Cut The Strings

Entrepreneur, May, 2001 by Melissa Campanelli

WISE BUYS

* Private eyes: American Express (www.americanexpress.com/privatepayments) now offers cardholders unique credit card numbers good for a one-time use. The Private Payments program, which aims to strengthen security for online shoppers, allows Net shoppers to get a user name and password when they register--for free--for the Private Payments program via the company's Web site. When they're ready to buy, shoppers return to the Private Payments home page, where they receive a unique, randomly created card number and expiration date. They then simply transfer the number to the order form to make the purchase--without having to share their American Express card number with you or any other merchant they'd like to buy from.

* Popularity contest: TIFNY (The Image Factory New York), a producer of Web applications in New York City, has released AtomicLog, a software program that lets you monitor your site's traffic in real time. AtomicLog examines the huge log files produced by your Web server and allows you to see the top-referring sites, the most popular domains and countries from which visitors come, the documents and files your visitors are downloading and traffic levels--all by the hour, day or month. You can sort AtomicLog's charts by unique page-view hits, unique host or amount of data downloaded. AtomicLog runs for free on your PC. For details, visit www.atomiclog.com.