Steve Jobs on CNBC

A Famous speech by Steve Jobs "Stay Hungry - Stay Foolish

Another famous speech, this one by Steve Jobs.

Thank you. I'm honored to be with you today for your commencement from one of the finest universities in the world. Truth be told, I never graduated from college and this is the closest I've ever gotten to a college graduation.

Today I want to tell you three stories from my life. That's it. No big deal. Just three stories. The first story is about connecting the dots.

I dropped out of Reed College after the first six months but then stayed around as a drop-in for another eighteen months or so before I really quit. So why did I drop out? It started before I was born. My biological mother was a young, unwed graduate student, and she decided to put me up for adoption. She felt very strongly that I should be adopted by college graduates, so everything was all set for me to be adopted at birth by a lawyer and his wife, except that when I popped out, they decided at the last minute that they really wanted a girl. So my parents, who were on a waiting list, got a call in the middle of the night asking, "We've got an unexpected baby boy. Do you want him?" They said, "Of course." My biological mother found out later that my mother had never graduated from college and that my father had never graduated from high school. She refused to sign the final adoption papers. She only relented a few months later when my parents promised that I would go to college.

This was the start in my life. And seventeen years later, I did go to college, but I naïvely chose a college that was almost as expensive as Stanford, and all of my working-class parents' savings were being spent on my college tuition. After six months, I couldn't see the value in it. I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life, and no idea of how college was going to help me figure it out, and here I was, spending all the money my parents had saved their entire life. So I decided to drop out and trust that it would all work out OK. It was pretty scary at the time, but looking back, it was one of the best decisions I ever made. The minute I dropped out, I could stop taking the required classes that didn't interest me and begin dropping in on the ones that looked far more interesting.

It wasn't all romantic. I didn't have a dorm room, so I slept on the floor in friends' rooms. I returned Coke bottles for the five-cent deposits to buy food with, and I would walk the seven miles across town every Sunday night to get one good meal a week at the Hare Krishna temple. I loved it. And much of what I stumbled into by following my curiosity and intuition turned out to be priceless later on. Let me give you one example.

Reed College at that time offered perhaps the best calligraphy instruction in the country. Throughout the campus every poster, every label on every drawer was beautifully hand-calligraphed. Because I had dropped out and didn't have to take the normal classes, I decided to take a calligraphy class to learn how to do this. I learned about serif and sans-serif typefaces, about varying the amount of space between different letter combinations, about what makes great typography great. It was beautiful, historical, artistically subtle in a way that science can't capture, and I found it fascinating.

None of this had even a hope of any practical application in my life. But ten years later when we were designing the first Macintosh computer, it all came back to me, and we designed it all into the Mac. It was the first computer with beautiful typography. If I had never dropped in on that single course in college, the Mac would have never had multiple typefaces or proportionally spaced fonts, and since Windows just copied the Mac, it's likely that no personal computer would have them.

If I had never dropped out, I would have never dropped in on that calligraphy class and personals computers might not have the wonderful typography that they do.

Of course it was impossible to connect the dots looking forward when I was in college, but it was very, very clear looking backwards 10 years later. Again, you can't connect the dots looking forward. You can only connect them looking backwards, so you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something--your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever--because believing that the dots will connect down the road will give you the confidence to follow your heart, even when it leads you off the well-worn path, and that will make all the difference.

My second story is about love and loss. I was lucky. I found what I loved to do early in life. Woz and I started Apple in my parents' garage when I was twenty. We worked hard and in ten years, Apple had grown from just the two of us in a garage into a $2 billion company with over 4,000 employees. We'd just released our finest creation, the Macintosh, a year earlier, and I'd just turned thirty, and then I got fired. How can you get fired from a company you started? Well, as Apple grew, we hired someone who I thought was very talented to run the company with me, and for the first year or so, things went well. But then our visions of the future began to diverge, and eventually we had a falling out. When we did, our board of directors sided with him, and so at thirty, I was out, and very publicly out. What had been the focus of my entire adult life was gone, and it was devastating. I really didn't know what to do for a few months. I felt that I had let the previous generation of entrepreneurs down, that I had dropped the baton as it was being passed to me. I met with David Packard and Bob Noyce and tried to apologize for screwing up so badly. I was a very public failure and I even thought about running away from the Valley. But something slowly began to dawn on me. I still loved what I did. The turn of events at Apple had not changed that one bit. I'd been rejected but I was still in love. And so I decided to start over.

I didn't see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods in my life. During the next five years I started a company named NeXT, another company named Pixar and fell in love with an amazing woman who would become my wife. Pixar went on to create the world's first computer-animated feature film, "Toy Story," and is now the most successful animation studio in the world.

In a remarkable turn of events, Apple bought NeXT and I returned to Apple and the technology we developed at NeXT is at the heart of Apple's current renaissance, and Lorene and I have a wonderful family together.

I'm pretty sure none of this would have happened if I hadn't been fired from Apple. It was awful-tasting medicine but I guess the patient needed it. Sometimes life's going to hit you in the head with a brick. Don't lose faith. I'm convinced that the only thing that kept me going was that I loved what I did. You've got to find what you love, and that is as true for work as it is for your lovers. Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work, and the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven't found it yet, keep looking, and don't settle. As with all matters of the heart, you'll know when you find it, and like any great relationship it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking. Don't settle.

My third story is about death. When I was 17 I read a quote that went something like "If you live each day as if it was your last, someday you'll most certainly be right." It made an impression on me, and since then, for the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself, "If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?" And whenever the answer has been "no" for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something. Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important thing I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life, because almost everything--all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure--these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.

About a year ago, I was diagnosed with cancer. I had a scan at 7:30 in the morning and it clearly showed a tumor on my pancreas. I didn't even know what a pancreas was. The doctors told me this was almost certainly a type of cancer that is incurable, and that I should expect to live no longer than three to six months. My doctor advised me to go home and get my affairs in order, which is doctors' code for "prepare to die." It means to try and tell your kids everything you thought you'd have the next ten years to tell them, in just a few months. It means to make sure that everything is buttoned up so that it will be as easy as possible for your family. It means to say your goodbyes.

I lived with that diagnosis all day. Later that evening I had a biopsy where they stuck an endoscope down my throat, through my stomach into my intestines, put a needle into my pancreas and got a few cells from the tumor. I was sedated but my wife, who was there, told me that when they viewed the cells under a microscope, the doctor started crying, because it turned out to be a very rare form of pancreatic cancer that is curable with surgery. I had the surgery and, thankfully, I am fine now.

This was the closest I've been to facing death, and I hope it's the closest I get for a few more decades. Having lived through it, I can now say this to you with a bit more certainty than when death was a useful but purely intellectual concept. No one wants to die, even people who want to go to Heaven don't want to die to get there, and yet, death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because death is very likely the single best invention of life. It's life's change agent; it clears out the old to make way for the new. right now, the new is you. But someday, not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it's quite true. Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma, which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of others' opinions drown out your own inner voice, heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.

When I was young, there was an amazing publication called The Whole Earth Catalogue, which was one of the bibles of my generation. It was created by a fellow named Stuart Brand not far from here in Menlo Park, and he brought it to life with his poetic touch. This was in the late Sixties, before personal computers and desktop publishing, so it was all made with typewriters, scissors, and Polaroid cameras. it was sort of like Google in paperback form thirty-five years before Google came along. I was idealistic, overflowing with neat tools and great notions. Stuart and his team put out several issues of the The Whole Earth Catalogue, and then when it had run its course, they put out a final issue. It was the mid-Seventies and I was your age. On the back cover of their final issue was a photograph of an early morning country road, the kind you might find yourself hitchhiking on if you were so adventurous. Beneath were the words, "Stay hungry, stay foolish." It was their farewell message as they signed off. "Stay hungry, stay foolish." And I have always wished that for myself, and now, as you graduate to begin anew, I wish that for you. Stay hungry, stay foolish.

Thank you all, very much.

Setting up your own website...

This is a compilation of several articles from rediff.com

Hosting options:

So you want to tell the world you have arrived or you have a business and want to expand its reach, whatever your motivation, setting up your own website is a great way to get noticed.

Before you shrug off the idea pleading ignorance of coding, Photoshop, web design and everything else related to the topic, take a look at our easy-to-follow guide to setting up your very own website.

The first decision you need to take is whether you want a free (almost free) web page or if you're willing to shell out a certain amount on a paid domain name and hosting services. (The domain name is the name through which people can access your WebPages. Hosting is the service that provides you space on the internet to save the web pages that you have created.)

Free hosting services
Freewebs.com, tripod.lycos.co.uk, geocities.yahoo.com, freewebsites.com and many others provide you with space on their servers where you can host your website for free. For most of these free hosting services, you do not need to buy a domain name. These services would provide you with a sub domain name on their server.

For instance, I may host my web pages for free on geocities and anyone on the world wide web may access my pages on 'http://geocities.com/ankurjain/index.html'. Some of these free hosting servers may also provide you with easy-to-use utilities to create web page polls, feedback forms, albums and blogs on the web pages you host on their servers.

However, if you are a firm believer in the saying 'Nothing comes for free', you aren't far wrong. The catch here is these sites will take up a prominent space on the pages you host on their servers (a small, but prime spot). The company will use this space to display advertisements relevant to the content of the webpage and relevant to the visitors to your page.

For instance, if you are an expert on financial planning and you plan to host some articles on financial planning, then the service provider may use the space to post an advertisement from a company dealing in mutual funds or tax consultancy firm.

So, while this option is very handy for people with tight budgets, if you are using a free service to host your company's web page, be warned that your clients might just end up seeing your competitor's advertisement on your home page.

That's where paid hosting services come in.

Paid hosting
Once you decide on your hosting options, the next step is to book a domain name. To buy a domain visit any of the following websites: godaddy.com, buydomain.com, net4omains.com.

If I am hosting a website about myself, then I might want to buy the domain ankurjain.com. Since domain names are unique, only one website can exist with the name ankurjain.com. If someone has already booked this domain name, I could opt for ankurjain.in or ankurjain.name among others.

After checking the availability of the domain and the other domain options, the website will show you the annual price listing for each. You will need to renew the registration at the end of the end of every year if you want to continue using the domain.

If you take the time to search, you'll find a number of good offers by Indian hosting providers for web hosting on the net. You can also just choose to host your site with your registrar (the place you buy your domain from). For example, if you buy a domain from and host your website at GoDaddy.com, you can get 500 MB of web space, a 25-GB data transfer limit and 100 e-mail IDs with both POP3 and web mail access for just $3.95 (approx Rs 170) a month!

What hosting provider you eventually choose depends solely on your needs and budget, but you should trawl the web for user reviews that are a good pointer to the most user-friendly and dependable service providers.

Most of the hosting services provide you with complete know how on how to setup your website on their servers. They provide easy to understand step-by-step documents for uploading the pages created/designed by you on to their servers.

The only drawback is that you have to have a credit card!

Designing a homepage :

What affects your online presence most, either as an individual or as a company, is, perhaps, your website. Your home page is the one thing that defines you most, for the millions of strangers online. Today, with so many free options for web-hosting, it's almost a crime not to have a functional and regularly updated site.

We will walk you through the basics of designing a simple site. You need to decide where and how your site will be hosted. All the millions of options you have can be categorised into either free or paid solutions. Once you've decided on the type you want, you can go ahead and start planning the look of your site.

A common misconception is that coders who know HTML and other web design languages can only design sites. In this age of software empowerment, anyone to do anything: Web design has not been spared. Design programs such as Microsoft FrontPage and Macromedia Dreamweaver make sure that a good design is simple to achieve.

Frontpage

FrontPage has always had the distinction of being really easy to use, but has generally been less respected as a web design tool by hard-core designers. However, for those just starting out with Web design, there is no simpler tool. As with most Microsoft products, you'll take almost no time to get to grips with the interface.

Let's take a look at MS FrontPage:

~ When you run FrontPage, it starts off with a blank page.
~ You can choose to build a site from a template. There are several templates available -- choose one that matches your needs.
~ We chose to build a 'Corporate Presence' site.
~ Change the logos and add suitable text where clearly marked, and save each page.
~ Check the pages you've designed in different browsers by going to File > Preview in Browser.
~ Once all the pages have been edited, upload the entire web folder to your hosting server.
~ Check all the pages again, and your site is done.

Though this sounds a little too simple, the fact is FrontPage is designed that way, so the easiest way to experience its simplicity is to install it and try it yourself.

Web Components:

Web components in FrontPage are very important. FrontPage calls Flash movies, hit counters, buttons, etc 'Web Components'. The simplest way to see what each does is to open a blank page, insert one of each component and then preview the page in your favorite browser.

Pictures:

Inserting a picture in FrontPage is very easy: just go to Insert > Picture and choose the appropriate option.

Themes:

Use a theme to get a predefined colour scheme and save your time trying to think up one.

Import:

If you already have a site, and are looking to modify the existing site rather than building a new one from scratch, you can choose to import your site by going to File > Import.

Dreamweaver

Macromedia Dreamweaver is the preferred professional Web design tool. Though it is not as easy to use as FrontPage, it is considered to be much more powerful. Of course, this does not mean it is impossible to use, and it is actually quite simple to accomplish basic tasks, just like in Microsoft FrontPage.

When you run Dreamweaver, you are presented with a blank page. You can just close that page and go to File > New, and in the 'New Document' dialog that pops up, choose 'Page Designs' from the 'Category' pane on the left. You will see a long list of options in the 'Page Designs' pane in the middle, and clicking on one will show you a preview of what that design looks like in the 'Preview' pane on the right.

Choose one that suits your needs for the page you're designing and click 'Create'. Just like in FrontPage, you are shown a page with blank images and dummy text. All you have to do is edit the text and images by double clicking on them.

Once you are satisfied with your final page, press [Ctrl] + [Shift] + [S] and choose where to save the web page. Create all the pages you want for your site and save all pages in the same folder relative to the index.html page. If you need to make new folders, do so and make sure to keep all images in a separate 'images' folder. This will help you sort your data more efficiently.

Once you are done creating all the desired pages, make sure to right-click to see the many options easily available to you. Preview all of them in a browser -- you can do this by pressing [F12]. The last step is to upload all the pages and images to your web server. Remember to keep all relative paths exactly the same as they are in your root folder (where 'index.html' is saved) on your hard disk.

Inserting Objects:

In Dreamweaver, you can insert a large variety of objects into the current page. Just click on the 'Insert' menu to see the list of available objects. Once done, don't forget to save your page.

Right-click:

Dreamweaver's right-click menu is quite exhaustive. Right-click anywhere on the page to see the long list of options available.

Tables:

Drawing tables is easy in both Dreamweaver and FrontPage. All you need to do is look for the 'Insert Table' option in the 'Insert' dropdown menu.

Task Panes:

In order to use Dreamweaver more efficiently, you'll need to learn to use the various task panes provided on the top, bottom and right-hand side. The best way to learn is to use each task pane and get the hang of the software.

Covering both the tools in detail would require a big fat book. Just start using these tools -- look up Internet tips and tutorials, and basic information about them for help.

Avoid these errors:

More often than not, web designers get carried away by technology and create websites that have a lot of frills and fluff but nothing that actually tells the visitor what the website offers. There are hundreds of websites sporting constantly changing images and floating objects, but falling desperately short of holding the visitor's attention long enough to find out more. What you need to keep in mind if you want your website to be seen and visited regularly, is that (as in life) looks aren't everything.

Here are some of the tools you need to use with care:

Frames

Five years ago, frames were the 'in' thing -- they let one or two parts of your site remain constant, while only one frame changed. This idea caught on like wildfire, and every second designer, at one point, was designing sites with frames. However, when content on the web started to grow, search engines became more popular, and the concept of bookmarking caught on. Frames didn't gel well with bookmarks.

In the context of search, the concept of frames is flawed: it uses one HTML page that gets content from two or more other pages and places the content in pre-defined parts of the page. Though this sounds like a good idea, search robots will visit the index page and catalogue it as the content of your site -- ignoring the entire HTML code that refers to other pages. This led to sites with frames dropping rapidly in search engine rankings. This was perhaps the major reason why frames are no longer popular, after all, search engine optimisation (SEO) is a full-time business now, and is also a major aspect of web design.

Misleading or useless page titles

The page title is the text that is supposed to describe the current page, or at least your site as a whole. This text appears between the '' code tags in an HTML page. Sadly, most amateur designers fail to notice the importance of titles, and leave it as "Welcome to xyz.com".

Again, this is very wrong when you take into account the way search engines display results: almost all search engines make the link to the page title. Even if a search throws up your page as a result, all a potential visitor sees is the text "Welcome to xyz.com", and a few lines from the site.

The page title is what will draw a visitor to your site, and as the latest generation of internet surfers is quite comfortable using search engines, they have learnt to ignore sites with such title tags.

Let's say you're in the business of selling computer hardware, and your site is called 'xyz.com'. Another company also sells IT products, and has a site called 'abc.com'. Let's assume a potential visitor or customer searches for "computer hardware vendor India" in a search engine and gets the following results:

"Welcome to xyz.com

We believe in finding the right solutions for your pocket. Whatever your budget for computer hardware, we have a configuration that will fit your needs. Vendors of --

www.xyz.com/52K-8 Aug 05. Cached - Similar pages"

"Something.com

Your source for in-depth computer hardware info.

www.something.com/524K-10 Aug 05. Cached - Similar pages"

"Abc.com: The best computer systems in India at unbeatable prices

ABC is the leading computer hardware information resource on the 'Net. We have all the information you need about computer hardware, including vendors.

Abc is a renowned computer hardware vendor based in Mumbai. We deliver anywhere in India within 48 hours, and have over 1,000 service centers located at."

www.abc.com/24K-10 Aug 03. Cached - Similar pages"

Even though your site, xyz.com, may show up first, chances are potential visitors will click on the link to Abc.com, only because the title tag matched what was searched for. In an age where internet users estimate relevance based on a quick scan of content on search engines and web sites, the wrong title tag could kill your chances of getting hits.

Size matters

Considering that India is still to achieve the mass adoption of broadband, sites with large file sizes for pages are frowned upon. When you get data transferred to you at around 5 KBps, the average 100 KB page takes 20 seconds to load. This is already too long in terms of visitors' patience, and the only reason most sites get away with is because here in India we're used to waiting for pages to load.

However, if you have a site that has a 500 KB start page, this translates to a minimum of 100 seconds of waiting for the page to load. On an average, try to keep pages as small as possible -- less than 100 KB -- by using fewer images and other unnecessary design elements. This will ensure that users have a better experience at your site.

Flash designs

Although the use of Macromedia Flash has revolutionised the way content can be stored on your site and displayed to visitors, it is another bandwidth hog. Since Flash is generally used to compress videos or animations to display on web pages, the file sizes are always large. Even simple button animations can add a few kilobytes here and there, which can total up to a lot.

You also need to remember that text almost always loads before graphics, and most users will scan through whatever appears on your site first and decide whether the content is what they are looking for. Even though you may have relevant content neatly displayed using a fancy Flash links menu, many users may not stick around long enough to see this.

Gaudy colours

Some websites give you the idea that the people who designed them are colour blind! The net is jam packed with sites that use vivid reds, pinks and purples that distract rather than attract. There isn't much to explain here, with millions of colour combinations available it's purely up to you to decide what combinations are just not right.

Browser support

Most designers don't seem to care about whether their sites work on browsers other than Internet Explorer (IE). In fact, it's not just site design you should worry about, you should also choose a hosting solution that is compatible with most browsers. For example, Microsoft's ASP technology is largely targeted at IE, and browsers such as Opera and Mozilla Firefox often run into trouble with some ASP pages.

The best way to check the functionality of your site is to check it using the most popular browsers. We suggest you start with Lynx, the popular text-based browser in Linux, to see what your site will most probably look like to a search engine bot, and then work your way through IE, Mozilla Firefox, Opera, and others.

Balanced content

Sites with only text, or even those with only graphics, can be very irritating to view. Even if your site has only text, try and make the text layout look good.

You should never substitute text with graphics, such as making an animated GIF image with changing text. Doing this only increases the size of a page, and also takes away people's ability to resize the text on the page according to their needs. It also almost always results in a low-resolution image that shows very poor quality text.

A good rule of thumb is the ratio of 80:20 -- 80 per cent text to 20 per cent images. This means that when you look at the pages you design, no more than 20 per cent of the screen area should be images.

You also need to remember that websites have depth, so there's no reason to try and cram everything you offer into your homepage. Divide your content into little piles, study your existing as well as target audiences, and then tag your content in decreasing order of importance or interest to this audience.

The top 50 per cent of your content should be easily accessible from your homepage, and the rest can either be distributed lower down on your homepage or stored in lower levels (different pages) of your site.

Navigation

Very often, you come across sites that lead you to a page best described as a virtual dead-end. Somehow, visitors might get stuck at a place, and have no clue as to how they got there. This usually results in a visitor clicking on the little [X] on the top right corner, banishing your site from their screen forever! The entire reason for taking pains to design sites is to avoid this from ever happening -- yet it does!

So what causes this problem? Simple. Bad design!

All the pages your site contains should at least have links to your homepage and major sections. The easiest way to do this would be to have a constant navigation bar that has a fixed position on every page of your site. A good rule to follow is the 'three-click rule': no page in your site should be more than three clicks away from any other page.

Being over-creative

Sometimes, designers have delusions of grandeur, and think they would make good copywriters or visualisers in advertising agencies. This leads to sites that are cryptic to the common man. Such sites might be acceptable if the business or individual is attempting to show off their creative prowess -- as might be the case with an actual copywriter or advertising agency, or perhaps an artist's homepage. However, most often, such sites are a big no-no for the majority.

Outdated pages

Nothing is worse than having a site that has outdated content. Sites that contain content on the homepage that was last updated over a couple of months ago are often considered 'neglected', and are ignored by visitors. This holds true especially if you add a 'News' section to your site and start updating it regularly and then somewhere along the line, falter and stop updating it.

No resizing

Web pages that cannot be resized are a big no-no. Often, people browse websites without maximising the window. If half your content is not visible because your site does not allow for resizing windows, you have a problem on your hands. This also holds true for text resizing: nothing is more irritating than text on a page that visitors cannot increase or decrease the size of by using their browser's text resize option.

Moving text and images

Scrolling text marquees are ugly! They are not considered good design any more, and you should avoid putting in scrolling text as far as possible. The only form in which scrolling text is acceptable is as a ticker on your site, such as a stock quote ticker, news ticker, or Shout box, where visitors can leave a message for other visitors. Basically, only if you need to dedicate a very limited space to content that changes rapidly, or is input by visitors, should you consider scrolling text.

Animated GIF images, too, are now considered amateurish. Most often, only jokes and ads contain GIF animation. Web users are accustomed to seeing GIF animations as advertisements, and have learnt to ignore them at sight. This means that all the effort you put into animating an image will be wasted on the majority of visitors.

If you have to include moving pictures, make sure the animation is done well and flows smoothly, otherwise it's likely that you'll make your site look unprofessional.

Online Marketing

A McKinsey survey of marketing executives from around the world shows that in marketing, things are starting to change: companies are moving online across the spectrum of marketing activities, from building awareness to after-sales service, and they see online tools as an important and effective component of their marketing strategies. In 2010 respondents expect a majority of their customers to discover new products or services online and a third to purchase goods there. A majority of the respondents also expect their companies to be getting 10 percent or more of their sales from online channels in 2010—twice as many companies as have hit that mark today.

In addition to established online tools such as e-mail, information-rich Web sites, and display advertising, survey respondents show a lot of interest in the interactive and collaborative technologies collectively known as Web 2.0for advertising, product development, and customer service.

What are emerging vehicles?

Blogs (short for Web logs) are online journals or diaries hosted on a Web site.

Online games include both games played on dedicated game consoles that can be networked and “massively multiplayer” games, which involve thousands of people who interact simultaneously through personal avatars in online worlds that exist independently of any single player’s activity.

Podcasts are audio or video recordings—a multimedia form of a blog or other content. They are often distributed tharough aggregators, such as iTunes.

Social networks allow members of specific sites to learn about other members’ skills, talents, knowledge, or preferences. Commercial examples include Facebook and MySpace. Some companies use such systems internally to help identify experts.

Virtual worlds, such as Second Life, are highly social, three-dimensional online environments shaped by users who interact with and receive instant feedback from other users through the use of avatars.

Web services are software systems that make it easier for different systems to communicate with each other automatically to pass information or conduct transactions. A retailer and supplier, for example, might use Web services to communicate over the public Internet and automatically update each other’s inventory systems.

Widgets are programs that allow access from users’ desktops to Web-based content.

Wikis, such as Wikipedia, are systems for collaborative publishing. They allow many authors to contribute to an online document or discussion.

In four of the five major areas of marketing, a majority of executives—83 percent for service management and, even at the low end, 44 percent for pricing—say that online tools are at least somewhat important for companies in their industries. At least two-thirds of companies are using these tools in all the areas they deem most important.

The importance of these tools naturally varies among industries—for instance, 65 percent of the respondents in high tech say that advertising online is very or extremely important for them, compared with just 39 percent in manufacturing. There are also two other likely reasons for the relatively low use of online tools: a lack of capabilities to manage them³ and the fact that access to high-speed Internet connections (required for many of these tools) is uneven (just under half of Europeans have it, for example, compared with 59 percent of the US population).

Although marketers expect to rely increasingly on digital-advertising vehicles, they recognize barriers that could slow the adoption of these tools. The lack of sufficient capabilities at companies or their agencies is the most significant concern, for both those that are advertising and those that aren’t (Exhibit 6); among online advertisers, for example, about 60 percent of responses indicate that insufficient capabilities are a barrier. Even among respondents at companies that frequently use online tools for all marketing purposes, a full 50 percent of responses highlight capability barriers to advertising. Other McKinsey research shows that a lack of online capabilities extends far beyond the marketing department: 42 percent of the respondents to another global survey said that investing more in the capabilities of their companies would have made initial investments in Internet technologies more effective.