Bulletin Board

This collection includes short articles about sharing your mailing list, affordable video on the Web, online copyright clearance, memorable computer passwords, handhelds as bar-code scanners, and the star computer in the Internet story.

So You Want to Share Your Mailing List

With dot-com companies making a bundle off users' personal information, you may wonder whether you can do the same -- without alienating your customers.

After all, many of those efforts have gotten plenty of bad press. Earlier this year Internet-ad firm DoubleClick Inc. was forced to postpone its plan to create profiles on Web travelers by combining data on their Web-use patterns with their personal information. The resulting profiles, DoubleClick maintained, would help marketers better target advertising. Privacy-conscious consumers roared their disapproval.

Meanwhile, the government has taken notice. In May the Federal Trade Commission urged Congress to set tougher standards for collecting consumer information online. A separate bill that began making its way through the Senate Judiciary Committee last spring would require Web sites to notify consumers about what information they're collecting.

Are you still game to rent out customer data? If so, take heart: you can do so responsibly. (See "Getting Started," below.) For example, Boston-based music retailer Newbury Comics Inc. invites customers to join its E-Mail Club. Members get discounts on merchandise in exchange for letting the company track their purchases; the 21-store chain uses that data for merchandising and marketing.

Newbury Comics also E-mails club members information about promotions that are jointly sponsored by bands, nightclubs, concert promoters, and recording companies (for instance, alerting Foo Fighters fans about new CDs or upcoming shows). But those sponsors never get direct access to customers. "E-mails are always from Newbury Comics," says Trish Chapman-Kane, director of Newbury Comics Interactive. "We're not going to ever sell personal information or trade it with anyone."

Even though Newbury Comics charges its marketing partners nothing for the conduit to its customers, the mailing list still generates revenues: each of its 12,000-plus members pays $3 a year to participate.

In any case, businesses can share information about their customers without getting into trouble with them, says Andrew Shen, policy analyst for the Electronic Privacy Information Center, in Washington, D.C. The key: "Be very open about what you're doing and why." -- Anne Stuart

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Getting Started

The following are guidelines for responsibly sharing information about your customers.

Be up front. Whenever you collect information, tell your customers what you'll use, how you'll use it, who'll get access to it, and how you'll protect it.

Let them say no. Make sure customers know they can decline to provide data that may be shared.

Seek selectively. Consumers get nervous about providing birth dates, Social Security numbers, income figures, and details about their kids. If you don't need it, don't request it.

Get branded. TRUSTe and other Internet-privacy organizations offer Web-site "seals of approval." -- A.S.

For more information on this topic, check out inc.com's guide to managing customer data.

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Sweet Streams (Are Made of This)

You've got a video clip to post on your company's Web site -- a new product or a message from your president. How hard could it be to put it online?

Hard enough, as Gary Jesch found out. His company, CHOPS & Associates Live Animation, based outside Reno, Nev., produces live video performances for trade-show exhibitors.

Since 1993, CHOPS productions have been a hit at trade shows. But potential clients couldn't see what the company was up to unless they wandered past a booth where one of the animated virtual performers was holding court.

Jesch thought about streaming live video from trade shows on his Web site (www.chops.com). But live feeds are expensive. His estimate: about $15,000 for a new server, software, and ISP fees. That was too much for his $200,000 business.

His fallback position was to post an archived one-hour show. But even that wasn't simple. If Jesch had wanted to host the video files, he would still have had to lay out cash for the server, the software, and ISP hosting. The costs would have been a bit cheaper, since archived files generally have fewer concurrent users -- and thus consume less bandwidth -- than live ones. Still, Jesch cringed at the thought of spending thousands.

His solution: outsource it. Jesch turned to VideoFarm.com, run by New York City-based Javu Technologies Inc. For just $45 a month, VideoFarm.com hosts Jesch's video files, giving him up to 500MB of space and 10GB a month of bandwidth. Now when visitors to Jesch's site click to watch a video, the content is pulled up from a VideoFarm server.