House hunting with cursor and click; Web services give buyers more control, changing the rules of the real estate game
Article Abstract:
The World Wide Web has altered the real estate industry by shifting more control to potential house buyers. The most significant change consists of research, as shoppers can mostly bypass the traditional methods of consulting real-estate agents and visiting homes selected by the agent. Microsoft raised the stakes in an already competitive online real estate services market with the debut of its Jul 1998 Home Advisor site (www.homeadvisor.com). One of the other estimated 200,000 real estate Web sites is the National Association of Realtors (www.realtor.com), the likely industry leader with more than 1.2 million listings. Realtors and newspapers consider the online dissemination as a threat to their businesses of controlling and advertising information. Web sites can provide convenience for remote shoppers who can study a home's descriptions, dimensions and photographs to make informed decisions. Online sites also can list realtors, mortgage rates, property tax rates, schools and local amenities.
Publication Name: The New York Times
Subject: Business, general
ISSN: 0362-4331
Year: 1998
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Bringing the visual world of the Web to the blind
Article Abstract:
Blind people can utilize the World Wide Web for personal interest as well as a necessary tool for required job skills. Many of the tens of thousands of blind computer users are learning to use the Web, according to Curtis Chong, director of the National Federation of the Blind. Between 15,000 and 18,000 customers deploy Hunter-Joyce's approximately $795 JAWS (Job Access With Speech) for Windows screen reader, according to the manufacturer. Hunter-Joyce will include a speech synthesizer in its new JAWS version, which is due in spring 1998. Pertinent Web sites include the National Federation of the Blind's corporate-resource page (www.nfb.org/computer.htm), the World Wide Web Consortium's Web Accessibility Initiative (www.w3.org), the National Federation of the Blind's Web site (www.nfb.org/webacc.htm) and the Center for Applied Speech Technology's Web site accessibility service (www.cast.org/hobby).
Publication Name: The New York Times
Subject: Business, general
ISSN: 0362-4331
Year: 1998
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Happy birthday, your team won, your stock crashed; personalization is designed to provide you with your own Web, not the world's
Article Abstract:
Personalization allows World Wide Web users to customize their information. This process, which is gaining popularity after years of struggles, requires computers to send specific information. Many Internet experts say personalization can help customers make more efficient searches through the more than 650,000 available Web sites. My Yahoo, My Excite and My Web TV are among the services that deliver customers' favorite subjects. News, weather, sports, stock quotations and horoscopes are some of the favorite topics. Personalization differs from push technologies, in which Pointcast Network and other software products download a user's less-specific information categories before logging off. Push technology, introduced in the mid-1990s, lost popularity because it consumed resources and overwhelmed computer hard drives. A drawback to personalization is explaining the concept, according to Excite.
Publication Name: The New York Times
Subject: Business, general
ISSN: 0362-4331
Year: 1998
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