The E-World Handbook: Internet Resources and Opportunities Book

Don't think of Apple's long-defunct online service; the eWorld in this book is what the author insists on calling the Internet. Short chapters cover the main features of the Net: picking an ISP (he recommends IBM); email; spam; privacy; and search engines, along with suggestions for getting your business online. Web site recommendations are scattered through the book--but confusingly they have nothing to do with the chapters they are in (though perhaps the site on "getting past the anger" does fit the chapter on spam).There is good advice here on strategy and business planning, designing and launching an ecommerce site and attracting and keeping customers. But while Lynas addresses many topics, there is often not enough information to be useful. Business suggestions are mixed in with cursory technical information on building Web pages (Lynas recommends IBM HomePage Creator) and registering domain names that lacks detail. Many of the services covered are American--odd in a book where prices are given in Euros and there is a chapter on currency.Lynas gets full marks for covering computer use for the disabled, from visual impairment to dyslexia--though he mentions only one speech recognition product, made by IBM. A section on "silver surfers" covers a few URLs. The final chapters on the future of online business are interesting, although many readers will question whether open source software and Linux are quite as crucial as the author suggests--and calling the open source Web server "IBM's Apache" is misleading. But for those who can overlook its biases, the eWorld Handbook has some interesting and useful things to say.--Penny JanniferRead More