From: Robert Seidman Subject: "In, Around and Online", Issue 2.7 W/E 2/17/95 To: Multiple recipients of list ONLINE-L In, Around and Online- Issue 2.7-- Week Ending 2/17/95 ======================================================= Copyright (C) 1995 Robert Seidman (robert@clark.net). All rights reserved. May be reproduced in any medium for non-commercial purposes. In This Issue... ================ - The Continuing Saga of Bungling Mail - More from HotWIRED - It's a Small eWORLD(Review) After All... - Top of the News (CompuServe, America Online and Prodigy) - Update on Microsoft Anti-Trust Consent Decree - Newsworthy Notes - Short Takes - Stock Watch - How to Get This Newsletter The Continuing Saga of Bungling Mail ===================================== All the children sing: Hey, AOL mail You're Such a Snail AOL Mail Well, I have some good news for you - at least for today. All week long my mail tests to AOL were sporadic with some mail being received virtually instantly and some taking as long as 18 hours. In today's testing, all of my inbound mail to AOL from the Internet made it within seconds. I hope this is a trend! Unfortunately, America Online picked a bad time to bring their mail system down for maintenance. Normally, if the mail system were down for a couple of hours it would only cause minor discomfort, but when such an event occurs in the early morning hours of Valentine's Day, the members tend to get a little testy. Further, in the evening of that same day the mail system slowed to such a crawl that trying to open or send a piece of mail sometimes took between 10 to 30 minutes. Okay, I know some of you are thinking, "What's the big deal Robert, it happens!" I understand that point of view of very well. The thing is, since its earliest days as Quantum Computer Services, America Online has preached the gospel of "electronic community". AOL chief Steve Case has been one of the strongest proponents of electronic community. I know some people think that it is a crock, and MANY people think that it is especially a crock coming from Mr. Case. I don't think it is a crock and in my extremely unscientific study, there are at least a couple million other people who don't think it is. But an "electronic community" doesn't function very well when some of the electronics start to malfunction. Apparently Ziff Davis' new magazine, Inter@ctive, quoted me from one of my newsletters commenting on AOL's e-mail difficulties saying that "to blame growth is inexcusable". They took me a little out of context though. I don't think that it is inexcusable for a company to blame problems on growth. Last year, when America Online experienced tremendous growth I think THEY were probably as surprised at the growth as anyone else was. To that end, though it was annoying, it was forgivable. But when AOL finally sorted out most of the growth issues of a year ago, they came back to the members and basically said: "Thank you for putting up with all the problems and being patient with us. We've re-engineered our system so that accommodating growth in the future will not be difficult." So yes, I do find it inexcusable that a year later they're blaming problems on growth. The truth is, they screwed up. I don't expect any company to send a letter to its members saying, "Gang, we screwed up- we're really sorry." But when I think of "electronic communities", ideally it would be handled that honestly. The question many have written in with in light of the growth problems America Online is experiencing is: how do they continue to thrive... More Musings on "Ned Brainard"'s HotWIRED Column ================================================ A recent segment in Ned Brainard's FLUX column on HotWIRED suggests that the industry trend of huge growth is masking another industry trend: churn. America Online's recent quarterly financial statement clearly indicates that growth is way ahead of any churn. However, in the current market it is quite possible for a company to experience 100% churn and still end up making money. That's because there are more people out there that want to try or will be trying services than the number of people currently using such services. That won't always be the case though, and the FLUX pages are very correct in pointing this out. Many industry analysts are speculating that America Online has already surpassed CompuServe to become the biggest online service. To answer the earlier question of how America Online continues to thrive even when they have problems, the answer is relatively simple. America Online is the easiest service to use, they've gone out and secured a wide variety of content and they are run, literally, by a marketing genius. But the fact remains that the competition is coming. Prodigy expects to launch it's new P2 interface sometime this spring, Interchange president Michael Kolowich has gone on record stating that Interchange will be launched this Spring (I'll believe this when I see it), new and improved interfaces are in the offing from GEnie and Delphi and until we hear otherwise we can expect that Windows 9x will ship with the Microsoft Network built in. As long as the market continues to grow and America Online continues to be the easiest to use, they will succeed even in spite of performance problems. But soon, even in a still growing market, there will be several "easy to use" services to choose from and all will offer similar content and services. At that point, price and performance and "cool tools" become the biggest issues. Assuming that the price war will come, and I am assuming that it will, performance quality will play a significant role when customers are choosing services. As for Ned, well, I think HotWIRED is ticked off that AOL hasn't made it out of the box with their World Wide Web browser yet and as such, HotWIRED doesn't have access to AOL's 2 million or so customers. HotWIRED would have you believe that they're not upset that they don't have access to AOL's customer base, but that their upset because AOL members don't have access to HotWIRED. HotWIRED is funded on ADVERTISING revenue. You be the judge. Do I expect Ned to be a little nicer to Steve Case once AOL's WWW browser up and running? No, but while blasting America Online, the service, the gang at HotWIRED will welcome the AOL members with open arms. HotWIRED is available via the WWW at: http://www.hotwired.com . It's A Small eWORLD After All ============================= Don't take the title the wrong way-- small isn't necessarily a bad thing! I like Apple's eWORLD, it definitely gets a thumbs up from me. The Mac support forums are excellent (especially for a Mac Newbie such as myself) and the offerings for children are great. The news services provided are outstanding both in terms of content (Reuters, Dow Jones, UPI and more) and presentation. The three things eWORLD is lacking are Internet services (though they do have Internet e-mail); an abundance of people (when compared to America Online, CompuServe and Prodigy) and breadth and depth of content. The Internet access will come - newsgroups are expected to launch sometime during the first half of the year. Inside sources tell me that Apple's software licensing agreement with America Online entitles eWORLD to the Internet services America Online has designed, and other non Internet services as well, such as pictures within forms. The content will come too-- remember eWORLD hasn't been around all that long. Don't let the shortage of people steer you away though. While eWORLD is not the happening "chat" spot that America Online is (and that Prodigy is becoming), AOL and Prodigy started out in similar fashion. If you're a Mac owner and you believe in the principles of electronic community, than eWORLD may be for you. The community is smaller, but that gives you a better opportunity to have a bigger voice in the community. Look for a PC compatible version sometime this year. I haven't had the time to complete all the research necessary and interview all of the appropriate folks at eWORLD, but you can expect a more lengthy review and in depth analysis sometime in the near future. Top of the News =============== COMPUSERVE announced plans to offer SLIP/PPP access along with a CompuServe membership at the same low connect rates as the regular service! Internet access at $4.80 an hour! What a bargain! The benefit of this is that you'll be able to connect to the service with any TCP/IP compatible software and use whatever WWW browser you want. CompuServe will most likely package this with Spry's Internet In a Box software and throw in a new version of CIM that will allow connectivity via TCP/IP. If you SLIP/PPP into the net and then jump to one of CompuServe's basic services (like AP Online news), I'm not sure if you'll be billed $4.80/hr. for your Internet connection or not. I'll find out and let you know. The nice thing about this announcement is that national Internet access will be offered via CompuServe's network. So, if you happen to be away from home, you'll have a truly national service provider. The not so nice thing about this is that regular browsing of the WWW at $4.80/hr. is a lousy deal. While CompuServe will undeniably be one of the most reliable access methods for net access, at $4.80/hr., the cost significantly outweighs the reliability benefit. I'll keep you posted. In the mean time, look for a local provider that offers flat fee or reasonably priced SLIP/PPP access or one of the national providers that's already providing reasonably reliable access at better rates. Then snag a copy of the new CIM software when it becomes available and wander over to CompuServe via your own connection. AMERICA ONLINE this week announced the formation of a new venture called WebSoft, intended to "leverage the Internet assets of AOL to create open standards for companies who want to build a presence on the Internet." Additionally, the company named William L. Dunn President of WebSoft, and Senior Vice President of America Online. "The market remains too fragmented for companies looking to develop a presence on the Internet," according to Steve Case, President and CEO of America Online, "There are numerous vendors that have entered the market, but most tend to focus only on a piece of the puzzle. Through the formation of WebSoft, Inc. we hope to bring these pieces together in an integrated way and build open standards to accelerate the growth and popularity of the Internet." "We think it is more important than ever before to bring together a variety of companies across multiple industries to build open standards and accelerate the development of this interactive medium. Bill's understanding of the challenges companies face as they try to exploit opportunities on the Internet, as well as his depth of knowledge and experience with digital technologies, positions him perfectly to lead the charge in bridging the excitement of the Internet with the strategic interests of leading media, technology and telecommunications companies to create sustainable win-win alliances," Case added. Dunn, formerly an Executive VP at Dow Jones was credited with the success in the growth of Dow Jones' electronic information division which provides services like Dow Jones News Retrieval. Dunn is described as a visionary when it comes to the electronic distribution of news. I'm a stickler when it comes to visionaries, but clearly, this guy is the real deal. Dow Jones was ahead of its time when it comes to electronic distribution of news. Dunn, who left Dow Jones in 1989 was most recently the president of his own media technology company. According to news reports, Dunn had signed a 5 year non-compete agreement with Dow Jones. PRODIGY announced that over 250,000 Prodigy members have downloaded their World Wide Web browser since it first debuted a little over a month ago. Prodigy also announced that 125,000 of the members are new Prodigy subscribers. Remembering that Prodigy counts multiple users on the same account as subscribers makes these numbers sort of confusing. Still, the WWW software only needs to be downloaded once per Prodigy software client, so if there have been 250,000 downloads, half coming from new subscribers...wow! Even if these numbers are inflated some, they are still impressive. Though if history is an indicator, we can look forward to a press release announcing that in an independent survey of those accessing the WWW with a graphical browser via a major online service, Prodigy's WWW browser rated the highest. Yeah, I know Prodigy is the only major online service currently offering a graphical browser for the WWW, but I wouldn't be surprised to see the press release anyway. Marketing hype aside, again, hats off to Prodigy. They were first, and they did a nice job! Update on Microsoft Anti-Trust/Consent Decree ============================================= I've received several letters asking why this issue makes it into this newsletter. From my point of view, it is the single most important backdrop to the online services industry as a whole. Microsoft plans to bundle the Microsoft Network and Internet access into its forthcoming Windows '95 software. Microsoft also has a deal on the table to buy Intuit, the makers of the popular personal finance software, Quicken. >From an online services point of view, these two items are especially significant. Given Microsoft's dominance in the operating system market, it is quite natural to assume that ultimately the Windows 9x operating system (assuming it ever ships) will also become the dominant operating system. Taking it a step further, it is not unreasonable to think that if they do in fact bundle the Microsoft Network with the operating system, that ultimately Microsoft will have an advantage in the online market because everyone using the Windows '9x operating system will have access to the Microsoft Network. As for Intuit/Quicken, many people believe that one of the biggest aspects of the "online" market will ultimately be personal finance and home banking. Quicken is far and away the most used personal finance software and the ability to leverage the Quicken software with the Microsoft Network will give Microsoft an overwhelming advantage in this particular area. Last summer, the Justice Department and Microsoft came up with an agreement that slightly modified some of Microsoft's licensing practices. But the consent decree came under fire and was ultimately reviewed by US District Judge, Stanley Sporkin. Sporkin it seems read a book last summer alleging all sorts of bad stuff about Microsoft and I guess he thinks he's the guy to put a stop to Microsoft's dominance. Many folks have confused the Justice Department's encouragement that Sporkin should approve the decree as Bill Gate's having the Justice Department in his back pocket. This isn't really the case, but it doesn't matter, Sporkin rejected the consent decree and the Justice Department has filed an appeal. Why is the Justice Dept. appealing? They feel that the consent decree was a satisfactory resolution to the investigation that was going on at the time and the charges brought against Microsoft based on that investigation. New evidence, allegations and issues like whether Microsoft should be allowed to bundle their online software with their operating system and the Intuit buyout should be handled separately from the investigation and litigation that brought on the recently rejected consent decree. While it pains me to agree with Janet Reno's shop on anything, here I must agree. Clearly, the Justice Department should investigate these other issues, and is already investigating some of them to determine whether charges should be brought against Microsoft. The legal experts seem to agree in the mainstream that Judge Sporkin overstepped his bounds, but aren't going as far as saying Sporkin's ruling will be overturned on appeal. It seems that normally it would pretty much be a given that Sporkin's ruling would be overturned on appeal, but because Microsoft is such a behemoth and because these issues have so much visibility getting the ruling overturned is not a done deal. Personally, I think Sporkin should have approved the consent decree, and let the Justice Department bring the other issues to the table as necessary. Now it could turn out that there will be one huge case that involves all the little pieces and the Justice Department will have lost, at least in the short term, the little bit that was gained by the consent decree. In the mean time, look for lots of hard earned tax dollars to be spent on this. This case could get extremely long and drawn out a la the IBM case that lasted more years than I've been alive. Stay tuned... Newsworthy Notes ================ VIRTUAL VINEYARDS, a retailer of premium wines via the Internet is the first (at least that I've seen) to take advantage of Netscape's secure server technology. When you enter http://www.virtualvin.com , the Netscape WWW browser advises you that you're entering secured space. Then when the document is presented, the little broken key at the bottom left of the Netscape browser CONNECTS! I got goose bumps, I tell ya. All kidding aside, this really is something of a milestone. Here's how it works, according to the press release: "A customer connects by computer to Virtual Vineyards' World Wide Web site and orders wines from their on-line portfolio. Virtual Vineyards receives the order with the customer's encrypted credit card payment information. It then electronically transmits the credit card payment to Wells Fargo Bank and the order to the supplying winery. The bank authorizes the payment and captures the money from the customer's credit card account over Wells Fargo's private electronic network. Meanwhile, the winery starts filling the order and arranging to ship the wine to the buyer. " Cheers! SONY CORP. of America announced its new "Sony Online" service via the World Wide Web that integrates all the Sony divisions into one interactive online service. While this online service is really just an advertisement, it is a fun one! From music clips to Beavis and Butthead. You'll want to check this one out at: http://www.sony.com . FIDELITY INVESTMENTS launched a new (FREE) service on the World Wide Web providing investment information and more. The service is not conducting brokerage transactions over this service but plans to once security issues are resolved. See it for yourself at: http://www.fid-inv.com . PHONE WARS: No, I'm not talking about AT&T and MCI. Now phone wars have come to the Internet. First out of the box is a company called VocalTec with a product called Internet Phone that allows users with SLIP/PPP connections to the Internet (accessing at speeds 14.4 Kbps and above) to hold voice conversations over the Internet. The software, which lists at $99 (US) will be available for $49 through March 31. A demo version that allows 90 seconds of conversation at a time is available at ftp.vocaltec.com . This software is currently only compatible with the Microsoft Windows operating system and a winsock compatible TCP/IP driver. Not long after this announcement, another announcement came from a company called Camelot Corporation announced plans to ship a product called PICK (Personal Internet Companion Kit) that will offer full duplex and encrypted phone conversations over the Internet. The product is scheduled to ship at a MSRP of $99.95 (US) during the second quarter of '95. INFOSEEK CORP. announced the launch of a service on the World Wide Web, InfoSeek, that allows users to search "more than 100 computer publications, 10,000 Internet newsgroups and 200,000 World Wide Web pages." Additionally, the company announced agreements with several new content providers that will make their information available via InfoSeek, including Business Wire, CW Publishing Inc., Information Access Co., InfoWorld Publishing Co., Newsbytes News Network, PR Newswire and The Reference Press. You can find out more about InfoSeek at: http://www.infoseek.com . IT'S THAT TIME of year and all of the major online services are offering online areas that will help you with your Income Taxes. Now the Los Angles based CPA firm, Hargrave & Hargrave presents the Tax Wizard on the World Wide Web. To see it for yourself, point your browser to: http://taxwizard.com . TELESCAN INC. providers of the Telescan online service aimed mainly at business professionals and entrepreneurs announced plans to provide Internet access and plans for a presence on the World Wide Web. The full plans are expected to be announced March 25 at Telescan's Phoenix Forum in Phoenix, Az. You can see a preview of their WWW site at: http://www.telescan.com . AMERICA ONLINE closed the acquisition of the assets of Advanced Network & Services Inc. (ANS)for $35 million. The price was made up of approximately $20 million in cash and 258,065 shares of stock. AOL said the acquisition is expected to strengthen the strategy to rapidly deploy network capacity from multiple sources to capitalize on emerging market opportunities. DEUTSCHE TELEKOM AG, the dominant German telephone company announced plans to enter into the online and interactive television market. It plans to offer "Telekom Online" sometime this summer-- giving Germans access to the Internet. The service, according to a Wall Street Journal story, will provide the first significant competition to CompuServe, which is currently the dominant online provider in the European market. Deutsche Telekom plans to upgrade a current online service called Datex-J that hasn't done very well. Deutsche Telekom is forecasting 2.2 million members in 4 years time. CMG INFORMATION Services formed a new venture called CMGntures. CMGntures is being funded in part by the capital raised by the sale of Booklink Technologies to America Online. CMGntures charter is to invest in companies seeking to capitalize on the commercialization of the Internet. VISA and CARNEGIE MELLON University announced a partnership for an Internet payment system that would allow users to buy content on the net for as little as a penny. The system, NetBill, has been under development at the university since 1991 and is expected to begin trials this summer. According to the story from UPI, it is currently difficult to compensate people who offer their intellectual property for free on the Internet, but as the amount of people using the net grows, the potential to make money is there. Hmmmm. Nah. BELLSOUTH NETWORK SOLUTIONS (BNS) was announced as a new entity of BellSouth, to "serve the rapidly developing and increasingly complex network integration needs of business customers." THE MOST WANTED hacker, Kevin Mitnick was apprehended this week. This is a pretty big story and is extremely interesting. I'm not giving it much space though because this story was such big news it was covered everywhere. I've read many interesting newspaper accounts and seen a few good reports on television news broadcasts. If you want an interesting angle, look into both Netcom's and The Well's involvement in the case and then look at the announcements issued by Netcom and The Well. MICROSOFT'S INTERNET ASSISTANT for MS Word 6 for Windows is now available in beta at: http://www.microsoft.com . The Internet Assistant allows Word 6 users to easily create HTML documents from within MS Word. It also allows users to browse the web straight from Word and cut and paste links into their own documents. Internet Assistant uses technology licensed from Booklink Technologies (now owned by America Online). Short Short Takes ================= TAKE ME OUT to the ball game- okay, so the players are on strike. And we're all sick of it in general. But don't let that stop you from visiting Cracker Jack's site on the WWW at: http://mainsail.com/crackerj/ BABE-O-RAMA: Well, it's that time of year and the Sports Illustrated Issue is up. You can download high quality GIFS of some of this years best shots on CompuServe at GO SIMAGAZINE. CATCH TONIGHT SHOW'S Jay Leno at an NBC ONLINE Interactive event. On America Online Monday, Feb 20 at 10PM EST. Keyword: COLISEUM HEY, HEY, what can I say... Catch Jimmy Page and Robert Plant in a chat event on Prodigy 2/23 at 10pm EST. Jump Chat on Prodigy. Stock Watch =========== Last This 52 52 Week's Week's Week Week Company Ticker Close Close High Low ------- ------ ------ ------ ------- ------- America Online AMER $68.25 $65.00 $68.25 $25.13 Apple AAPL $43.75 $42.50 $48.06 $24.63 Netcom NETC $29.50 $29.25 $29.50 $16.75 AT&T T $52.25 $50.50 $57.13 $47.25 General Elec. GE $52.13 $53.63 $54.88 $45.00 H&R Block HRB $36.13 $36.25 $48.75 $33.00 IBM IBM $75.00 $75.00 $77.25 $51.38 MCI MCIC $20.13 $19.50 $27.88 $17.25 Microsoft MSFT $62.00 $60.38 $65.25 $39.00 News Corp NWS $16.75 Sears S $47.00 $47.75 $55.13 $42.13 How to Get This Newsletter ========================== Via LISTSERV: send an e-mail to LISTSERV@CLARK.NET and in the BODY of the message type: SUBSCRIBE ONLINE-L YOUR FULL NAME example: SUBSCRIBE ONLINE-L Robert Seidman Via Anonymous FTP: FTP to ftp.clark.net . Back issues are in the pub/robert directory. Via the Word Wide Web: point your browser to: http://www.clark.net/pub/robert/home.html Via the newsgroups. In, Around and Online is regularly posted to alt.online-service, alt.internet services and alt.business. See you next week.