Below are your tasks, with an estimate of the time required for each. Please try to finish everything by Class 5 except for Homeworks 5, 6, and 8, which carry over. Articles are in the Course Reader unless otherwise noted.

    The first item concludes the Security and Encryption module.

1) [1 hr] CLASS NOTES AND HOMEWORK 4: PGP [2.5 hrs -- 1.5 hr week 4, 1 week 5 (due)] Please finish this homework, which was detailed in a Class 3 handout.

    The next item continues the Electronic Payment Systems module.

2) [3/4 hr] HOMEWORK 5: CyberCash [1.5 hrs -- 3/4 hr week 5, 3/4 hr week 6 (due)] Review the material on CyberCash in your books: K-W pp. 154, 169, 170 and K pp. 45, 46, 255. Go to the CyberCash Website at www.cybercash.com and look at the "Company", "Services", and "Support" pages listed at the top. Then click on "Consumers" under the globe, and successively on the three links in the left margin; study these pages. Then please take a look at http://www.cybercash.com/cybercash/consumers/sixsteps.html.

During the spring offering of this class, students were asked to download and try the CyberWallet. As a result of the insightful student critiques, which were leaked to the press, CyberWallet has been losing ground and has been taken off the list of accepted payment mechanisms at CDWorld and many other popular on-line stores. Moreover, Cybercash itself, whose fortunes are rocky judging from their stock performance, is unofficially saying that CyberWallet will be discontinued. Max Moroz recently had a conversation with CyberWallet's media relations people, who implied that the new InstaBuy service will take the place of CyberWallet.

Therefore, your task is now different: write a paragraph or two on what you think the reasons are for this change. Before doing that, please go to http://www.cybercash.com/instabuy/ and read all information available there. There is no demonstration version of Instabuy to try out yet, but if InstaBuy is launched in November as planned you will have a chance to look at it before the end of the course.

Now that you are familiar with CyberWallet and InstaBuy, it is time to look at the rest of CyberCash's web site for other products it offers. Please do so, and write a brief (3-4 paragraph) report listing all the technologies you find and explaining in the simplest way possible what they are for. You may want to use other resources on the web, apart from CyberCash.

Optionally, look up current news about CyberCash, look over the DigiCash site at http://digicash.com/, reflect on the relative strengths and weaknesses of these two competitors, and post a comment in the appropriate on-line class discussion area. Such a comment would count toward a higher grade.

    The next three items continue the Business-to-Consumer Electronic Commerce module.

3) [1.75 hr] Read K-W Chap. 9, "Electronic Commerce and Online Publishing" (skim 9.5). This very interesting chapter is of broader interest than might seem to be the case at first glance, for the economics of the Web makes it practical for virtually every organization, not to mention ambitious individuals, to be on-line publishers even when this is not their usual business classification. Moreover, all of us are long-time consumers of books, magazines, newspapers, and other published materials, and so can relate in a personal way to many of the points made in this chapter.

Note the material on Lexis/Nexis and EDGAR. These are two of the sources dealt with in Workshop 2 during Class 4.

The time allotted for this reading is generous in order to allow time for you to visit some of the prominently mentioned Websites; please consider, in each case, how the present-day situation differs from the situation described in this chapter, and post a comment about one of these differences in the on-line discussion area devoted to the Business-to-Consumer E-Commerce module. This discussion area will then become, among other things, a kind of supplementary update to K-W Chap. 9.

Optional: Appendix 4 through p. 22, "The Emerging Digital Economy," U.S. Dept. of Commerce, Washington, D.C., April 1998, on-line at http://www.ecommerce.gov/emerging.htm. A nice complement to Chapter 9 of Kalakota and Whinston (item 3 above).

Optional: T. O’Reilly, "Publishing Models for Internet Commerce," Communications of the ACM, 39:6 (June 1996), 79-86, on-line at http://acm.org/pubs/citations/journals/cacm/1996-39-6/p79-o_reilly/ (PDF, 1733 KB). A nice complement to Chapter 9 of Kalakota and Whinston (item 3 above).

4) [.5 hr] Read K-W Chap. 11, "Intranets and Customer Asset Management" (skip 11.2, 11.4, pp. 336.5-340). Although most of this chapter focuses on intranets, this material makes the point very well that a strong concern for customers’ needs can yield immense benefits for a company and its Websites. Consider the profiles you wrote for Homework 1, and how well those Websites exhibit this attitude.

Optional: R.M. O’Keefe and T. McEachern, "Web-Based Customer Decision Support Systems," Communications of the ACM, 41:3 (March 1998), 71-78, http://acm.org/pubs/citations/journals/cacm/1998-41-3/p71-o_keefe/ (PDF, 211 KB). This article is a nice study of how valuable a Website can be to customers if sufficient thought is given to customer needs. See especially the descriptions of the sites at GE Plastics and UTC Carrier.

Optional: W. Rosenblatt, "Learning to Build Loyal Customer Relations -- That Last," SunWorld Online, 1997, on-line at http:// www.sunworld.com/swol-03-1997/swol-03-bookshelf.html. This is a nice review of the very influential book by D. Peppers and M. Rogers, The One to One Future: Building Relationships One Customer at a Time (Doubleday), which Rosenblatt says is "really a primer on electronic commerce on the Web in disguise." Rosenblatt has a feature in SunWorld Online called Bill’s Bookshelf, which contains other reviews that are generally well done.

Optional: J. Slaton, "BEWARE! Unsolicited Email Does Work!", 24 Sept. 95, on-line at http://www.spp.umich.edu/spp/courses/744/misc.hyper/0119.html. Not in Course Reader. Read this and weep. It will help you understand why spam is so pervasive and isn’t likely to go away. There are other interesting posts in this collection: take the "Messages sorted by [subject]" link to see them.

5) [1 hr] HOMEWORK 6: Top Site Profiles [3 hrs -- 1 hr week 5, 1 hr week 6, 1 hr week 7 (due)] Begin this homework, which is detailed in a Class 4 handout. Nothing is due until Class 7, but successful completion requires that you begin now.

Optional: T. Kerievsky, "The Top 100 Web Sites," PC Magazine, February 10, 1998, 100-130, on-line at http://www.zdnet.com/pcmag/special/web100/index.html. The categories covered are Commerce, Computing, Entertainment, News/Views, and Reference. A single page with links to all 100 sites is at http://www.zdnet.com/pcmag/special/web100/atoz.html. There is some overlap with "Let’s Go Shopping," PC Magazine, 16:20 (Nov. 18, 1997), 124-142, on-line at http://www.zdnet.com/pcmag/features/e-comm_sites/_open.htm (not in Course Reader). That article has 30 Web shopping sites selected from more than 150 candidates in these categories: Cars, Catalogs, Computing, Entertainment, Food/Wine/Cooking, Retail Department Stores, and Specialty Stores.

    The next item continues the module on Discussion Groups and Virtual Communities.

6) [1 hr] HOMEWORK 8: Participation in Discussion Groups and Virtual Communities [5 hrs --1 hr week 5, 1 week 6, 1 week 7, 1 week 8, 1 week 9 (due)] Begin working on this homework, which is detailed in a Class 4 handout. The emphasis this week is on e-mail lists . Nothing is due until Class 9, but successful completion requires that you begin now.

Reference: A. Geoffrion, "E-Mail Lists: Quick Reference," 9/98. Email lists are still a great way to follow particular topics of interest to you, and to participate in discussions on these topics. This sheet will come in handy when you want to subscribe or unsubscribe from a mail list, or want to use certain common mail list features.

Optional: Max Moroz, "Avoiding Junk E-Mail," on-line and linked to the course home page under the fifth week.  Not in Course Reader.  Be sure to read this if you don't like junk mail.

7) [1 hr] Work on your Term Project.