The web works with broadband. Flash does more than present a 'skip intro' page, streaming audio and video bring the news to life and well-designed web sites are packed with animated detail. Once you have broadband, you will no longer tolerate delay, and the business information available on the Web can play a big part in re-energising your company.
While broadband cannot solve issues of validity - there will always be ephemeral nonsense online, just as in all other media - it can massively increase the volume of research that's possible at any one time.
For a start, you can run multiple searches at once - opening several browser windows simultaneously without reducing search speeds. If you use one of the freeware browsers (Mozilla) then you can open multiple windows within a browser as tabs - easily flicking between them so as not to clutter your desktop with browsers. If you want to use your existing browser you can install 1Tabview, a small piece of Freeview available at
http://www.tucows.com/ which will replicate this feature.
Other research features include the ability to download large files and the use of file-sharing software such as WinMX or Kazaa (please check first for legality) which will allow you to search for files on other users' hard drives.
Finally, with broadband you can place online surveys for your customers and even watch your site statistics change by the minute! There are thousands of free software packages to help you monitor this type of information. Visiting www.download.com is a great place to start.
