The Net Today

Back in the early 1990s, when 486 PCs were king and IBM still thought it had a chance with OS/2, people who went online were academics or technicians. A few years later, after Netscape discovered an audience and Microsoft discovered the Rolling Stones, people who went online were early adopters. By the end of the decade, dot.com mania was firmly entrenched, and the people going online were your relatives and neighbors.

Now that so many people are online, we have some good news and some bad news to deliver. The good news is that the Internet is a fantastic communications network that gives you access to an unparalleled wealth of knowledge. The bad news is that the Net is also a congested snake pit of frustrations. Here is my list, in no particular order, of the top things I find irritating about the Internet.

Spam. The online version of junk mail is more than merely irritating. It wastes time, takes up space, and forces you to delete, delete, delete. It can range from insipid “Make a million dollars a year working two hours a week” claims, to garbage with XXX-rated subject lines. Credit card companies, the kings of regular junk mail, have discovered the Internet and are now killing bytes along with trees. Spare us!

Incrediblylongdomainnamesthatmustbespelledperfectly. Now that every word you can think of is attached to dot.com, Internet addresses are getting longer. Thanks to the unforgiving nature of the domain name server system, if you make a single error while typing long names, you’re out of luck. Or worse, you reach another site (most likely adult oriented) that’s reserved similar addresses containing typos people are most likely to make. We need to overhaul the domain name system.

Sites that block out our browsers Back buttons. Imagine going into a local store that tried to keep you from leaving when you wanted to; would you ever go there again? I wouldn’t, either.

Shopping sites that hide the shipping charges. When you shop in the real world, you want to know the total cost of your purchase before you’re in the checkout lane reaching for your wallet. Why don’t all shopping sites include a quick total feature that instantly totals the cost of everything in your cart, including the shipping charges?

Intrusive, in-your-face advertising. There’s a difference between creative advertising that gives us the option of pursuing the topic, and in-your-face ads that take over your browser and force you to sit through long downloads. Companies should concentrate on getting their message across to the right audience in the most appealing way, rather than proliferating bandwidth-hogging ads, or developing technologies that let them kidnap someone’s browser.

Broken links. I’m tired of going to Atlanta. Not in the literal sense, mind you; it’s web slang for getting the 404, site not found error message, because 404 is Atlanta’s area code. When sites move content around, they break the links to that content. Someone needs to figure out a smart way to avoid, and eliminate, all the links that are broken every day.

Poorly designed sites. If companies aren’t going to put information on their sites in a way that makes it easy to find what you want, they shouldn’t be on the web, period.

How long it takes to download material. We’ve used dial-up accounts, cable modems, DSL (Digital Subscriber Line) connections, and fractional T3 lines to access the Internet. Even the broadband options can crawl at times. We know it’s going to take a while, but we want fiber-optic access at home.

If every frustration is also an opportunity knocking, then entrepreneurs might want to take note of the items on this list.

(Mendoza is Systems Administrator of Verizon. For question, e-mail Mendoza at franco.mendoza@vzpacifica.com.)