Are you surprised to learn that Republicans act differently online than do Democrats? GOP clickers swarm like well-heeled flies to Web stock analysis sites, while Democrats lollygag around touchy-feely shopping portals.
A fascinating study by Media Matrix surveyed 55,000 Web users to flesh out how party animals differ online. Six of the top 10 sites favored by Republicans are business-finance stops: Schwab.com, TheStreet.com, BigCharts.com, ETrade.com, Fidelity.com and CNBC.com.
While GOP surfers dream of clipping Treasury coupons, digital Dems dream of clipping store discount coupons at these favorites: ShoppingList.com, Colonize.com, AskMe.com, EHow.com, ArcaMax.com, EZsweeps.com, and ClubMom.com.
PASS AND PRAYSTATION
SLIP-UP AT SONY
Watch out, Mom and Pop, a bear of a holiday shopping crunch looms as Japan’s Sony fessed up that it can ship only half of the red-hot PlayStation 2 “supercomputer in a toy box” video games it had promised for Oct. 26. Kids clamor for these wonder widgets that boast chips that run circles around Pentiums, Internet connectivity and a DVD movie player, along with ultrarealistic shoot-’em-up graphics and booming stereo sound. Sticker price: $300; if you can get one. Feliz Navidad.
NO PUFF JOBS
WINDOWS ON APPLE
Talk about hatchet Jobs! A new scorched-earth biography of Apple Computer Inc.’s once-and-forever CEO Steve Jobs makes America’s MacMeister look like a megabyte Mussolini. But he sure made the money trains run on time, hauling in profits from iMac sales.
Alan Deutschman’s “The Second Coming of Steve Jobs” is a can’t-put-it-down expose of Jobs, whose inner circle (says Deutschman) fear riding with him in elevators, a favorite place for some of his infamous spontaneous firings.
Worst of all, we learn on page 254, the Jobster didn’t even use Macintoshes in his own office, favoring a Microsoft Windows Toshiba Terca for his serious business computing. Now that’s a shot across the bow.
CARDINAL CARDING
VATICAN VISAS
With 40 million pilgrims expected to visit Rome and the Vatican during the Papal Jubilee Year of 2000, Pope John Paul II’s computer programmers turned to Oak Brook-based Lakeview Technology for some appropriately named software: high availability and continuous operations solutions.
Lakeview’s MIMIX software tracks plastic “Pilgrim Cards” given visitors to control admissions to services, papal audiences and such without creating ungodly gridlock. Lakeview CEO Bill Merchantz says the company gets satisfaction from this deal that “transcend(s) the monetary realm.”
