convince, v - убеждать, уверять expect, v - ожидать
insist, v - настаивать (на чем-либо) momentum, n - толчок, импульс predict, v - предсказывать
retailer, n - предприятие, розничной торговли trend, n - тенденция, направление
Vocabulary in context
Find in the text the words with the following definitions
1.scientific or scholar inquiry:__________________________________________
2.to consider an event probable or certain:________________________________
3.a range of things from which to choose:________________________________
4.to draw by appeal to interest, emotion, or aesthetic sense:___________________
5.an increase, especially in amount, number, or intensity:____________________
Reading comprehension questions
1.What were the figures of Internet sales in the USA on the eve of Christmas 2002?
2.What were the chain store sales in December 2002?
3.What are the reasons of the rise in Internet sales?
4.What objects do consumers buy?
5.How much are online shoppers expected to spend?
Text 19 |
WOMEN OVERTAKE MEN ONLINE |
British women are spending longer than men on the web for the first time, according to new data from Internet Research firm NetValue. A grand total of 5.8m women logged onto the web during May2002, an increase of 30% or 1.8 million women since the beginning of the year. Women stayed online for an average of 462 minutes during May, while the men trailed behind at 414 minutes.
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Men were typically far keener to get online than women, and once made up 60% of all Internet users. But the tide has steadily been turning, as sites specifically designed for women help to pull in the female audience.
Women also viewed a broader range of sites than their male counterparts. NetValue reports that women surfed their way through 412 unique pages in May, compared to the 347 clicked on by the men. Women's websites are gaining in popularity, with 7.7% of all home Internet users visiting one in May.
Handbag.com - which offers news, e-mail and online shopping - is the most popular women's site with a reach of 1.4% and 198,000 unique visitors in May. The average visitor stayed for 16.9 minutes on the site, which is half owned by the UK chemists chain Boots. But men's surfing habits are also being buoyed by the very sites that target an all female audience. One third of all visitors of 'women's websites' are men.
Women spend an average of seven hours online compared with male surfers who clocked up 10 hours per month, its study found. While there are still half as many European women online as men, the number of females getting wired has shot up by 29% in the past year. Spain has one of the lowest numbers of women surfers - 29% compared with 42% in the UK. But they spend the most time online, favouring instant messaging sites and file-sharing. The majority of wired women across Europe are young, except in Germany where the over-50s spend over nine hours online each month, with almost four hours of that time on AOL.
Generally men are more interested in browsing, reading content and downloading software. Women use their time online more purposefully - shopping, organizing travel, banking and sending e-greeting cards. Sites that provide information to help women with their daily lives are popular.
Women are still using web differently to men. Women know what they want from the Internet and spend less time than men getting it, according to analyst firm Jupiter MMXI.
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Glossary
average, a - средний
buoy, v - поддерживать (надежду, энергию и т.п.) gain in popularity, v - завоевать популярность increase, n - увеличение
keen, a - сильно желающий log onto, v - входить
offer, v - предлагать range, n - ряд, группа
steady, a - постоянный, устойчивый trail, v - отсеивать
Vocabulary in context
Find the words in the text with the following definitions
1.very rare or unusual:_________________________________________________
2.to examine the qualities of, especially in order to discover resemblances or differences:__________________________________________________________
3.to have or hold as property; to possess:__________________________________
4.a number greater than half of a total:____________________________________
5.to look at attentively; to inspect:________________________________________
6.an acquired pattern or mode of behaviour:________________________________
Reading comprehension questions
1.What is the figure of the rising number of women on line?
2.What sites are popular with women?
3.How many hours per month do women spend an average online?
4.What is the age of wired women in Europe?
5.What are web-browsing habits of men and women?
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Text 20 STUDY REFUTES E-MAIL MYTH AT WORK
A new study from the Pew Internet and American Life Project finds that overwhelming levels of e-mail are quite atypical, an outcome that surprised even the researchers. "All of the anecdotal evidence you hear from people out there is, 'I'm so overwhelmed by the volume of e-mail,"' said Deborah Fallows, a senior research fellow at Pew. "The perception comes from the people who are talking most loudly about it, those few who are most overwhelmed."
In fact 60 percent of Americans who use e-mail at work receive 10 or fewer messages on an average day. Only 6 percent receive more than 50. And among those power users, only 11 percent say they feel overwhelmed by all the e-mail. Most have found tricks to keep e-mail manageable, such as using software to automatically sort e-mail into folders.
The results counter a myth that employees are inundated by e-mail as they are copied in on every response and are continually sent notes requesting something urgent, finding hours quickly disappearing just checking e-mail. Three-quarters of e- mail users at work spend an hour or less each day on e-mail. A quarter spends less than 15 minutes. Only half say e-mail volume has increased over the past year.
The pattern is different for the power users, typically the better-educated and higher earners. The study found heavy e-mail use more typical in large corporations as well as among high-level managers, who may be copied in on a range of projects. Many of them spend two hours or more daily on e-mail -- often beyond four. They are also more likely to be checking e-mail after work or on vacation. But power users are also more likely to credit e-mail for helping them communicate with more people and keeping them current with events. The study notes, for instance, that low-level employees may feel comfortable e-mailing a senior manager with an idea they may not otherwise walk in to discuss.
Meanwhile, the study found that workers under 30 were more likely to use e-mail for personal use. They were also more likely to send gossip, jokes and chain letters. Fallows said the difference is attributable to the younger workers' greater comfort with technology and the lower likelihood they'd be in senior positions. The
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telephone-based survey of 2,447 Internet users, including 1,003 who use e-mail at work, was conducted April 9 to May 17. The study has a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 3 percentage points.
Glossary
attributable, a - характерный counter, v - противоречить disappear, v - исчезать error, n - ошибка
folder, n - папка inundate, v - затоплять
likelihood, n - вероятность manageable, a - управляемый
meanwhile, adv - тем временем, иным образом, между тем otherwise, adv - в противном случае, иначе, иным образом overwhelming, a - подавляющий
outcome, n - результат
perception, n - понимание, ощущение, восприятие refute, v - опровергать
survey, n - обзор, обследование volume, n - объем
Vocabulary in context
Find in the text the words with the following definitions
1.a position or place in a scale or rank:___________________________________
2.to fill with wonder or amazement:_____________________________________
3.an outward sign; an indication:________________________________________
4.calling for immediate attention; pressing:_______________________________
5.to transmit information, thought, or feeling so that it is satisfactorily received or understood:________________________________________________________
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Reading comprehension questions
1.What are the results of study on e-mail levels in the USA?
2.What is the percentage of people who are feeling inundated by e-mail at work?
3.How do they keep their e-mail manageable?
4.What do young users use e-mail for?
5.When the telephone-based survey was conducted?
Text 21 |
FILTER IT OUT |
“Vice-president of ideas, idealab": did any job title better catch the Zeitgeist of Silicon Valley at its bubbliest? Surely the holder of that position is now cleaning tables in some Palo Alto diner? Actually, no. Scott Banister, the ideas-man in question, is proof that there is life after dotcom death.
After idealab, a pioneering Internet "incubator abandoned plans for an initial public offering that was once expected to raise $ 10 billion or more, Mr. Banister and a colleague, Scott Weiss, started IronPort, a firm dedicated to improving the efficiency of e-mail delivery. Despite a drought of venture capital, they have already raised $20m, and next week they roll out : a novel solution to spam, the dark side of e-mail.
Every user of the Internet knows the frustration of an inbox clogged with unwanted correspondence from vendors of porn, cheap loans and anatomical enlargements. More recently, there has been a new frustration: anti-spamming filters that rebuff genuine correspondence. According to Mr. Banister, "false positives" can account for up to 30% of the "spam" identified by some filters.
This can be more than annoying-valuable correspondence may never be delivered. The growing ingenuity of spam senders has made life hard for conventional filters. Obscenities are easy to scan for - but as the acceptability threshold of a filter is raised, to include words frequently but not exclusively used in spam (cheap loan, or enlargement, perhaps?), legitimate e-mail is increasingly misidentified.
The IronPort entrepreneurs think they can solve the problem. Their track record suggests they know how to deliver a successful Internet product. Mr. Weiss was a founder of the free
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Hotmail service, and made a fortune; when it was sold to Microsoft. Mr. Banister came up with an e-mail list-hosting service while in college. It is now Microsoft's listbuilder. He also claims some credit for Goto.com (now Overture), an Internet search engine that lists sites according to how much the site pays to appear when a specific keyword is entered.
Overture is one of the few unsung triumphs of web content, with a market capitalisation of $1.7 billion-down from its $6 billion peak, but still significant. And it is profitable. Mr. Banister reckons that the key to its success was that it took economics seriously: buyers will not pay for a high listing if searchers do not value it, and thus reward it, when they find it. Its new anti-spam system also uses economic intuition, by requiring senders of e-mail to state clearly whether they are sending spam, and to back that statement with their own money in the form of a bond that will be forfeited if it turns out that they are lying. The idea, simply, is that, if the price of sending spam rises, less of it will be sent.
Servers fitted with IronPort's spam-recognitionsystem will be able to identify "bonded senders" by their web addresses, and can block senders that are not bonded. Next week, it expects to announce that many of the best-known senders of non-spam bulk e-mail have signed up, along with the big Internet service providers, to its bonded-sender programme. The size of the bond will change over time, but is likely to be around $100,000 initially. The number of complaints made by recipients of e-mail from the sender will determine whether the bond is forfeited, in full or part. According to Mr. Banister, "the first complaint will not cost you much, a 3-4 digit number will cause pain to the bonded sender and 10,000 or more will result in the most severe punishment." Here's hoping it works.
Glossary
bond, n - соединение
bubble, n - дутое предприятие, «мыльный пузырь» clog, v - засорять
complaints, n, pl - жалобы forfeited, a - конфискованный
frustration, n - расстройство, огорчение
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ingenuity, n - изобретательность, искусность make a fortune, v - сделать состояние offering, n - предложение, ценные бумаги rebuff, v - отказывать, давать отпор
roll out, v, зд - разрабатывать threshold, n - порог
venture capital, n - вложение капитала с риском
Vocabulary in context
Find in the text the words with the following definitions
1.of great use or worth:_______________________________________________
2.often repeated or occurring:__________________________________________
3.a person who starts or runs a business activity, especially one that involves financial risk:_______________________________________________________
4.to call for as necessary or essential:____________________________________
5.the attainment of wealth or fame:_____________________________________
6.to give money to someone for something:_______________________________
7.conforming to recognized principles or accepted rules and standards:________
Reading comprehension questions
1.What are Mr. Banister and Mr. Weiss?
2.What is IronPort?
3.What are the frustrations of using an inbox?
4.What are the plans of the IronPort entrepreneurs to solve the problem?
5.What is Overture?
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Text 22 |
WIRELESS NET TAKES OVER HOMES |
To make the Internet even more convenient, many keen users are installing home wireless networks that give every room access to the web. Part of the reason for this popularity is because setting up these networks is easy. The latest edition of Microsoft's operating system, Windows XP, works well with these wireless, or socalled wi-fi, networks. Some Apple Mac computers come with wi-fi networks built in and happily share it with other wireless devices. The networks are low power and have a working radius of a few hundred metres, enough for the average family home. There is a dazzling array of companies selling wireless cards for PCs and wireless access points or hubs. The wi-fi hubs act as co-ordination points for all the wireless devices in a home or office and share out net access between them. Competition between the makers of these devices is brutal which should mean lower prices for anyone buying all the pieces to create a home network. Even Microsoft is producing its own brand versions of wireless hubs.
One company has started selling ready-made radio antennas made out of crisp cans to help people stretch the working range of their radio network. Setting up a wireless network is usually straightforward. Often simply switching them on and installing the configuration software is all it takes. But this convenience does have its disadvantages too.
Many of the people who have set up home wireless networks are reluctant to tinker with the default settings of their home access point. When setting up a network, many people simply take the devices out of their boxes, plug them in and forget about them. As a result many are broadcasting their existence over the airwaves to anyone who is interested and are potentially sending out personal information to the same audience. In the age of identity theft this can be a dangerous thing to do.
The last 12 months has seen many surveys revealing that companies using these wireless networks are unknowingly broadcasting sensitive information to outsiders. Many are turning to companies such as ReefEdge whose software and hardware keeps an eye on what is happening on these wireless networks and keep out intruders. ReefEdge has also released free software for home users, called Dolphin, which
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makes it much easier to work out if your home system is secure and to do something about it. Companies selling broadband access recommend that users install a firewall and keep their anti-virus software up to date.
Glossary
array, n - масса, множество brutal, a - грубый, жесткий competition, n - конкуренция convenient, a - удобный
dazzling, a - великолепный, блестящий disadvantage, n - недостаток
firewall, n - защитная система hub, n - ядро сети, концентратор
plug, v - вставлять в контактное гнездо set up,
set up, v - устанавливать, размещать
reluctant, a - делающий (что-либо) с неохотой, неохотный reveal, v - открывать, показывать, обнаруживать
share, v - разделять, совместно использовать straightforward, a - простой
stretch, v - расширять
survey, n - обзор, обследование tinker with, v - возиться с чем-либо
Vocabulary in context
Find in the text the words with the following definitions
1.to establish in a specified place, condition or status:_______________________
2.to give something in exchange for money:______________________________
3.to give form, or shape to:___________________________________________
4.to obtain something by giving money for it:_____________________________
5.highly responsive or susceptible:_____________________________________
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