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Any bank attempting to woo customers online, as Bermuda's three banks are gearing up to do, should take heed of a recent study by Cybercitizen Finance which found customers were being turned away from Internet banking by a lack of service they found at the end of their mouse.

The study found that over the last year one-third of all customers who opened an online bank account ended up closing them. Half of those quitting found site navigation, that is ease of use, too complicated and expressed dissatisfaction with customer service.

Another study, funded this time by eFunds and Deluxe Corp., found that 80 percent of those who began to open an online account did not complete the process. The study found that the main impetus driving users to the Internet was the promise of saving time over doing business by the telephone or by going to the branch bank.

The IDC, a forecast group, estimates that 32 million households in the US will bank online by 2004. Another study of the top 10 banking sites by Web Criteria (www.webcriteria.com) found the average user took about 11 seconds to load a page on a browser. The slowest site took an average of about 20 seconds a page to load. That's a long time to sit there looking at a screen doing nothing at every step into a site. The fastest site (National City at www.nationalcity.com) took about 6.7 seconds to load.

In terms of accessibility, a measure of how long a user takes to navigate through a site, PNC bank (www.pncbank.com) was the most accessible at an average of 2.1 minutes, while the least accessible took 3.2 minutes.

Freshness, a measure of the age of elements on the site, was another criteria used in ranking the sites. The average freshness was 31.4 weeks with Wells Farrago (www.wellsfargo.com) being the best at updating with an average of 17.8 weeks. In terms of composition, the make up of the sites, the average used 85 percent text, 15 percent graphics, one percent audio, and one percent video.

These measures or benchmarks -- load times, accessibility, freshness and composition -- are the considerations every business should think about when assessing how useful their site will become to the customers they want to reach. The key is learning the right balance between fast loading times and slow graphics. In my books pretty is good but not if it ain't fast.

The Aibo, the robot dog that became a big hit over Christmas, is back on the market. The $2,000 toy was launched in a limited edition as a trial and sold only over the Internet. The first 3,000 sold out in just 20 minutes and the next 10,000 before Christmas. Now the company has decided, of course, to launch the techno-toy again. Check out how to order one at www.sonystyle.com or www.world.sony.com/aibo.

Aibo, has 19 motors, walks on four legs, sits, sleeps and is programmed to learn. A huge fan club has grown around the dog with all the nuts exchanging software they use for the toy to get it to perform various ''tricks''.

Spotted on the Internet: Check out an article in The Atlantic by James Fallows on a six month stint he did working for Microsoft Corp. in Richmond, Virgina.

His is not the usual trash article about the software giant. Instead it's a straight forward insight, however brief, into the company's corporate culture which allowed it to succeed. You can read it at www.theatlantic.com/tech/tech.htm. By the way, The Atlantic has a great site.

The other article I liked was the one on capital punishment, which detailed in horrible detail all the innocent people who have been condemned to death and killed by the state. The author uses the examples as a reason for stopping capital punishment.

There are more and more cautionary warnings coming out about problems with Windows 2000, which is due to be launched this Thursday (February 17).

Businesses should be aware that Smart Reseller (www.smartreseller.com) has got hold of an internal Microsoft memo in which the company admits there are some 63,000 potential known defects or bugs in the program.

The memo is by one of Microsoft's Windows development leaders, Marc Lucovsky, who was encouraging his staff to fix as many of the problems as they could before the launch.

According to the memo, as quoted by Smart Reseller, the Windows 2000 source-code base contains more than 21,000 ''postponed'' bugs, an indeterminate number of which Microsoft is characterizing as ''real problems''. Others are requests for new functionality, and others reflect ''plain confusion as to how something is supposed to work.'' Mr. Lucovsky then goes on to admonish his troops to do better work. ''Our customers do not want us to sell them products with over 63,000 potential known defects. They want these defects corrected. How many of you would spend $500 on a piece of software with over 63,000 potential known defects?''.

Sounds like a good piece of advice to me.

Quote of the week: Gunter Grass, the German novelist famous for writing The Tin Drum and The Flounder, recently spoke out against the use of computers for writing. `I have nothing against computers,` he said. `My secretary uses a computer and that's very useful for dates, and special things collected. But for manuscript work, it's too quick for me. Perhaps I am wrong, but I get every day one or two books sent by publishing houses that they want me to read.... After 10 pages I can say if they are written by a computer or not.` Mr. Grass was writing about the impact technology had on the writer's life.

During his Nobel prize speech for literature last year he also had this to say about the Internet: ''Is it not rather the case that literature is currently retreating from public life and that young writers are using the Internet as a playground?'' he said. ''A standstill, to which the suspicious word 'communication' lends a certain aura, is making headway. Every scrap of time is planned down to the last nervous breakdown. A cultural industry vale of tears is taking over the world.'' This from a guy who writes standing up and with only pen and paper.

Congratulations are due for the new Bermuda Sun website look. The newspaper has become more serious about marketing its presence online at bermudasun.org or bermudasun.bm. The updated site now features colour photos, and easier to view news pages. But more important from a commercial standpoint the site is also attempting to become an advertising medium, which is necessary if the public company is to justify the spending online. So far I have spotted adverts by Air Canada and by ETrade, the online brokerage. Ads for government jobs and from the Sun Shopper are also featured.

Tech Tattle deals with topics relating to technology. Contact Ahmed at ahmedelamin yhotmail.com or (01133) 467012599.