Return-Path: Received: by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.7.4/NSCS-1.0S) id XAA03600; Sun, 8 Dec 1996 23:10:34 -0500 (EST) Date: Sun, 8 Dec 1996 23:10:34 -0500 (EST) From: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu (TELECOM Digest Editor) Message-Id: <199612090410.XAA03600@massis.lcs.mit.edu> To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Subject: TELECOM Digest V16 #653 TELECOM Digest Sun, 8 Dec 96 23:10:00 EST Volume 16 : Issue 653 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson The Problem With the Chat Feature (TELECOM Digest Editor) Re: WebTV Sad Story (Alan Bishop) Re: WebTV Sad Story (John Nagle) Re: WebTV Musings: A User's Perspective (David Scott Lewis) Re: WebTV Musings: A User's Perspective (Brian Elfert) WebTV: Pricing and Access Issues (David Scott Lewis) WebTV: Excite Live! Page Creation; E-Mail Miscellany (David Scott Lewis) Compcon 97 (Joy Shetler) TELECOM Digest is an electronic journal devoted mostly but not exclusively to telecommunications topics. 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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. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Sun, 8 Dec 1996 22:04:48 EST From: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu (TELECOM Digest Editor) Subject: The Problem With the Chat Feature After observing it for a few days now, the one thing I've noticed is that two or more people rarely seem to be there at the same time. In most cases, someone goes to that web page, hangs around a few minutes and after seeing no response from anyone else then leaves. Time and again, five minutes or less later, some new person shows up. :( It might be a good idea to have some times given for chat by a general consensus; that is, people showing up there could usually expect to find others there at that time also. So how is this for a starting schedule ... and feel free to make your own arrangments with others to meet there at certain times. How about 10-11 AM Eastern; 4-5 PM Eastern; 9-10 PM Eastern .... At least for Monday and Tuesday .... to give those of you who are interested in using this feature a chance to meet others who like doing the same thing. If you wish, leave a message there at any time indicating the time you will be returning or would like to have others meet you there, etc. I have this feature set currently for only one 'room' or chat area, but I can set it for as many areas as I like; I was thinking of possibly setting it for about six 'rooms', meaning that many separate conversations could be going on. Also, some people have been leaving questions there looking for answers from others 'passing through'. You might want to make sure that if no one is there to answer your question you include an email address where you can be contacted with an answer, etc. The Telecom Chat URL is http://hyperarchive.lcs.mit.edu/telecom-archives/chat PAT ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 8 Dec 1996 14:51:38 PST From: Alan Bishop Subject: Re: WebTV Sad Story Howdy. I'm a software engineer at WebTV Networks. I certainly don't speak for the company, but I can clear up some misunderstandings. dr@ripco.com (David Richards) writes: > It's apparent that "WebTV" uses a proprietary interface that is > totally incompatible with the PPP standard, so it can only be used to > connect to their service. Nope. It uses PPP. However, it does connect to our servers over the internet via TCP/IP. See below for more information. doug@cc.ysu.edu (Doug Sewell) writes: > I tried WebTV at Sears recently to bring up my home page. It was > "painfully slow" - comparable to Netscape at 2400 baud. [...] > 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. That's unusual. Perhaps that Sears had a noisy phone line? It's got a 33.6k modem built in. Plus, data is compressed further by our proxy server when possible. Some reviewers of our box have been perplexed when they get pages *faster* than their $3k computer. Version 1.0 of the client only supported MIDI. Version 1.1, due out shortly, supports Real Audio, .wav, .au, .aiff, mod, and others. All users will receive the upgrade free of charge. The important software in the box is all stored in flash ROM, and we can do upgrades over the net. The only thing the user needs to do is select 'upgrade now' when we announce the new release. The box takes care of the rest. Technical specs on the box are at: http://webtv.net/HTML/home.specs.html (.net, not .com) JP White writes: > In defense of WebTV they do provide a service where you give them your > area code and first three digits of your local number and they will > inform you if the call is local or not. However there is catch 22, > this service is available on their Web page, so if you havn't got Web > access your stuck. That's at: http://webtv.net/HTML/home.retail.html (.net, not .com) However, you can also call our customer service department at 1-800-GOWEBTV, and they can tell you as well. Dave Sieg writes: > 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. [...] > In our part of the world, business lines cost nearly $70/month, and we > have had our bad experience with the abuse of "unlimited" accounts. > It simply doesn't make sense for any local ISP to permit somebody to > have unlimited use of his dialin lines, modems, routers, etc for a few > bucks/month. Dave Sieg has some legitimate concerns. However, his article may confuse some people. We *are* contacting local ISPs and arranging for more coverage. Communications are via standard PPP and TCP/IP, so this is pretty easy. What he's upset about is that (a) we want to still be involved (i.e. we only allow customers to connect to ISPs that we have a business relationship with), and that (b) he's in a region of the US where (according to him) the economics don't work out for a $19.95 unlimited access plan. Hopefully, a description of our service will bring a little more light to the discussion. The key to understanding the decisions we've made is "user experience". Our goal is a system usable by anyone, not just those who know how to use a computer. If you've never touched a keyboard before, you've never heard of an ISP, or you're not quite sure what the internet is, you can still successfully use our system to browse the Web and send email. This is a consumer product, not a computer system. The user interface has been radically redesigned. There are no scrollbars. There is no horizontal scrolling. The primary interface is through a remote control, similar to the ones used for DSS. After you buy it at the store (either the Sony or Philips / Magnavox brand), you plug it into power, your TV, and your phone line, and you press the power button. You don't need to select an ISP and you don't need to fiddle with connection scripts, modem configuration, or phone numbers. It just works. Many areas have multiple ISPs serving them, and if the first one your box dials fails to connect properly, it just rolls over to the next one in the list without the consumer needing to intervene (or know). For one fee the customer gets the redundant services of multiple ISPs. Customer service and billing is all through us. Obviously, to pull this kind of transparency off, we need to have some sort of relationship with the ISPs involved, since we need to know who to call, what their connection procedures are like, and who to pay. Our systems have only been online since September, and it's not surprising that we started with the largest ISPs with the best coverage before working our way down. The box talks to our proxy server over an encrypted channel (using TCP/IP). This allows us to provide a better service to the user in several ways: - privacy for the user. The number of places that someone could snoop on a user's session are greatly reduced. We should be publishing a statement on user privacy in the near future describing what we will and won't do with information in our possession. I believe it's designed to answer the same questions as those posed in http://www.cdt.org/privacy/online_services/chart.html. We use strong encryption, and as some of you are already aware, we've been declared a munition by the US government, and the boxes have a "do not export" stamp on them somewhere. - response time for common sites is more consistent. The time to connect to a common site is the time between a user's box and the proxy server, not N different sites on the internet. - we transcode images and other media types. For example, image creators often make their images too detailed or store them in a format that doesn't compress as well as it should. We fix that in the proxy before transmitting them over the slow link to the user. It also means that if we want to support a media type, we don't need a new client release: we just add it in the server and convert it to an existing one. Mail is stored on our server. This means that even if one of your ISPs is down, you can still get your mail. We run a 24x7 operation with generator backup. Some ISPs do this too, but not all. So, it is true that users must connect to our service once they're hooked to the internet. It is true that you do not select your own ISP. In exchange, you get a system that anyone can use, redundancy, improved reliability, and performance in many cases, and a single point of contact for billing and customer service. alan a@corp.webtv.net [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Thanks for responding Alan. Please continue to follow this thread and perhaps in a day or two take a few minutes to summarize it for us with some followup comments of your own. PAT] ------------------------------ From: nagle@netcom.com (John Nagle) Subject: Re: WebTV Sad Story Organization: NETCOM On-line Communication Services (408 261-4700 guest) Date: Sun, 8 Dec 1996 18:53:03 GMT doug@cc.ysu.edu (Doug Sewell) writes: > I tried WebTV at Sears recently to bring up my home page. It was > "painfully slow" - comparable to Netscape at 2400 baud. > 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. It does forms. It does E-mail. It's actually rather clever about dealing with the width limitations of the TV screen. It didn't do QuickTime or .avi movies when I tried one. I was suprised; given the name, I though it would be oriented towards audio and video, not text. John Nagle ------------------------------ From: David Scott Lewis Subject: Re: WebTV Musings: A User's Perspective Date: Sun, 08 Dec 1996 12:47:32 -0800 Organization: Strategies & Technologies Rich Greenberg wrote: > Does the limited resolution of the typical TV distort the images/photos > on the web sites? Is it as good as 640x480? Nope! David Scott Lewis thewebguy@acm.org [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Was that 'nope' a response to the first question or the second question? PAT] ------------------------------ From: belfert@citilink.com (Brian Elfert) Subject: Re: WebTV Musings: A User's Perspective Date: 8 Dec 96 21:55:36 GMT David Scott Lewis writes: > 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. WebTV is really designed for the person who doesn't have Internet now, and probably doesn't have a computer. Do you think the average person really has a half dozen Internet email addresses, and wants their WebTV mail to be returned to a different email account? Chances are, this will be the only email account for most users. Brian ------------------------------ From: David Scott Lewis Subject: WebTV: Pricing and Access Issues Date: Sun, 08 Dec 1996 13:54:22 -0800 Organization: Strategies & Technologies Original message asked me about who's the ISP with WebTV, are their access points toll-free, and how much does it cost. There's a bit of marketing perspective/philosophy later in this message. WebTV IS the ISP. To determine if it's a local call, you can go to their home page and navigate until you find their local access indicator input selection. In other words, it's a form where you put in your phone number. WebTV then determines if you have a toll-free local access number. However, I'd check your White Pages just to be sure. In my case, both numbers they gave me were local. But I'm in Los Angeles and in the Marina; EVERYONE seems to have a toll-free access number from the Marina, so it's not surprising that I had TWO local access numbers for WebTV. (The ISI think tank is about a stone's throw away from my residence; they have the fastest pipes in L.A., and through their MFS connection everyone seems to be hooked-in locally.) The charge for UNLIMITED access is $20.00. It might really be $19.95 or $19.99, but you get the idea. Oh, that's per month, of course. The real question for the WebTV folks is what are the reservation prices? My complete unit ran about $440, including the IR keyboard. My hunch (and it's just a hunch) is that WebTV needs to price the hardware at less than $300; actually, that might be more of a call for Sony and Philips, since they're the two current hardware suppliers. (I don't know if WebTV has exclusives with Sony and Philips.) For monthly access, I believe they need to be in the $12 per month range for unlimited access. However, I'm going to urge them to offer an automatically tiered pricing. In other words, $3.95 per month for 3 hours; $9.95 per month for 20 hours; and, $12.95 per month for unlimited access. Like my PacBell account, it should kick-in automatically; unlike AOL's new pricing scheme, user's should NOT have to predetermine how much access they want. AOL is being a bit ridiculous and it got them in legal hot water. With this kind of pricing, WebTV's biggest problem will be meeting demand! Within a year, they would be the largest Internet-only ISP. Within two years, they would surpass AOL. Besides, within the next 18 months, I expect them to have integrated a lot of new, cool technologies, especially streaming video ... or, at the very least, Shockwave and QuickTimeVR. Plus, PDF must not be too far behind. Macromedia and Adobe must see the value of WebTV as the platform of choice for the public at large. Like I've hinted in the past, it's a switch to a market potential of over a hundred million new "viewers," versus the old, tired paradigm of "users." However, I expect this new generation of "viewers" (or at least a good fraction of new "viewers") to want interactivity. I wouldn't be surprised if WebTV is working with someone (hey, NetObjects would be cool) to develop an authoring toolkit so "viewers" could put up a very basic home page. There have got to be some interesting ways of taking advantage of the VCR/WebTV/television triad ... and why not add input from digital cameras, et al. VCRs, cameras, and other traditional consumer electronics products are what the public at large is used to; WebTV will simply be their seamless access platform to the Internet. And that's the real beauty of WebTV. Consumers will come to think of WebTV as another one of their appliances: "Yeah, I've got a microwave, a frig, a dishwasher, and WebTV." Word of caution: WebTV does NOT currently allow access to the Internet with the exception of the Web and e-mail. For most of the world that's more than adequate. (Even I can't recall when I last used Gopher or talk, although I do miss my Unix compression-related tools, especially since I read a lot of ftp accessible research papers, many using .z or .gz compression.) However, through DejaNews and other types of archives, such as the archives for Online-News, it's possible for those without access to a direct Usenet feed to read postings and directly post to Usenet groups. (I hope DejaNews is prepared to handle the traffic. Matter of fact, DejaNews should be a courtesy "Favorite" for WebTV. In other words, WebTV shouldn't charge DejaNews for the "Favorite" link/icon; DejaNews is, in essence, doing WebTV a big favor.) Once WebTV provides EASY Usenet access, perhaps through a relationship with DejaNews, then it will be really tough to argue against WebTV. With e-mail, access to the Web, and participatory access to Usenet, WebTV will provide (practically speaking) EVERYTHING that viewers would want ... at least until THE NEXT BIG THING, whatever that will be. Final observation for this message: I'm already finding that WebTV is my PRIMARY means of 'Net access. My PC is collecting a bit of dust! :-) Hey, I still use my PC access at least a few times a day, especially when I'm composing long (e-mail) letters, but I'm using WebTV to read most of the key Web publications that I regularly view AND to read many (actually, most) of my e-mail newsletters. Yes, WebTV needs Netscape InBox-Direct capabilities, but it's fine for 95+% of the e-mail newsletters and 'zines that I receive. Guess what: This lengthy message was originally composed on WebTV ... and it's pretty long. So go get your WebTV ... before they're all sold out! :-) For a peek at the most interesting threads I've seen about WebTV, go to: http://www.social.com/social/hypermail/news/index.html (As you know, yours truly has numerous WebTV-related postings in their archives.) Also, be sure to check out the copied newsgroups for the latest perspectives on WebTV. If you're on WebTV or don't receive a Usenet feed, go to: http://www.dejanews.com David Scott Lewis thewebguy@acm.org ------------------------------ From: David Scott Lewis Subject: WebTV: Excite Live! Page Creation; E-mail Miscellany Date: Sun, 08 Dec 1996 15:18:46 -0800 Organization: Pacific Bell Internet Services A while ago I talked about the difficulties of setting up an Excite Live! page through WebTV. Some further explanation is required. Actually, it is possible to set up an Excite Live! page through WebTV; it's just cumbersome (or can be). Since it's not possible to "Copy" and "Paste", each URL for Excite Live! had to be inputted manually. Now that's okay for The New York Times (http://www.nytimes.com), but not too cool for Technology Review (http://web.mit.edu:80/afs/athena/org/t/techreview/www/). But it's doable. Some other features that need to be added: 1) Ordering of "Favorites". Right now a "viewer" will get stuck with a listing of "Favorites" ordered by data, FIFO style. That's a pit of a pain, especially if a "viewer" has a lot of "Favorites". 2) Currently there is no "Reply to All" feature in their e-mail system. That, too, needs to be added. It's been noted before, but I'd like to restate it, that a red light message indicator signals when new mail has been received. The unit also beeps. Both are nice features. David Scott Lewis thewebguy@acm.org ------------------------------ From: jshetler@ohm.elee.calpoly.edu (Joy Shetler) Subject: Compcon 97 Date: 8 Dec 1996 21:36:21 GMT Organization: California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo IEEE's COMPCON 97 Set for Feb. 23-27 in San Jose Visit the COMPCON 97 World Wide Web page for more information and/or to register: URL: http://www.compcon.org or read the following :) SAN JOSE, Calif., -- One of the country's pre-eminent computer technology conferences -- Compcon 97 -- will be held February 23-26, 1997 here in the heart of the Silicon Valley. This continues a tradition of more than 40 successful years in the San Francisco Bay Area for this non-profit technical conference. "Hot Systems/Cool Software" is the theme of COMPCON 97, underscoring the importance of new computing technologies and applications in both the computer industry and society. "Computer technologies ranging from world-record 600MHz processors to eye-catching Java applets and VRML virtual worlds will all be featured at COMPCON 97," said Darrell Long, the conference chair and computer science professor at University of California-Santa Cruz. "COMPCON has the reputation as a one-stop, no-hype overview of the important developments in our industry. If you could only attend one technical conference a year to learn about the overall state of the industry, COMPCON would be your choice." Adds Dr. Joel Birnbaum, Vice President, R&D and Director of HP Labs: "COMPCON has been consistently a valuable conference presenting a broad technical program on state-of-the-art computing technologies." IEEE COMPCON 97 will be held at the San Jose Hilton and Towers Hotel (300 Almaden Blvd.) in downtown San Jose, Calif. COMPCON is sponsored by the Institute for Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), a non-profit professional association, and has been held in the Bay Area annually since 1955. Its 27 technical sessions and six in-depth tutorial topics run the gamut from the design of advanced central processing units and networks to computer systems, advanced programming and world wide web technologies. In addition, five well-known industry luminaries will give plenary talks. COMPCON has no marketing presentations or product exhibitions. COMPCON 97 program overview: INTERNET/INTRANET TECHNOLOGY: Trends, Environments, Applications SYSTEMS: Superservers, Mobility, Software Architecture MICROPROCESSORS: High-Performance, Low-Power INTERCONNECTS: Parallel Computers, LAN and WAN, Wireless VIDEO: Advanced Displays, Digital MULTIMEDIA: Technologies, Software Environments, Applications PARALLEL/DISTRIBUTED SYSTEMS: Applications, Hardware, Compilers OPERATING SYSTEMS: Object-Oriented, Microkernels PERIPHERALS: Mass Storage, DVDs, Display Technologies EMERGING TECHNOLOGIES: GigaHertz Devices, Advanced Hardware, Java Tutorial topics include: 3-D graphics, virtual reality, web site design and security, advances in computer architecture. Plenary speakers include: Federico Faggin (Synaptics) -- "The Microprocessor: Its History and Future" Hector Garcia-Molina (Stanford) -- "Meta-Searching Across the Internet" David K. Gifford (MIT and OpenMarket) -- "The Future of Electronic Commerce" Ted Laliotis (Laliotis and Associates) -- "To Tax or Not to Tax Internet Transactions" Dave Nagel, AT&T Advance reservations to Compcon 97 can be made through the web site or by contacting: Dave Hunt, COMPCON 97 Registrar Lawrence Livermore National Lab PO Box 808 MS L-130, Livermore, CA 94551-0808 E-mail: hunt-dn@llnl.gov Updated information will be placed on the Compcon 97 home page on the World Wide Web at URL: http://www.compcon.org Additional contacts include: Dr. Darrell D. E. Long, General Chair University of California-Santa Cruz Baskin Center, Computer Engr./Info. Sciences Applied Science Bldg. Santa Cruz, CA 95064 Phone: 408-459-2616 Fax: 408-459-4829 E-mail: darrell@cse.ucsc.edu Dr. Michael Harrisson, Program Chair University of California, Berkeley Computer Science Division 775 Soda Hall Berkeley, CA 94720-1776 harrison@cs.berkeley.edu Michael Ross, Publicity/Media Relations IBM Corp., Almaden Research Center 650 Harry Road, K03-802 San Jose, CA 95120-6099 Phone: 408-927-1283 Fax: 408-927-3011 E-mail: mikeross@almaden.ibm.com For more information about this posting contact: Dr. Joy Shetler Cal Poly Computer Engineering Program San Luis Obispo, CA 93407 Phone: 805-756-2309 Fax:805-756-1458 E-mail: jshetler@calpoly.edu http://www.elee.calpoly.edu/~jshetler ------------------------------ End of TELECOM Digest V16 #653 ******************************