Source
Automatically imported from: http://commons.somewhere.com:80/rre/1995/online.business.html
Content
This web service brought to you by Somewhere.Com, LLC.
online business
``` [I find this newsletter intermittently useful. This issue includes some responses to their editorial strongly supporting formerly excoriated forms of online advertising. In them you will discover a common type of argument among proponents of such views: focusing on the people who respond more rudely to unsolicited advertising in order to stereotype people who disapprove of the practice as flamers. This, of course, is like the burglars' association's PR firm trying to draw attention to all those antisocial homeowners who have nothing better to do than wait around for a chance to shoot burglars in their homes at the least excuse. Obviously, they'll point out, the responsibility for retrieving missing goods belongs with the homeowner. Much else in this issue is also of interest on topics like privacy and the evolving structure of the online services industry. Subscription information at the bottom.]
Date: Sun, 24 Sep 1995 17:38:13 -0400
From: "Online Business Today(tm) @ Home Page Press, Inc."
---
ONLINE BUSINESS TODAY(TM) NEWSLETTER: 950925 (#12) MORNING FINAL MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 25, 1995 OBT@HPP.COM
---
IN THIS ISSUE:
---
NEWS
---
ABC TO START WWW AUDITING
This long established body finally gets in on the auditing of interactive media . . .
V-ONE'S CYBERWALLET(TM) LAUNCHED
The company uses patent-pending Secure Transaction Channel (STC) technology . . .
VOCALTEC INTRODUCES SOFTWARE FOR HIGH-QUALITY SOUND OVER THE INTERNET
Vocaltec says its IWave is a voice tool for broadcasting over the Net . . .
QUATERDECK INTERNET MACHINE RACING ON
Company to help bring Internet to the masses in Holland . . .
NETSCAPE TO ACQUIRE COLLABRA SOFTWARE
The acquisition is aimed at extending Netscape's position as a premier open software provider . . .
DEPARTMENTS
CYBEROMETER . . .
READER'S VOICE Letters to the Editor . . .
ONLINE DIARY Who's Doing What and Where . . .
EDITORIAL, OBSERVATIONS AND OPINION . . .
SHOP WATCH This column looks at businesses making their presence felt on the Internet . . .
ABC WILL START AUDITING WEB SITES
The Audit Bureau of Circulations, the long established body that vouches for the circulation claims of periodicals, has announced it will begin test audits of interactive media on the World Wide Web beginning October 1, 1995.
Four initial beta sites have been established: They are CondeNet, the interactive edition of The Atlantic Monthly, TimesFax on the Internet (a daily electronic digest of The New York Times) and Adfinder.WSJ (the advertising Web site of The Wall Street Journal).
Commenting for The Wall Street Journal, Celia Currin, director of Marketing Services, said "The Journal has long been a technology leader in the publishing business. We are excited to be involved in a beta test of technology that will verify the importance and reach of this new advertising medium."
Explaining The New York Times' involvement, Patricia Ecke, a vice president of The New York Times Information Services Group and publisher of TimesFax, said "We are pleased to participate in this test with ABC to help define new ways to quantify and describe Web site customers. Such information will be valuable to us and our advertisers."
ABC's Board of Directors, representing advertiser, advertising agency and publisher members, gave Bureau management approval to begin beta tests based on its position that the new electronic media require independent, third-party validation by an industry resource which is credible and responsive to the needs of its core constituencies. "This is the same position upon which ABC was created 81 years ago to audit the claims of print publishers," said ABC President, David Keil.
ABC's audits for World Wide Web sites will confirm the integrity of the record keeping process and independently verify the activity statements made by the publisher."
ABC is working with Market Arts WebTrack, Inc. (WebTrack) to manage the technical process of online auditing and to further develop auditing software. The audit software will measure activity in a secure environment, independent of a publisher's usage log, and will compare activity with the publisher's usage log to flag discrepancies.
"Web sites are proving to be a census-based medium," said Arnie Semsky, a member of ABC's Interactive Sub-committee and executive vice president, Media and Programming Services at BBDO Worldwide Inc. "That is, all of the user activity can be captured, audited and reported. Advertisers using this new media should take advantage of this opportunity to establish census-based measurements."
"ABC plays a key role in acting as an industry forum for advertisers, agencies and the media they use in the development of measurement and reporting standards," said Board Chairman, Hugh Dow, president of Initiative Media. To this end, ABC's Board of Directors has created an Interactive Sub-committee to help develop definitions, standards and report formats.
These will incorporate principles endorsed by CASIE (Coalition For Advertising Supported Information and Entertainment). "We will continue to work with the industry by seeking input and reaction to the measurement and reporting standards as they are developed," said Dow.
With more than 4,200 members, ABC is the first and largest circulation-auditing organization in the world, and maintains the world's foremost electronic database of audited circulation information. ABC offers reports and services in a variety of print and electronic formats, including CD-ROM and the World Wide Web. For WWW access you can connect to http://www.accessabc.com.
V-ONE'S CYBERWALLET(TM) LAUNCHED
V-ONE Corp. has announced that it will now license its technology for open, secure electronic commerce known as the CyberWallet(TM) to any qualified software vendor for a nominal license fee. The announcement was made in part in response to the recently-publicized breaches of Netscape's SSL security protocol. V-ONE's CyberWallet payment process is intended to prevent merchant fraud and to make totally open and secure electronic commerce on the Internet by both consumers and businesses a reality.
The CyberWallet payment process was licensed by V-ONE to Checkfree(TM), Spyglass(TM), and SecurePay(TM) in August of 1995 as a part of the Electronic Business Co-op (EBC). Currently, a major credit card company and several processors are testing the CyberWallet process.
Unlike the Netscape SSL method, V-ONE uses its patent-pending Secure Transaction Channel (STC) technology in its CyberWallet process. STC is an "out of band," end-to-end security method which utilizes DES and RSA public key cryptography to conceal and transmit financial data to credit card processors over the Internet. STC's "out of band" characteristics enable its secure use with any Internet browser, any Internet server, and any transaction processor. The United States Department of State and the Department of Commerce have granted export approval.
STC's method differs from "in-band" security methods such as Netscape's SSL, by operating on a separate channel, parallel to any browser. This method is analogous to a control channel operating with a data channel in communication systems.
V-ONE, owner of the Internet firewall SmartWall(TM), successfully demonstrated its version of the CyberWallet - SmartWallet(TM) - September 19 at the Third Annual International Smart Card Forum in Tysons Corner, VA. In the demonstration, the SmartWallet process was used to purchase merchandise with a credit card over the Internet. Next, a smart card was used to authenticate a user over the Internet to conduct secure personal banking with a Citibank Home Banking account.
STC reduces the risk of merchant fraud by not allowing the cybermerchant to see any financial data contained in the encrypted envelope. The data is decrypted at a decryption server used by the processing bank or processor, who is a trusted party for credit card information.
STC is designed to eliminate the current need for a certification infrastructure by using a unique public key/private key relationship for encryption and decryption. When the certification infrastructure is finally in place, STC's application level architecture allows for immediate migration to that process. In addition, STC will comply with credit card transaction standards as they are released.
"We use the strongest DES encryption to encrypt the financial data and re-encrypt with RSA technology to make it what we believe to be the strongest, most secure Electronic Wallet in the world." said James Chen, CEO of V-ONE.
VOCALTEC INTRODUCES SOFTWARE FOR HIGH-QUALITY MUSIC AND VOICE BROADCASTING OVER THE INTERNET
VocalTec Inc., the developer of the Internet Phone software, has launched the Internet Wave, or IWave, a voice communications tool that it claims sets a new quality standard for broadcasting over the Internet. The software is available free for download from the Internet at http://www.vocaltec.com.
VocalTec says its IWave gives radio stations, entertainment companies, universities and even individuals a way to broadcast shows, lectures, music and more in a high-quality audio format to Internet users worldwide and all Internet users a way to receive such broadcasts.
"IWave's technology is adding another dimension to the Internet - high quality sound. Now, anyone who wants to be represented on the Internet will have the 'voice' to be heard," the company claims. Martin Schoffstall, senior vice president and chief technical officer for PSINet, says "VocalTec has set a quality standard for real-time voice. Expect all aspects of the Internet to be enriched.
"VocalTec has achieved a level of audio quality that enables radio stations to go 'on-air' online with both speech and music," said Tony Gatto, managing editor, WCBS Radio New York. "IWave opens doors for radio stations around the world to expand their reach to new audiences anywhere, any time and any place with broadcast quality digital audio."
IWave, currently being considered by Viacom, Virgin Interactive Entertainment Inc. and Sony Music Entertainment Inc., has two main components - a server package that includes an encoder which works in conjunction with standard web servers and the IWave Windows-compatible helper application. Both are available free of charge at VocalTec's Web site at http://www.vocaltec.com.
QUATERDECK INTERNET MACHINE RACING ON
Quarterdeck Continues its Drive for Market Leadership in Europe by Partnering With One of the Netherlands' Leading Access Providers and Dutch PTT Affiliate to Provide Broadest Internet Distribution Services in the Netherlands.
Videotex Nederland N.V., one of the Netherlands' leading Internet services providers and Quarterdeck Corporation have announced an agreement to team up in the Netherlands to provide the broadest Internet access available today in the Netherlands.
As part of the agreement, World Access(TM) services will be bundled in the Netherlands with Quarterdeck's InternetSuite(TM) software which includes Quarterdeck's browser. In addition, Quarterdeck Mosaic and InternetSuite will be bundled with World Access service and distributed by Videotex and retail channels. The Quarterdeck InternetSuite will be available with an estimated retail price of 99 Dutch Guilders (inclusive VAT) with one month free usage of World Access.
"The Internet market in the Netherlands is rapidly approaching that of the U.S. market in terms of acceptance," said Gaston Bastiaens, Chief Executive Officer of Quarterdeck. "The cooperation between Quarterdeck and Videotex Nederland will greatly contribute to the rapid market development in the Netherlands."
Quarterdeck InternetSuite - is a group of five tools that includes Quarterdeck Mosaic, Quarterdeck Message Center, QTERM (Telnet), QFTP (File Transfer Protocol), and Quarterdeck Location Manager. Quarterdeck InternetSuite includes integrated Windows SLIP/PPP support for easy dial-up connections to the Internet.
NETSCAPE TO ACQUIRE COLLABRA SOFTWARE
Netscape Communications Corporation has announced the signing of a definitive agreement to acquire Collabra Software, Inc., the leading independent developer of collaborative, computing software.
The acquisition is aimed at extending Netscape's position as a premier open software provider for linking people and information over enterprise networks and the Internet into the burgeoning collaboration and messaging market.
"By combining Collabra's products and technologies with our own, we broaden our ability to offer customers strong, integrated solutions for easily communicating and collaborating within and beyond the enterprise using open standards," said Jim Barksdale, president and CEO of Netscape. "We also gain the benefit of Collabra's tremendous team of people, who bring world-class expertise in providing messaging and collaborative technologies."
"With the overwhelming majority of our enterprise customers wanting to integrate their internal messaging systems with the Internet, we are extremely excited to join Netscape," said Eric Hahn, president and CEO of Collabra. "Working with Netscape's outstanding team will enable us to deliver our market- leading collaboration technology on the platform our customers are requesting. The result of this agreement will be a state-of-the-art client/server, platform- independent product family based on open standards." Netscape will purchase 100 percent of Collabra, a privately held company, for 1.85 million shares of Netscape stock, to be accounted for as a pooling of interests. The deal is expected to close on or before January 31, 1996.
Collabra's flagship product, Collabra Share, first shipped in July 1994 and quickly emerged as a leading group conferencing and information sharing application. Collabra Share makes teams more effective, collaboration more affordable, and organizational learning automatic by providing electronic discussion forums where people can distribute and discuss information. Collabra Share leverages companies' existing messaging infrastructures including Microsoft Exchange, Microsoft Mail, Novell Groupwise, Banyan BeyondMail and Lotus cc:Mail.
CYBEROMETER
Yahoo now lists 31,938 entries under its Business and Economy sub-directory of WWW sites.
The classification "Companies" includes 23,540 cybercorps which equal 73.7 percent of all B&E listings. Second is Products and Services with 4,431 (13.9 percent) followed by 1,483 Organizations (4.6 percent). No other categories exceed 1,000 listings. Employment is fourth with 595 and Markets and Investments is fifth with 308. These top five categories equal exactly 95 percent of the WWW under Business and Economy.
Yahoo lists an additional 25 categories to account for the remaining five percent.
Reader's Voice
Dear OBT:
unsubscribe
You obviously feel it is fine if people wanting to sell something dump several thousand unwanted advertisements a day into my email system. Has the thought ever occurred to you what this will do to the email system, how it will destroy its usefulness?
Also, I must admit I did not much care for the insulting way you refer to those of us who have been users and core supporters of the Internet for many years . . .
Regards, Fred
Dear OBT:
Thank you for your strong editorial on Internet advertising in your most recent issue. I operate a desktop publishing/resume service and just recently started advertising on the Internet. I am not into the practice of scooping up e-mail addresses from newsgroups. I limit my advertising to USENET newsgroups that are either market oriented or related to my resume services. My ads either contain helpful information, such as the article "Ten Tips for a Successful Resume" that I recently posted or they are short and respectful of the viewing audience.
Despite these facts, I do seem to have earned a handful of flames over the posts. I consider myself lucky that there were only a handful but included with them were some gems sent by some fairly nasty individuals. I've had one mail-bomb threat so far and one person who told me I should keep my advertising off the Internet.
These self-appointed watchdogs seem to have nothing better to do than to scan newsgroups every day and compose these flames and threats to those who dare to violate "their" sacred bandwidth. Their behavior displays worse netiquette than that practiced by those they harrass. It's basically what is referred to in some circles as "hiding behind the keyboard".
I agree that sending unsolicited mail to millions of e- mail addresses is poor treatment of other netizens. If you watch TV, however, you will end up listening to obnoxious car salesmen but that doesn't stop you from enjoying the more informative or artis tic commercials. The net community needs to stop treating advertisers in general as pariahs and needs to accept that the commercialization of the Internet was a logical inevitability. It is now - and will continue to be - a fact of life.
Andrew Comeau Professional Printing Services Ocala Florida
Dear OBT:
I'm the Marketing Director and Internet Co-ordinator of a small press magazine, and I've been online myself for several years, so I have a fairly rounded outlook. First, I agree completely that the angry, over-blown reponse some people have to what they perceive as spamming by advertisers is totally wrong. When I get unsolicited, unwanted e-mail I generally just delete it.
Occasionally, I write a short, polite message letting the sender know that I'm really not interested. (So far the biggest problem has been with press releases sent to the company e-mail address. Even though our title, Midwifery Today, should give a pretty good idea of our content, we still get releases that have nothing to do with birth or midwifery, like the 50K sports-related release we received a couple days ago.) As an advertiser myself, I've experienced a few angry responses, but nothing like the problem you faced after the glitch on your first issue. (I for one, was very pleased to receive that issue, even though it came in on the company pay-for-time AOL account. I really enjoy OBT.)
However, on the other hand, as a consumer, I have problems with your statement, "The chore of rejecting the junk and filtering the good from the bad is the responsibility of the mailbox owner."
Well, yes and no. For one thing, some services don't make it easy, or even possible, to filter out unwanted mail. And these are usually the commerical services that make you pay for your mail or for the time you spend retrieving it. (Incidently, on AOL, there is no per-message cost, you pay for your time online-the more messages or the longer the messages, the more you pay. There is no surcharge for internet messages, and there has never been. Compuserve did have a surcharge, but I believe that's been dropped with the new pricing plan.)
It also takes a certain level of technical sophistication to filter mail-it's not as easy as simply eyeballing the paper mail and tossing the unwanted stuff in the recycle bin. I believe that it's also true that the advertiser has the responsibility to send material to people who might actually be interested in their product or service (programming glitches aside, ofcourse!!)-and not just send out batches of e-mail because it's so inexpensive.
Sincerely, Donna Dolezal Zelzer Marketing Director, Internet Coordinator, Midwifery Today Eugene, OR USA
(Note from the Editor: CompuServe has also reviewed its policy of charging for inbound mail from the Internet.)
Dear OBT:
I was alternately amused and annoyed to read your editorial proclaiming spamming and junk e-mail to be positive things just because they are done by businesses. It was basically the equivalent of an article praising telemarketers who interrupt your dinners and showers and so on with their unsolicited and unwanted phone calls.
(I'm sure telemarketers hear their fair share of four- letter words as well, regardless of the way some people seem to believe that the net is the only place in the world containing foul language.) Instead of telling internet users to lie down and take it, you should be telling businesses that not knowing the difference between use and abuse of the net will give potential customers a very bad impression of them.
Tane' Tachyon
(Note From the Editor: We got such a large response to the editorial in the last issue that printing all the letters would have taken up the whole publication. Nevertheless we will run a few more in the next issues. We were delighted to get such strong and divergent views from readers heavily involved in online business, and others who have been part of the so-called Internet "community" for many years.)
ONLINE DIARY
Note: Venues and dates may change without notice to OBT. Contact the organizations directly for registration and further information.
ASSIST INTERNATIONAL: This organization hosts the Internet & International Trade conferences. Chicago, October 2-3, 1995; Washington, DC, October 18-19, 1995; Boston, November 1-2, 1995. assist-intl.com (212) 725-3311.
COMDEX FALL Comdex is hosting several conferences covering the Internet and business. Las Vegas, November 13-17, 1995. WWW: http://www.comdex.com:8000; (617) 449-6600.
NETWORLD INTEROP FALL The world's premier networking event promises many Internet related exhibits and conferences. Atlanta, GA, September 27-29, 1995. (415) 578-6900.
FALL INTERNET WORLD '95 Exposition and conferences on the Internet and World Wide Web. Boston, MA, Oct 30-Nov 2. Mecklermedia, mecklermedia.com URL: http://www.mecklerweb.com (800) 632-5537, (203) 226-6967.
ONLINE EXPO '95 Exposition and conferences on the Internet and World Wide Web. This expo explores the world of emerging technologies Los Angeles Convention Center, CA, Oct 6-8 Event Info: (310) 358-2778 Exhibiting: (310) 285-8728.
EDITORIAL, OBSERVATIONS AND OPINION
That the venerable Audit Bureau of Circulation (ABC) has finally decided to sit up at take notice of the publishing history being made on the Internet and the
World Wide Web is both good news and bad news. The good news is that the ABC may allay the fears of companies who have the media dollars to spend on the Information Superhighway's "billboard" . . . the WWW.
Advertisers, and their agencies, have been at a loss to put a reliable cost per thousand (CPM) on the number of "hits" a Web page receives. Many have called the "hits" issue the publishing fraud of the century and this has caused those with the ad dollars to stick to what they know, the independently audited traditional media . . . print and television. If the ABC's beta projects with the likes of the "Wall Street Journal" and the "New York Times" work out, and why shouldn't they, well see companies give some attention to the issue of spending money in Internet advertising.
That the Internet may get a serious share of the ad- dollars will be bad news for the traditional publications who have been seeing advertising income dwindle over the years -in some cases to such an extent that the publications folded. The signs are there. The last of those dollars may just be diverted to the Web. The solution for the "tight" publications; especially those with small readership and circulation, may well be to establish a presence in cyberspace . . . or even to cease a 3-D version altogether. If you're a publisher, television or radio station, and you're not on the WWW, you're already dead.
On another note: US Based software corporations, like Quarterdeck, Spyglass and Microsoft, are fast forming massive strategic partnerships around the world . . . and the common bond is cyberspace and the Internet. It is interesting to observe how cyberspace has transformed the world of business . . . allowing US Based corporations to team up with others in geographically remote areas. Quarterdeck, for example, is forming strategic relationships that will help the Internet grow at astonishing rates in Europe. Its latest coup brings people in the Netherlands onto the Net at an exhilerating rate. No doubt the massive sales of
Quarterdeck's Internet access and browsing software will make the software giants investor's happy, but the news is the effort to which these American success stories are bringing the "Net" to critical mass. Soon the whole EEC will be as cyber-savvy as North America. The same can said about the Pacific Rim countries.
FASTER THAN SURFING...THE WWW VIA E-MAIL
When you want WWW information, you now have the option to skip the surfing step. If you know which Web site you'd like to research, you can now use e-mail to fetch your documentation. Just fire up your e-mail application and issue the "go" command to retrieve any of millions of pages from the WWW. Here's how . . . .
Send your e-mail to webmail@www.ucc.ie. In the body of your message type "go" followed by the URL from which you wish to retrieve information. For example, "go http://www.Four11.com/" will bring back page one of SLED Corporation's site, in part, "Four11 is the Internet's largest White Page Directory with over 1.2 Million listings and 150,000 registered users. Free Listing... ."
OBT typed a reference in the "subject" field of our e- mail and received returns as a "reply." Placing a reference in the "subject" field will make identification easier if you mail out multiple WWW retrieve messages.
Further testing this new engine, OBT sent e-mail to webmail@www.ucc.ie and wrote "go http://primenet.com/~swiggy/" in the body of our message. Not only did The Church of Spam return its first page, but included was an attachment document which we viewed in our browser as an html document.
We saw Church of Spam exactly as if we had surfed to the site. We saw click options including (1) Read the Ten Spamandments!; (2) Enjoy the Hymns and Prayers of the Church of SPAM, and; (3) Some personal information about the Good Paster SWIGGY.
OBT easily and very quickly was returned WWW information from other URL's including Page O' Spam "go http://www.rsi.com/spam/", The Online Knitting Magazine "go http://www.io.org/~spamily/knit/" and Linda's Indonesian Recipes "go http:www.best/~spam/linda_recipes.html".
We also used this service to visit "The List." OBT was able to determine a complete list of Internet Service Providers (ISPs) by area code. For example, in the body of the message we wrote "go http://www.thelist/305.html" and received back a complete list of ISPs for area code 305 here in South Florida. Simply vary the three digit number and include any area code you wish. The List will e-mail back the listings for your region.
This free fetching service is another fine example of how Internet business entrepreneurs are offering free services to attract potential customers. In this case, your e-mail returns will post a bit of advertising which in part reads, "For details of how to write your own Web files, see "The WorldWideWeb Handbook ... details are on the Web at http://www.ucc.ie/~pflynn/books/wwwbook.html." So, next time you read about a "HOT" new WWW site, let your e-mail do the walking. Try webmail@www.ucc.ie as the quick and easy e-mail way to surf the WWW.
OBT SHOP WATCH The Shop Watch column looks at business presence on the Internet
SHOP WATCH The Shop Watch column looks at business presence on the Internet
DALLAS' PAGENET LAUNCHES WWW SITES
Dallas-based Paging Network, Inc. known as PageNet, the world's largest wireless messaging company, has launched two Internet World Wide Web sites today with alphanumeric paging capability. Anyone with Web access now can send alphanumeric pages to PageNet's nationwide customers.
Douglas R. Ritter, PageNet's vice president for new business development, said, "The World Wide Web is a great forum for educating the public about PageNet and about wireless communications generally.
Our Web site also provides added value for our nationwide alphanumeric customers, who will be able to receive messages from anyone with Internet access.
We are currently exploring additional ways to use the Internet to serve our customers and the public."
The "Wireless Source" site, - http://www.wireless- source.com. PageNet's corporate web site, - http://www.pagenet.com.
For further information from PageNet contact Scott Baradell, 800-943-0497, or Julie Sullivan, 214-985- 6258, or julie_sullivan@pagenet.com.
---
---
PUBLISHER: Karl Slatner, karls@hpp.com EDITOR-IN-CHIEF: Jeffrey R. Shapiro, jeffs@hpp.com
---
NEWSDESK: newsdesk.obt@hpp.com LETTERS TO THE EDITOR: letters.obt@hpp.com SUBMISSIONS AND QUERIES sq.obt@hpp.com
---
---
---
HOME PAGE PRESS, INC., publishers of:
ONLINE BUSINESS TODAY(tm), FREE, published every Monday, text .................. obt.text@hpp.com ONLINE BUSINESS TODAY(tm), FREE, published every Monday, PDF .................. obt.pdf@hpp.com
ONLINE BUSINESS CONSULTANT NEWSLETTER(tm), $295 / year published monthly .................. obc@hpp.com COMPUTER TELEPHONY CONSULTANT NEWSLETTERtm), $495 / year published monthly .................. ctc@hpp.com
--- ```
This web service brought to you by Somewhere.Com, LLC.