Has your CEO been quietly unloading stock? Has your competitor staked out any Internet domains lately? Won any patents? Have analysts downgraded your stock? Is the Securities and Exchange Commission nipping at your heels?
Enter www.companysleuth.com, evil twin of Homework Helper, both projects of Internet pioneer Infonautics Inc., which specializes in information-heavy Web sites. Companysleuth, debuting now, tracks up to 10 companies by stock ticker symbol and does sweeping nightly searches on-line to ferret out everything from gossip in chat rooms to formal filings before the SEC concerning your 10 targets.
Less than a week old, companysleuth.com already ranks as perhaps the nation’s best source for water cooler gossip all across corporate America.
TONKA WONKS
TOYS FOR TECHNO TOTS
American kiddie toy giant Hasbro’s new Interactive Inc. subsidiary will test the nerves of computer-owning parents everywhere with WorkShop CD-ROM Playset. It’s a plastic gadget that fits over the keyboard of your Pentium 90 Mhz or above PC. Then your toddler hammers away at it, just as earlier generations used to play with wooden toy work benches.
Junior or Missy gets a hammer, a wrench, a saw, a punch press and other plastic tools to wack at the plastic bench that fits over the keyboard and straps in place with a velcro belt. Hitting and turning stuff activates plastic plungers that press various keys as the tyke responds to stories played on the monitor screen.
SIDEWALK SLIPPAGE
CHICAGO IS MISSING
If Microsoft Corp. took as long building a Web browser as it’s taken to get it’s long-ballyhooed www.sidewalk.com site for Chicago done, Bill Gates would probably be a friendly witness in a federal case accusing Netscape Communications Inc. of being a ruthless monopoly instead of vice versa.
At last week’s launch of a very slick national sidewalk site, Microsoft officials said they won’t have their Chicago site up for at least another two months.
Meanwhile, Sidewalk has morphed into one very slick buyers’ guide, particularly for high tech gadgets, and particularly ones that run on Microsoft software.
YOU’VE GOT FARE
GIVE ‘EM EL
It’s kind of cranky, but a new Chicago Transit Authority Web site (www.chicagotransit.com) lets those who don’t fear hackers avoid mingling with one’s fellow riffraff at those foreboding subway station fare card vending machines.
You fill in name/address/home phone/work phone and then trust the Web and the CTA with your credit card number and expiration date and wait for your transit card to arrive in the mail. You get $15 worth of rides for $13.50, or $18 worth for $16.50.
One of these cards and a blue ribbon at the county fair will get you a ride anywhere in town.
