Today, we take a brief detour from our roadmap to success and deal with a
major problem facing almost anyone trying to use the Internet as a business tool
- too much information to choose from. I am constantly asked how I deal with
this issue and the answer is very simple - Davenetics. I like it so much that if I
had to choose only one source to keep up with what is going on in the Internet
industry, I would choose Davenetics. See below to find out why.
The Davenetics Advantage
Davenetics is a daily e-mail newsletter that helps keep its subscribers in
the loop regarding web-related news. It surveys the leading web-publications
each day and identifies the top and/or most interesting stories of the day. It
then provides links to those stories, along with informative blurbs regarding
the content you will find when you click.
Davenetics keeps its newsletters short and usually provides around 7-10
links. Examples of a few blurbs are:
"HOLY VERTICALS BATMAN!"
"Business to Business e-commerce will grow at a rate of about 33% a year
by 2003 according to the Boston Consulting Group. Up to a fourth of all
corporate purchasing will be done online by that time."
http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1008-200-1502982.html
"WHO'S YOUR DADDY?"
"Puff Daddy is shifting some of his entertainment muscle to the web with
the upcoming launch of Notorious.com. It will be a megastore, "that features and
attracts rebels, rule breakers and mavericks -notorious people who change the
world with their unique brand of individualism." Not unlike this newsletter,
eh..."
http://www.nypost.com/business/20215.htm
"WINDOWS OF OPPORTUNITY CLOSING?"
"Yahoo! (parent of Broadcast.com) may move to drop support of Real Audio
by the end of the year and switch over completely to the Window's Media format."
http://www.internetnews.com/
streaming-news/article/0,1087,8161_266261,00.html
"STORY BOARD"
"Industry Standard lists their choices for the ten stories that shook the
net over the last year. Oddly enough, there is no mention of Mahir."
http://cnn.com/1999/TECH/computing/
12/22/standard.10.stories.idg/index.html
"A LARGER CAST OF CHARACTERS"
The maximum length of domain names will be extended from 22 characters to
61 characters. Let the buying begin."
http://www.csmonitor.com/atcsmonitor/
cybercoverage/bandwidth/p-122199bwurl.html
Notice that each of the blurbs is followed by a link that takes you directly
to the complete story. The entire process of skimming Davenetics, including the
links, takes only a few minutes, and when you are done - you are really in the
know.
Use The Newsmonger Headline Source
My favorite and most used feature of the newsletter is the Newsmonger Headline
Source. Here, Davenetics reviews leading web publications and provides very
short - 4 or 5 word - summaries of each article of the publication. You can
learn a lot simply by reading these short summaries. If you click on the
particular summary, you can learn even more, because you are quickly taken to
the original article where you can read it in its entirety, or just skim it. In
any event, you have been provided with the latest news quickly and efficiently.
The site also provides archives and a more complete list of sources of
information, including sites, sounds and searches.
I Learned Davenetic's Secret
As I prepared this column, I scoured the Davenetics site to learn as much as
I could. In doing so, I learned that Davenetics is written by Dave Pell. The key
point here is that Dave Pell is the managing director of Arba Seed Investment Group. He
invests in, and advises, more than twenty Internet start-ups at various stages
of development. This means that he is just as busy as we are and more
importantly, knows what being an entrepreneur and start-up is all about.
I personally believe that Dave Pell's background and experience is the reason
why Davenetics is designed the way it is - developed by a busy entrepreneur -
for busy entrepreneurs.
Next week we get back to our roadmap for start-ups, and because of
Davenetics, we all should be much better informed.
Published by Israel's Business Arena on January 4, 2000.