupport, Action Request System, and Vantive Support–is a customer-interaction system (CIS), a relatively new type of software that helps companies address their customers’ concerns quickly, effectively, and efficiently. SupportTeam coordinates and connects customer support, product development, sales management, and quality-assurance functions, permitting Open Horizon to diagnose problems and recommend solutions even when another vendor’s software is to blame for performance glitches. That’s just what happened one recent Friday afternoon. The countdown began when one of Open Horizon’s customer-service reps fielded an angry phone call from a customer in Korea, who reported that his company’s computer system had been crashing repeatedly. Open Horizon had until Monday evening to come up with a fix. The weekend technical experts struggled to discover the root of the problem, but by Monday morning they were still testing possible causes. Their efforts had not, however, been in vain. Because SupportTeam had kept track of their work, the weekday technical crew could easily pick up the process of testing and eliminating causes when they took over on Monday morning. Within a matter of hours they’d found that the problem had been caused by another manufacturer’s software, a package that had created problems earlier for another client. Quickly they dipped into the SupportTeam database, where the solution had been stored the first time around. SupportTeam then prompted the rep to refer his Korea-based client to the manufacturer’s Web site, where he could download a corrective patch. More often than not, customer-service operations amount to little more than a room full of phones manned by teams of haphazardly trained tyros. The inadequate tools of their trade are the names and phone numbers that co-workers scribble on scraps of paper and tack to cluttered bulletin boards. With no mechanism to facilitate communication, most customer-service employees have no idea whether the questions they hear are familiar tales of woe or brand-new stories. CIS software, on the other hand, makes it much easier to reap the benefits of customer dissatisfaction. It is built on the premise that questions to customer-assistance lines are thinly disguised demands for improvements to design or documentation and that call histories are sources of sales leads for training programs and maintenance agreements. CIS software prompts service reps who answer calls to log complete contact information and to categorize and describe each problem on an electronic form. The system then notifies every affected department. If a customer reports a product flaw, for example, the CIS generates a “bug” report that pops up on screens in the design department. Later, the system records the solution and who developed it, and alerts the rep and the customer by E-mail, fax, pager, or phone. Because the database stores contact details about all company customers, the system can also E-mail, fax, or phone any other customers who might benefit from the latest product alert. Rather than evaporating into the ether, problems and solutions reside in an interactive database that stays current with the company’s daily transactions. CIS databases are searchable by product name, keyword, and other identifying characteristics. Reps can easily retrieve complete customer records, and customers, in turn, can enjoy consistent product service and support. Companies can even customize their CIS software to respond to an individual customer’s requirements. For example, a company might specify that reps must resolve all calls from its best customer within eight hours. The CIS database, reflecting that policy, would track its employees’ performance and reliability. If resolution of such a problem exceeds the prescribed time parameter, the CIS will automatically notify designated managers. For Charter Communications, an Atlanta concern that provides dedicated phone lines to companies doing business in Panama, Honduras, and Venezuela, a CIS proves an effective way to shield its customers from the effects of rapid growth through acquisition. When the $9-million company acquired other organizations with incompatible computer systems, business got messy. “Customers bought service and never got it; customers that had been on for six months never got billed. We were searching for records on paper, and all too often we couldn’t find what we needed,” CEO David Olson recalls. To establish a semblance of order, Charter paid more than $50,000 to license 38 copies of Action Request System, a CIS package from Remedy Corp. “The system makes sure that salespeople fill out every part of an electronic form before they can close,” Olson explains. “That information is channeled to the appropriate departments immediately: billing information goes to accounting, the password goes to engineering, installation details go to operations, and so on.” The system also ensures that customers get made-to-order assistance. When a customer calls for help, a Charter rep enters the customer’s name and–presto–the system brings up his or her complete record. If the person has, say, called three times about similar problems, the rep makes sure that he or she gets high-level technical support. Similarly, if a dozen people call with the same complaint, the system alerts the Charter staff in time to do something about potentially serious defects. “Say the phone circuit in one of our regions goes down,” says Olson, “and our customers are unable to use our local number for Internet access. Still, because our equipment continues to function perfectly, that local failure would trigger no alarms. At the same time, however, our help desk logs six or seven calls from customers who can’t get on-line. Our CIS system recognizes the pattern and alerts us. We then deduce that the phone circuit is out and take steps to deal with one large problem, not six individual ones.” CIS vendors plan to have their products go even further. They are currently integrating their systems with both intranets and the Internet, so companies can provide on-line self-service by giving customers access to company databases. Such a service doubles as an effective mechanism for tracking customer concerns. And, as Ori Sasson, chairman, president, and CEO of Scopus, says, “A customer with a problem is your opportunity to provide a better product or service.” Srikumar S. Rao is chairman of the marketing department at the C.W. Post campus of New York’s Long Island University. Resources These are some of the most popular CIS packages on the market: Action Request System $9,500 per three concurrent users Remedy Corp. Mountain View, CA 415-903-5200 E-mail: info@remedy.com Web: www.remedy.com ClearSupport $3,750 per concurrent user Clarify Inc. San Jose, CA 408-573-3000 E-mail: info@clarify.com Web: www.clarify.com SupportTeam $2,975 per concurrent user Scopus Technology Emeryville, CA 510-597-5800 E-mail: info@scopus.com Web: www.scopus.com Vantive Support $2,500 per concurrent user The Vantive Corp. Santa Clara, CA 408-982-5700 1-800-VANTIVE Web: www.vantive.com