By Colby Horton
Shop Site of the Month
St. Marys Auto Body - St. Marys, Pa.
www.stmarysautobody.com
This site offers some innovative features, including the ability to make an appointment online. Customers are able to track the progress of their repair through a convenient access point. The shop posts employment opportunities on its Web site, helping to recruit qualified new employees. Comprehensive "History" and "About Us" sections make this site informative to both new and existing customers. The professional graphics and color scheme add to this site's uniqueness.
Web Wise
Internet Explorer Finally Getting Facelift It Needs
Microsoft is finally catching up with rival Internet browsers with a retooling of the popular Internet Explorer Web browser. Although it's one of the most popular Web browsers available, Internet Explorer has been showing some signs of aging in recent years with very little improvement made to its technology. But now, Microsoft is integrating some innovative features that will help the browser compete with some of the newer Web browsers available, such as Opera and Firefox.
An early beta version of IE 7 was recently released for software developers to test for compatibility. And although all features are not operational in Beta 1, the buzz is that the new IE 7 incorporates some exciting features.
IE 7 will feature something that has been available on many competing Web browsers for some time: the search box. Users will no longer have to download a separate toolbar from third-party providers such as Google to perform searches without visiting the search engine's home page. The new search box initially supports searches through Google, Yahoo, America Online, Ask Jeeves and Microsoft's MSN, with the ability for the user to add additional search engines.
Another nice feature of the new browser is a shrink-to-fit print feature. This feature is already available on later versions of Internet Explorer for the Macintosh. Web sites aren't necessarily created to print, often causing the margins to be cut off when printed. The new IE simply makes the entire page smaller so the site fits across the width of the paper. The browser also uses the feature when a printout would use only one or two lines of the second page.
The new Web browser will also support Really Simple Syndication (RSS) technology. The technology allows users to subscribe to certain newsfeeds and are notified when breaking news occurs directly from their Web browser. RSS is also used on popular blog sites to notify visitors when new content is available. RSS feeds are relatively new, but some of the other Web browsers already support them.
IE 7 will also contain major security improvements. A real-time anti-phishing tool has been incorporated to address scammers who try to trick people into revealing passwords by posing as legitimate banking or e-commerce sites. When the browser encounters an unfamiliar site, it gives the user an option of passing the address onto Microsoft to check against a database of known phishing sites. When there's a match, IE 7 takes you to a "red warning page," according to the Associated Press.
IE 7 will be available early next year.
Net Numbers
The time lost by employees dodging spam when checking e-mail or surfing the Internet will cost U.S. businesses $17 billion in 2005.
Source: Ferris Research
ASA Web Ways
Visit ASA's Member's Only Area
There's a lot of information at your fingertips in the Members Only area of ASA's Web site, www.asashop.org. This section was specifically created with the ASA member in mind. Members can sign up for free e-mail accounts with 10 MB of disk space, shop in ASA's secure online store, access more than 9,000 business abstracts from the Information Center and chat with a membership representative in real time. Members can also renew their membership online through a secure gateway. To access the Members Only area, go to the ASA home page and enter your six-digit ASA member number into the Member Login field.
