It probably won’t surprise you, but the latest survey of the cream of the crop among America’s corporate sales force supervisors found that 49 percent of all sales managers confirmed that their sales reps have lied to customers. Just like that chief of police in Casablanca, this writer is shocked to hear this. Shocked and amazed.
Charles Butler, editor of Sales & Marketing Management magazine, which did the poll, rounded up the usual suspects to blame–computer-created corporate re-engineering and downsizing. Play it again, Chuck.
CITY HALL DATABASE
THE DALEY DISCLOSURE
Speaking of rounding up the usual suspects, point your Web browser to www.ci.chi.il.us/mayor/disclosure, where “Mayor Daley’s Disclosure Database” now is up and running with a computer-searchable list of “everyone involved with new city contracts and leases,” as that Web page’s own text puts it.
You should note that key word “new” before you get any high hopes about finding where all the bodies are buried. The database only goes back to Nov. 28, so watch that space. A check of the name Daley found no hits. Are you shocked? Amazed, maybe?
VIRTUAL UNREALITY
THE HOUSE THAT GATES BUILT
This one is too ironic not to share. U.S. News & World Report put high technology on last week’s cover and served up on its Web site a point-and-click virtual reality tour of Bill Gates’ $60 million wonder house being built in Seattle’s ‘burbs.
Trouble was, the Web site was written in Java and won’t work on computers running Microsoft Internet Explorer–you know, the software that Atty. Gen. Janet Reno says gives Gates an unfair advantage over such competitors as Java’s developer, Scott McNealy of Sun Microsystems Inc.
BTW (by the way in Netspeak), the virtual tour is a real gas using Netscape Navigator at www.usnews.com. Pity Bill can’t see it on his own software.
SECURITY OR PARANOIA?
COMPUTERS SAVING FACE
If you’re the paranoid type who’s afraid somebody else in the family will figure out your password and log on to the computer as you, you’ll love what Visionics Corp., an outfit in Jersey City, has to show you. The software lets your computer take in your countenance via a small TV camera and then log you on if it decides that you are, in fact, you.
“FaceIt PC, Face Recognition Software” ($149 at www.faceit.com) uses a batch of pattern recognition algorithms and a few practice recognition sessions where the software gets to know your mug. It does a more than credible job of telling Dick and Jane from Mom and Dad and their dog, Spot.
