New Bookmarks

1999 Quarter 3:  July 1-September 30, 1999 Additions to Bob Jensen's Bookmarks
Bob Jensen at Trinity University

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For the July 1-September 30, 1999 Additions and Summaries scroll down this document 
For the other editions go to http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/bookurl.htm
For the full set of Bob Jensen's Bookmarks go to http://WWW.Trinity.edu/rjensen/bookbob.htm
    (The full set is never up to date with the latest additions to my New Bookmarks.)
Click here to go to Bob Jensen's home page http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/

Choose a Date of 1999 Additions to the Bookmarks File

September 28, 1999   September 21, 1999    September 14, 1999       September 4, 1999

August 31, 1999         August 24, 1999          August 11, 1999             August 2, 1999

July 30, 1999              July 23, 1999              July 16, 1999                  July 9, 1999                July 1, 1999

For the other editions go to http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/bookurl.htm

September 28, 1999

BankBoston
Brown, Brothers Harriman & Co.
Chase Bank
Duff & Phelps
Kawaller & Co.
Lazard Asset Management
Lehman Brothers
PricewaterhouseCoopers
Principia Partners
RiskMetrics Group
Salomon Smith Barney
Smith Barney Capital Management
Trinity University
Tucker Anthony Cleary Gull

This is a very good technology resource center at http://www.edtechresource.com/ 

We have all been confronted with the onslaught of technology advances and software innovations over the past few years. We at Educational Technology Resource hope to help you make sense of the wonderful world of technology. Educational Technology Resource is committed to providing links to the most valuable Internet resources on the web for, educators, parents, seniors and students. You'll find reviews of educational software , links to stores which sell some of the finest educational products available, and Educational Forum where you can communicate with other visitors. We hope our site will help make your particular mission on the Internet easier, less time consuming, and more productive.

BonusPoint is a good technology in education news center and forum center http://www.bonuspoint.com/ 

A newsletter dedicated to new technologies for schools. The BonusPoint newsletter will be distributed by email beginning in Fall 1999. To subscribe to the email newsletter, send your name, school name, US address, and email address to newsletter@bonuspoint.com .

Lucent Technologies web site for helping educators (includes tips on obtaining grants) http://www.wavelan.com/education/ 

The real "treasure" that educators seek comes from the effective use of technology to help students learn and perform better in the classroom. They seek to engage children in their learning experience and get them active, excited and involved every day.

Micron University  http://www.micronu.com/ (a joint project between Micron Electronics, Microsoft Corporation, and Ziff-Davis)

Save thousands of dollars on computer training with Micron U. Micron U gives individuals and companies access to hundreds of online classes, tutorials and seminars, all designed to provide you with the tools you need to win in today's new economy. You can take as many classes or tutorials as you want, plus you can set your own training schedule so it doesn't interfere with your day-to-day operations.

Tutor.com has a directory of personal tutors.  Tutors and instructors can register.  There is a process for proof of background attestation.  http://www.tutor.com/ 

The annual InformationWeek 500 listing of the biggest and best users of information technology. http://www.informationweek.com 

Did you know that the first department of correspondence teaching was established at the University of Chicago in the early 1900s.  Did you know that 66% of the adult distance education is female and that 80% of those females have children?  You can get a wealth of history information in "The Origins of Distance Education and Its Use in the U.S.," T.H.E. Journal, September 1999, pp. 54-67.  The online version of this article is not yet available, but you will eventually be able to find it available free online at http://www.thejournal.com/.

In the September 21 Edition of New Bookmarks I noted the startup of UNext for delivery of graduate business from such top graduate schools as Columbia University, the University of Chicago, Stanford, and the London School of Economics and Political Science.  The UNext web site is at http://www.unext.com/ .  After September 21, I found a news item about this in Syllabus, September 1999, pg. 10.  The online version is not yet posted, but eventually it will be at http://www.syllabus.com/syllmag.html .

There is an article entitled "Textbooks in Cyberspace:  Online Bookstores Go Back to School" in Syllabus, September 1999, pp. 16-18. The online version is not yet posted, but eventually it will be at http://www.syllabus.com/syllmag.html .  It describes how college bookstores are going online to compete with the major online stores such as Amazon and Barnes & Nobel.  Some key web sites of interest include:

Question Mark's "Perception" software for computerized testing and assessment (authoring) http://www.questionmark.com/ 

Question Mark is a powerful tool for computerizing quizzes, tests, assessments and surveys. It is easy to use by both the question designer and the candidate or participant. Question Mark saves time and money while allowing you to present questions with videos, graphics and a wide variety of styles.

Question Mark software allows you to create question files while the participant uses a run-time system or a Web browser to answer your questions. The participant receives the feedback that you have specified. Answers are then saved to a file for scoring and analysis.

Why two sets of hyper-links?

Question Mark operates worldwide and provides two web servers to provide easy access, one located in North America and one located in Europe. These servers contain unique and specific information for the territories they serve.

Can I learn about this with an on-line seminar? Question Mark provide a free, one-hour TeleSeminar, that uses the Internet and audio-conferencing, on computerizing assessments with its products. A live instructor will lead your seminar over the telephone while you view slides with your web browser. As long as you have a standard browser and a telephone you can join in our public sessions free of charge.

You will find the following links in my bookmarks at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/bookbob.htm 

Once you know the ISBN number, you can compare prices and shipping charges in one easy (free) visit to http://isbn.nu/ 

Books In Print: (Trinity University users only)-- index of books currently in print available in the U.S., including paperback editions as well as cloth; also provides access to Books Out of Print (books confirmed as out of print or indefinitely out of stock) and Publishers directory

Online Bookstores

Amazon.com:  The first major Internet bookstore, Amazon provides access to over a million book titles, including recently out of print titles, too; other features include online ordering, a growing list of musical recordings, book reviews from published sources and readers' comments, and an online agent that will e-mail you whenever Amazon receives a new book matching your subject or author interests.

Barnes&Noble.com:   Amazon.com's major competition, part of a huge publishing conglomerate (note: Trinity users may wish to check with our bookstore about discounts, since Barnes and Noble runs our bookstore)

http://www.efollet.com/ 
http://www.buy.com/ 

Online Textbooks and Bookstores

Best Big Online Bookstores:   a list and review of the features and prices of the largest bookstores selling via the Internet

Books and Book Collecting:   a nice site with many links to bookstores, publishers, out-of-print specialists; includes quick-search forms for many of the major bookstores on its own page

Entrepreneurial Edge http://edge.lowe.org/ 

Text Books

http://www.varsitybooks.com/ 
http://bigwords.com/home/ 
http://www.textbooks.com/ 

Online Publishers

http://www.wadsworth.com/ 
http://www.prenhall.com/ 

Indexing Services

http://www.back2college.com/text.htm 
http://home1.gte.net/mcorphan/books.html 

Metasearch Services

http://www.pricescan.com/ 
http://www.addall.com/ 
And my favorite http://isbn.nu/ 
For business searches and product searches in general see http://www.1jump.com/  

Britannica Internet Guide http://www.britannica.com/ 

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The New Millennium and the Next Bottom Line  http://www.wri.org/wri/busiweek/ 

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From the Scout Report (See http://www.1jump.com/ )

Billed as the "Ultimate Business Portal," 1Jump is an enormous business search engine featuring over one million companies, 180,000 brands, and 10,000 stock tickers. The companies in the 1Jump database have been compiled by humans, as opposed to computers, and are searchable through natural language keywords. Users may chose to use the Web version, or they may download the more extensive "1Jump Companion for Windows," which also includes a larger list of search terms, a tracking device to keep track of stock quotes, news, and filings, and a chat system to provide information and networking opportunities.

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From the Scout Report

Business History -- Leiden University http://www.let.leidenuniv.nl/history/res/bushis/ 

Leiden University's Business History Website consists of online resources for business history in the countries of the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany, the Netherlands, and Japan and Korea, as well as general business history. The resources are indexed by country and include Websites, electronic libraries, electronic mailing lists, databases, and articles. Sites are briefly annotated and are ranked and sorted with a somewhat confusing system of icons, which denote ratings given by the Webmaster as well as content of the site.

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Checklist for purchasing a used vehicle (automobiles and trucks)  http://www.quicken.com/small_business/cch/tools/?article=vhchkl_m 

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Choose an integrated e-commerce solution to provide your web site and your clients with secure purchasing solutions. Choose from uShopLite or uShopPro as an integrated shopping cart, or choose our SecureCGI Advanced account to integrate your own system. you can download from http://www.the6thwave.com/ushop.html 

You can see how it works: : http://www.the6thwave.com/secure.shtml 

kibraim [kibrahm@HOTMAIL.COM] 

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Now, you can get the PRO-level WebFerret suite FREE just for trying ZDRewards! Members also enjoy great benefits like computer classes, private tech data, a software CD, and more http://cgi.zdnet.com/slink?8486:2700840 

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"Technology: A Major Catalyst for Increasing Learning," Jody C. Isernhagen, , T.H.E. Journal, August 1999.
http://www.thejournal.com/magazine/vault/A2126.cfm  (discusses impact on learning).  

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Helpers for Business  
Entrepreneurial Edge http://edge.lowe.org/ 

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Business Ethics Resources http://www.ethics.ubc.ca/resources/business/ 

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Fooling with Words with Bill Moyers --- http://www.pbs.org/wnet/foolingwithwords/ 

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Create your own online photo album to share with friends and family --- http://www.gatherround.com/ 

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The Magazine of the American Library Association http://www.ala.org/alonline/index.html 

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CNN's Visions of China http://www.cnn.com/SPECIALS/1999/china.50/ 

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Study Spanish  http://www.studyspanish.com/ 

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Irish History on the Web http://wwwvms.utexas.edu/~jdana/irehist.html#top 

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Theodore Roosevelt: His Life and Times on Film --- http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/trfhtml/ 

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A message from a former student

Just wanted to let you know that our company, Atension Inc., was recently acquired by Rare Medium Inc., a national internet development firm.

We decided that acquisition was the best financing/growth option for the services we offer. We will be the technical production center for the South Region and will have 30 to 50 employees in San Antonio by the end of 1999.

You can view the San Antonio Business Journal article at the following address:  http://www.amcity.com/sanantonio/stories/1999/09/13/story1.html 

Brian Clarke [mailto:brian@atension.com] 

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National Gallery of Art Tour: American Impressionists of the Late 1800s and Early 1900s http://www.nga.gov/collection/gallery/gg70/gg70-main1.html 

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Tip from Accounting Web at http://www.accountingweb.com/ 

To save the hard drive step, open Explorer (right mouse click) and highlight the drive you want to copy, then right click again and click on "Copy Disk." Simply click on Start and follow instructions. Midway through the process, you'll be prompted to insert the destination disk and then you'll be done. Voila! No hard drive copying!

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I will be chairing two conferences entitled  "Implementing FAS 133:  Accounting for Derivative Instruments and Hedging Activities."  See   http://www.worldrg.com/FA981/ .   The places, dates, and hotels are as follows:

Chicago (September 29-October 1 in the Hyatt Regency) 
Washington DC (October 27-29 in the Key Bridge Marriott)

The program is now available at the above web site.  What is important about this conference is that top specialists from public accounting and industry will be conducting workshops and making presentations.  Speakers listed at the above web site (along with summaries of what they will be speaking about) are from the following organizations:

Sun Microsystems
Union Carbide
Travelers Insurance
MasterCard International
Allstate Insurance
U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission
Arthur Andersen LLP
Deloitte & Touche LLP
TPG Software, Inc.
Ernst & Young
First Union Corporation
PricewaterhouseCoopers
Trinity University

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From Phil Livingston

At FEI'S Committee on Finance and Information Technology meeting in Santa Fe this month, Marc Demarest, CEO of DecisionPoint systems, addressed the myths and realities of knowledge management and key questions in designing systems to use KM approaches in technology applications. You can find his presentation in our download library at http://www.fei.org/download/dl_index.htm. Also Ron Neumon, manager of e-Business Architecture and Strategy at IBM, walked the group through ways in which IBM's HR strategy is being enhanced through web-related technologies (coming soon to the download library). And Patterson Shafer, Consultant at Prescients, discussed a model for performance measurement and prioritization of IT investments  http://www.fei.org/download/dl_index.htm

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A message from Rocket eBook

The Open eBook Publication Standard was announced this past Tuesday morning. As one of the founding members of the Open eBook Authoring Group, NuvoMedia completely stands behind the Open eBook specifications. What the standard means to Rocket eBook users is more RocketEditions will be available! The standard makes it easier for publishers to provide content for Rocket eBook.

As a Rocket eBook owner, you will continue to read every RocketEdition you purchased prior to this specification. In the future, you will be able to read OEB-based RocketEditions as well as the current HTML-based RocketEditions. We will continue to support HTML-based RocketEditions so you can still create your own RocketEditions by downloading web pages or converting documents from applications that will save your documents in HTML such as Microsoft Word(R).

Rocket eBook upgrades to support OEB-based RocketEditions will be available as a simple download off of the Rocket eBook website. It’s as simple as downloading a book!

If you have any more questions regarding the Rocket eBook and the Open eBook standard, please refer to our FAQ at: http://www.rocket-ebook.com/Products/Faq/index.html 

A second message from Rocket eBook

ROCKET EBOOK: TOOL FOR THE VISUALLY IMPAIRED Carol Wulster writes:

"I have not been able to read a book in five years due to MS and the affect it had on my vision, but I was able to read a computer screen. I first saw news about the Rocket in November 98, but felt it was too soon to buy. In May, an review in Slate magazine appeared. After reading it, I ordered a Rocket eBook. I had every intention of returning the eBook if it didn't work for me. Within five minutes of opening the package I as hooked. The combination of the large size font, the physical size of the page, and the backlight allow me to read without my vision doubling. A Miracle! I have become so passionate about my Rocket, that I want every title in the world in Rocket Format...."

-----Carol, thank you for your interest in the Rocket eBook! As you may know, the Rocket eBook comes with two default fonts, 10-point and 14-point. However, you can use the Rocket Librarian program to set the font style or size to any font you have on your PC (up to 28-point!). It is our sincere wish for the Rocket eBook to bring the gift of reading and writing to all those who are limited by conventional books!

A word of caution from Bob Jensen.  Even though I own a Rocket eBook, there are some advantages of Softbook and some huge advantages (as well as disadvantages) of the forthcoming Everybook.  Shop carefully if you are going to purchase an electronic book.  What I am really happy with is the ease with which you can create your own custom library and download any configuration of books whenever you want into your library from http://www.rocket-library.com/.  Each book takes roughly 20 seconds to download on a T1 line.  I also like the upgrade that allows me to hold 100 books in my Rocket eBook having a battery life of roughly 30 hours before recharging.  To make comparisons between Rocket eBook, Softbook, and Everybook Dedicated Reader, go to http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/book99.htm#Rocket 

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September 24th Special edition of the Internet Essentials '99 Newsletter for the financial professional. E-Commerce Update
http://www.tiac.net/users/nhannon/news.html 

Here are this week's topics:

Over 30 links to recent articles will catch you up-to-date on all the latest E-Commerce trends including:

1. ERP - Enterprise Resource Planning 
2. Virtual Private Networks.. Why your business will have one soon 
3. Corporate Portals.. Industry related or build one yourself 
4. Functional Portals.. marketing, purchasing, and more. 
5. Quality of Service Agreements 
6. Supply-chain management software 
7. E-business communities 
8. Verticalnet.com 
9. What SAP, IBM, HP, Oracle, Microsoft, and Sun-Netscape are doing.

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You may be interested in today's article in the NEW YORK TIMES. One shot case study of web class problems. http://www.nytimes.com/library/tech/99/09/cyber/education/22education.html 

Peter B. Kenyon Professor of Accounting School of Business & Economics Humboldt State University, Arcata, CA 95521 USA 707.826.4762 (tel) 707.826.6666 (fax) http://www.humboldt.edu/~pbk1/ 

A response from Duncan Williamson regarding the much-debated NY Times reported article entitled "Students’ Frustrations with a Web-based Distance Education Course: A Taboo Topic in the Discourse" at http://www.slis.indiana.edu/CSI/wp99_01.html 

23 September, 1999

Dear All,

Sorry if you think this response is too long; but I have been through some of what I discuss below and felt the article we were pointed at left several stones left unturned. If anyone wants a copy of this reply in Word format, just let me know at duncan@arminco.com

Introduction

I hesitate to say that everyone should read the article

Students' Frustrations with a Web-based Distance Education Course: A Taboo Topic in the Discourse

That we were introduced to via a cross reference to a summary article in the New York Times (NYT); but it merits a serious discussion here I think.

Whilst I think the article itself is a rich source of ideas for discussion, the NYT article adds a few more insights. One source of surprise to me is that the authors of the article have been invited to address a conference on "new media and learning". I can see some reasons for inviting them to the conference; but I would worry about the mauling they might receive!

The article itself really is interesting but I think that in some respects, the articles leaves out more than it puts in. One of the points I kept in mind as I read the article was Richard J Campbell's comment on this list of earlier today:

I also read the article, and reading between the lines: The lead professor was intimidated by technology, and after making a commitment, bailed out and gave the whole class to a grad student with little advance warning, who also was in over her head. Sounds like a typical grad school scenario. Technology was not to blame here.

I thought that couldn't be a fair comment. After all, we were talking about a post graduate course, whether online or off. I began by trying to sort out how they had set up and run the course. Had it just been thought up on the spur of the moment? Had it gone through a series of curriculum review boards?

What's in and what's not in the article

We are told that the course is not new: having been run at least three times (I think this can be inferred from the case), including this offering. We are told that the course had purposes and a philosophy; evaluation was considered in the article, as were review and feedback. A wordsearch of the article revealed:

Key word Number of times included Aims 0 Objectives 0 Purpose 2 Philosophy 1 Briefing 0 Induction 0 Selection 0 Assessment 4 Review 6 Course design 0 Feedback 18 Evaluation 6

My hypothesis was that these are some of the words I would have expected to have found in an article that was trying to provide a balanced view of the reasoning behind why a course such as this had suffered such problems.

Aims and objectives

I was looking for evidence that the course had aims and objectives: the article uses the word purpose, so the answer seems to be yes, they did have aims and objectives. Two references to purpose in the article, however, didn't ease me into thinking that they ever referred back to them as they attempted to understand fully what had gone wrong.

One of the reasons for checking on aims and objectives was that I felt the Instructor, who had been left in the lurch when the Professor fell ill, should at least have been able to fall back on a clear idea of what the course was trying to achieve and what the students should have been able to do by the end of it. We were not told whether the Instructor availed herself of such an opportunity.

Student selection

I looked at selection because I felt we ought to have been given some idea of how the students had been selected to take the course: self selection or positive selection by the University. Selection didn't appear in the article, so I would ask the authors to enlighten their readership on how their students were selected. After all, educationalists tend to know that a student who is on the wrong course will have problems of one sort or another for some or all of that course. Maybe selection was part of the problem.

Induction

Following on from selection, I expected to find some idea of how the students had been introduced to the course. Anecdotal evidence tells us that some of the students' friends had done the course before. However, the words induction and briefing did not appear in the article.

Student assessment

I would also have liked to have read something about how the students were assessed and how assessment was made to fit the aims and objectives of the course. Assessment, review, evaluation and feedback figured most highly out of all of the words I searched for. However, the majority of the instances in which the words appeared did so when the students themselves were talking; and usually in a negative mood.

The authors have missed some of the point

Having checked the article for signs of clarity of purpose, recruitment and selection of students and effective management of the educational process, I have to say that I think the authors themselves have pretty well missed the point of their own work. In the discussion section of the article, they say

In summary, this study observed that in this distance education course, students' frustration originated from three sources: · technological problems · minimal and not timely feedback from the instructor · ambiguous instructions on the WWW site as well as via e-mail, and asserted that these frustrations were so overwhelming that some students gave up on the formal content of the course. The instructor's personal reflection note revealed that two other students who began taking this course from distant sites dropped it because they could not overcome technical problems. In addition, during interviews two students affirmed that they will not take distance education courses in the future because they could not deal with these frustrations anymore. Therefore, students' frustrations were serious problems in this distance education course.

I imagine because the authors both work in the area of systems and computer science they have concentrated on the technological aspects of their work: indeed, the article seems to be dominated by computer and technology based references, ideas and problems. This has blinkered them to a whole series of non technically related problems, as I have demonstrated above.

I am not dismissing the importance of the technological problems. The feedback from the instructor and the ambiguous instructions problem are critical; but only part of the story.

The work applies universally

Finally, in their conclusions, the authors say:

This case illustrates the frustrations that students can experience while taking a distance education course, and how these frustrations can significantly inhibit their educational opportunity.

We would do well to appreciate that many of the problems discussed in this article can be replicated in face to face teaching and learning too.

Duncan Williamson [duncan@ARMINCO.COM]

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And that's the way it was on September 21, 1999. 

Professor Robert E. Jensen (Bob) http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen
Jesse H. Jones Distinguished Professor of Business Administration
Trinity University, San Antonio, TX 78212-7200
Voice: 210-999-7347 Fax: 210-999-8134  Email:  rjensen@trinity.edu

Bob Jensen's Index Page

Bob Jensen's Bookmarks

New Bookmark Archives

 

 

September 21, 1999

From Barry Rice

For those of you who have not seen an e-book, here is an opportunity to try a simulated one on your PC. Go to http://www.rocketbook.com/  and select "Click here to find out how the new eRocket lets you read free RocketEditions right on your PC". It's near the center top of the page.

Downloading the program takes about 20 seconds with a cable modem. The download includes a users manual and ALICE'S ADVENTURES IN WONDERLAND. How appropriate!

As the Web site says, "With the Rocket-Library.com web site, you can now download more content for your Rocket eBook for free and share your own documents with other Rocket eBook readers. Become a Rocket-Library.com member and submit a RocketEdition today." There are over 1200 free titles. The site also says "Did you know that the Rocket eBook has a speaker? No? Well, try this sound demo. If a RocketEdition is created with embedded sound files, the sound can be heard on the Rocket eBook".

In effect, the PC simulation is a marketing tool to get you interested enough to buy a Rocket eBook for about $300. Barnesandnoble.com sells it for $329 and has within the past few weeks made available 1,639 current best sellers, etc. for purchase and download. I found no accounting books in the list. As I understand it, you have to be a registered owner of the actual ebook to buy the titles from Barnes & Noble. Their most popular title is "The Wall Street Journal Interactive Edition: Three-Month Subscription".

The same device is available under the name "Franklin Rocket eBook" at amazon.com for $300 but you have to search for it in their electronics products. As far as I can tell, Amazon does not yet sell the titles for downloading. Can that be far behind? MicroWarehouse (warehouse.com) has it for $300.

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Update on the amazing Everybook

You can read more Rocket eBook and its leading competitors at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/book99.htm#Rocket .  I just received my upgraded model that will hold about 100 books.  Note that over half the books are free for Rocket eBook.  However, Softbook is better if you want daily downloads of the NY Times and The Wall Street Journal.  We are all awaiting the (probably expensive) colored two-screen model from Everybook at http://www.everybook.net/ 

The Everybook Store will be a hard wired collection of fileservers containing electronic publications, complete with graphics and typographically formatted text, from the dust jacket to the back cover art. Publishers will provide, on a consignment basis, the electronic files created by their composers and shipped to printing companies. The EB Dedicated Reader (EB) can display the read-only versions of those same files without the loss of page layouts, in the same vertical format as that of a printed page. The publications will be accessed by computer modems, via the Internet connecting the EBS with EB Dedicated Readers around the world. The EBS will also access bank accounts of EB owners via electronic funds transfer, to debit accounts at the moment of publication purchase. By automating the browsing, purchase, delivery, and payment for publications, Everybook, Inc. will dramatically reduce costs for publishers, consumers, and the natural environment.

The Everybook Store is a digital archive, where publications are stored on hard disks and backed up to digital linear tracking tape. A large database of titles and publication jackets, organized by title, author and subject, is linked to the redundant array of disk storage units. The database has a user-friendly graphical interface, which can appear as a virtual library, bookstore, or powerful search engine. EB owners access the EBS file server holding the publication database via high speed phone lines and a toll-free, universal phone number. When the EB owner accesses the Everybook Store, the server verifies the EB by its unique security chip and the owner's prearranged debit account. Once verified, the user is allowed to browse a public domain library, an English Bookstore, a Non-English Bookstore, and a Subscription Store. Selections are downloaded as compressed PDF files, onto a secure PCMCIA storage card. The card should hold hundreds of books, magazines, and newspapers, and may only be accessed by the EB which was used to purchase the publications.

One of the major frustrations that I have been having with Office 2000 is selecting very large block of texts by dragging a mouse --- the mouse glides seem to be frustratingly discrete and sometimes stop altogether.

Then it dawned on the dummy that I have a new Microsoft mouse with that little wheel in the middle that I never use. Now I use it, because it makes selection of large blocks of text much easier.

Reply from Barry Rice

I've had the Microsoft Intellimouse Pro with the wheel for over a year and _strongly_ recommend it. (MicroWarehouse sells it for $65 at warehouse.com.) This one is such a comfortable fit for the hand (if you are a "rightie"). A wheel mouse really changes the way you work with all windows applications. e.g., I almost never use the vertical scroll bar any more. But, now I get irritated when my classroom PC has no wheel mouse. Hey, I have to have something to gripe about.

Reply from Jon Andrus

If you want real mouse action while selecting large blocks of text, click the wheel. The cursor will present a fixed icon and the text will scroll in relation to both the direction and distance you move the mouse from the fixed point. The feature is great if you want to get to cell IV:65536 in excel or move rapidly to the end of the Word document. It allows rapid (often too rapid) scrolling in any direction.

Reply from Amy Dunbar

Oh my gosh, I never noticed I had a wheel before. It works like a charm for copying. What's that Jack Nicholson line in A Few Good Men -- Don't I feel like the ________________!
Thanks for the tip, Bob.

Reply from John Stancil

I have used the Genius NetMouse for some time. It has a sort of toggle rather than a wheel that I find at least as easy to use as the Microsoft Wheel. Plus, it is a whole lot cheaper than the Microsoft Mouse. I have found it for around $10 on eBay.

Reply from Paul Dierks ( This is really good advice, thanks Paul)

Use the shift key to select - and adjust - large blocks of data.

Place the cursor at the start or end of the block you are interested in highlighting. Hold the shift key down and move to the end of the block and click the cursor. All of the material between the two mouse clicks will be highlighted. If you continue to hold the shift key down you can "adjust" the block that was highlighted with the first two mouse clicks if you select another location and click again.

Ascension of Women

Ascension of Women into Partner Ranks is Slow But Steady 
CPA Personnel Report's exclusive Annual Survey of Women in Public Accounting - 1999 reveals that the percentage of women partners in the top 25 CPA firms are up 1-2% over last year. Among Big 5 firms, women make up 9-12% of the partnership ranks, despite the fact that they make up clearly 50% of the professional workforce in today's CPA firms. Who has the best performance? Among the Top 25, Michigan's Plante and Moran states that 15% of their partnership is female. For a copy of the survey, contact CPA Personnel Report: http://www.straffordpub.com/products/cpr/index.html 

The AccountingWEB Newswire - Issue 9 September 16, 1999 http://www.accountingweb.com 

The September 19 PBS show called Computer Chronicles featured a new email educational volunteer service called Telementoring at the International Telementor Center at Colorado State University.  See http://www.telementor.org/ 

The idea is "telementoring." By spending about 30-45 minutes per week communicating via e-mail, adult mentors can share their experience and expertise, helping students achieve academic excellence in math and science, improve communication skills, and explore career and educational futures. Telementoring is a process that combines the proven practice of mentoring with the speed and ease of electronic communication, enabling busy professionals to make significant contributions to the academic lives of students.

To capitalize on this valuable resource for human development, CSMATE has become the non-profit home for the International Telementor Center (ITC). The ITC will facilitate electronic mentoring relationships between professional adults and students worldwide, and is projected to serve at least 10,000 students annually by the year 2003.

The ITC will be built upon the success of technology leader Hewlett-Packard's Telementor Program. Begun in January of 1995, the HP program has served over 3,000 students and has earned numerous awards. This experience not only provides a sturdy foundation for the ITC, but eliminates the need for a long learning curve and a labor-intensive start-up.

To achieve this goal we need partners. The ITC needs a core group of Charter Members who see this opportunity to become part of an innovative and effective educational effort that complements their existing educational and public relations programs and who are willing to commit financial support and other resources.

CSMATE and Hewlett-Packard extend this invitation to corporations and organizations interested in helping students achieve academic success. This website provides an overview of the ITC, outlines the requirements and benefits of becoming a Charter Member, and tells you how your organization can become involved. We look forward to the possibility of a rewarding partnership.

The September 19 Computer Chronicles show also featured some interesting new products for email systems.  Some merely add animations and graphics that I consider a waste of bandwidth and mail server space.  But one item that caught my attention is the new software from Intel that was demonstrated with a video window to an email message.  

Jeff Abbate, of Intel, brought along Intel’s ‘Create and Share’ digital video camera and software package. He shows us how you can use it to easily record video and audio clips and how you can even edit these clips into a short film sequence. You can then send these clips as .AVI file attachments or as part of an 'email postcard'.

The Intel package comes complete with a camera and software for under $150.  See http://www.intel.com/pccamera/pccam.htm.

Prestige universities are preparing to deliver graduate courses on the Internet.

I previously announced a new paper on trends in course authoring and network delivery of courses and course modules at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/290wp/290wp.htm.  I just revised it for recent news that uNext.com has recently announced partnerships with the University of Chicago, Stanford University, Carnegie Mellon University, and the London School of Economics and Political Science to deliver graduate courses over the Internet.

UNext.com is dedicated to making high quality education available anywhere and anytime. We serve those who understand that thriving in today's competitive knowledge-based economy demands a continual advancement in their knowledge and skills. In short, we provide companies, and the individuals who work for them, the most effective means possible to increase their human capital.

Our goal is to create powerful learning communities that marry the world's most respected academic scholars and institutions with the global reach and interactive capabilities of the Internet.

Our first learning community is Cardean, designed to address the business education needs of professional working adults.
http://www.unext.com/om/om/ 

We have seen over 1,000 instances where private corporations have commenced providing courses and even degree programs on the Internet. It may well be that the move by Columbia University will set the trend for reactions by education institutions. Columbia formed Morningside Ventures, Inc. to deliver its courses and programs on the Internet. 

For the Graduate School of Business, Columbia will use UNext eCourses at http://www.unext.com/.  See http://www.cc.columbia.edu/cu/pr/19513.htm.

Columbia University has established a company, Morningside Ventures, Inc. (MV), to create an online learning center to produce and distribute high-quality educational resources.

The company, which will develop an overall new media strategy for Columbia, will compete in the commercial marketplace for learning and will build strategic alliances with businesses that have significant reach on the Internet such as search engines, portals, Internet and broadband access points and news information sites.

Ann Kirschner, former vice president of interactive programming and development for the National Football League, has been named MV’s president and CEO, and Vikram Nagrani, a former principal at Morgan Stanley, has been named the company's chief operating officer.

This new venture will consider the feasibility of a wide range of innovative education models that would augment traditional, campus-based Columbia education programs and will consider the entire spectrum of academic disciplines from arts and sciences to law and medicine.

In one dimension of this effort, Columbia, through its Graduate School of Business, has already reached an agreement with UNEXT.com, a start-up company, to provide education material primarily for post-graduate education, probably courses in finance, accounting and marketing. This is a non-exclusive agreement to license intellectual property, the rights to which Columbia will retain.

“Columbia will continue to offer its traditional, campus-based degree programs. Indeed, applications to our undergraduate and graduate schools are at record levels,” President George Rupp said. “However, interactive, online, multimedia programs will be among the most important educational developments in the 21st century. We believe it vital that Columbia, both because of its academic strengths and its research in new media technologies, should be a leader in this movement. The content of education, whether on campus or online, is best provided by outstanding colleges and universities.”

Provost and Dean of Faculties Jonathan Cole added, “The mode of production and consumption of knowledge is undergoing changes no less dramatic than the changes from a pre-industrial to industrial society. Knowledge — access to it and the creation of it — will be the engine that will fuel change in the 21st century. Columbia must lead in the development of quality in this domain. We will continue to preserve all that is great in our current research and teaching structure, and develop, through digital media, new ways of enhancing still further that quality. That is what we are trying to do in establishing Morningside Ventures.”

This section was added on November 4, 1999

Ivy Online

Elite universities and professional schools are scrambling to "leverage their brands" and make extra money through online education.

See http://www.thestandard.com/articles/display/0,1449,7122,00.html  (thanks for the tip Scott Bonacker)

End of November 4, 1999 insert.

Those of you following my bemoaning of the lack of leadership among top business schools in educational technologies, may find the following article of interest.  

Richard Schmalensee, the new dean of the Sloan School of Management at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, has shouldered the task of training the next generation of executives for the ''New Economy.'' Already he has started to shift the curriculum to focus more on the Internet and entrepreneurship. While running the school is his main job, he is perhaps best known for his work earlier this year as an expert witness testifying on behalf of Microsoft Corp. at the government's antitrust trial.

Article 7 of 21, Article ID: 9906160191
Published on 06/14/99, SAN JOSE MERCURY NEWS  http://www.mercurycenter.com/ 

You can read the following at http://mitsloan.mit.edu/cftest/buildDome.cfm?page=http://mitsloan.mit.edu/news/releases/1999/launch.html 

MIT Sloan Dean Richard Schmalensee announced plans to offer MBA students a new Electronic Commerce and Marketing management track expected to be ready for student enrollment by the fall semester 1999. It is part of a new multidisciplinary research and education Program on Electronic Commerce and Marketing being developed at Sloan.

Dean Schmalensee said, “Sloan has been a leader in research and education focused on the interactions between technology and management. The School is in an ideal position to bring together the expertise at MIT with students and industry partners to advance both the understanding and practice of electronic commerce.”

The event launched the School’s new community-built web site, which includes a Digital Time Capsule sealed into its cornerstone. Sloan faculty, staff, alumni and business partners proposed and collected digitized artifacts for the capsule that capture the essence and spirit of the Internet and business in early 1999.

You can read the following on Page 6 of Educom Review, September/October 1999:

Schmalensee believes that Sloan, as one of the first business schools to make these adjustments to technology, is a leader in the growing movement toward the Internet.  He predicts that those schools and businesses that refuse to embrace the growing Web culture will crumble.

McGraw-Hill's failed venture to become McGraw-Hill World University moves down in one direction whereas the proposed Harcourt University is moving in the opposite direction in seeking accreditation from the New England Association of Schools and Colleges.  You can read the following at http://www.nrischools.com/ 

Due to changes in the marketplace, The McGraw-Hill Companies has recently reached the decision to phase out the NRI Schools operation. Effective April 1, 1999, NRI is no longer accepting additional enrollments. Based on this decision, NRI will no longer be sending out catalogs or promotional materials regarding our courses.

You can read the following at http://www.harcourt.com/hlcollege/hup/ 

The Harcourt University Project presents a progressive venue for teaching. We offer you the opportunity to become a forerunner in education by using technology to teach in an exciting new way. Professors will guide students through course work, both individually and in teams, using the Internet to communicate. The Harcourt University Project professors will create unique learning communities, involving themselves with students and course content.

Harcourt will be actively recruiting a distinguished faculty as the foundation of our academic quality. They will be committed to student interaction with e-mail, course forums, and other online communications so that the time-challenged students of today can conveniently reach them.

The Faculty will have access to a broad range of services that help to provide an efficient and enjoyable teaching experience. There are plans for a virtual Faculty Lounge to house amenities such as the campus newspaper, faculty newsletter, chat rooms and bulletin boards, among other useful features — all of which create the camaraderie of a campus atmosphere while allowing for a unique and ever changing forum.

A course demonstration at NYU's Virtual College  http://www.scps.nyu.edu/virtual/demonyt001 

Software for interaction and collaboration http://www.webline.com/ 

A September 19 on PBS, the Digital Duo did a feature on helpers for applying for college.  The September 19 show is not yet summarized online, but eventually you will find it at http://www.digitalduo.com/ .

The most helpful of all web sites for college applicants is probably the US News.edu web site at http://www.usnews.com/usnews/edu/home.htm.  This web site is best known for its rankings of colleges and graduate schools.  However, there are some important other helpers at this web site.  

The main navigation page is at http://www.usnews.com/usnews/edu/home.htm 

Take a College Personality Quiz at http://www.usnews.com/usnews/edu/college/cpq/coquiz.htm 

How can you find a college where you'll thrive? Start by taking a careful look at yourself–your interests, abilities, and attitudes. Do you learn best in classes with lots of discussion, like those found at small liberal arts colleges? Would you be happier as part of a larger college community with bigger classes? Find out all this and more by taking the college personality quiz, adapted from College Match: A Blueprint for Choosing the Best School for You! by Steven R. Antonoff, Ph.D., and Marie A. Friedemann, Ph.D. (Octameron Associates, 1999).

Predict College Costs at http://www.usnews.com/usnews/edu/dollars/dscosts.htm 

It's no secret that the price of tuition for four-year colleges goes up every year. Use this work sheet to estimate the total cost of attendance for four years of school, which includes all institutional expenses, such as room and board, as well as personal expenses like entertainment, long-distance phone calls, or laundry. Enter three schools below, along with the number of years until you head off to college, and we'll provide you with a chart that shows you how much your first year of college will cost, plus the total cost for all four years. If you are considering a public school in your home state, don't forget to click the "In-state tuition" button.

Find a Scholarship at http://www.usnews.com/usnews/edu/dollars/scholar/search.htm .  One of the features is for any user to read in his or her SAT score, religion, ethnic background, etc. and the search service will look for special scholarships such as a scholarship for a particular religion.

Quick search of scholarships based on these categories: Ethnic scholarships · Athletic scholarships · Art scholarships · Corporate scholarships · Organizational scholarships · Military scholarships ·

Find a scholarship at a particular college.

Compare Your Financial Aid Awards at http://www.usnews.com/usnews/edu/dollars/howtopay/dsawards.htm 

Because different schools offer different amounts of financial aid to each student, the school with the most expensive tuition price may not cost you the most to attend. Use this work sheet to compare financial aid packages from four schools. Enter school names, costs of attendance, expected family contribution, and aid amounts below. Click the gray buttons in the left-hand column to calculate the totals for each section. When you have finished filling out the work sheet, click "YOUR FAMILY'S TOTAL COST" to find out how much it will cost to attend each school.

The Find Your College web page at http://www.usnews.com/usnews/edu/college/cosearch.htm 

Use this search to access our directory of over 1,400 four-year colleges. Enter a college name below to get up-to-date admissions, academic, and financial aid information on that school. Or use our interactive work sheet to find schools according to the following criteria: location, distance from home, cost, size, selectivity, major, student/faculty ratio, academic programs, single sex/coed, religious affiliation, setting, diversity, ranking, extracurriculars, and sports. You may search by any or all of the criteria listed above. You may also access a school's information through our alphabetical index.

Best Value Schools and other helpers regarding financial aid http://www.usnews.com/usnews/edu/dollars/dshome.htm 

Find a bargain: Check out our best values list for a guide to schools top ranked in terms of quality and cost.

Flavors of federal aid. Pell grants, Stafford and Perkins loans, work study, and more.

Decipher your financial aid award letter.

Will my prepaid tuition plan transfer out of state? Get the skinny on state college savings program plans.

Find a job listing. Write a killer résumé. Wow them in the interview.

Best Value Rankings http://www.usnews.com/usnews/edu/dollars/dsbvalue.htm .

Find Your Community College at http://www.usnews.com/usnews/edu/college/communit/commsrch.htm 

U.S. News and the American Association of Community Colleges have teamed up to help you find a community college that fits your needs. Search for schools by name, or use the interactive work sheet below to find schools based on location, distance from your home, programs, or student services. Your search results will link you to our directory of community colleges, which provides basic information on admissions, academics, and cost for over 1,200 schools.

Helpers from experts on financial aid http://www.usnews.com/usnews/edu/misc/answerzn.htm 

To register right away, go directly to our forum registration page. You may also register by entering the forum of your choice and starting a new message or responding to an existing message. At that point, you will be prompted to log in. Click on the "Or you can register here" link at the bottom of the page.

Outstanding High Schools http://www.usnews.com/usnews/issue/990118/18intr.htm 

Career Center http://www.usnews.com/usnews/edu/careers/cchome.htm 

CollegeEdge has changed its name to Embark.com at   http://www.embark.com/ .  This free web site serves as a consultant to students who are actually applying for college.  There are links to guidance professionals and career professionals.  The Digital Duo gave high marks to this web site.  Users can also track the progress of their admissions applications.

Trinity University uses several services and ties directly into https://www.applyweb.com/aw?trinity.

Yahoo search for domestic and foreign schools at http://dir.yahoo.com/Education/Higher_Education/ 

Collegestudent.com announced the acquisition of eStudentLoan.com for an undisclosed amount of stock  http://www.collegestudent.com/ 

An excellent article that compares XML and CORBA was written by Mark Elenko and Mike Reinertsen, "XML & CORBA," Application Development Trends, September 1999, pp. 45-50.  For some reason the article is not available online along with the other articles that are online at http://www.adtmag.com/ (Maybe it will be made available by the time you read this edition of New Bookmarks):

It is still important to sometimes distinguish CORBA from XML.  CORBA is an enabling technology for creating sophisticated, distributed object systems on heterogeneous platforms.  XML is a technology for conveying structured data in a portable way.  CORBA allows users to connect disparate systems and form object architectures.  XML will allow users to transmit structured information within, between and out of those systems, and to represent information in a universal way in and across architectures.  Both technologies are platform-, vendor- and language-independent.  The conceptual fit is perfect.  To see where and how this fit is best realized, we will examine how to actually combine CORBA and XML from a series of widening perspectives.

I found this both funny and indicative of how web shopping can get you better deals.  Note that when she finally got her new Mercedes using Priceline it was at a cheaper price from the same dealer who would not give her a better price on the floor of the dealership itself.  This is taken (without the picture) from Newsweek, September 20, 1999, pg. 44:

Tracy O'Such
When Tracy O'Such got a fat bonus last year, she was thrilled.  The 38- year-old exec decided it was time to buy a new car, her first, and set her heart on a Mercedes.   After using the Web to research models and prices, O'Such set off for dealerships near her Fairfield, Conn., home.  She found a C280 that she loved, but ran into what she calls the "Hi, sweetie, want to buy a car?" attitude from the salesman.   She asked about the sticker price and wanted to negotiate; he told her about the available colors.  When she decided to buy, the salesman named a price $5,000 higher than hers and refused to budge.  She tried to wheedle him down, but he kept insisting that his price was a giveaway.  "It was over $40,000," she marvels.   "He wasn't doing me any favors."  Finally, O'Such gave up and went on Priceline.com.  She listed the model and color, and named $38,000 as the price she was willing to pay.  Within 12 hours, she had a taker: Continental Motors in Fairfield--same dealership, different salesman.  She called her salesman back and said, "Guess what?  I've found the car for my price."  He protested, claiming that was impossible.  "It's in your showroom," she said.   Silence.

O'Such says Priceline made all the difference.   "Just having the information made me able to negotiate with confidence," she said.  "Especially as a woman, that's important."

Microsoft takes on Priceline   http://www.wired.com/news/news/business/story/21640.html 

Microsoft, Dell, and others take on eBay http://www.zdnet.com/pcweek/stories/news/0,4153,2336028,00.html 

Wired News technology news http://www.wired.com/news/ 

Lotus LearningSpace Anytime falls short of the competition http://www.zdnet.com/pcweek/stories/news/0,4153,2331135,00.html 

For a review of the competition see http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/290wp/290wp.htm 

Can Microsoft evolve DNA 2000 for the Web?  http://www.zdnet.com/pcweek/stories/news/0,4153,1017285,00.html  

The Redmond, Wash., company this week announced plans to provide new tools, servers and services to simplify building e-commerce applications for the Web and Windows 2000, which is expected to ship later this year.

Products falling under Microsoft's updated Distributed Internet Application architecture umbrella -- Visual Studio 7.0, the new AppCenter Server and the BizTalk XML Server -- will follow the Windows 2000 release and should ship by the middle of next year, officials said.

If you find an Excel workbook on the web and you are using Internet Explorer 5.0 or higher, be a little careful how you download Excel files. If you click the option to "Open the File," the Excel workbook will open in Internet Explorer but it will not have Excel functionality and will mask cells behind comments attached to those cells. It is probably best in most instances to instead choose the option to download the file to your hard drive and then open in Excel.

Since most Excel files that you find on the web will not have been saved with XML round tripping code, you cannot initially read the spreadsheet in your web browser and then save it as an Excel xls file. You must instead initially download the Excel file and save it to disk.

I have upgraded the tutorial explanation of Example 2 found in the FASB's SFAS 133 on Accounting for Derivative Instruments and Hedging Activities. Explanations for downloading are given at http://www.cs.trinity.edu/~rjensen/13300tut.htm 

Excel workbook explanations for SFAS 133 Examples 01 thru 10 are given at http://www.cs.trinity.edu/~rjensen/ 

Example 2 has been upgraded in 133ex02a.xls to include a spreadsheet called "Explanation." Comments on the cells explain how each number is computed in the difficult Example 2 that uses but does not explain the yield curve derivations. My next goal is to do the same thing for the even more difficult Example 5.

Yahoo's broadcast services (web media) http://www.broadcast.com/ 

I received a tip from a list serve called Dummies Daily (dummiesdaily.com) about a bulletin board site. This is an alternative to a personal Web site. You can set up a bulletin board site and put notes on it in less than 5 minutes.

"...eBoard, a site where you can set up your own Web-accessible "corkboard" and post pictures and notes, WITHOUT HAVING TO CREATE A WEB SITE! An eBoard is easy to make, easy to update (no need to worry about links), and not at all easy to over-design."  http://www.eboard.com
Enjoy!
Tanya Pinedo, Research Associate, Trinity University

The Dingbat Page http://dingbats.i-us.com/ 

Graphical Web Search 

A new Visualization of Information Tool (VisIT) by educational psychology professor James Levin and educational psychology graduate student Dan Kauwell at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, offers a unique way to display and organize Web-search results. The tool also lets the user add, delete, rearrange, and annotate the results, and then save the organized chart of Web links for future use.

Among its features, VisIT can arrange search results into user-created groups (see Figure 1) or so that the most relevant sites are near the center of the screen arrows are drawn between any linked sites. The number of arrows pointing to a site indicates how often it's referenced. The search tool also groups together sites from the same server or under the same home page, showing them as small organizational charts. "We think this will give people a closer mapping to how they organize the knowledge in their head," says Kauwell, a graduate student in educational psychology.

VisIT is part of a multiyear interdisciplinary research project at UIUC's Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology. Funded by Yamaha Motor Corporation of Japan Ltd. (www.yamaha.co.jp), the Computer Companion Project (http://empath.vp.uiuc.edu/TravelCompanion/period-1.html) researches ways for computers to read and interpret eye movement, facial expression, voice inflection, forms of language, and other forms of human-computer interaction.

http://visit1.vp.uiuc.edu/ieee_article.html 

CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORKS FOR NETWORK LEARNING ENVIRONMENTS: CONSTRUCTING PERSONAL AND SHARED KNOWLEDGE SPACES by Michael J. Jacobson, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and Vanderbilt University http://www.ed.uiuc.edu/projects/tta/Papers/JL_EdTele/ 

From InformationWeek Online, September 16, 1999

Visa said yesterday that it will consolidate all online initiatives into a business unit called eVisa. The division will focus on E-commerce payment processing, including the development of banking Internet strategies and online transaction standards, and marketing of digital wallet technology. And eVisa plans to launch an Internet connection to the Visa processing network, called Payment Gateway, that will instantly process credit-card transactions from online purchases.

(Blue) Martini lunches are back in style, especially at Andersen Consulting (eCommerce) http://www.informationweek.com/747/web.htm 

George Orwell had it right, but he missed on guessing the year --- Big Brother will be everywhere in Year 2004 or slightly earlier http://www.zdnet.com/pcweek/stories/news/0,4153,2330504,00.html  

One Across for crossword enthusiasts (based on Proverb, a powerful cruciverbalist system developed at Duke University) http://www.oneacross.com/ 

Visions of China http://www.cnn.com/SPECIALS/1999/china.50/ 

eCommerce update for small business from InformationWeek Online on September 20, 1999 

Wells Fargo Enters Web Hosting Market

Wells Fargo & Co., one of the leading banks on the Internet, today will launch One Stop eStore, a service that provides Web hosting and online payment processing to small businesses. The San Francisco bank company will charge a business $45 a month for the Web site, plus a fee for each payment transaction processed. Customers who want only payment processing can buy that service as a standalone product. Wells Fargo's partner in the venture is First Data Corp., an Atlanta payment and transaction processing company. The One Stop eStore system will run on First Data servers.

More than 1 million small companies do business with Wells Fargo, and the bank hopes that providing technology services will lock them in as loyal customers. "We think it's a good retention strategy," says Debra Rossi, Wells Fargo executive VP of merchant card services.

On another E-commerce front, Wells Fargo will consolidate bills from its commercial customers and present them to consumers who also are Wells Fargo customers, using billing technology it has licensed from Just In Time Solutions Inc. A bank unit is piloting Just In Time's BillCast 2.0 software, which lets customers pay their bills online as well as view and manipulate billing data.

Wells Fargo plans to offer similar billing services to customers who bank with Chase Manhattan Corp. and First Union Corp., making Wells Fargo a central hub for exchanging bills between consumers and merchants.

The man who made the nuclear bombs for Stalin (history) http://www.pbs.org/opb/citizenk/ 

Calendars Through the Ages (history) http://www.webexhibits.com/calendars/ 

If you are going to be a tourist in South Florida, you must see this from the University of Miami 

Florida Postcard Collection http://www.library.miami.edu/archives/cards/intro.html 

Notebook computers selling for less than $1,000 are on the horizon according to Intel http://www.zdnet.com/pcweek/stories/news/0,4153,2334988,00.html 

iShip.com (making package mailing as easy as price, ship, track). http://www.iship.com 

Finding my Jensen family genealogy is tough, because my family in the U.S. used Jensen and Jenson whenever they pleased --- probably to confuse the I.R.S.  Years earlier, back in Norway, Norwegians tended to change their last name with each brood of children.   For example suppose there were two brothers named Knute and John Helgeson.  If Knute had a son named Jens, the boy's name became Jens Knuteson, and John's son Nels became Nels Johnson.  The name Helgeson thereby was not carried forward in that family.  Then if Jens Knuteson had a son named Sven, he became known as Sven Jenson.  

My first ancestor to arrive from Norway was John Knuteson.  For some reason, however, he just decided one day that his name was Thompson.  So my grandmother was Regina Knuteson in Norway but became Regina Thompson when she joined up with her uncle John on a farm north of Swea City, Iowa.  Then she became Regina Jensen when she married Julius Jensen from Seneca (only he could only say Yuliuus Yensen).  I dare you to try to find the genealogy of any Norwegian.  

For those of you who are not Norwegian, it may be a bit easier to trace your genealogy.  Three web sites are recommended in an article entitled "Click Here for your Roots" in the Readers Digest, October 1999, pp. 79-83:

http://www.rootsweb.com/         (   700,000 visitors per year)

http://www.ancestry.com/           (1,000,000 visitors per year)

http://www.familysearch.org/      (   600,000 visitors per year)

daily coverage of the art, technology, and business of television. http://www.tvindustry.com/ 

Time warps and television http://www.liketelevision.com/ 

From IWnews Online on September 15, 1999 (this points to a whole new trend in online marketing).  I wonder if it will also catch on when high school seniors go "shopping" for colleges to attend.

So you're buying pants for a loved one far away and aren't sure whether he would prefer twills or chinos, cuffed or uncuffed, wrinkle-free or wrinkle-prone. Or you're ordering tights and want to ask a service representative which size (XS? S? M?) corresponds to a little girls' size 5. Clothing retailer Lands' End unveiled online solutions Wednesday for both these shopping scenarios: "Shop with a Friend" and "Lands' End Live."

The technology behind both is the same, developed by WebLine Communications Corp. Lands' End Live allows the customer to contact a rep while online, either by requesting a phone call or by opening a chat session. Shop With a Friend lets the customer open a joint shopping trip with someone on another computer by providing the pal with a special password. Both can pick out merchandise and add it to the shopping cart, though only the originator is allowed to check out. They can communicate through a chat window or by phone. Both control the browser simultaneously, making the feature best suited to those with extremely strong friendships.

The September 17th edition of the Internet Essentials '99 Newsletter for the financial professional. http://www.tiac.net/users/nhannon/news.html 

Here are this week's topics:

1. DollarDiscounter.com Tries New Approach To Web Shopping 
2. Merger, Acquisition and Capital Funding for Growing Businesses 
3. Security Updates for Intrusions and Incident Responses 
4. Visual Cities Provides Free Web Space with a Nice Twist 
5. President Clinton Loosens Encryption Restrictions 
6. Message Click: Free Voice mail, faxes and email 
7. Lack Security Staff? Outsource It 
8. Speaking of Finding Hard to Find IT Talent 
9. mySAP.com: Multi-faceted Business and Personal Portal

I will be chairing two conferences entitled  "Implementing FAS 133:  Accounting for Derivative Instruments and Hedging Activities."  See   http://www.worldrg.com/FA981/ .   The places, dates, and hotels are as follows:

Chicago (September 29-October 1 in the Hyatt Regency) 
Washington DC (October 27-29 in the Key Bridge Marriott)

The program is now available at the above web site.  What is important about this conference is that top specialists from public accounting and industry will be conducting workshops and making presentations.  Speakers listed at the above web site (along with summaries of what they will be speaking about) are from the following organizations:

Sun Microsystems
Union Carbide
Travelers Insurance
MasterCard International
Allstate Insurance
U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission
Arthur Andersen LLP
Deloitte & Touche LLP
TPG Software, Inc.
Ernst & Young
First Union Corporation
PricewaterhouseCoopers
Trinity University

And that's the way it was on September 21, 1999. 

Professor Robert E. Jensen (Bob) http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen
Jesse H. Jones Distinguished Professor of Business Administration
Trinity University, San Antonio, TX 78212-7200
Voice: 210-999-7347 Fax: 210-999-8134  Email:  rjensen@trinity.edu

September 14, 1999

The bottom of this September 14 edition of New Bookmarks contains an important message from Jean Heck about the formation of a new association and journal for business educators.  The association is called the Academy of Business Education.  Scroll down to find Jean's message.

I will be chairing two conferences entitled  "Implementing FAS 133:  Accounting for Derivative Instruments and Hedging Activities."  See   http://www.worldrg.com/FA981/ .   The places, dates, and hotels are as follows:

Chicago (September 29-October 1 in the Hyatt Regency) 
Washington DC (October 27-29 in the Key Bridge Marriott)

The program is now available at the above web site.  What is important about this conference is that top specialists from public accounting and industry will be conducting workshops and making presentations.  Speakers listed at the above web site (along with summaries of what they will be speaking about) are from the following organizations:

Sun Microsystems
Union Carbide
Travelers Insurance
MasterCard International
Allstate Insurance
U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission
Arthur Andersen LLP
Deloitte & Touche LLP
TPG Software, Inc.
Ernst & Young
First Union Corporation
PricewaterhouseCoopers
Trinity University

In the above conferences, I am presenting my Mexcobre Case that finds flaws in FAS 133 on Accounting for Derivative Financial Instruments and Hedge Accounting.  For these presentations I prepared a special presentation file.  If you have both Internet Explorer 5.0 and Microsoft Office 2000, you may want to take a look at that file at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/caseans/133spshow.htm .  In particular, the SFAS 133 flaws are noted in my answer to Question 13.

The answers are condensed in that file.  For the complete answers, you must download my Excel workbook on the Mexcobre Case.  For instructions on how to download the complete answers, contact me at rjensen@trinity.edu .

McGraw-Hill's failed venture to become McGraw-Hill World University moves down in one direction whereas the proposed Harcourt University is moving in the opposite direction in seeking accreditation from the New England Association of Schools and Colleges.  You can read the following at http://www.nrischools.com/ 

Due to changes in the marketplace, The McGraw-Hill Companies has recently reached the decision to phase out the NRI Schools operation. Effective April 1, 1999, NRI is no longer accepting additional enrollments. Based on this decision, NRI will no longer be sending out catalogs or promotional materials regarding our courses.

You can read the following at http://www.harcourt.com/hlcollege/hup/ 

The Harcourt University Project presents a progressive venue for teaching. We offer you the opportunity to become a forerunner in education by using technology to teach in an exciting new way. Professors will guide students through course work, both individually and in teams, using the Internet to communicate. The Harcourt University Project professors will create unique learning communities, involving themselves with students and course content.

Harcourt will be actively recruiting a distinguished faculty as the foundation of our academic quality. They will be committed to student interaction with e-mail, course forums, and other online communications so that the time-challenged students of today can conveniently reach them.

The Faculty will have access to a broad range of services that help to provide an efficient and enjoyable teaching experience. There are plans for a virtual Faculty Lounge to house amenities such as the campus newspaper, faculty newsletter, chat rooms and bulletin boards, among other useful features — all of which create the camaraderie of a campus atmosphere while allowing for a unique and ever changing forum.

Update on invisible (ubiquitous, wireless) computing http://www.internetwk.com/lead/lead091099.htm 

Research papers on invisible (ubiquitous) computing and the demise of the PC http://www.research.att.com/~amo/doc/networks.html 

Recall my earlier links on eBras, etc. at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/book99.htm#smut 

Thank Chris Nolan for this link.
Database on web sites and web usage http://www.oclc.org/oclc/research/projects/webstats/ 

Just for fun (Dick Bartels will love this one) read about obscure patents like air conditioners for shoes at http://www.patents.ibm.com/gallery/ 

Serious inventions by women at http://www.inventorsmuseum.com/women.htm 

Why are there so few women in science?  http://helix.nature.com/debates/ 

Women: The Shadow Story of the Millennium:  The second in the New York Times Magazine's Millennium series http://www.nytimes.com/library/magazine/millennium/m2/index.html 

Bob,

Potential bookmarks:

I haven't checked much of the site, but http://www.learn2.com/  has gotten fairly high praise, and it is fun/useful to go through some of the tutorials. Maybe you can place some of your tutorials on the site!

History/Overview of the Internet:

http://mothra.tamu.edu/netstuff/whatis.htm 

http://www.yikesnet.com/net.html 

http://info.isoc.org/guest/zakon/Internet/History/HIT.html 

http://www.internetvalley.com/intval1.html  (quite interesting!)

Hope all is going well - I enjoyed reading about your childhood ( http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/max01.htm ). I too find the Internet most useful as a community/communication type device and am probably as obsessed with it as you! That's why NetMeeting is probably my favorite piece of software - even though I don't get the chance to use it very often.

Jim Borden
Villanova University

The Computer History Museum Center http://www.computerhistory.org/ 

Evolution of communication (history) --- http://library.advanced.org/26451/ 

The best place to start for accounting and accounting education news http://www.accountingeducation.com/ 

For accounting news and virtual communities you may also visit  http://www.accountingweb.com/ 

Thank you Andrew Lymer

ERIC/AE FULL TEXT INTERNET LIBRARY http://ericae.net/ftlib.htm  http://www.accountingeducation.com/news/news482.html  
 The ERIC Clearinghouse on Assessment and Evaluation (ERIC/AE) has recently announced the opening of its Full Text Internet Library, providing access to over 250 "of the best full-text books, reports, journal articles, newsletter articles and papers on the Internet that address educational measurement, evaluation and learning theory."

I hope business education and research organizations will follow the lead of social scientists in developing knowledge databases.  See http://www.nesstar.org/papers/iassist_0599.html 

Even though I have Photoshop, I still love Paint Shop Pro for most of my graphics needs.  It is cheap and very versatile.  You can be a Version 6 beta tester.  See http://www.jasc.com/psp6beta.html .

By the way, you will not find many graphics images in my web pages.  I get complaints that files are too long to download without graphics.  Keep this in mind in your own web page designs.  Huge graphics and clever animations may look good when you author them, but users will curse you or ignore you if they are too slow to download.

I tend to use more graphics at my LAN (Drive J) drive on the Trinity University campus.  Downloading is not so slow on campus.

New Attain Objects for Macromedia Dreamweaver http://www.macromedia.com/software/attainobjects/trial/ 

Thanks to Severin Grabski for this tip: 
ISWORLD has a number of resources devoted to e-commerce. Included are cases, syllabi, site design, security, Internet technology, e-markets, applications, social issues and more.
http://www.isworld.org/isworld/ecourse/index.html

If you know any accounting educators with helpful materials on the web, please ask them to link their materials  in the American Accounting Association's Accounting Coursepage Exchange (ACE) web site at
http://www.rutgers.edu/Accounting/raw/aaa/ace/index.htm
Please send these professors email messages today and urge them to share as much as they can with the academy by easily registering their course pages with ACE.

Hey, we have a new doctoral course in ACE.  The featured professor this week is Jack Kramer.

Professor Kramer provides many references for tax policy and research.  Thank you for sharing Jack.

American Accounting Association Annual Meeting Abstracts http://www.rutgers.edu/Accounting/raw/aaa/research.htm 

We can now order the audio presentations of virtually all presentations (including plenary sessions) at the American Accounting Association annual meetings (excluding the preliminary CPE workshops). I ordered the $199 CD that contains all presentations in MP3 audio compression that will play on most PCs.  You can also order individual tapes. The web site is at http://www.tsok.net . The company is Sound of Knowledge, Inc., 4901 Morena Blvd. Suite 207, San Diego, CA 92117. Telephones are 858-483-4300 (voice) and 858-483-4900 (fax).  Abstracts of these presentations are available at http://www.rutgers.edu/Accounting/raw/aaa/99annual/highlights.htm .  Abstracts of CPE workshops can be found at http://www.rutgers.edu/Accounting/raw/aaa/99annual/cpelist.htm 

The American Accounting Association badly needs new members, especially accounting practitioners who would like closer ties with accounting educators worldwide.  There are a lot of benefits to practitioners as well as educators.  See http://www.rutgers.edu/Accounting/raw/aaa/join.htm .  

European Accounting Association  http://www.bham.ac.uk/EAA/ 

23rd EAA Annual Congress March 29-31 in Munich http://www.bham.ac.uk/EAA/eaa2000/ 

eEurope Takes Off http://www.tiac.net/users/nhannon/news.html and http://www.ac.com/showcase/ecommerce/ecom_efuture.html 

My financial ratio links were first issued on May 7 at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/book99b.htm#ratios 

You can also find them in my main bookmarks at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/bookbob1.htm#010303FinancialRatios 

Forwarded message from Phil Livingston

LETTER TO SEN. PHIL GRAMM
This week we delivered a letter to Senator Phil Graham. As chairman of the Senate Banking Committee, he is considering holding hearings on the accounting standard setting process. The letter reiterated our support for independent, private-sector standard setting with minimal government involvement. Here is a link to our letter: http://www.fei.org/download/fasbletter9-8-99.doc  (in MS Word 97 format). Also on the site you will find a suggested letter for you to send to your Senators in Washington. Please consider taking this grass-roots initiative and magnify the influence of FEI by sending in your own letter on your company's letterhead. It's easy- download the Word file and print it out. Here's the link: http://www.fei.org/download/SampleFASBletter.doc  (MS Word 97 document) Please copy me with your letter at plivingston@fei.org . If you need the address of the Senators from your state, just call or e-mail FEI's DC office (202/659-3700; cmooshian@feidc.org ) Thanks!

I had great personal phone calls from SEC Chairman Arthur Lev