(Posted to alt.online-service, alt.internet.services and alt.business) In, Around and Online- Issue 12, Week Ending 11/25/94 ====================================================== Copyright (C) 1994 Robert Seidman. All rights reserved. May be reproduced in any medium for non-commercial purposes. What's New ========== This newsletter is now available via LISTSERV thanks to the gangs at Clark Internet Service and L-SOFT International, Inc. To subscribe, send an e-mail to: LISTSERV@CLARK.NET . In the BODY of the message type: SUBSCRIBE ONLINE-L [YOUR FULL NAME] Corrections =========== Last week I told you about CMP Publications making their computer publications available on the WWW (currently for free) at: http://techweb.cmp.com/techweb . In my confusion, I referred to CMP Publications as Cowles Media Publications. I love them both, but they're not the same thing. My apologies for any confusion this caused. Preface to This Week's Lead Story ================================= This newsletter has been great fun, but a freebie newsletter doesn't get the bills paid so I have a "real job" in my spare time. Even though I write a freebie newsletter and distribute it via the Internet, I feel that I must adhere to some self inflicted standard of journalistic integrity. If I come off as an unbiased observer of events, that is because I feel that I am. I never want to bring personal bias into the fold. However, it would be wrong, if for example I were to write an amazingly glowing review of something on CompuServe without telling you that I worked for CompuServe. Your knowledge that I worked for CompuServe might affect how you viewed that particular review. I don't work for CompuServe. I work for a company called FYI Online. FYI Online developed the technology being used for infoMCI, the cornerstone (my bias, but true nonetheless) of the networkMCI Business suite of applications. The technology works though- it automatically does all my research for this newsletter. It gives me the stories that *I* want to read- all I have to do is read them! I could go on about the product, but that would be advertising, and that isn't my intent. MCI is currently paying 50% of my paycheck, and soon to be 100%. My personal perspective is that I am an employee of FYI Online and MCI is our customer. While I believe that I would write what I am about to write regardless, I'd never convince anyone that didn't want to believe that. I thought you, the reader, had a right to know. We've all seen the standard signature file of "I speak for myself, not for my employer"; it applies here. On with the show... The Big News ============ (note- unattributed quotes refer to direct quotes from the press release) MCI Communications Corporation boldly and confidently walked onto the online services industry playing field offering a portfolio of services "featuring such components as a new secure electronic shopping mall, a user-friendly software package and high-speed network connections to the Internet" for roughly $3/hour. The service, "internetMCI" will provide customers with software from FTP Software, Inc. and Netscape Communications Corporation (formerly Mosaic Communications Corporation). The software provided by FTP Software will serve to connect users to the Internet and provide them with a suite of point and click applications for services such as e-mail, telnet and FTP. Netscape Communications will supply their Netscape WWW browser which is quickly becoming the de facto standard. In addition to general web surfing, the Netscape software will play an integral part in linking internetMCI users to the electronic shopping mall, dubbed marketplaceMCI. MCI will be using the Netscape's server technology, which in combination with the Netscape browser provides secure electronic transactions over the Internet. The software will cost users $49.95 (there will not be any additional charges for this software for networkMCI business customers). Users will be charged $19.95/mo. for 7 hours of local dial-up access (3 hours for users in rural areas and those accessing via an 800#). Additional hours are scheduled to be billed at $3.00/hr. Further, MCI will be marketing "storefronts to retailers and service companies that want to promote or sell their services to the estimated 25 to 30 million people who now access the Internet worldwide. MCI will offer business consulting in the design, implementation and management of their storefronts..." Small businesses will be charged $2,000 per month for storefronts and larger businesses will be charged more. MCI already runs the backbone that supports approximately 40% of all the traffic in the US and will give merchants the opportunity to hook up to their high speed network (currently 45 megabits/second and scheduled to go up to 155 megabits/second next year) in ways that range from local dial up to frame relay, and in the future, SMDS and ATM. Taking a page from Microsoft, MCI has announced this product before it is truly ready. Rather than being far off, this service is scheduled to be available in January, although MCI has said that their network of local access lines to the Net will not be ready until mid February. Initially, my reaction to this announcement was not great. I found myself caught up in the issue of pricing and failed to see the big picture and the importance of this announcement. I've had a couple of days to reflect upon this service now, and consider this the biggest announcement in this industry all year- even bigger than the Microsoft announcement. We're about to see the Internet mass marketed in ways we've never seen before. The impact of this is wide ranging and will affect the way all online services do business. A new business model has been served up for selling products and services on the Internet. Small businesses can't get a big presence on services like CompuServe, Prodigy and America Online cheaply. Even if they could, they're presenting their products to a relative small group of people when compared with the 25-30 million on the Internet. While it is true that many, perhaps even most, don't currently have the type of access that will allow WWW browsing with a multimedia client, this is changing rapidly. If I am a small business and have to pick who I would have market my services and products and my choices are MCI or America Online- I'm going to pick MCI, because in the United States, everyone knows who MCI is. It pains me to use the often used phrase of "brand name marketing", but in this market, it makes a difference. A business sales force of approximately 7,000 MCI representatives doesn't hurt either. We're already seeing how smart the folks at Netscape Communications are. They're giving their Netscape client away, and many people are already using it- and they'll be able to use marketPlace MCI for secure transactions over the Internet whether they are internetMCI customers or not. Sooner or later, all major services will provide World Wide Web browser access, and all those users will be capable of getting to internetMCI. For companies small and large alike, that is a major incentive, but the real beauty for these companies isn't so much that marketplaceMCI will be available to everyone that's jacked in, but that everyone that's hooked in will KNOW marketplaceMCI IS THERE. That's something MCI can bring to the table that the other services aren't currently in a position to provide. I'm not going to try and tell you that this is the end of the world as we know it and that I see doom and gloom for the likes of CIS, AOL and Prodigy- the market is growing by leaps and bounds and there will be room for lots of folks. This announcement just raises the bar a little bit and forces the existing online players to come up with new and innovative ideas. The world as we know it isn't over. It is changing though, and I think we all will benefit, regardless of what services we choose to use. Emphasizing their commitment to being a major player in the online-service arena, MCI named Timothy Price, previously the president of MCI Business Markets as president of the newly created Communications Services Group. According to a story by the Associated Press, this will essentially make Price the third highest official in the company with wide ranging authority. Top executives of the business and consumer markets will report directly to Price. Price's focus will be leading MCI into the online services market. Speaking of New and Innovative... ================================= This week, America Online, Apple Computer(owner of eWORLD) and Medior teamed up to form a new company chartered with coming up with new and innovative ways to get people to shop interactively. The new company- 2Market, Inc., will initially be offering a multimedia CD ROM for Apple Computer and MS Windows users that will interface with major online services such as America Online and Apple's eWorld. According to Ted Leonsis, President of America Online Service Co. and the new CEO of 2Market, the need for this sort of product was validated by the success of En Passant a CD ROM product that featured goods and services from 21 big catalog merchants that was tested on some 30,000 Apple Computer users last winter. According to 2Market, the results of the En Passant test showed that people would shop via computer and that in fact, the users found it preferential to other passive home shopping formats like paper catalogs and television shopping because it was "personal, fun, easy, and convenient". Each of the three companies involved in 2Market had a role in the En Passant testing. "With the success of En Passant, we saw a tremendous opportunity to be the first company to deliver a new service that marries multimedia, CD-ROM and on-line services to revolutionize how people shop," according to Leonsis. "The timing is perfect now because time-constrained consumers are demanding convenience and they have the technologies in their homes to support a new way of shopping." More Shopping Tidbits ===================== It would seem that the efforts detailed in the stories above are somewhat validate in the recent study from Killen & Associates, "Purchasing and Payment on the Internet: Digital Money Takes Off." The study predicts that shoppers worldwide- at home and in the workplace- will use the Internet to purchase $600 billion of goods and services in the year 2000. That is to say that in some 5 years time, nearly 8% of all goods and services purchased will be purchased via the Internet. Doesn't look like the Internet is going to put shopping malls out of business, but $600 billion is still a pretty nice slice of the pie. Prodigy News ============ Regular readers of this newsletter are probably aware that I'm not the biggest Prodigy supporter to walk down the block. But when somebody does something right, you have to give them credit. Newsweek Interactive debuted earlier this week on Prodigy, and simply put, it is the best presentation of a publication in the online medium that I have seen so far. It has the look and feel of an interactive CD ROM, and features pictures and the hypertext point and click feature that WWW users are familiar with. It's even better structured than anything I've seen on the World Wide Web. Needless to say I liked it. Currently only available to Windows 3.1 users, with Mac compatibility scheduled for next year. Check it out at: JUMP NEWSWEEK . Be sure to have a Tom Clancy book or something like "War and Peace" handy as the initial downloads take a little while. CompuServe News =============== H&R Block reported that its CompuServe service recorded pretax earnings of $34.3 million for the quarter ending 10/31. This is a %40.5 increase over the same period one year ago. Revenues rose $33.2 percent for the quarter perhaps due in some part to service being turned up in Mexico and Eastern Europe. CompuServe has also been beefing up their marketing efforts in Canada. Internet Censorship? ==================== Carnegie Mellon University recently blocked access to areas on the net where students can access "dirty" pictures. About 300 students protested this move earlier in the month claiming blatant censorship. Some have suggested that officials at Carnegie Mellon have overreacted. The officials have responded that they feared legal action could be taken if they distributed pornography to minors. Most of the students at CMU are adults, but children as young as grade school age have access to the university computers. According to a story by the Associated Press, the issue heated up when research associate Martin Rimm used CMU's computers to research a study being done on pornography in cyberspace. In his "research" he collected 917,000 pictures that ranged from simple nudity to... well, let's just say animals were involved and leave it at that! In his research, he also tracked how many times the pictures had been downloaded. According to the AP story it was a whopping 6.4 million times. But I'm not sure how the numbers were computed. I mean, if he downloaded 917,000 pictures, he would account for almost 15% of the downloads himself. As seems typical in these cases of censorship, Mr. Rimm had the ability to view the pictures for himself before taking his statistics to university officials. Based on the numbers, university officials felt they had no choice but to act on this. These are difficult decisions, and I'm glad that I'm not the one having to make them. Still, if the AP numbers are correct, it does make one wonder where Mr. Rimm found the time to download 917,000 pictures. I would think for purposes of research, a mere 250,000 would've made do! Some guys get all the luck. Microsoft/Intuit Update ================ In an earlier issue I wrote about the significance of Microsoft's planned acquisition of Intuit, maker of the popular personal finance package, Quicken. Reports this week indicate that it is likely that Justice Department will spend some time looking into the potential for a monopoly in personal finance software. Microsoft confirmed earlier in the week that it had received a second request for information. This basically amounts to an extension of the earlier, more general review of Microsoft that hardly amounted to a slap on the wrist. Taking a page from Steve Case and the online gang, competitors claim they are worried that Microsoft will bundle Quicken with their operating system much as they plan to bundle the online service, the Microsoft Network. Competitors would be relieved by any settlement that involves Microsoft promising not to bundle quicken with the Windows operating system. SHORT TAKES =========== HO HO HO: Santa's sleigh now rides the information super highway. Kids and the young at heart can send electronic mail to Santa by writing to: santa@northpole.net . Santa now has a WWW page that will make put even the biggest grinch into a festive mood. You can check it out at: http://northpole.net . This free community service is provided to the children of the world by North Pole Productions, a division of Internet Access Inc., Ottawa, Canada. AEROSMITH CYBER TOUR: Aerosmith has rocked us for years now they're rocking into cyberspace in a big way. Making appearances on CompuServe, Prodigy, America Online AND the Internet December 4-7. Proceeds from connect time charges and sales of the limited edition Aerosmith Cyber Tour t-shirts (designed by the gang at Wired Magazine) will be donated to the Electronic Frontier Foundation. For details, contact the EFF (voice) at 202-347-5400 or contact your CompuServe, Prodigy or America Online. EXTRA EXTRA- You can now read all about it in the Electronic Telegraph the electronic version of London's Telegraph. You don't have to be in the UK to read and enjoy this one. Find out for yourself at: http://www.telegraph.co.uk TELECOM LIBRARY ON the net. Tulsa, Oklahoma based Wiltel is sponsoring a telecommunications library on the Internet. Lots of information here for those who just can't get enough. Via the World Wide Web at: http://www.wiltel.com/library/library.html . CONGRESSIONAL JOB SEEKERS - (there will be quite a few after the most recent elections) and others can look for work or post their resume to the net. An interesting career services site sponsored by the Employment Transition Services Group. A pretty nice site available via WWW at: http://www.earthweb.com:2800/etsg or by e-mail at: etsg@earthweb.com . THOMAS DOLBY to guest on this week's version of Warner Bros. Record's Cyber-Talk. On America Online, Monday 11/28 at 9:30 p.m. EST. Keyword: WARNER . PENTIUM PC OWNERS who are no longer confident in their PC's ability due to a bug in the floating point processor that affects mathematical calculations that go out 9 decimal places and further might want to check out the fix by MathWorks. Most people will probably never need it, but if you need your faith restored check out: http://www.mathworks.com for some work arounds. Happy Holidays! See you next week.