Caught In |  | by Al Massey |
I just returned from taking a test drive of a HP 150MHz Vectra stuffed with 64 Megs of ram and assorted other necessities. This hummer was hooked up to the internet through a T-1 line, and this I know...I've got to have one. Honest honey, it followed me home, can I keep it? It's so cute.
"I disdain people who use low baud rates." In an effort to make the Internet more secure IBM's Lotus unit has teamed up with Nippon Telegraph & Telephone, AT&T and a few others to form the Multimedia Services Alliance Forum. Their aim is to make the Internet work much like the telephone system works without the need for manuals or computer commands. In coming months they hope to develop a layer of software and hardware that will rest atop the Internet, making it more reliable and secure. Ahh, one can dream can't one?
"Instructions say the form needs to be filled out on the typewriter. Typewriter?" The Microsoft Network (MSN) is implementing a new service called V-CHAT, a graphically based chat system allowing users to take on the persona of prefabricated avitars or animated three dimensional representations of the user. Microsoft has begun giving away software development kits for V-CHAT to its content providers thereby allowing them to develop branded chat worlds on the MSN. Linda Stone, director of MSN virtual chat team, sees chat as the glue that will bind users to the system. "We're trying to provide a more interesting way to chat, as well to help people aggregate around topics or the type of community they're interested in, or around some branded thing they're interested in," says Stone. In seeking a competitive advantage over such established on-line giants as Compuserve and AOL Microsoft is banking on their chat service. Indeed they claim that from 40 to 70 percent of their users engage in chat on a regular basis. V-CHAT will represent a significant revenue stream for MSN if it lives up to expectations. In a related move Compuserve has already launched their Worlds-Away avitar based chat service designed and operated by Fujitsu Ltd., and AOL, in Vienna, Va., is working on an avatar-based chat service, using technology from San Francisco-based Ubique Ltd., which AOL acquired in September. All this follows on the heels of Worlds Inc. of San Francisco who introduced the first virtual chat world to the internet last spring. Worlds, Inc. business plan centers around building environments for businesses that want to market or sell their products on-line. Although MSN content providers can create their own chat worlds at no additional charge it is speculated that some content providers may charge visitors for their chat services.
"I'd rather have more dots per inch than miles per gallon." Sooner or later it was bound to happen. Greg Elin, a 30 year-old consultant at New York-based Nynex Science & Technology Inc. strapped a golf ball size camera from Connectix, Inc., to his helmet and jumped aboard his red BMW K75 motorcycle and set out on a 20 day journey from Manhattans Silicone Alley to California's Silicone Valley. The object of this trip was to record his visits with the people and institutions that were responsible for the building of the Internet. Armed with a laptop, cell phone and cellular modem Elin set out on his 3M (Man, Modem and Motorcycle) odyssey posting live updates at http://www.totalny.com/live/ge. "I wanted to prove that you didn't have to be the president of the United States to stay connected,'' said Elin. "We should be able to stay connected with friends, family and business associates as we travel. Why should that be the sole domain of the powerful?'' By using low cost off the shelf products Gregg Elin proved that the dawn of connectivity had arrived as he posted his visits to Internet landmarks live, as he visited them.
"Ahh, technology. I can't remember when I sat through an entire movie without at least one device on my body beeping or buzzing." I give a number of talks each month to civic clubs and the like and I have noticed a trend over the last few months. There is always someone asking how to get rich over the Internet. They want me to tell them in twenty words or less how to make millions without leaving their home. Well, now I have the answer. I attended a conference on Internet advertising the other day and I am here to tell you to sell web advertising. That's right, advertising, not products. I really don't know how much of anything is actually being sold over the 'net but I do know that there are a great number of companies selling advertising. I did hear tell of a company called Hot Hot Hot, a Pasadena, Calif., specialty shop dealing in exotic hot sauce that sold over $6,000 worth of hot sauce over the web in the last year. They said that represents about twenty five percent of their total sales. Sites such as HotWired and AOL Global Network Navigator (http://gnn.com) are charging customers as much as $15,000 a month to post information about their products and services on their web sites. Bruce Moore of Bernard Hodes Advertising in New York, a firm that bills more than $200 million a year in advertising revenue, sees the web as the next logical step in generating revenue. "We build ads, and then send the content out to newspapers and magazines...along with 75 percent to 80 percent of the revenue to publish them," Moore says. "On the Internet, we are the publisher, and we keep all of the revenue." Enter DealerNet, a firm offering web space to about 400 car dealerships for a flat $995 fee to put the dealership online, plus $500 a month to keep them there (http://delearnet.com). It is reliably reported that Proctor and Gamble has laid claim to some 35 domain names for their Internet experience. Can you say http://www.badbreath.com or http://www.underarms.com?
"I'm so paranoid I take "Bad Command" and "Invalid" response personally." With the release of Internet Explorer 2.0 World Wide Web Browser for Windows 95 Microsoft claims it is eating into the market share carved out by Netscape. Oh yeah? Offering up their in-house poll of undisclosed sources at various Internet providers Microsoft claims that it has captured fully one-third of the market, with the rest of the pie divided equally between Netscape and AOL's Browser. WOW! My own informal poll, conducted in private but supervised by my friends Butch, Bubba, Margo and Sue Ellen, show that this is not the case. These astute Internet watchers logged onto a Web site that compiles statistics of some of the more popular Web destinations like YAHOO, and brought back info that shows 76.1 percent of visitors to those sites use Netscape Navigator and only 4.1 percent use Internet Explorer. http://www.cen.uiuc.edu/~ejk/bryl.html Point is, whatever the figures indicate it is you and I that are likely to lose out as these giants slug it out in the Browser market. With both Netscape and Microsoft creating extensions to HTML and not solely relying on standards it is hard for other vendors to compete in this ever-changing market. While both companies make their extensions available to third party vendors the competitors are quick to point out that the publishing of extensions rarely dovetails with product release cycles. You can get Internet Explorer at http://microsoft.com/windows and Netscape Navigator at ftp.netscape.com. "From the Dell Computers Tech Support Staff: A woman called asking how to install the battery on her new laptop. When told the directions were on page one of the manual she replied, "I just paid $2,000 for this machine and I am not going to read a book." As I am writing this in mid December the newspaper brings stories of even more lay-offs in the job market. It is times like these I wish the User Journal was on-line so I could help with late breaking news. One of the fastest growing areas on the internet is job-hunting. On-line services post over 6000 new jobs per month on their various forums and the government puts up another 3,000. Then the UseNet News Groups post another 10,000 or so. This doesn't count the 1,000+ the universities post nor the non-networked employment boards or the World Wide Web. It is going to be awhile yet before on-line services replace the newspaper, professional recruiters and other forms of networking but this is a great start. There are two basic on-line job services: job listings and resume posting and many sites have both capabilities. In general stay away from sites that charge a fee to post your resume or do a job search. Some of the more active sites include: the On-line Career Center (http://occ.com), the Interactive Employment Network (http://www.espan.com), the Monster Board (http://ageninfo.tamu.edu/jobs.html), America's Job Bank from the U.S. Department of Labor (http://www.ajb.dni.us) and Jobweb (http://www.jobweb.com) from the National Association of Colleges and Employers. Don't forget the web sites of an employer you are interested in working for. Many of these sites have job opportunities listed on their Home Page and if they don't you can e-mail the Webmaster for additional information. Some of the more active Newsgroups are MISC.JOBS.OFFERED, MISC.JOBS.OFFERED.ENTRY, MISC.JOBS.RESUMES and MISC.JOBS.CONTRACT. Finally, don't forget the Job forums on Compuserve, AOL and Prodigy. Al's law of evaluating software: "If it don't work right the first time chances are it never will." Surfing Safari for the month: Point out the differences between the three search engines at Lycos, Infoseek and Yahoo. Winners will get a treat from Al's bag of goodies.
Al Massey is a HAL-PC member.
This page is best viewed using Netscape ver. 2.0b5 or higher. Designed by Meredith Foster. E-mail me at webmaster@hal-pc.org with any comments you have and tell me what you want to see here.
Back to the User Journal Home Page