Subject: TRIP DIAMONDS(sm) #1 - DCI Toronto Sept/95 Conference From: vassos@VNET.IBM.COM Date: Fri, 29 Sep 95 22:00:43 EDT
How the Web Was Won
Subject: TRIP DIAMONDS(sm) #1 - DCI Toronto Sept/95 Conference
From: vassos@VNET.IBM.COM
Date: Fri, 29 Sep 95 22:00:43 EDT
Hello everyone. Just when you thought it was safe to go
back into the water...I bring you another set of conference
trip reports...These trip reports cover the DCI Web World,
Email World and Internet Expo Conferences in Toronto
last week (Sept 18-22/95).
Jay Linden has promised to put these reports up on his Web
site so there will be hot links to all of the Web sites
mentioned in this report. In a few days, take a look at:
http://www.interlog.com/~bxi/reports.htm
At this site you will also find all of my (and Jac's) TRIP
DIAMOND(sm) conference trip reports from various other events
including the DCI and Meckler conferences in California this
past spring. Trip reports from ANSI's IISP (Information
Infrastructure Standards Panel) meetings can also be found at
this site. (The IISP is a body I have participated in which
is involved in setting standards for the Global Information
Superhighway.) For those of you without Web access, I'll make
all of these reports available shortly via an E-mail infobot.
More information on upcoming DCI conferences can be found at:
http://www.ocm.com/dci/
My overall impression of the DCI conference was that although
they didn't have any blockbuster "name brand" keynotes, they
did have an excellent slate of speakers covering a wide
range of topics. Unfortunately I was out of town for the
beginning of the conference so I missed some good tutorials
like Jim Sterne's day-long "What Works on the World Wide Web"
session. (I caught the shorter version of this session at the
spring conference.)
Anyway, here's the first TRIP DIAMONDS(sm) report...enjoy the
ride.
The morning keynote speaker for today was:
Mark Skapinker, Co-Founder and President
Delrina Corporation
"Cyberspace - The Next Megamarket"
The Internet is made up of over 50,000 networks, 4.5 million
computers, 38 million users in over 60 countries. Mark
provided a very introductory description of what the Internet
is. (Note from Tom: I believe these numbers are low. As
far as I know, there are over 180 countries with E-mail access
to the Internet.)
The Web now stores a huge amount of information:
* 35 gigabytes of text
* 6 billion words, which is equivalent to
* 2,257 miles of standard newspaper-width text, or
* 1.2 million 50,000 word books.
(Note from Tom: I believe these numbers grossly underestimate
the total amount of information on the Web for the following
reasons: These numbers refer to text only. There are many more
gigabytes of information in audio, video and graphics image
files. The numbers above probably refer to the amount of data
physically on the Web and may not include the many corporate
databases which are now accessible through Web pages, even
though the database itself may not be physically on the Web.
The final point to consider is that this refers to the
publicly accessible Web. There are many more gigabytes
of Web information accessible to employees behind corporate
firewalls. I estimate that at IBM we may have about 15 to 20
times more information on our internal IBM Web than we have on
the public IBM Web site.)
By the end of 1995 there should be 9 million Web users.
By the end of 1997 there should be 25 million Web users.
80% of Internet users today are limited to e-mail.
Penetration in homes should grow dramatically:
6% in 1994
16% in 1997
40% in 2000
(Note from Tom: I believe these numbers overestimate the
penetration of the Internet into homes. The recent O'Reilly
study identified under 10 million users in America which would
translate to less than 4% penetration in 1995. I don't believe
that 40% penetration in 2000 is very likely.)
According to IDC, there will be 200 million users by 1999.
The percentage of males on the Internet has gone from 90% to 66%
by mid-1995.
Inhibitors to Internet growth include:
* Security and privacy
(Earlier this week some people in California showed how they
could break Netscape's encryption within a minute.
But this may be no different than giving your credit card
number over the phone.)
Almost every industry will be able to use the Internet as
a new medium. Publishing may see the most significant
changes.
There are various models for doing business on the Internet:
* Subscription Model
Users pay for access and services
Not very popular
* Software Sales Model
* Shopping Mall Model
Landlord charges a fixed fee plus possibly some performance
incentives
For example, see http://www.onsale.com/
* "Travel Agent" Model
You get a fee for bringing 2 people together
* Advertising Model
Revenue stream from advertisers
The charge can be fixed fee, or by hit, or per subscriber
* Computer Services Model
Charge for storage space, Web pages, etc.
New competitors getting involved in the Internet that
will have the biggest impact are Microsoft and AT&T.
Bill Gates has recently said that the Internet may be
a major threat to Microsoft (I assume unless they capitalize
on the trend).
RealAudio lets anyone create a radio station. But the
paradigm has changed. With today's radio, you hear information
serially. With the Internet, you can go straight to the
specific information you want to hear..."on demand radio" or
the diversity of content will bring "fringe radio".
Delrina is launching a product called Cyberjack which is a
suite of products integrated with Win 95. It includes a
guidebook to the Internet (500 sites) that will help get you
going.
Two way telephone will not get too far on the Internet before
the telecommunications companies get involved (push for
regulations, etc).
HotJava will let you do more than just access information on
a Web site. It will let you download an actual application
to your local machine.
Good examples of companies with unique uses of the Internet:
Federal Express
http://www.fedex.com/
Complete works of Shakespeare (MIT)
http://the-tech.mit.edu/Shakespeare/works.html
Seniors Net
http://www.seniorsnet.com/
Planet Reebok
http://planetreebok.com/spfit.html
Rock and Roll Hall of Fame
http://www.rockhall.com/
cnn
http://www.cnn.com/
Delrina Home Page
http://www.delrina.com/
USA Today
http://www.usatoday.com
Web Museum
http://mistral.enst.fr/louvre
Bob Dylan Home Page
http://www.agate.net/~dcraig/dylan.html
New York City Reference
http://www.panix.com/clay/nyc/
Cinemaven Online Information (movie reviews)
http://useattle.uspan.com/maven/
Auctions and Things for Sale
http://www.onsale.com/
Major League Baseball
http://www2.pcy.mci.net/mlb/
Useless WWW Pages
http://www.primus.com/staff/paulp/useless.html
Mirsky's Worst of the Web
http://mirsky.turnpike.net/wow/Worst.html
PBS
http://www.pbs.org/
Dog Home Page
http://www.sdsmt.edu/other/dogs/dogs.html
Funky Site of the Day
http://www.realitycom.com/cybstars/prefunk.html
The Paris Review
http://www.voyagerco.com/PR/p.toc.html
CBS Television Home Page
http://www.cbs.com/
Kids' Com
http://www.kidscom.com/
KID (Did's Internet Delight)
http://www.clark.net/pub/journalism/kid.html
Children's Literature Guide
http://www.ucalgary.ca/~dkbrown/index.html
Amnesty International
http://www.io.org/amnesty/overview.html
World of Coca Cola Museum
http://www.cocacola.com/
The Good Health Web
http://www.social.com/health/index.html
Theatre Central
http://www.mit.edu:8001/people/quijote/theatre-central.html
Popular Mechanics Magazine
http://popularmechanics.com/
The National Ballet of Canada
http://www.ffa.ucalgary.ca/nbc/nbc_main.html
Live World Chess Championships
http://www.intel.com/
Update on Pope John Paul visit to the east coast (Vatican)
http://www.christusrex.org:80/www1/citta/0-Citta.html
Excerpts from ex-Senator Packwood's Diaries
http://128.148.128.26/people/mende/steps/index.html
Catalogs such as Eddie Bauer, The Horchow Collection, The
Sharper Image, The Bombay Company and the Book-of-the-month
Club's Editor's Choice
http://www.pathfinder.com/
Autumn Scenes of Vermont
http://www.pbpub.com/vermont/
Reprise Records
http://www.RepriseRec.com
Some silly examples of the use of the Web include:
What's in my desk drawers:
http://www.crayola.cse.psu.edu/~goodman/desk.html
Steve's list of all his T-shirts:
http://www.chaco.com/~stev0/shirts.html
How does the Internet survive if it is free?
The Internet is no more free than the TV.
The Internet is a combination of a post office, library,
shopping mall, school, travel agency, arcade, bulletin
board, museum, conferencing system, etc.
The afternoon keynote speaker was:
Gary A. Bolles, Editorial Director,
Inter@ctive Week, @media, and Internet Life
http://www.interactive-week.com/
"The Next Wave of the Web"
The media is strongly hyping anything that's related to
the Internet. The total valuation of Netscape and
UUNet is over a half a billion dollars.
Why is the Web hot? It's like telnet on steroids.
Perceived competition also breeds accelerated adoption
(even though it might not make sense for you to invest
heavily in the Internet).
The bad thing about the Internet hype is that consumer
expectations are high, technology develops too rapidly
(resulting in a shake out), and vendor expectations
are high.
The good thing about the Internet hype is that it
generates lots of consumer interest and vendor acceptance,
and vendors have access to lots of capital (through IPOs).
Are consumers getter good value for the price (money
and time)? Are businesses able to get value from
the Internet?
Wave #1 on the Internet is the creation of electronic
commerce capabilities.
A Verifone study (http://www.verifone.com/) has
recently announced that of Internet users, :
* 32% have already purchased one or more products
* 91% intend to purchase in the future
* 62% plan to use credit cards on the Internet
According to PAM Research Group
(http://www.ramresearch.com/):
August/95 survey of 350 credit card-offering banks:
* 20 have Web sites (with a combined market share 21%)
* Nearly half of these plan to make on-line offerings
* 29% of all banks (12% market share) say they intend
to go online
Consumers have a slow adoption to new technologies
(especially if there's no huge benefit). Therefore
online interactive ordering of videos has not been
accepted all that quickly. Online ordering from
catalogues may not be able to quickly make a huge
dent vs traditional catalogue ordering.
Another problem is that there has been a proliferation
of E-Commerce solutions ranging from secure direct
(between vendor and customer), to secure verification
(3rd party involved), to secure coin (a token with an
integral value). Examples of secure coin include First
Virtual, CommerceNet, Cybercash, SafeSite, etc.
Inevitably there will be a consolidation between
various electronic commerce schemes. There will be
a merging between competing schemes and companies.
Large software vendors and large financial institutions
will have a major impact on how this consolidation
occurs.
Internet security may be a red herring. Packet sniffers
can trap a credit card number, however, it makes more
sense for hackers to just go after machines on the
Internet that may have 50,000 credit card numbers
(e.g., Mitnick).
On Sunday, students in California proved that
30 bits of the calculation in Netscape's 40 bit
code could be decrypted in a very brief time (minutes).
Therefore there may be a security exposure, but it
is probably overblown.
Electronic commerce is often viewed as being something
between vendors and consumers. The business to business
potential may be much larger. Commerce isn't just
money, it's an end-to-end process including several
components.
IPro (Internet Profiles) are doing research to
determine details about Web users.
The Web breaks down several barriers to access
and barriers to entry. For example, to publish
a magazine, there is huge costs involved. This
is a barrier to entry. Barriers to access include
time, geography, demographics and goals. The
Web does not have these barriers to access and
barriers to entry. Anyone can be a publisher.
Reasons for publishing on the Web include providing
information, testing technology, reacting to competitors,
interacting with customers, and creating and
maintaining communities of interest.
It is positive to see the non-technology companies
come on to the Web.
Who's publishing in the corporation?
* Tech support
* Sales
* Public Relations
* Marketing
* Operations
* All of the above
Lotus has determined that they can support 6 times
as many people using online support techniques.
(Note from Tom: Lotus actually has an automated
support capability on their Web. You type in your
question and a search is done on all of their support
files. Several files are retrieved (FAQ files, press
releases, product descriptions, etc.) from a Lotus Notes
Database and you can browse through the files that look
appropriate. Take a look at:
http://198.114.68.12/cgi-bin/gateway.cgi?state=Q
(Disclaimer: Lotus is an IBM subsidiary)
The band Lollipalooza (sp?) no longer sends out press
releases. They simply tell the press that their
information is all on the Web.
MIS has not necessary introduced the Internet to
the corporation, but over time they will probably
step forward to manage it. (A similar trend occurred
with the introduction of PCs into corporations.
Various departments brought them into the corporation,
and eventually MIS needed to move in to help support
them.)
You must build business processes behind the site
that you have created. If you don't, it will die.
Web creators can learn a great deal from the publishing
industry. Web designers must understand that production
is a sequence, and content must match the needs of one
or more constituencies.
What not to learn from publishers: Publishing tends
to be a one-way model. Interaction with users is not
mandatory. On the web, this should be a key
consideration.
Wave #2: The Internet as Internalnet
Use the Web for internal company publishing (groupware).
Companies have found that when they publish an
external Web page, 80% of the early traffic to the
site is all of their own employees. There is a
huge pent-up demand for information within the
corporation.
There are inevitable consequences to the ubiquitous
microprocessors throughout the world. There is a
vast pent-up demand for communications.
Wave #3: Virtual Corporations in the Virtual World
Hard corporate boundaries will fade and melt. Cross-
disciplinary, cross-company workgroups will be formed.
Wave #4: Beyond Publishing
Focus will move from raw information to filtering
and context. There will be alternate presentations
of the content for different constituencies.
Wave #5: Beyond Dialup
ISDN and cable modems are promising but do not seem
to be taking hold. Changing the infrastructure will
take forever. Cable companies know what a set-top
box is, but don't know what a PC is! Smart bandwidth
is also coming. You will get high-end graphics and
videos if your connection can handle it. If you can't
handle it, you will only get text, low resolution
graphics, etc.
Wave #6: Beyond Browsers
The "terminal" model is obsolete. VRML is one model
of how people will react. This model does not work
for everyone. We are moving towards real client-server
and intelligent interactive applications.
Wave #7: Beyond the Screen
The Internet can lead to real interaction between
people, real communities.
There are still issues with the ubiquitous use of
technologies.
Grant Ricketts, Sybase, "Architecture for Change"
grant.ricketts@sybase.com
http://www.sybase.com/
Grant started off with a video that mentioned an offering
from Digital Planet (in California) with an offering
called "Netcount". This software (service?) is able
to track the number of visitors to Web sites which should
help to determine the true traffic. This will help
advertisers determine the true value of advertising at
various sites.
According to the Boston Consulting Group, here's the
media value chain:
Content origination: $50 billion
Packaging and Navigation: $70 billion
Transportation and delivery: $265 billion
Equipment: #30 billion
A huge amount is spent on transportation and delivery.
In the new online paradigm, less can be spent on transportation
and delivery, and more on content.
The Internet offers a dramatic increase in productivity.
Productivity in electronic orders (vs phone orders), productivity
for company help desks (retrieval of information), and
productivity in workgroup collaboration.
According to Grant, First Virtual is looking at creating
something called RoyaltyNet where artists could receive
royalties for the distribution of their intellectual
property.
The database connected to the Internet should be able to
dynamically generate interactive client pages. This
should lead to customizing of information down to the
individual (the "Power of One").
Sybase believes that authoring systems for Interactive
Television (ITV) (which
include full motion and interactive capabilities), could
move towards the Web authoring area. (They currently
offer a product called "Interplay" which is available
in the ITV area today".) "Interplay" allows for full
motion capabilities, as well as interactivity.
Technology Presentations
UUNet Canada
http://www.uunet.ca/
TicketMaster lists 5,000 events. It provides information
about these events (city, dates, etc.)
http://www.ticketmaster.ca/
Disney Studios provides information about movies plus
video clips.
http://www.disney.com/
CNN Web page:
http://www.cnn.com/
Constantly being updated with new news. Business news,
weather, show business, etc. Provides great depth on
specific news stories...OJ Simpson, the Balkans, etc.
Also provides video clips of specific news stories.
Quantam offers a contest for a free disk drive. This
allows them to create a database of prospects.
http://www.quantum.com/survey/
The final speaker was:
Steve Kirsch, InfoSeek Corporation
"How to Find almost anything on the Internet and the WWW"
The number one query on the Internet is a blank (people
forget to enter in their query). The number 2 query
on the Internet is the word "sex".
How do you write a Web page to get the best score?
The search engine will not find your home page if
it is just loaded with graphics.
Surveys suggest that 80% of the traffic to several
sites came from Yahoo and Infoseek. Make sure you
register with those 2 sites.
Your searches must be specific. A PC Week reporter
used the search "personal computer" to complain that
search engines were no good. You need to be more
specific. Another reporter complained that a search
on the word "baby Bells" (to find info on the Bell
operating companies) turned up pages on the "Young
and the Restless" (because the Bells were having a
baby). He should have typed "Baby" with a capital "B"
to get the correct results.
You must also watch your spelling. "Geneology" gets
only 115 hits but "Genealogy" (the correct spelling)
gets 1,511 hits.
5 key rules for searching:
All the search engines on the Internet tends to use
different special characters to mean different things.
Make sure you try differing variations of a word you
are looking for (e.g., CD-ROM vs CDROM).
You should have a comma between proper names (e.g.,
"Bill Gates Paul Allen" should be "Bill Gates, Paul Allen"
Avoid these mistakes:
Reeve Christopher
should be Christopher Reeve
htp://www.sun.com
should be http://www.sun.com
james bovard
should be James Bovard
ARCHITECT
should be architect
You can use InfoSeek to do a trademark search (to
see is someone has already registered the name).
If you're looking for David Letterman's Top Ten list,
you may need to try "Top Ten" or "Top 10" or "Top-Ten".
You can use InfoSeek to search Usenet. See what
people are saying about your company, see what your
competitors are saying, find out information on a
specific product, get leads for specific jobs in
the city you want to work in, information on various
medical conditions, etc.
To get a full copy of this presentation from InfoSeek,
send a note to:
request@infoseek.com
and in the body of the message type:
send talk
Anyway, hope you enjoyed TRIP DIAMONDS #1.
Stay tuned for TRIP DIAMONDS #2 which has loads of information
for developers.
AND HOW WAS YOUR SUMMER?
...or to those in the southern hemisphere...AND HOW WAS YOUR WINTER?
=======================================================================
TOM VASSOS, B.E.S., M.B.A., Part-time Instructor, University of Toronto
Internet Writer, Educator, Speaker: Call for Internet keynotes...
Manager, Internet Marketing Strategies, IBM Software Solutions Division
E-MAIL: vassos@vnet.ibm.com PHONE: 416-448-2189 FAX: 416-448-2893 (c)
Of course I don't speak for IBM or the U of T, I have enough trouble
speaking for myself. This note is brought to you from Toronto, CANADA
------------------------------
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