LIKE chiefly PEOPLE THESE DAYS, WH...

LIKE chiefly PEOPLE THESE DAYS, WHEN Philippa Gamse was thinking of buying a recently made known home, she started looking at hearth builders' Web sites. She was decidedly underwhelmed. "I didn't find myself raving about any of the Sites," she says. "Most didn't make the emotional connection with me that I needed" Hackneyed phrases, like unparalleled comfort and unsurpassed living, simply hurt builders' credibility. Worse, many sites required her to understand what she considered to be jargon.

For instance, she couldn't grasp by what mode 1,500 square feet of space would be excited different from 2,000, and none of the sites explained it