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

The first two items continue the module on the IT Foundations of E-Commerce.

2) [15 min] Read J. Heid, "Making Waves with Streaming Audio," Macworld, February 1998, 125-129 (you need only skim the five-step plan on pages 128 and 129) , on-line at http://macworld.zdnet.com/pages/february.98/Column.4140.html. This article covers the basics of streaming audio, which has many uses in e-commerce.

Reference: Babylon 6, "Real Audio Guide," on-line at http://www.babylon-6.demon.co.uk/rac.htm (not in Course Reader). This is a nice guide for Web page authors who want to exploit RealNetworks' streaming audio and video technology.

The next two items continue the Electronic Payment Systems module.

4) [1.25 hr] HOMEWORK 7: VeriSign
Reread pages 74-78 of Kosiur to remind yourself how digital signatures and digital certificates work and why they are important. Now go to http://www.verisign.com and familiarize yourself with VeriSign and its products for about 30-40 minutes: read the "About VeriSign" page, return to the home page, press the Individual Certificates button on the left to go to the Digital ID Center, read this page, and press the About Digital IDs button (read the first three links on the resulting page) and the Help button (skim the first three links on the resulting page).

Now you are ready to obtain a free trial Class 1 Digital ID from VeriSign. Go back to the Digital ID Center, take the "Try a Digital ID FREE for 60 days" link, press the "Enroll Now" button for a Class 1 certificate, fill out the resulting Web form (be sure to specify 60-day trial -- no need to enter your credit card information), and follow the directions from there on.

Go back to the Digital ID Center, press the Search button, and search for yourself. Your name should appear on the resulting screen. Click on it to view the information that is available to anyone who does a similar search. Please print this screen and turn it in.

Your second (welcoming) email from VeriSign suggests that you visit www.verisign.com/securemail/guide/ to learn how to do secure email. Go there, click the last link on the page (the one on Netscape Messenger), and print the three Web pages under the three links in part 3. The first of these explains how to send an email with your digital signature. Open Messenger Mailbox (you may have to use your Anderson password), hit the "New Message" button (or take the menu option Message/New Message), write a short message to yourself in the Composition window, and "sign" it per the instructions you just printed. No need to encrypt it. Send this message, then look for it in your INBOX, which you can read in Messenger. Probably the quickest way to make the message show up is to use the menu option File/Get Messages/New. Read the message. You should get a Valid Signature icon. If not, and time remains, click on the Invalid Signature icon and try to figure out what went wrong. Print and turn in this message to yourself, no matter which icon you ended up with.

NOTE. If you have trouble, check your Netscape preferences for menu option Edit/ Preferences/Mail&Groups/Mail Server. Mail server user name should be like ageoffri, not like arthur.geoffrion or arthur.geoffrion@anderson. ucla.edu (this should match the userid you used in Step 1 of applying for your digital certificate); Outgoing mail (SMTP) server should be smtp.anderson.ucla.edu; Incoming mail server should be anderson.ucla.edu; Mail Server Type should be IMAP (don't check any boxes). Trouble can also be caused by firewalls, so you may need to do this homework while on campus.

If you have time, read the article from Fortune at (http://www.pathfinder.com/fortune/1997/970707/coo10.html) on VeriSign, use the search engines to find more recent articles in the business press, and try out some of the demos at http://www.verisign.com/demos/index.html .

The next three items continue the Business-to-Consumer e-commerce module.

6) [3/4 hr] Read K Chap. 6, "Offering Custom Products on the Internet." This is a factual, informative, historical narrative of Gateway’s Web site for selling their products. Notice the material concerning systems integration, a big stumbling block for many companies trying to put up similar sites. Next read pages A3-14 through A3-16 on Dell in "The Emerging Digital Economy". Visit both sites, ponder their relative strengths and weaknesses, and prepare for a class discussion on this topic.

Optional: "Good-Bye to Fixed Pricing," Special Report, Business Week, 4 May 1998, 71-84, on-line at http://www.businessweek.com/1998/18/b3576023.htm. A broad-ranging discussion, with many examples, of how the Internet is altering pricing strategies. One conclusion is that many markets will become more efficient, but this must be understood in the context of time-varying consumer utilities. Another way to look at the subject matter of this article is from the viewpoint of yield management as practiced first by American Airlines, and now by many other businesses.

7) [1 hr] HOMEWORK 6: Top Site Profiles [3 hrs -- 1 hr week 5, 1 hr week 6, 1 hr week 7 (due)] Please see the Class 4 handout by this name and continue working on it. Nothing is due until Class 7, but successful completion requires that you spend an hour this week.

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

9) [1 hr] Work on your Term Project. Please note these words in the syllabus: There will be 5-minute progress reports during Class 6 by all teams to summarize each project’s scope, goals, and current status, and to engage the class in any discussion that might be useful to the project.