Return-Path: Received: by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.7.4/NSCS-1.0S) id BAA18519; Sun, 8 Dec 1996 01:53:03 -0500 (EST) Date: Sun, 8 Dec 1996 01:53:03 -0500 (EST) From: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu (TELECOM Digest Editor) Message-Id: <199612080653.BAA18519@massis.lcs.mit.edu> To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Subject: TELECOM Digest V16 #651 TELECOM Digest Sun, 8 Dec 96 01:53:00 EST Volume 16 : Issue 651 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson WebTV Musings: A User's Perspective (David Scott Lewis) WebTV: Problem With URLs; Remote Control Options (David Scott Lewis) Re: WebTV Sad Story (R. Van Valkenburgh) Re: WebTV Sad Story (Doug Sewell) TELECOM Digest is an electronic journal devoted mostly but not exclusively to telecommunications topics. It is circulated anywhere there is email, in addition to various telecom forums on a variety of public service systems and networks including Compuserve and America On Line. It is also gatewayed to Usenet where it appears as the moderated newsgroup 'comp.dcom.telecom'. Subscriptions are available to qualified organizations and individual readers. Write and tell us how you qualify: * ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu * The Digest is edited, published and compilation-copyrighted by Patrick Townson of Skokie, Illinois USA. You can reach us by postal mail, fax or phone at: Post Office Box 4621 Skokie, IL USA 60076 Phone: 847-329-0571 Fax: 847-329-0572 ** Article submission address: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Our archives are located at mirror.lcs.mit.edu. The URL is: http://mirror.lcs.mit.edu/telecom-archives They can also be accessed using anonymous ftp: ftp mirror.lcs.mit.edu/telecom-archives/archives A third method is the Telecom Email Information Service: Send a note to tel-archives@mirror.lcs.mit.edu to receive a help file for using this method or write me and ask for a copy of the help file for the Telecom Archives. ************************************************************************* * TELECOM Digest is partially funded by a grant from the * * International Telecommunication Union (ITU) in Geneva, Switzerland * * under the aegis of its Telecom Information Exchange Services (TIES) * * project. Views expressed herein should not be construed as represent-* * ing views of the ITU. * ************************************************************************* Finally, the Digest is funded by gifts from generous readers such as yourself who provide funding in amounts deemed appropriate. Your help is important and appreciated. A suggested donation of twenty dollars per year per reader is considered appropriate. See our address above. All opinions expressed herein are deemed to be those of the author. Any organizations listed are for identification purposes only and messages should not be considered any official expression by the organization. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From: David Scott Lewis Subject: WebTV Musings: A User's Perspective Date: Sat, 07 Dec 1996 00:24:10 -0800 Organization: Recommendations.net (http://fab.stanford.edu) Several days ago (last Tuesday and Wednesday, to be exact), I had the opportunity to demo WebTV at the San Diego (Central County) Computer City. Over the two days I gave their unit, which has a live 'Net connection, a helluva workout. My conclusion is that WebTV FINALLY got it right! Let me rephrase that: FINALLY somebody got it right ... and it is WebTV! WebTV is so simple that it's elegant. They've done a superb job with just above everything. Sure, it can't do some of the neat things that we've come to expect, like frames. But overall, it's what we've all been waiting for; I'll go so far as to say that it may be exactly what's needed to reach the mass audience of TV viewers that are not particularly 'Net- or PC-savvy (and don't want to be). I'm so jazzed by WebTV that I'm going to go and buy it, even though I have access through a PC to PBI. What I've done to make my surfing really easy is to add links on my personal Excite Live! page (http://live.excite.com). Hence, my WebTV home page will become a jump- station to numerous Internet marketing, advertising, and PR resources; Fab, the Stanford AI Lab spin-off technology that I've been working with for the past several months; over 200 international daily news- papers; several search engines, including the new ProFusion metasearcher, ZD Net, inquiry.com, et al; direct links to The New York Times and The Los Angeles Times, et al; Sun Server (my favorite Sun Microsystems source); a couple of intranet pointers, since I'm doing some intranet consulting these days; NewsLinx, my favorite up-to-the- minute Web info source; Web Commerce; my personal BusinessWire profile; and numerous other Web-based information sources, such as AnchorDesk, DQi (courtesy of DataQuest), FaulknerWeb, The San Jose Mercury News "A.M." news source, my personal c/net edition, PC Week, InfoWorld, Computer Reseller News, Web Week, @Computerworld, AgentNews, mobilis, Telecom A.M., Hyperstand, ... Plus, I have instant access to my NewsTracker profiles on agents, Internet trends, servers, venture capital, mobile computing, Web design, animation, intranets, ... Although WebTV does have the capability to receive e-mail, I still plan to use my PC for e-mail correspondence. However, for those that can forward mail to other accounts (e.g., those in an Unix environment using the .forward command), why not just go ahead and send copies of your e-mail to your WebTV account? This would be especially nice for those of us that receive lots of publications by e-mail, or for those that are subscribed to a lot of mailing lists. (By last count, I receive at least a couple of dozen e-magazines. It would be great to have my YPN, NewsTips, Tipworlds, et al, forwarded to my WebTV account.) Better yet, use USA.NET to have your mail viewable through ANY Web browser located ANYwhere AND forwarded to a RadioMail/Wynd-type wireless access account AND a WebTV account. And don't worry, there are plenty of good, usable mail filters to help with routing. I believe that it's time to refine the prevailing views on mass access to the Web. WebTV creates a new paradigm ... a paradigm that reaches out to over two hundred million potential users -- just like broadcast TV itself! It will be fascinating to observe the adoption and diffusion patterns of this new Internet media outlet. ==================== ADDENDUM (POST-PURCHASE): I bought my Sony WebTV black box on Tuesday night. I got it up and running in eight minutes. Well, almost. If you use an S-Video input, you better make sure you know how to set your television to switch to it. Personally, I had never used this option before. Also, my television, which is a 29" ProScan (Thompson), has two remotes: a master remote and a small, sleek remote (which is the one we always use; it looks like Voyager). Of course, I soon discovered that the only way to access the S-Video input is through the master remote. And, as fate would have it, the batteries had died! Oh, well, this added about another 10 minutes (and some colorful language) to the sign-on process. I've already used it for over 20 hours; I've had very little sleep over the past few days. Here are some of my observations: 1) The best thing is the music while you wait to connect! I like the "Downtown" song, but a user can select from three other options. However, there doesn't seem to be a way to change your option once it's selected. Hence, you have been warned: Select your music choice very carefully; you might be stuck with it for a long, long time! Now to more substantive issues. 2) First, I'll address e-mail (no pun intended). Well, there's no blind carbon option. For me, that's an important feature that they're lacking. There's also no way to create lists. And, it's not really easy to send regular carbons; the set-up is far more conducive to sending all recipients in the "To" header. Fortunately, it is possible to add names to an address book. Unfortunately, it is NOT possible to add names to your address book from e-mail that you've received. It's also not possible to change your header. That's bad news. I am, for example, really sending this message from my Pacbell account, but most of you see this as coming from my IEEE address. Here's the problem: When I send a message from my WebTV account, message recipients that hit their "Reply" function will send their messages back to my WebTV account. That means that I'll get WebTV replies only when I use my WebTV account. That's definitely NOT cool. I'd like to be able to designate my own e-mail and reply-to address. I ALWAYS use a forwarding account, like my IEEE or ACM accounts, which is turn forward to my USA.NET account, which then explodes to my Pacbell and WebTV accounts. Since the only place that I can store (and, for now, print) messages is with my Pacbell connection (which really sucks, by the way), I use my Pacbell account as my so-called "master" account. But I can still view ALL of my messages through WebTV or through any browser anywhere in the world through my USA.NET account. If I get RadioMail (or Wynd) ... or the MP 2000, I'll add forwarding to those accounts as well. So here's the scoop: Replies to messages that I send from my Pacbell and old Presence accounts (yep, I actually have a couple of more Internet access accounts, plus a CompuServe account) AND from my USA.NET account get distributed to my PacBell account, my WebTV account, and my USA.NET account. That's very cool indeed. But, those WebTV-originated messages will receive replies only at my WebTV account. That's NOT cool; WebTV needs to fix this immediately! Good news: It seems that most of the problems with WebTV, not just their e-mail limitations, can be solved with a software solution that doesn't require any equipment modifications by the customer. Oh, I can see a need to replace the keyboard or remote every few years as new function keys are added. And we'll need to buy WebTV "Smart Card" peripherals as they become available. But, overall, it seems to be an EXTREMELY low maintenance piece of equipment. Conceptually, it's a good model to support the cause of NCs vs. PCs ... but I don't want to get on this topic; it's almost like a religious war between Unix and MS Windows. 3) More on e-mail. You can't reply to individual portions of a message. That can make things a bit awkward. And changing the "Subject" field is a bit cumbersome as well, but it's doable. BTW, the "Reply" function does NOT allow an option to include the original message; you have to do that through the "Forward" function. Hmmm. Web documents are easy to forward/transmit from WebTV, but they do NOT include the entire document, only the link. That's a real bummer. Since I use Navigator Mail (Go Netscape!), I'm spoiled by the fact that I can receive Web pages and view them in their full glory in my Navigator Mail account. (For the record, for those of you using primitive e-mail systems, you can view Web documents that are sent to you as e-mail in their full glory via a USA.NET account.) OTOH, Web pages sent as e-mail to a WebTV account CAN be viewed in their full glory via WebTV, although I find that it looks much better when I simply click on the link and thereby take advantage of a full screen, versus a smaller e-mail viewing screen. A big question for many might be about data input (or shall I be quaint and call it "typing"). The Sony keyboard is terrific. I'm not sure what kind of IR they're using; I didn't check the spec. I get the impression that it's a line-of-sight IR. I would have been happier with a diffuse IR link. But, overall, it seems to work fine. It's a very light keyboard and very well designed, IMHO. Data entry through the remote control is a snap. Well, maybe not a snap. But it's okay for enterings URLs and the like. Users have an option to choose between an ordered keyboard (i.e., "ABCDEFG ...") or a Qwerty keyboard for their onscreen keyboard. (Don't worry, the "real" keyboard is a Qwerty keyboard.) The onscreen keyboard needs to go through a few iterations. For example, they need to add the major hierarchies as one-click entries; it's silly for me to have to type the letters c-o-m or e-d-u all the time. Also, a one-click input for w-w-w would be nice, just to save a bit of time. They also need to add their "Continue" key and "." key to a couple of more locations on their onscreen keyboard. 4) Viewing. Viewing can be a bit annoying. The output tends to be rather bright. Sure, I might be able to adjust the contrast on my television set, but that would (or should) impact by regular television or videotape viewing quality. I'm not sure what WebTV can do about this. Hmmm. They can probably change the background to be slightly off-white ... versus the GLARING WHITE SCREEN that I get on most Web pages. 5) Bookmarks. Their bookmarks are called "Favorites". They're easy to access from the keyboard by hitting the "Favs" key. Hey, that's easy! On the remote, they can be accessed through a two key input process: "Home" and then moving over one space and clicking on "Favorites". Easy. Very easy. I don't know if they have a limit, but I wouldn't push it. Each "favorite" shows up as a first-screen icon; hence, they tend to be a bit large. It would be nice if WebTV allowed a text-only display option. To aid in my surfing journeys, I selected my extensive Excite Live! page as my first favorite. From there, I can go just about anywhere. (BTW, Excite Live! does have limitations. For example, only so many links can be added to each category. Hence, my categories don't have much resemblance to the links that they contain. That's a silly limitation on the part of Excite Live! After all, I'm getting the same number of links, but now I have to put them in separate categories that don't correspond to the links ... just so I can have all (or most) of the links that I want.) 6) More on "Favorites". My second and third favorites are AltaVista and InfoSeek Ultraseek. I've added the dailies that I MUST read to my "Favorites" page. Hey, here's something quirky. It is now NOT possible to name the "Favorites"; it's necessary to accept the default. That, too, is a bit silly. For example, my Ad Age Interactive Daily "Favorite" has the date of the first issue that I used as my "Favorite" input. Also, a couple of my favorites have titles that don't really suggest what they're about. I should be able to override the HTML "Title" defaults and use my own titles. Overall, though, their "Favorites" are efficient. BTW, you can't use a "Favorite" as your home page. The home page defaults to a page offering a menu for e-mail, favorites, explore (which is like Yahoo!, of sorts), and search. 7) Last item on "Favorites". Their system has a built-in list of bookmarks. I deleted all of them. Except one. Keep their "JumpCity" bookmark. "JumpCity" kind of works like VCR-Plus. The Sony unit comes with a 472 page book describing all sorts of Web sites. It reads a lot like a Wolff book, e.g., NetGuide/YPN. The book evidently shows the home page for each described item. That's good and bad. Sometimes it's a bit much visually. But, overall, it's a GREAT book, especially for newbies. Here's why. With a simple four-digit input, which is easy to do with the remote (although it's another example as to why the "Continue" function needs to be added to a couple of more places on their onscreen keyboard), it's possible to go to thousands of sites. Okay, for those of us that have lived on the Web for any reasonable length of time, it's simply a cute feature. But for newbies, it's a TERRIFIC idea. Good job! I haven't checked the printed guide for political correctness, but it seems to have a lot of key sites. 8) More on e-mail. When a user first gets on, the system lets them know how many new messages they have. And it does this for all accounts. (See the next paragraph.) The system also beeps when new mail is received. Those are nice, albeit standard features that many of us are already getting. 9) Multiple accounts. You can set-up multiple accounts, each with their own favorites. I've set up accounts for myself (thewebguy@webtv.net), my fiancee (thewebgal@webtv.net), and my daughter (thewebkid@webtv.net). My daughter, who is slightly over three, doesn't receive too much e-mail, so I haven't done to much with her settings. My fiancee is in Europe on business this week, so she can arrange her own "Favorites" when she returns. However, both of our USA.NET accounts forward to our WebTV account, so she's already getting mail at her WebTV account ... even though she hasn't been around since I purchased the Sony unit. 10) Last observation (also about e-mail). Deleting messages is a VERY SLOOOOOW process. WebTV should, at the very least, have a checkmark and delete function (and a trash function as a back-up, but with automatic trash disposal since they probably don't want to keep an overabundance of someone's e-mail on their server/s). This, too, is a standard feature on some e-mail systems. Even USA.NET has this. Oh, and WebTV e-mail does NOT have filtering capabilities, nor does it have sorting capabilities. 11) Image maps. Oh, boy! They're not easy to navigate with either the remote or keyboard. And without a hardware change, I don't see an easy solution. If you absolutely must deal with a torrent of image maps, then WebTV is not YET for you. Yet, for all practical purposes, I don't find the arrow-key based navigation too cumbersome. Bottom line: It's fine, at least for the next year or so. Overall, WebTV is GREAT! I love it! The WebTV folks still have a lot to do ... probably a lot of job opportunities for programmers. RealAudio is key, as is some sort of streaming video. The logical choice seems to be VDOlive, but they should see what they can do with VXtreme, Xing, Vivo, ... Speech synthesis would also be nice. (Speech recognition would be great, but that would require a significant change in their hardware.) When I mean speech synthesis, I'm really talking about TTS -- text-to-speech. (My fiancee is in this area; she can be reached at thewebgal@usa.net, which, as I stated earlier, will forward to her WebTV and her personal Earthlink accounts. But, she can review mail while in Europe via her USA.NET account ... accessible through over 1,000 cybercafes worldwide! The firm that she's with was touted by guru Amy Wohl during the recent COMDEX as providing _the_ view into our computing futures.) Happy Holidays! David Scott Lewis d.s.lewis@ieee.org For further discussion, see http://www.webtv.net/HTML/home.yankelovich.html P.S. -- I have a couple of more observations about WebTV. They both relate specifically to optimizing for WebTV. Assuming the WebTV phenomenon catches on (and it will, even if WebTV does NOT prevail as the lead player), it might be very wise to have so-called "Designed for WebTV" pages and sites. (Call it what you will; you get my point.) Let their servers handle the tough stuff, but take advantage of everything that can be optimized via their servers. Also, it might be important to rethink e-mail for WebTV. Hah, not so obvious of a problem, but a problem indeed! Hitting hard returns is generally a good practice, but it can really chop up WebTV e-mail. Yet, the WebTV screen leads to itty-bitty columns. I'd like to see WebTV come up with a solution from their end, but in the interim, if I were offering a text-based e-mail service, I'd be very careful about how things look on WebTV. That's especially important for consumer-oriented sites, like the portfolio companies with idealab! Are you listening, WebTV? FINAL COMMENT (NO KIDDING): In response to my "Are you listening, WebTV?" question, I received a timely reply from WebTV: "We are listening." Good for them! ------------------------------ From: David Scott Lewis Subject: WebTV: Problem with URLs; Remote Control Options Date: Sat, 07 Dec 1996 10:34:52 -0800 Organization: Recommendations.net (http://fab.stanford.edu) I ran into this problem when I first started using my Web TV unit last Tuesday night, but I forgot to comment about it in my postings. However, it just came back to light a few minutes ago. A feature they need to add is a way to view URLs and manipulate URLs. For example, if I find a bad URL, I'll usually try to truncate the URL and see what I can get. More often than not, that seems to work ... or at least help. But URLs are NOT displayed and can't be manipu- lated from the "Location" position. Matter of fact, the only time a user can directly manipulate a URL is during the "Go To" input. That's too little user control. Here's a real example of this limitation: A little while ago I wanted to add Seidman's newsletter to my Excite Live! home page. I used to get Seidman's, but it seemed like it fell off the face of the earth, just like my old e-newsletter/e-magazine! :-(... Anyway, I couldn't add Seidman's new URL to my Excite Live! through WebTV. There is simply no way to copy and paste the URL. Hence, I had to go to my highly unreliable PacBell account to do the appropriate manipulations. (BTW, I beat up on Pacbell, but I really have a soft spot for them. After all, it was old Web design firm, Presence Information Design, that was the lead contractor on their "AtHand" site. That's why I'm STILL sticking with them. I hope they solve their problems, although I'm starting to lose all hope.) So for me, it's a pain to have to go to my PacBell account to do some basic functions that I can't do with my WebTV account. However, for a lot of people that may get WebTV and NOT have any other accounts, it's an unacceptable limitation. Remember, I really love WebTV. In some ways, I view myself as their third-party/user evangelist. However, I don't want to pull my punches. Once again, this is a problem WebTV could fix from their side. And, it shouldn't be too difficult to fix. Another suggestion (but much less important): "Favs" should be an advanced option through the remote control "Options" command. Yep, it saves only one step, but in general, a lot of the keyboard one-function keys should be accessible as advanced options through the remote control "Options" command. That should be VERY SIMPLE to implement. Have a default settings/reset for newbies that get too crazy and too confused. But after a while, it should be very easy (and make sense) for most WebTV users (or are they "viewers"?) to add some additional options. David Scott Lewis Recommendations.net d.s.lewis@ieee.org For the record (and for the accolades), they're: John Lee, Corporate Evangelist, evangelist@corp.webtv.net or jlee@webtv.net Chris White, MTS, casper@webtv.net Good customer service, guys! ------------------------------ From: vanvalk@auburn.campus.MCI.net (R. Van Valkenburgh) Subject: Re: WebTV Sad Story Date: Sun, 08 Dec 1996 01:49:05 GMT Organization: auburn.campus.MCI.net Reply-To: vanvalk@auburn.campus.MCI.net That's a very funny story, I think. I must say that I've gotten to where I prefer salesman who know nothing about their product, than salesmen who know just enough to be able to insert a few good lies. ------------------------------ From: doug@cc.ysu.edu (Doug Sewell) Subject: Re: WebTV Sad Story Date: 7 Dec 1996 12:46:23 -0500 Organization: Youngstown State University Thus spake Dave Sieg : > I had an interesting phone call from a guy who had bought one of the > "WebTV" boxes. It sits on the top of the TV and hooks to a phone > line, allowing "unlimited Internet Access" for only $19.95/month". I tried WebTV at Sears recently to bring up my home page. It was "painfully slow" - comparable to Netscape at 2400 baud. > But it would make sense for WebTV to allow a local ISP to be THE > provider in areas where they don't have POP's. Nope, can't be done. > Apparently, they use some proprietery encryption scheme, and are > making big plans for people to conduct all kinds of business solely > through their ISP. Another proprietary scheme. A pox upon them. Incidentally, my home page -- which is pretty ordinary -- had a .wav sound clip on it, and WebTV couldn't deal with that at all. I don't know if it supports any other type of sound files. It handled forms, however. I didn't bother to check my web server to see what the browser looked like to it. I'd suspect that many of the newer web browser features aren't supported, perhaps I'll have to head out to Sears again today and try it ... Doug Sewell (doug@cc.ysu.edu) (http://cc.ysu.edu/~doug/) ------------------------------ End of TELECOM Digest V16 #651 ******************************