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Interactive television is something that is becoming quite widely talked about these days. In the United States they are going to have 500 television channels but not all of them will be interactive. I understand that there is one called the fish channel, or fish net, or something like this, and it just consists of fish swimming round in front of your eyes for nearly 24 hours out of 24; so it might be very relaxing but I do not know if you can really interact with them much, unless you just open your mouth in the same way they do. Our speakers are going to talk about interactive television. They are going to tell us what it is exactly. They are going to tell us about the transmission technologies that you are able to use, how you actually interact with the programmes. They are going to talk about who is involved in interactive television, and why, and they are going to talk about potential services that one can have available with these devices. Our very first speaker is going to tell us about what interactive television is — Judith Jeffcoate. She is an independent consultant specialising in new markets for information technology, she was the lead author on a report by Ovum on interactive television multimedia, and she has just written a book on introduction to multimedia technology and applications.

Describes how small businesses involved in e‐commerce may benchmark their performance against a number of critical success factors (CSFs). The proposed approach is based on a series of interviews carried out amongst small‐to‐medium‐sized enterprises (SMEs) whose activities were judged to represent best practice in e‐commerce. Encourages an SME to analyse its own strengths and weaknesses on a continuing basis and to compare them with those of its competitors. The first step in this process is to identify the company’s attitude to growth. Next, the SME should establish a suitable generic strategy and decide on a set of objectives that support it. Finally, it should identify a set of relevant CSFs. Analysis of the KITE interviews identified 11 CSFs relevant to the competitive performance of SMEs entering the e‐commerce market. Further research currently being undertaken as part of a follow‐up study will be used to validate this approach.

The desirability of electronic document delivery systems has been argued for years and the reasons for the slow progress of the idea are discussed. An explanation of the technical background is provided followed by some examples of electronic means of information distribution such as facsimile and disc‐based systems. Some experimental projects are described and the article concludes with a description of document image processing systems used for business purposes which have a number of features in common with delivery systems.

Managers today are faced with an ever‐expanding range of options when it comes to managing information within their organizations. Although we build bigger, better and faster machines, the sheer volume of information is expanding more rapidly than our capacity to process it. The problem lies with the software. Most of it is obsolete by the time it is delivered and the design is such that it is nearly impossible to make changes without totally redesigning it. Today's corporation must be flexible and the company's information system must be capable of evolving along with the organization.