News-Press from Fort Myers, Florida • Page 60

2 THE NEWS-PRESS, TUESDAY, APRIL 25, 2000 SHOPPING: Amazon outranks Wal-Mart OPEN FOR BUSINESS above the others. Online malls Shopping at a virtual mall isn't so different from the real thing, except that sites can and do disappear from the Web in the click of a mouse, whether it be from network failure or financial insolvency. But vour feet don't swell un as Palm still best-liked of PDAs New features allow navigation, pager receiver Online retailers know it's easy for shoppers to click to another Web site or head back to their local malls. So the heat is on to improve customer service and reward loyalty. What would make clickers click more otten? 0 20 40 60 80 Be more informative Offer sweepstakescontests Make banners more creative Offer awardscash Provide loyalty incentives Don't know Response time: Room for improvement Survey of consumer Web sites; Five or more days 15 Three days 6 Two days 11 SOURCES: Jupiter Communications, NFO Interactive From Page 1 ranked against its competitors.

Categories follow the most popular industries, such as books, toys, brokerage firms and apparel. Car dealers and airline ticketing aren't reviewed here. The most revealing information we found, however, was that Amazon ranked first in three categories, beating out Wal-Mart in general merchandise and eToys in toys and games. Oh, and it's first in books. www.bizrate.com Frankly, we didn't know whether to classify BizRate as an e-commerce rating service or a comparison shopper because it does a little of both and makes some money off consumers as well.

That said, we'll focus on the ratings because they are upfront with viewers who bother to read their disclaimers. The site bases most of its one- to five-star ratings on consumers' opinions just after they've finished shopping online, part of an agreement BizRate has with merchants in exchange for listing and comparing their products on the site. For merchants who don't cooperate, the site staff shops, compares and offers its own two cents on the merchant. The 14 categories are all product-driven so, for example, you check into consumer electronics, click on camcorders and specify what type or make or price. Then the products pop up on a list where shoppers can then take a look at a company's track record.

www.thepubliceye.com Merchants listed here have already agreed to be monitored solely by consumers for reliability, so there are no truly bad reviews posted. To build confidence in Web-based commerce, this site formed a coalition of 7,500 self-policing merchants who would risk their reputation on the Internet by letting customers alone rate their online businesses. As with most sites, negative ratings tend to come from poor customer support or slow delivery, but many gain ground back by offering credit card fraud insurance for customers and by not making customers' e-mail addresses vulnerable to spamming or unwanted junk mail. Also, the Public Eye offers its services in English and Spanish. These guys may not be the slickest show in town, but they're not taking a cut from sales, either.

Price shopping sites There's nothing worse than buying a big-ticket item, only to find it cheaper somewhere else a few days or weeks later. Comparison-shopping sites can help alleviate that fear, but consumers need to remember that no one site compares every single merchant for a specific product. much online. Of course, Web malls don't amount to much more than searchable store directories so that shoppers can browse hundreds, sometimes thousands, of stores without typing in an equal amount of individual addresses. The mom-and-pop specialty shop is just as easy to walk into as a big chain store, and product selection can be as mundane as vitamin from a discount pharmacy, obscure as a formal dining table for dogs or as eclectic as a customized spell from a dial-up witch.

www.netmall.com NetMall bills itself as the Internet's largest directory of online stores and boasts a whopping 200,000 stores from Sao Paolo, Brazil, to London to Deer Park, N.Y. Visitors can search by store name or keywords, but our tries on a handful of everyday items resulted in more misses than hits. The best method to find a store is with the 18-category pull-down menu, which can get you where you want quickly and provide some surprises not found in suburban malls. For example, the beauty section brought back page after page of lotions, creams and makeup natural and synthetic as well as a jewelry store, a clothier, a scissor-sharpening service and an escort service. Try finding all that at your local mall.

www.buyitonline.com This mall has a slightly smaller and tamer collection of merchants than NetMall and can also be searched by category or product keyword. The attempt to anchor the mall with a fictional department store, however, is as hopeless as a shoe store in Cold War-era East Berlin. Again, it's best to shop by category to get to merchant wares quickly. For the pedestrian consumer, we found house slippers, skin care products and portable electric grills. For those who march to a different drummer, there were Arkansas thumb pianos, Greek sandals and Afghani freedom fighter headgear.

More important, the mall's customer service page did a good job spelling out policies on returns, online security, delivery fees and satisfaction guarantees www.empiremall.com Here's the closest thing we found to a real mall that is, the 45 stores listed here mirror what's found in the suburbs, plus a few extras. Popular clothing chains are accessible, right alongside sporting goods, furniture, record shops and florists. And let's not forget toys. The anchor store here is Wal-Mart where the smiling yellow happy-faced button is slashing prices online for items like the Millennium Barbie and suntan lotion. Specialty kiosks also hawk pantyhose, sunglasses, ties, T-shirts, car insurance and for reasons beyond us jet aircraft consulting.

Where else could you get sound advice on that Learjet you've had your eye on while picking up a pair of Leggs? By CRAIG CROSSMAN Knight Ridder News Service The Palm hand-held personal digital assistant remains the most popular in the ever increasing variety of Personal Digital Assistants. It's one of the best ways to carry all those addresses, contacts and phone numbers as well as keeping on top of your daily schedule. A whole industry has sprung up around this little wonder that includes thousands programs as well as hardware additions. New hardware gives the Palm additional abilities such as a Global Positioning System navigation antenna complete with mapping software so you never get lost, and a pager receiver that converts the Palm into an alphanumeric pager. Now Kodak has introduced another clip-on attachment that converts the Palm into a digital camera.

Weighing in at just 1.5 ounces, Kodak's PalmPix is about one-third- the size of the Palm. Its recessed opening lets you slide in the Palm so that its screen becomes the back side of the digital camera. The front of the PalmPix sports a 2X zoom lens. As you aim the PalmPix, you see the image displayed on the Palm's screen. Pictures are viewed on the Palm's LCD screen as grayscale images.

Once transferred to the computer, the pictures are stored as 24-bit color JPEG or bitmap files. They can be accessed as full-color VGA (640 480) pictures, then manipulated, e-mailed, printed and saved. The Palm's buttons are reconfigured to perform camera operations. The Date Book button becomes a previewshutter button. Press once to see the image, again to take the picture.

The Scroll buttons let you zoom in and out. The Palm's screen also displays a listing of all pictures and dates taken. It's easy to assign any name to the picture. Simply tap on any name in the list to see the image instantly displayed. Other on-screen features include a self-timer icon that gives a 10-second delay before a picture is taken and a resolution icon that lets you switch between 320 240 and 640 480.

A frame counter lets you know how many pictures remain to be taken. Transferring the pictures is a snap. Remove the Palm from the PalmPix and connect it to the computer docking slation. Or simply use the wireless infrared Beam function of the Palm to transfer pictures to another Palm. includes content, travel and retail sites: Nn o.mail aaaress listed 10 KRT els, some on sale, to compare against our target, and ground shipping was free.

www.mysimon.com Simon acts as a customized comparison shopper for prospective buyers who register with the site. Registration is free, and Simon keeps tabs on your last shopping excursion. But he can be a bit loose with your money. Simon occasionally assumes that his more expensive tastes match his clients' wallets. At first we asked him to hunt down any old CD-writer, and he quickly brought back a screaming machine for almost $500.

When we sent him back for our 6x4x16 machine, he got the right model, and it came in at $221.99, plus tax and about $9 shipping. Not bad. Again, however, the store Simon snagged it from didn't ask whether we needed an interface card. This is definitely something a lot of vendors could improve on. But Simon also found another comparable CD-writer model for $23 less.

The boy just wouldn't quit. www.bottomdollar.com These folks prefer to call their site a shopping search engine, which is OK with us because it worked well. Like Simon and ebates, it had a healthy collection of merchants plus the best search engine of them all. We plugged in our brand-name CD-writer and browsed through about 15 models before locking on to one for about the same price as my Simon's. Then, just for grins, we simply plugged in only the model number and hit the jackpot: nine vendors selling the same machine from $198 to $250 Even better, most of the vendors bidding for our business went to the trouble to list system requirements and a selection of acceptable controller cards to install a CD-writer property.

Judging from the prices, selection and a bang-up search engine, BottomDollar came through heads 1 But we found that being specific on these sites is important. We took a Sunday ad supplement from a big electronics retailer and picked out a name-brand, internal, readable-writable CD rated at 6x4x16, wrote down the serial number and tried to beat the price online. The retailer offered a $60 rebate if we bought the player and the necessary interface card together, which came to $229.99 before taxes. Here's what happened next: www.ebates.com Like most comparison sites, which sell items from a variety of vendors, ebates requires customers to register with them, then promises up to 25 percent rebates for buying from their affiliated merchants. Stores listed within the shopping categories post their average discount, which seems to hover from 5 percent to 8 percent most of the time.

Customers have to perform their own comparison shopping by bouncing back and forth between competing sites, which can eat up a lot of time. Eventually, we found our CD-writer for $269.95 at Beyond.com, minus a 5 percent rebate for using BizRate. The problem was that novices wouldn't know whether the interface card was needed and the product information guide didn't bring it up, The good news was that there were other mod- iou uan ly! Congratulations To our newest pilots Zach Smallwood Joseph Priolo iHHidirHiimcmreTTrri.