SDiTOR: NANCY BUSS BUSEME ss 2 the daily herald POSiTfYS CTHUGSLES THURSDAY, S1P1 EMBER 23, l as porn shows Family Web pages mislabeled By PETE SLOVER The Dallas Morning News DALLAS Photographer Bill Maselunas was curious when he started noticing hits on his family Web site from the search index at search, thunders tone.com. Curious turned to furious that his Web page snapshots of his Cyberspace next business frontier 4 - !: In business, I've never had any the Chicken Little Approach. People who run around Shouting that the 6ky is falling are less than useless. Alarmists are Hme for Smost always counterproductive. That said, Fd like to share a few droughts on the impact of the Internet on small retailers. Since the nd of World War II, small retailers Jiave been under siege in one form or another. First came supermarkets. Then tame malls. National chains like and Home Depot showed At next. the same time, the cata-selletip blossomed big, like Land's tnd and Eddie Bauer, Victoria's Secret, J. Crew, Fingerhut and hundreds of others. j The Internet, if ignored by small jotailers, poses an even bigger threat. A few months back I wrote in this tolumn about how much I enjoyed Trading Bill Gates' new book, Business the Speed of Thought." Wal-Ma- ' I'VE BEEN haunted ever since an almost throwaway line Gates wrote. He said that retailers had to jpe aware of threats aside from their Jraditional industry competitors. He didn't use the term "cybermalls,"but twill here. It's simple: He felt that Internet retailers would offer any divergent product they felt they tpuld sell in sufficient volume to jrpderprice traditional retailers in Jhat particular business. An example of this occurred recently when Sotheby's struck a deal to sell through Amazon.com. jThat is, an Internet company that parted out selling only books at jhuge discounts now will sell expensive and rare items from Sotheby's, Jhe venerable upscale auction house. J Internet retailing is wide open. Everyone knows about the great jleals offered by travel agencies and puto dealers who are using the jnternet for nationwide sales. Want Jo tour the Clinton's new borne in fs'ew York? Just log on. Almost every jveek the New York Times profiles ?n Internet startup specializing in Expensive luxury items. Soon any Salable item will be offered on the Jiy daughter, Fiona classified as triple-- Thunderstone's ,. . . automated indexing software. It apparently interpreted references to the infant cooing and giggling as after finding www.ma8elunas.com classified as a Triple-- adult magazine. Maselunas' first step was to contact Thunderstone and get his site removed from the index. The company acknowledged to him and in a Dallas Morning News interview 38rTn. Mackav's Moral: Cyberspace can ilake your business into outer space. Survey Mackay is the chairman and ) of Mackay Envelope Corp. and can ; contacted at harveyfnackay.com. but not disappoint- prise maintained that such errors are the unavoidable price of progress in Web categorization. Curious after his discovery, Maselunas began browsing Thunderstone to see what other pages landed in smut categories. Amid bounteous links to bonafide raunch, he discovered other family Web pages and squeaky clean businesses ranging from real estate offices to online shoe stores to even a Christian Internet provider Web offering porn-filtere- d access. The proprietor of that the provider, International Family Network (www.i-f-n.coexpressed but-Web-filter- at being lumped with smut merchants. Tm actually excited about it," says Troy LaCoe, president "I figure and founder of anybody looking for that kind of thing could use what we're offering." that's pretty scary." The director of Thunder8tone's Cleveland, Web site bristled when contacted about Maselunas' complaint. Ohio-base- d Marketing guru markets himself By ELAINE JACKSON Hercld Correspondent Coca-Col- a success. In the introduction he states: "Successful companies don't owe their greatness to luck. They're on top because they know more about their consumers than the competition and they execute their marketing efforts better." The same can be said for successful authors. Fortunately for the reader, Schulz really does know his business and he outlines a blueprint for marketing success for the small entrepreneur or large business. As he points out, the product or scope of the promotion may differ but the prin- - Bill Maselunas "That guy is kind of crazy. I don't understand his motivation," says Bart Richards, who says Maselunas shares the blame for the mistake. "It's a terrible idea, putting pictures of your children on the Internet," Richards says, listing several steps Maselunas could have taken to avoid the problem. "My God," Richards says, "he was asking for it." Maselunas that says Thunderstone's help desk told him it was up to him to file the online forms to get the site reclassified by the company's "robot." That process could take several weeks, he was told. "It's just wrong to associate g and Diane. A Web search that sort of thing and then to act like it's our fault. They say Tough, my robot did it. Fix it yourself" Maselunas says he contactpeople with ed a lawyer in Ohio, who told him it probably would not be worth legal action to make his point. But Stephen Gillen, an expert on Internet law, says Thunderstone might technically be liable for suggesting someone is dealing smut. "I think there is a theoretical cause of action for libel or a false-lig- invasion of privacy, but establishing that there were any real damages would be tough," especially considering that Thunderstone offers a mechanism for curing mistakes, says Gillen. Dow industrials fall to lowest level since June LIS.! r It is no surPR0V0 Eric Schulz that prise knows a lot about marketing. Bill "My worst fear is that somebody is looking at my site, trying to get porn, and immediately sees a picture of a little girl. I don't know how sick people get, but that's pretty scary." But Maselunas says the notion gives him the creeps. "My worst fear is that somebody is looking at my site, trying to get porn, and immediately sees a picture of a little girl," Maselunas says. "I don't know how sick people get, but Book review: After a blitz that included signings in several area bookstores, Schulz should be satisfied that he has followed his own recipe for marketing hap-Sffi- to RONALD MARTINEZ Dallas Morning News Squeaky clean: Fiona Maselunas, 9 months, is featured on the Web page set up by her parents engine used a computer to check key words and classified the page as a pornographic site. that mistakes happen, but it ment able. trans-Jjortatio- tWlaiWYIBHI "How can they say that and anybody else to associate me with pornography?" Maselunas wondered, "Even the smallest retailers should et in on this action. They have two fjptions, and one super opportunity. They can start their own Web site, or hey can join an umbrella Web site. umbrella Web site will no doubt arise like the Kinko's franchise or Jhe old nationwide florist network. ; Remember, the Internet uses fome of the same laws for interstate Commerce developed over a century nd a half ago to govern railroads. Jtailroad barons thought they were Jn the railroad business until interstate truckers taught them the hard n JesSon that they were in the instead. business I Don't let something like that your retail business. SCet into Internet selling in some pe $ about me America Online. d 11 smut. Jnternet. I "The impact of the Internet on the Jiext century will likely be similar to Jhat of electricity on this one. Like Jhe Internet, man made electricity Jiid not gain widespread use for Hecades after its creation. Yet today, ifearly every activity in our daily JiVes depends on it." This quote Appeared in USA Today a few Sneaths back. The man quoted was Steve Case, the 40 year-olCEO of f! j .Z including old had been porn by After graduation from BYU and covering the Utah Jazz for The Daily Herald, he used his degree and creativity to achieve success with corporate giants, and Disney, Procter & Gamble. The surprise comes when you begin to read The Marketing Game." Subtitled "Insider Secrets that You Can Use from the World's Marketing Leaders," this book is easy to read and actually enjoy- OR COPY 'vj f.K-'4-- when he went to the Thunderstone site and learned Harvey Mackay I .7 By BRUCE MEYERSON AP Business Writer 1 Mtcrit t Ciaiii Tm Wu Ointr Tai (tci-Ca- u CM'v Csnr Blue-chi- p NEW YORK stocks fell again Wednesday, extending Tuesday's 225-poiplunge by the Dow Jones indus- trial average and pushing the index to its lowest level in three months. But strength among technology shares and issues bolstered the broad market, with the Nasdaq composite index rising back toward record territory. The Dow fell 74.40 to 10,524.07, about 800 points below its record-higclose of Yet 25. set even 11,326.04 Aug. with the slide from record levels, the barometer of 30 major companies still holds a gain of 14.6 smaller-compan- ciples remain the same. The book is divided into well-define- parts, d each focusing on a particular area of product promotion. Chapters within the four parts cover development and planning, marketing consumer cornerstones, communication and promotions. While some of the information is boring, all of it is worthwhile and presented in an entertaining manner. The main points, 'Secrets of the Game,' are presented in highlighted paragraphs and each chapter concludes with a concise summary in bullet form. The parts of the book that are most interesting are actual marketing examples from major companies. Schulz why explains Tylenol offers consumers multiple options instead of one but why toothpaste makers actually boost sales by offering one product that He does everything. explains why some products do better if marketed as "status symbols" (i.e. Rolex watches) and others do better by offering their products to the mass market at It is all interesting reading for the casual consumer of marketand a must-rea- d ing students or Wal-Ma- rt y h percent for the year. indicators were But the strength mostly negative. in technology stocks helped lift k the Standard & Poor's index by 2.93 to 1,310.51, while the Nasdaq composite rose 37.06 to 2,858.16, about 30 points shy of a new high. The Russell 2000 index of smaller companies rose 1.03 to 427.53. Leading the Dow's retreat on Broad-mark- 500-stoc- were Wednesday Union Carbide, down 2 516 to 54 78; United Technologies, down 2 14 to 58 578; Procter & Gamble, down 2 14 to 98; IBM, down 1 1516 to 125 316; and Goodyear, down 1 78 to 45 716. 3Com rose 1 5716 to 28 578 as the most active Nasdaq issue after the maker of computer network products and Palm Pilot organizers topped Wall Street forecasts with late Tuesday's profit report. Among other leading Nasdaq technology names, Microsoft rose 1 716 to 96 116, Yahoo! rose 9 1516 to 179 12 and eBay rose 8 12 to 149 18. MindSpring Enterprises jumped nearly 25 percent, rising 6 12 to 32 78, after the Internet service provider announced an alliance with Ceridian, a business services technology company. There was little reaction to a Wednesday afternoon report by the Federal Reserve saying k rates of in the growth" economy are contributing to widespread labor shortages, a major force behind inflation. "moderate-to-bris- Tallest building gets critical nod from Chicago By J.LINN ALLEN Chicago Tribune CHICAGO The saga of a new world's tallest building for resembles those Chicago famous baseball home run calls: "It could be, it might be..." Whether the call will end cheer with an or' the groans of a strikeout remains to be seen, but at least there is hope in the ball park. After months of skeptical waiting, a new world's tallest building for Chicago got a critical nod Tuesday as the Chicago Plan Commission approved the $500 million project, apparently convinced by the developer's pledge that he now has the financing to go ahead with it. "We have the commitment for the debt and equity today," declared Scott Toberman, president of European American Realty. "We will be in the 112-stor- "We have the commitment for the debt and equity today ... we will be in the ground by early May." Scott Toberman, president of European American Realty ground by early May." Toberman initially proposed his project at 7 S. Dearborn St. almost 18 months ago, then got city approval for a smaller building a year ago. Back again with the enlarged version without ever having moved a shovel of dirt, he faced pointed questioning in his plan commission appearance. But the developer insisted that this time he has solid backing for the silvery needle from a "consortium of financial institutions from Asia and the Pacific Rim" which he promised to name two weeks. within the n world-talle- st 1,550-foot-hi- jxt He is also negotiating with a group of television stations that want to lease antenna space to broadcast digital signals, and he said he has lease commitments for about 13 percent of the office space in the mixed-us- e building. Toberman said he would disclose the debt financing particulars a few days after the City Council approves the project, which is scheduled for next Wednesday. But he added he had disclosed the funding to Commissioner Planning Christopher Hill "in enough generic detail" to win his essential support.