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Internet taking strongman's strength program to new generation
By JIM BROOKS My wife and I enjoy stopping at flea markets and consignment shops from time to time. She's there to find clothes for the kids; I'm there to look for interesting old books or magazines. My latest haul included the August 1947 issue of Mechanix Illustrated. The advertisements in that genre of home mechanic magazine ranged from home courses on auto repair to baking. The one ad I discovered also appeared in comic books was the cartoon ad for strongman Charles Atlas, who was heralded at "The World's Most Perfectly Developed Man." The cartoon showed how a 97-pound weakling lost his girlfriend after sand was kicked in his face by a beach bully. The weakling orders the Charles Atlas home course, and in weeks, builds his strength and confidence enough to defeat the bully and win his girlfriend's heart and respect of his friends. His fellow beachgoers proclaim him "Hero of the Beach!" Thanks to the Internet, a new generation of "97-pound weaklings" can discover via the Web the secret Charles Atlas revealed to us many years ago: "No One Picks On a Strongman!" The Web site (www.charlesatlas.com) continues the Charles Atlas tradition of simple message to sell a simple product -- one that has worked since the burly strongman began selling it in 1929. The Atlas program requires no expensive equipment, and no trips to the gym or membership fees (for us weaklings, avoiding public humiliation is a strong selling point). The site says the program consists of isometric exercises, dubbed by Atlas years ago as "Dynamic Tension." While Charles Atlas died in 1972, his name, his program and his muscular physique continue the work he began more than 70 years ago. The site has expanded the Atlas franchise to now include vitamins and dietary supplements as well as some classic Charles Atlas memorabilia. Visit the site at www.CharlesAtlas.com. Leopard-print shorts are optional. BRIGHT CHRISTMAS AHEAD. The upcoming holiday season looks especially bright for e-commerce enabled retailers, otherwise known as "e-tailers." According to Garnter Interactive, an e-commerce consulting firm, online Christmas sales are predicted to nearly double this year. Many major e-tail Web sites were overwhelmed last year by online shoppers who racked up an estimated $10.5 billion in sales. This year's estimate is $19.5 billion -- which may again test the computer infrastructure of main retail Web sites. One of the hot toys last year was the Nintendo color Game Boy. As Christmas neared, they became increasing hard to find in local stores. Even Web sites sold out of them. One major toy retailer offered a special Christmas toy alert. Sign up and the company would notify you by e-mail when the desired toy was expected to be back in stock by Christmas. With Christmas weeks away, I signed up for the alert and waited. And waited. And waited. On February 10th, I received an e-mail alert stating the site now had color Game Boys back in stock. Too little, too late. It would have been nice to receive a message from the company that they wouldn't get it by Christmas. That way I would not have held on to those final strands of hope of finding the elusive Game Boy. Hopefully, the Web site's owners and I both learned valuable lessons from the experience. My lesson is simple: "Buy toys for the kids as early as possible." The lesson my e-tailer hopefully learned was simple too: Don't remind me in February of your poor customer service from December. And may both our Christmases be bright this year. TRULY WORLDWIDE WEB. A new study by the ACNielsen market research company estimates more than 295 million people around the globe has Internet access from a home PC. One in five households in Europe have Internet access, the study said. More than half of European Internet users live in three countries: Germany, Italy and the United Kingdom. The number of users with Internet access at work was generally lower than access at home, the study found. Using the Internet for making purchase decisions was highest in the United Kingdom, the study found. Sixty-four percent of users there responded they had used the Internet for information and prices before making a purchase within the past six months. E-MAIL SHUTDOWN. The shakeout among free Internet services shows no sign of ending with the recent announcement that free e-mail provider ImagineMail had shut its doors. The free Web-based e-mail service was supported by the sale of banner ads on its site -- much the same business model as used by dozens of other free e-mail services. HotMail.com was one of the earliest Web-based free e-mail systems. Microsoft now owns it. Nearly every major Web site and search engine offers free Web-based e-mail. One of the main benefits of Web-based e-mail is you can access your account easily from any computer connected to the Web. Users voiced their disappointment at the loss of their service. "I guess there really is no such thing as a free lunch," one user posted on the MacCentral.com Web site. FREE STOCK QUOTES. Yahoo!'s popular Yahoo! Finance Web site is offering free real-time stock quotes. In a press release, Yahoo! said it was responding to consumer demand for more up-to-date stock information. Individual investors are quite a market force analysts say, and statistics bear this out. More than half of U.S. households now own mutual funds, according to the Investment Company Institute. Yahoo!'s new services will include before- and after-market information, as well as volume and last-trade data. Many sites have offered stock quotes, but most have delayed the information by 15-minutes. The new real-time information will be available via a "Real-time ECN" option at the Yahoo!Finance quote menu. Web surfers can also access the information from the Yahoo! search engine home page at www.yahoo.com. Comments and questions about this column may be sent to jbrooks@myoldkentuckyhome.com, or visit www.myoldkentuckyhome.com on the World Wide Web. | HOME | |