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Despite the type surrounding the Internet
and the "Information Superhighway," obtaining
meaningful business benefits from it remains an elusive
goal for many. Eva Chiu, President of InfoAdvantage,
provides consulting services tailored to individual business
needs and objectives. As a client, you receive specific
instructions for finding the information you’re
looking for on the Internet. Much like the auto club
gives you a personalized trip map to a destination you’ve
never been to before, Eva provides "a road map for
the Internet." Personalized consulting and a leading
edge newsletter publication, InfoAdvantage Guide, are
available on a subscriber basis. Twelve times a year
the newsletter provides navigation tips to make the Internet
and cyberspace work for your business needs.
Internet mania is growing at an amazing rate. At the
end of 1994, it was reported by the Internet Society
that about 30% of the Fortune 500 companies have already
connected to the Internet. Not only large companies are
getting involved. An estimated 20-30 million individuals
have linked on as well. New member growth continues at
over 10% per month.
Internet Remains Elusive
Why is the world of the Internet so confusing? The Internet
was created by the Pentagon a quarter of a century
ago to help researchers working o military and government
projects in two ways: to access large databases and
to exchange information. Original users were pretty
technical folks and had no objections to cryptic commands
and arcane naming conventions.
The network was intentionally non-centralized by its
creators. It was designed to function in the event of
a nuclear war when large parts of the system might be
destroyed. The downside of decentralization is that the
tangled web of computers can be quite challenge to navigate,
especially by those of us not as technical as its creators.
Today’s "point and click" generation
expects, and is demanding, more ease of use than the
UNIX platform on which the network was developed. Manufacturers
have responded by making Windows and MAC "front
ends" available for the Internet, but road blocks
still exist at every turn. For example, entering the
Library of Congress to access data is now possible from
your computer, but you need to know "telnet to 140.147.254.3
or locis.loc.gov" to connect. This address is not
an intuitive or an easily obtainable piece of information.
Even when you have this data, what
should you do as you sit in front of the key-board?
White pages and Yellow
Pages have been printed with organized listings of access "addresses." Many
shelves in any bookstore are devoted to the Internet.
It seems as if every user on the Internet has written
a book about it. Investigation quickly shows several
different Yellow Page directories, each promoted as containing "all" listings.
However, contents are dramatically different.
Cyberworld is changing so fast that
chunks of data are omitted or not available. So much
for "all" of
the data. Information from a computer system half a world
away can be yours by simply logging onto your computer
and entering the right commands. But what are these right
commands and how can you decipher the confusing world
of the Internet? Eva’s services and publication
addresses these issues, making the Internet really work
for you.
Written by Carolin Benjamin and published in 1995.
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