Bulletin Board

A collection of short pieces focusing on various aspects of technology, such as new products and services.

Location, Location, Location

Here's a nightmare scenario: You're far from home, lost, and driving through some mountain range on a snowy winter night when suddenly your car dies. Fortunately, you have your trusty cellular phone with you. But when you call 911 for help, you realize that you can't tell the dispatcher where you are--and that it could take him anywhere from five minutes to five days to trace your cellular signal.

Too bad you don't have FoneFinder with you. Developed by patent attorney Bob Tendler, chairman of Tendler Cellular, in Boston (800-896-4440), the miniature system, which can be integrated into just about any cellular phone, combines global-positioning-system (GPS) tracking technology with a voice-synthesis chip. All a caller has to do is push a special panic button mounted on the cell phone. The device automatically dials the nearest 911 service, and the synthesized voice announces its exact location. If all goes smoothly, says Tendler, cell-phone manufacturer Audiovox will have the system in its Model 405 come September. --Joshua Macht

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Free at Last

Signing up for an on-line newsletter or updates from your favorite newsgroup is easy. You enter your E-mail address on the dotted line and never think about it again--that is, until you want to discontinue the service. Then it seems as if only a presidential pardon could stop the daily onslaught of messages you face.

One option to check out is Cancel-it (www.cancel-it.com), a free on-line consumer service that can help you rid your life of unwanted E-mail and pesky dial-up Internet accounts and other on-line subscriptions that you've been trying to shake since the day you signed on. Just fill out the proper form at the Cancel-it site, and within 24 hours the service will kick into gear. A week or so later you should be free.

The site's inventor, Phillip Underhill, believes he's performing a service not only for consumers but for large companies like America Online and Microsoft as well. "We're finding out about what customers don't like on-line, and that's important information for companies to have," says Underhill, founder of Dot Com Interactive, an electronic-marketing firm based in New York City. "And, of course, it's good customer service to make it easy to quit something." --J.M.

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Growth areas on the Internet, and expected rate of increase in next two years

 Training and/or continuing education 272%Direct sales to customers 260%Electronic publishing 189%Telecommuting 171% 

Source: 1997 American Management Association survey of 3,500 executives and 700 systems and administrative managers.

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Things We Love

As director of international sales for Systems Computer Supplies, a $40-million computer-supply store in Miami, Octavio Rios receives hundreds of computer accessories a week to sample. Recently, one called out to him: the WorldTalk Internet Phone, from InterAct Multimedia Products ($49.99; 410-238-2424; www.interact-acc.com).

The plastic phone, which comes bundled with Microsoft's NetMeeting and Internet Explorer, looks like an ordinary phone with no dial pad; it hooks into your computer instead of a wall jack. To make a call, you enter an E-mail address in a box on the screen. The recipient of your E-mail, who must also have Internet telephony software and either a computer microphone or the WorldTalk phone, gets a screen message about the call. Then you talk--you through the WorldTalk phone, and the recipient through the WorldTalk phone or the mike.

Rios initially purchased the phone just for fun. But after using it to talk to some of his clients in South America, he decided he should use it for business--and carry it in his store. "I realized I could be facing a hell of a savings on international calls," says Rios, who adds that he rings up nearly $18,000 a month in overseas telephone charges. "It's a beautiful piece of equipment. I hope they don't regulate it." --Sarah Schafer

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A River Runs Through IT

GRAND FORKS, N. DAK.--When the Red River recently overflowed its banks and flooded Grand Forks, N. Dak., it displaced more than 50,000 residents and devastated virtually every small business in the downtown area. But at least one longtime Grand Forks business owner was able to keep Mother Nature from crippling his company--primarily because he'd decided to automate seven years earlier.

Howard Palay's lived in Grand Forks all his life. His 16-employee company, Palay Display Industries Inc., sells retail fixtures and supplies--everything from candy racks to mannequins--through a mail-order catalog. The company has occupied the same spot since 1960. Back then, Palay's father, Robert, used paper-based systems to track orders and inventory. Today computers have streamlined the process: customers place orders via 800 numbers that ring in either Grand Forks or a branch office in Minneapolis, a good 320 miles away; operators punch data into computerized customer files; and labels are automatically printed out in a main stockroom.