>>New tools to build online stores to be unveiled...:ShopZone v. ONLINE merchant*
"...'Just as in the early days of computing when a handful of products fueled the PC revolution, so too will products like ShopZone fuel the Internet e-commerce revolution,' Wozniak said in a statement.
ShopZone is targeted for professional Web developers with some e-commerce experience and is designed for sites of companies with revenues less than $25 million. A key feature includes the ability to publish storefronts to many different ISPs or hosting services.
The new offering enters a relatively crowded developer tools market for e-commerce, where players include Microsoft, Open Market through its May 1 acquisition of ICentral, iCat, Vision Factory, Mercantec, and Intershop.
Features include wizards to create catalogs, shopping carts, order forms, shipping rates, tax schedules, discussion groups, electronic forms, a search engine, integration with Intuit's QuickBooks accounting software and popular HTML editors, built-in ODBC relational database connectivity, and graphics templates...Breakthrough has agreements with ISPs Verio, MindSpring, and Best Internet..." source: © CNET NEWS.COM July 10, 1998, 11:30 a.m. PT news.com
ShopZone breakthroughsoftware.com
ONLINE merchant stumpworld.com
*Alpha's ONLINE merchant is scheduled to release mid-July [next week?] per SWEBF management...this will now come down to which company has the best management team and marketing(.) v. Alpha's [pre-ShopZone] pricing superior product differentiating feature over iCat et al. which no longer appears to be a [superior] feature...the big question(s) now is...did ShopZone steal Alpha's thunder and pull a preemptive strike against Alpha's pending launch and is ONLINE merchant merely going to be another me too/commoditized product viz a viz Clean & Protect, PowerCleaner...?... |
