POINTERS J/F web
January/February 2000

THE KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT MARKET WILL GROW, according to a report by The Radicati Group, a Palo Alto, Calif.-based consulting and market research firm. Radicati divides the market into several segments and, by 2003, expects it to reach $10.7 billion for customer relationship management, $887 million for workflow tracking, and $2.3 billion for search and document management products. www.radicati.com

LOOK FOR INTERNET KNOWLEDGE when interviewing job candidates, advises Michael D. Zinn & Associates, a Princeton, N.J.-based executive search firm. Since the Internet now affects so many areas of business today, new hires need to be aware of its impact and how it can be used in day-to-day operations. Find out if candidates are early adopters, but make sure they're not the type who get so caught up in technology that they lose sight of the business reasons for using it. www.zinnassociates.com

FIND OUT THE BEST SITES for support on the web from The Association of Support Professionals (ASP), a Watertown, Mass.-based trade group. Its report, "Best Web Support Sites of 1999," profiles the 10 winners of the association's 1999 competition for this category. www.asponline.com

MOST COMPANIES HAVE NO E-COMMERCE STRATEGY, found the Cutter Consortium, an Arlington, Mass.-based research and consulting firm. In a survey of 154 respondents from organizations with web access, it discovered that 65 percent of these companies have no e-commerce strategy, and 25 percent have not developed an overall strategy. Only 4.2 percent claimed to have an e-commerce strategy, but 25.4 percent expected to have developed one by the end of 1999. An additional 17 percent plan to have such a strategy by the first half of 2000 and another 11.3 percent will have one by the end of 2000. www.cutter.com/consortium

LINUX ISN'T JUST A FAD, according to a survey by RHI Consulting, a Menlo Park, Calif.-based IT consulting firm. Fifty-seven percent of the 1,400 CIOs it polled predicted that corporate Linux use would increase during the next three years, while only three percent forecast a decline. Thirty-two percent of the CIOs cited low cost as Linux's greatest benefit, while 23 percent cited its open source code. www.rhic.com

WHAT'S IT LIKE TO WORK for the top software companies? The Insider Guide to Jobs in the Computer Software Industry, a report from WetFeet.com, a San Francisco-based career research organization, describes the environment at some of the top companies and the typical day for people with specific job titles. It also provides tips for job seeking, interviewing and enjoying the perks. www.wetfeet.com

IBM RANKED HIGHEST in customer satisfaction and mind share in the data warehousing and business intelligence areas, according to the Data Base Solutions III survey conducted by Survey.com, a San Jose, Calif.-based market research firm. IBM received the most "extremely satisfied" customer mentions of any systems vendor among the 500 North American companies in the poll, followed closely by Hewlett-Packard (HP), then Compaq and Sun. For overall business intelligence and data warehousing mind share, IBM came first, followed by Sun, HP and Compaq, in that order. www.survey.com

MANY CEOs AREN'T CAPABLE of judging the performance of their CIOs, according to a survey of 200 CIOs by John J. Davis & Associates, a New York-based IT executive search firm. One-third don't believe their CEO can make an informed, fair assessment of their performance. In some cases, lack of technical knowledge hinders CEOs from properly judging CIO management skills. But Transition Partners, a Reston, Va.-based IT consulting firm, sees some ways for a CEO to gauge CIO effectiveness, such as the ability to explain difficult concepts in layman's terms, engender confidence among other top managers and manage IT staff. www.transition-partners.com

MORE THAN 50,000 JOB CANDIDATES are now listed on the Kelly Career Network, a job search website operated by Kelly Services, a Troy, Mich.-based staffing services provider. Candidates develop a job profile and are automatically notified when a matching position is posted on the network. www.kellyservices.com

LOST AND FOUND DEPARTMENTS now have competition from the Internet, thanks to online service provider ReturnMe.com. Its Internet ID Tag Network provides labels to members that they can stick on items such as laptop PCs, Palm handheld devices, wallets, cameras and more. Each tag includes the phone number and URL of the ReturnMe.com Lost and Found Network, which can be anonymously contacted by anyone who finds the item and wishes to return it to its owner, who can then track the shipment via Federal Express. www.returnme.com

OPEN PROGRAMMING STANDARDS for communications processors are the goal of the Common Programming Interface (CPIX) Forum, an industry group that wants software to be able to run on communications processors from multiple vendors. It intends to define and promote standardized application programming interfaces. Charter members include C-Port and IBM, with Inverness Systems, Sitera and SwitchOn Networks among the first founding members. www.cpixforum.org

SEARCHING FOR USER EVALUATIONS of graphics design products? Creaticity.com's Creaticity Expo provides a forum where design professionals can find comments from other users on graphics products. Visitors can write their own product reviews and rate products on a scale of one to five. www.creaticity.com

PURCHASE ONLINE MORE CONVENIENTLY with IBM's Consumer Wallet, which lets you enter your credit card information once and have it stored securely in an icon. Instead of filling out forms every time you make a purchase, you just click once and the necessary information is sent automatically. MasterCard International is working with IBM to distribute the Consumer Wallet to banks. www.software.ibm.com; www.mastercard.com

EXPERT ADVICE ONLINE can be found at exp.com, a site that provides e-commerce capability to the service industry by connecting users who have questions with experts who have answers in a wide range of subjects. The site will offer a marketplace for experts who can provide advice and services in areas such as finance, parenting and pets. www.exp.com

MOST COMPANIES LACK DISASTER RECOVERY PLANS, according to a study by the Cutter Consortium, an Arlington, Mass.-based consulting and research firm. Cutter found that 20.4 percent of the organizations it surveyed have no disaster recovery plans and 26.1 percent have not tested the plans they have developed. Y2K motivated 15.2 percent to develop a plan, 31.3 percent created their plan as part of an overall strategic plan and 47 percent developed it because it was considered a "best practice." www.cutter.com/consortium

KEEP TABS ON WORKPLACE SURFERS with Cyber Patrol, from The Learning Company. The Internet-filtering software keeps visitors from accessing sites that could cause liability concerns or hamper productivity. The latest version filters out sites in the travel, investment and job search categories to keep workers from spending company time planning vacations, playing the stock market or looking for another job. www.cyberpatrol.com

THE WIRELESS ERA HAS DEFINITELY ARRIVED, claims the Personal Communications Industry Association, an Alexandria, Va.-based trade association, which sponsored a study conducted by the Yankee Group, a Boston-based research and advisory services firm. It found that 50 percent of U.S. households and 38 percent of the U.S. population use wireless technology. This usage includes cellular and PCS services, along with one- and two-way paging services. Almost one third of users have had their wireless phones for lengths of time ranging from three to four years, and about the same proportion have had their phones for more than five years. www.pcia.com

CONDUCT POWER AUCTIONS with Andale, a new website that enables buyers and sellers to automate and manage concurrent activities on multiple auction sites, such as eBay and Amazon. The service enables auctioneers to expand the range of buyers and sellers available to them. app.vendio.com

CAREER FAIRS ARE GOING ONLINE through jobs.com, an Internet website that provides job listings. Its recent career fair attracted 1,000 people to a live webcast and more than 11,000 people to the event's website. The site used streaming audio and video to enable job seekers to communicate with participating companies. Job seekers could also use jobs.com's free Resumail Resume software to prepare resumes and e-mail them, while the companies used Resumail Recruiter to review, sort and file the 600-plus resumes they received. www.jobs.com

CHECK YOUR EYESIGHT AND MONITOR with free software from Mitsubishi Display Products. One program, Eye-CEE, tests to see if you're suffering from Computer Vision Syndrome, a compilation of symptoms resulting from extended viewing of a video display terminal. The other program, DisplayMate, shows a series of test patterns to gauge monitor performance. They're available for download from the Mitsubishi website, which also offers tips on setting up a workstation for better performance and health. www.monitoryoureyes.com

FILLING THE 345,000 UNFILLED TECHNOLOGY JOBS in the United States is the idea behind Tek.Xam, an IT certification exam aimed at liberal arts students who need to prove to employers they have the necessary skills. Tek.Xam is the brainchild of the Virginia Foundation for Independent Colleges, a Richmond, Va.-based educational organization that represents 15 private liberal arts colleges in Virginia. The exam, created by business executives, human resources professionals and college technical faculty, will verify that graduates possess critical thinking skills and basic competency in areas such as Internet research and evaluation, general computing concepts, web design, presentation software, spreadsheets, word processing, and legal and ethical issues in technology. The tests will be administered at more than 62 institutions in 25 states. www.tekxam.com

– Michael Cohn