Corrections or additions?
Internet Privacy
These articles by Teena Chandy and others were published in U.S. 1 Newspaper on
March 3, 1999. All rights reserved.
Video stores store can be taken to court for giving
information to a third person about the titles you rented. Laws guarantee
your right to privacy with regard to the videos you rent but not when
it comes to the Internet, says Jason Catlett, founder and CEO
of Junkbusters Corporation, a virtual corporation whose mission is
“to free the world from junk communications.”
Anybody who wants to can track down where you are and what you do
on the Internet with impunity, says Catlett. “There is a discrepancy
in the existing online laws.” Catlett will speak on “Internet
Privacy: Right or Contradiction” at Princeton University’s Woodrow
Wilson School of Public and International Affairs on Tuesday, March
9, at 4:30 p.m., in Robertson Hall, Bowl 5.
Catlett majored in computer science at the University of Sydney, Australia,
in 1981, and got his Ph.D. in the same field. He taught courses in
technology and privacy at the University of Sydney until he moved
to the United States in 1992 to work at AT&T Bell Laboratories. Catlett
founded Junkbusters in 1996. The website is a comprehensive collection
of information about junk messages and how to stop them. “We want
everyone to know how to enforce their right to be left alone,”
says Catlett.
At the seminar Catlett will discuss privacy rights in cyberspace,
whether those rights can be enforced, and what individuals and governments
can do to protect privacy in the age of the Internet. The laws regarding
Internet privacy are weak, says Catlett. “The only way to protect
privacy on the web is to be anonymous.” Junkbusters provides software
and information on how to achieve this anonymity at https://www.junkbusters.com.
Catlett is currently leading a boycott against Intel. “Intel has
a new chip called Pentium 3 that has a unique number by which you
can track down where people went on the Internet,” says Catlett.
As an Internet privacy advocate, he has been actively involved with
organizing a boycott of Pentium products for the recall of this chip.
“Online privacy is going to be the most important issue in the
next decade,” says Catlett. “The information environment is
mostly going to be Internet based and protecting your privacy on the
web is going to be critical.”
— Teena Chandy
If you are worried about Internet privacy and who is
monitoring the browser of your home computer, be even more aware of
someone looking over your shoulder at work. Tools for enhancing employee
productivity — such as E-mail, voice mail, and Internet access
— have created new reasons and opportunities for employers to
more closely monitor the workplace activities of their employees,
says Steven M. Berlin of the law firm of Buchanan Ingersoll
PC, and a resident in the firm’s College Road office. “These tools
come with the risks of increased stress and reduced privacy for employee.”
Electronic monitoring of E-mail, Berlin has told the media, could
expose an employee’s plan to leave the company and take proprietary
information, or expose the theft of the employer’s trade secrets.
If the theft of trade secrets is discovered after it has occurred,
electronic monitoring may help identify the scope of the information
misappropriated.
But misuse of employer E-mail systems and Internet access can expose
an employer to liability. It could be grounds for sex, race, or other
discrimination claims.
Berlin cautions that employees “have privacy rights in the workplace
which have their genesis in Constitutional law. Certain federal and
state statutes also define the scope of legal electronic monitoring
in the workplace.”
A national survey on E-mail privacy conducted by Opinion Research
Corporation International for Accountants On Call, the global employment
agency for accounting and finance personnel, revealed that more than
half (56 percent) of employed Americans feel the E-mail they compose
and receive at work should be private between the writer and the recipient.
However, 41 percent of American workers who use E-mail at work believe
their employer has the right to review their electronic mail. The
survey also showed that the belief that E-mail in the workplace should
be private was stronger among younger workers and those with lower
household incomes.
Although the law may allow an employer to monitor electronic communication
in certain ways, the decision to do so is a business one, says Berlin.
“Factors for the employer to consider include what effect will
workplace monitoring have on the morale of the workforce? Will employee
creativity be stifled? Will monitoring create an `us versus them’
attitude?”
Berlin offers some advice for employers: “If the decision is to
monitor, use the least intrusive monitoring measures necessary to
meet the monitoring goals. Obtain employees’ explicit written consent
to workplace monitoring or written acknowledgement of receipt of an
employee handbook containing the workplace monitoring policy.”
“Be responsible,” Berlin says to employees. “Don’t attempt
to obtain information that an employee would have no legitimate reason
to possess. Don’t share private information about an employee to someone
who does not have a legitimate business reason to know the information.”
The web provides the most truly measurable marketing
medium, says Paul Haigh, partner and vice president of InfoFirst
Inc., a Research Park-based Internet company that provides specialized
web usage analysis and reporting services. “You can quantify in
very exact terms the effectiveness of your E-commerce investment.”
Haigh will be talking about “How to Measure and Improve the Success
of Your E-commerce Investment” at the Electronic Commerce and
Networking Seminar presented by Technology New Jersey on Tuesday,
March 9, at 8 a.m. at the DeVry Institute on 630 Route 1, New Brunswick.
The mid century department store magnate John Wanamaker once said:
“Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted, and the trouble
is I don’t know which half.”
You can measure not only quantity on the Internet, but also quality,
says Haigh. “Besides recording the number of impressions made
on a website, you can also determine the amount of time the visitor
spent on the site, whether he or she visited the key pages, and whether
it was a productive visit that led to the purchase of the product.”
Successful online marketers are tapping the web’s unparalleled potential
for measurable, analysis-driven marketing, enabling them to make real-time
decisions that impact the return on their E-commerce investments,
says Haigh.
Haigh graduated from the University of Liverpool, UK, with a BA in
English Literature. Prior to InfoFirst, Haigh worked for Princeton
Partners, where he specialized in the design and development of business-focused
web sites and web applications. “I have a marketing background
that I directed to the Internet,” says Haigh.
A successful website can be determined by the return in revenue generation,
says Haigh. The number of impressions on a website don’t necessarily
mean it is a good investment. Very often sites with the most number
of hits are the least effective, says Haigh. The visitors get to the
homepage and browse no further. They often get there after seeing
a banner advertisement for the website elsewhere and realize that
it was not what they were looking for.
Where you place your banner advertisements is also critical, says
Haigh. Reports detailing the number of impressions on the site should
not be the only criterion while placing banner advertisements on the
web, warns Haigh. “They can give you no idea of the quality of
the traffic.”
Successful E-commerce companies use the process of “web mining”
to maximize their return on investment, says Haigh. Web mining is
the process of digging deeper into the information that can be derived
from the usage statistics of a website. “This can help marketers
understand the types of visitors and build a demographic profile of
the most valuable visitor,” says Haigh, “and tailor the website
and marketing programs to suit those valuable visitors.”
The web mining process allows the marketer to provide the sales force
daily sales leads reports that detail key information received from
web analysis, says Haigh. The web’s effectiveness can be maximized
by “correlating the web usage data with other business data like
customer profiles, commercial data base, and sales leads data base.”
There is a proliferation of E-commerce investments on the web, says
Haigh. “Web analysis can give you a true understanding of which
ones are effective and which ones are not.”
— Teena Chandy
Top Of PageWeb Mavens: New Club
To focus on your customer is a very basic tenet, says
Josephine K. Ottman, but too many web developers overlook that
tried-and-true path to success. Ottman is one of four partners in
the Ridge Group, which has as its mantra “Making the Web Work
for You.” She is also the founder of the New Jersey chapter of
the Association for Internet Professionals (AIP) and has set the inaugural
meeting for Wednesday, March 10, 6 to 8 p.m., at the Sarnoff Corporation.
J.P. Frenza, author of “Web and New Media Pricing Guide”
and “Buying Web Services: the Survival Guide to Outsourcing,”
published by John Wiley & Sons, will discuss “What Clients Really
Want from Their Web Developer: the State of Web Outsourcing Today.”
Admission is free, but for information contact Ottman at The Ridge
Group, 154 Prospect Avenue, Princeton 08540, 609-924-8865; fax, 609-924-9636,
E-mail: jkottman@ridgegroup.com).
An alumna of Middlebury College, Class of 1977, she has an MBA in
finance from Columbia and has held marketing positions at Home Box
Office, was corporate marketing vice president for Thomson Financial
Services, and directed internet business strategy and product marketing
for three electronic product lines at Dow Jones Interactive Publishing.
Ottman was also acting vice president of marketing and product management
for AdOne, a web-based classified ad company. Her partners in the
Ridge Group, Russell Iuliano, Rich LaFauci, and Dick
Carney, are based in Boston and San Francisco and have worked at
Ziff-Davis, McGraw Hill, Information Access Company, and First Call.
Founded in 1994 AIP is billed as the largest and fastest growing professional
association in the industry (https://www.association.org. It
offers networking, job resources, technology updates and discounts,
social events, and special interest groups. Its accreditation council
has issued the first of several planned Internet industry certifications,
the Technical Level 1 specification. Last month it published its first
semi-annual compensation and benefits report, available to members
free and for sale at https://store.association.org.
Figure out how the visitor wants to use your site, says Ottman. “Often
clients are so enmeshed in their business that they have difficulty
seeing their business from their customer’s perspective.” Ottman
offers these suggestions for creating and managing a company’s website:
Avoid “scope creep” by sticking to your objective.”`Scopecreep’ is usually what goes wrong,” says Ottman. “The projectgets bigger, and that’s what contributes to it being late. When youshow your website demo, everyone — whether bosses or investors– wants to add more functionality.”Resist. Tightly define the objective and hold everythingup to that standard. If a new suggestion is “on point” tothe objective, build it. If it is just “nice to have” it goeson the Revision Two list. “And by the time you get to the Rev2 list,” says Ottman, “other things will have become moreimportant.”Use good project management skills. “Make a commitmentand hold everyone to that commitment,” says Ottman. One way tobe sure your project stays on track is to price it on a project basis,not an hourly basis. “Make sure you really understand what thescope is and what it includes,” she says.Take the politics out of the decision making. It’s thesame in new media projects as it is in traditional consulting projects.”Most websites or online services need to do only one or two things,”says Ottman, “but they usually try to do 10 things and do themequally well.””To really help the visitor, apply the 80/20 rule. Decidewhat the visitor wants to do most of the time and make that easy todo. Focus on satisfying the 80 percent of the people. If you try todo it all, you will mess up what you are trying to do for the 80 percent.””But in a corporate setting people have a hard time saying a particulardivision’s information is less important.” Which is why they needa consultant.Top Of PageCareers:BioinformaticsTo have a career in the hot new area of bioinformatics,says Michael Liebman, you need to be more than a computer programmer.”Bioinformatics is more than running software,” he says. “That’sthe technology. The goal is solving complex problems.” Too manyschools are turning out programmers who want to be bioinformaticsexperts, he says. “You have to be trained for problems that willgo into the clinical area.”Liebman will be a panelist at the Rutgers Computer Science open houseon Friday, March 5, at 9:30 a.m. in the CoRE Building on the Buschcampus. Rutgers is highlighting its leadership role in bioinformatics,which applies computer science methods to problems of biological discoveryand also includes research in such areas as applied mathematics, molecularbiology, and biophysics.Nick Cozzarelli, professor of molecular and cell biology ofthe University of California at Berkeley will give the keynote presentationon computational biology. Experts from business and industry willjoin scientists from Rutgers, Princeton, and the University of Pittsburgh.Rutgers scientists on the rostrum include Helen Berman, MartinFarch-Colton, Casimir Kulikowski, Ronald Levy, and Guy Montelione.Liebman has organized the program in that area at Northwestern University,and he is director for bioinformatics at Wyeth-Ayerst, based in Radnor,Pennsylvania (E-mail: liebmam@war.wyeth.com). An alumnus of Drexel(Class of 1970) and Michigan State, he will speak on the role of computerscience departments in bioinformatics education and training.In addition to computer literacy and scientific literacy, Liebmanbelieves the following should be requirements for entering the bioinformaticsfield:Clinical perspective, to understand how the data is intendedto be used. “Bioinformatics is focused on genomics now, producinga lot of targets, but they are not validated targets. That’s wherethe value will come and that needs a lot of clinical experience.”Understanding of business processes. “Coming in assomeone trained in science, you might not get exposed to that, butit helps to facilitate the transition.”Quantitative analysis. Liebman likes to recruit engineers.”Someone with an engineering perspective can understand largescale systems. The biological systems are complex processes, not justmolecules.”In summary: biology majors should take biomedical engineering,and engineers should take a little chemistry or biology.The all important salary question is deceiving. With a bachelor’sdegree you would start at probably $40,000 to $45,000 in a big company.A PhD without much experience is making $70,000 and $80,000. A PhDwith an MD is making more than $100,000That may sound “average” now, but look to the future. “Thisindustry isn’t that old,” says Liebman. There are so few peoplein the field now, that new entries have an unusually a clear fieldto the top executive spots in the future. Says Liebman: “Thisindustry isn’t that old.”Top Of PageScience for KidsFuture scientists can lobby their parents to take themto the Community Science Day and Open House set for Saturday, March5, 11 a.m. to 3 p.m., at Hopewell Valley Central High School on TimberlandDrive in Hopewell.Hands-on science experiments and demonstrations ranging from biologyand chemistry to environmental ecology and physics will be gearedfor families with children from kindergarten to sixth grade. The daywill particularly celebrate science equipment purchased with a $50,000grant from Bristol-Myers Squibb.”We have a mission to improve the educational experience of studentsin the Hopewell Valley School District,” says Joe Montemarano,an officer of the foundation who is also director of industrial liaisonat Princeton University’s POEM Center. “Corporations and governmentorganizations have been invited to share their perspectives on scienceeducation for today and into the new millennium,” says Montemarano.Congressman Rush Holt, a long-time Hopewell resident, is alsolikely to be in the crowd.Who are doing these experiments? Everyone from prize-winning scientiststo high school students, plus parents and volunteers from industryand government. Call 609-737-0105 for information.That very Saturday at 9:30 a.m. teenage scientists can learn aboutmarine biology as part of the “Science on Saturday” seriesat Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory on the Forrestal Campus. “OceanObservatories Off the Coast of New Jersey, What Can We See?” isthe topic for Oscar Schofield of the Rutgers University Institutefor Marine and Coastal Sciences. The following week, on Saturday,March 13, Anita Russell of Bristol-Myers Squibb speaks on “TheBirth of a Drug. The science series is geared toward high school students,but all are welcome. Registration is on-site prior to each session,and it is free. Call 609-243-2121.Top Of PageScience for WomenThe College of New Jersey celebrates Women’s HistoryMonth with a series of “Women in Science” lectures. SandraHarding, professor of education and women’s studies and the directorof UCLA’s Center for the Study of Women, will give a lecture on “Womenand Science: Objectivity Issues” at the Music Building ConcertHall on Thursday, March 4, 3 p.m.. The Women in Science series continueswith a lecture by Shirley Tilghman, professor of molecular biologyand chair of the council on Science and Technology at Princeton University,on Monday, March 8, at 2:30 p.m.On Thursday, March 11, at 3 p.m., Helen Burman, a chemistryprofessor from Rutgers, talks about “35 Years as a Crystallographer.”Jean Taylor, a Rutgers math professor, will present a lecture”Women in Mathematics: 1969 versus Now” on Monday, March 22,at 11 a.m. The last lecture of the series, “So Many Galaxies .. . So Little Time” will be by Margaret Geller, professorof astrophysics from Harvard on Wednesday, March 24, at 2 p.m.The Women and Science series is free and open to the public. CallPatty Karlowitsch at 609-771-2539 for locations.Top Of PageNJ Women AwardsB>Iris Chang of Princeton will be one of the sixNew Jersey women honored with Douglass College’s prestigious New JerseyWomen of Achievement Awards on Monday, March 8, at 5 p.m. at NeilsonDining Hall on the Rutgers’ Douglass campus in New Brunswick. PenelopeE. Lattimer, chairwoman of the New Jersey State Council on theArts, will be the keynote speaker. Tickets are $15 each. Contact ViolaVan Jones at 732-932-9603 for more information.The retired vice president of American Re-Insurance Company, Changhas managed worldwide systems development and implementation. In 1991the National Association of Insurance Women named her OutstandingAchiever of the Year. A native of China, Chang helped establish theChinese Cultural Exchange Collection at the Plainsboro Public Library,where she is a board member.Created in 1981 by Douglass College, the college for women at Rutgers,and the New Jersey State Federation of Women’s Clubs, the state’slargest volunteer organization, the awards honor women whose leadership,courage, humanistic contributions, philanthropic activities, communityservice, professional commitment, or other achievements have distinguishedthem.The other honorees are:State Senator Diane Allen of Edgewater Park, state senator fromthe 7th district. An Emmy Award-winning former news anchor, she leda successful legal battle for women’s rights after suffering age andsex discrimination herself. Gail Mowry Ashley of Stockton, thefirst full professor of geological sciences at Rutgers, is also presidentof the 15,000 member Geological Society of America. Elizabeth Christophersonof Harding Township is New Jersey Network’s first female CEO. DianneMills McKay of Mount Holly, is chairman of the New Jersey AdvisoryCommission on the status of Women. Mickie McSwieney of Allenhurstis program coordinator of Brookdale Community College’s DisplacedHomemaker Program.Top Of PageFast 500Six Princeton area companies — Novasoft InformationTechnology Corp., Logic Works Inc., Commtech Corporation, SimstarInc., i-Stat Corp., and T/Mac Inc. — were among the 20 New Jerseycompanies selected to receive the 1998 National Fast 500 awards. Theawards, sponsored by Deloitte and Touche LLP, recognize the country’sfastest growing technology companies and were presented last Thursday,February 25.Novasoft Information Technology Corp., moving soon to 4014 QuakerbridgeRoad, is involved with E-commerce, migration and outsourcing applications,year 2000 conversions, and training. Founded in 1993 as a conversioncompany for computer language and database with six employees, Novasoftnow has over 220 employees worldwide, with operations in Europe andIndia. “Our goal is NASDAQ by 2000,” says Neil Bhaskar,CEO. Four of the star employees — Cawas Desai, Joseph Donnelly,Heather Winkler, and Nilesh Kedia — each got a MercedesBenz at a retreat in Atlantic City in January.Commtech Corporation, is based at 2555 Route 130 South. This modemmanufacturing company is owned by Frank Fawzi.The diagnostic blood analysis equipment manufacturing company, i-StatCorporation, is based at 101 Windsor Center Drive in East Windsor.i-Stat’s systems are in use in health organizations including VHA,Kaiser Permanente, and Premier, and is traded on NASDAQ as STAT. WilliamP. Moffit is president and CEO, the company has 120 employees atits East Windsor facility.SimStar Digital Media, a digital media and engineering firm locatedat 1 Airport Place in Skillman, services healthcare clients with Internet,intranet, and CD-ROM products. Headed by David Reim the firmdevelops and delivers services for the pharmaceutical industry infive areas — patient education, physician education, brand promotion,sales force training, and internal systems. It grew from 10 to 34employees in one year.Logic Works, one of Princeton’s hottest software companies, was acquiredby Illinois-based Platinum Technology and has a contract with IBMto integrate its chief product ERwin into IBM products. The companyis located at 111 Campus Drive, University Square.T/Mac Inc. is a designer and manufacturer and repair of microwavepower amplifiers and subsystems for military and commercial applications.It recently expanded from 2,500 to 4,000 feet within the TechnologyHelp Desk’s incubator at 100 Jersey Avenue, has 11 employees, andhas increased business 500 percent since it began (https://www.tmacinc.com.).”Our application is primarily to a technology in the 10 to 20year old vicinity, a very mature market that to a large extent hasbeen abandoned by the larger companies in favor of the cellular market,”says Ted Wurtzelman, the CEO. “In our industry, most ofthe people capable of doing what we do in the larger companies havebeen laid off.”Unlike i-Stat (which is already public) and NovaSoft (which plansto go public) Wurtzelman never expects to have an IPO: “We aredoing over $2 million but we want to manage the business and producethe highest possible units rather than moving from deal one to dealtwo.Top Of PageNew Brunswick Transit GuideKeep Middlesex Moving Inc. (KMM), Middlesex County’stransportation management association has published an updated guideof the different bus routes serving the city of New Brunswick, withfunding provided by New Jersey Transit.”New Brunswick! You Can Get There By Bus,” is a pocket sizeguide that provides narrative descriptions of the current New JerseyTransit, Suburban Transit/Coach USA, Somerset County Dash, and HubCity bus routes, a color coded map, points of interest accessibleby bus, and tips for using bus transit. Phone numbers for additionalinformation are also included.”The guide is just one way to help commuters become more comfortablewith using mass transit,” says Roberta A. Karpinecz, KMM’sprogram manager. “KMM also plans to update the route maps in thecity’s bus shelters and is working with the Middlesex County PlanningBoard to revise the County’s transit guide.”KMM is a non-profit organization that works with employers, commuters,local, county, and state governments, and New Jersey Transit to promotetransportation alternatives. Call KMM at 732-745-4368 for free copies.Next StoryCorrections or additions?This page is published by PrincetonInfo.com— the web site for U.S. 1 Newspaper in Princeton, New Jersey.
