“With CarsDirect.com full of whiz-bang rich media as
360-degree rotating cars, instantly changing body colors, and
options that pop on and off with a click, Lawrence has demonstrated
the digital chops to make cars fly off his virtual lot. “The
goal at a conceptual level is to make it eye-catching–a lot of eye
candy and rich media,” Lawrence says. Still, he adds warily, “we’re
always concerned by delay at the user’s end….”
“After CarsDirect.com’s first ten months live, Lawrence souped
up his site in March–thanks to a Linux-based server manufactured
by Scottsdale, Arizona-based Workfire.com. “Workfire has a really
interesting solution–it senses a user’s connection speed, then
sends them appropriately sized content. It can pump out slightly
compressed images for someone with fat pipes, but when the mother
of the CEO dials up on her AOL connection, it will send her a
super-compressed image, so she won’t say, ‘son, how come your
site’s so slow?’….”
“Taylor adds, “The open nature of the Internet protocols has
allowed Workfire to build a Zero Insertion Force solution. One
could argue that Apache running Linux is the definitive embodiment
of the open system philosophy. Apache running on Linux certainly
represents a very significant portion of the overall market. Linux
has proven to be both stable and very fast.”