Where there's smoke, there's smoke!

This article appeared in The Sydney Business Review on 15 August, 1996

There's a new gold rush on. We are now seeing carpetbagger, snake oil salesman and holy roller all rolled into one in pursuit of riches. I give you – The Internet Expert.

People without email addresses in their advertisements are telling us how to promote our businesses on the World Wide Web. People with no programming experience are offering to build complex systems using the Java programming language. Millions of people use web browser and email software daily without training, but I've heard that four lessons at $90 per hour are needed for Netscape. The Sydney Morning Herald ran a feature recently containing 21 ads with neither an email nor web address, all offering expertise in training, marketing on the net, or web page development.

The words caveat emptor come from a language much older than Java or C++, but they need to be understood by anyone buying into the Internet.

Here's a test. Ask the person offering the service if they can write programs in CGI. If they say "Yes", run, do not walk, to someone who knows what they are talking about.