To: online-news@marketplace.com
X-Mailer: Chameleon ENGP1, TCP/IP for Windows, NetManage Inc.
Message-ID: 
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII
Sender: owner-online-news@marketplace.com
Precedence: bulk
Status: O
X-Status: 

If you want to see some really excellent uses of the Netscape extensions to 
HTML, get to http://www.word.com.

Word is an all-electronic publication that, in the proud tradition of 
HotWired,launched itself this weekby positioning itself as the Voice of a 
New Generation (anybody remember HotWired's "throbbing nervous system" 
press release?) and by dissing us print dinosaurs: "Word is also the first 
major publishing venture that is independent. 'We don't have an old-world 
publishing company behind us that knows little about the Internet,' says 
Thomas Livaccari, Founder and Publisher of WORD" (which I'm sure the 
HotWired folks would dispute).

They really do do some amazing things with Netscape and general artwork -- 
animation, ads that appear, then disappear, backgrounds that change with 
every page (with occasional misses there -- one page has black type on a 
dark gray background). Oh, sure, you really need at least a 56K connection 
to see the thing, but, hey, life is like that sometimes.
 
Unfortunately, several of their content providers, um, writers, seem 
determined to do their best to parody whiny Vanity Fair pieces. 

One of the "cover stories," titled "The Stevie Nicks Experience" (Stevie 
Nicks?!? Wasn't she old 10 years ago?) would stand up well in any 
vertical-pronoun competition. It goes on and and on about the author's 
experiences doing sit-ups to "Edge of 17,''  his interview with another 
reporter about interviewing Stevie Nicks, his chance encounter with River 
Phoenix at some nightclub and his shock at learning River was dead, before, 
finally, we get to his actual interview with her Nicksness (what does River 
Phoenix have to do with all this? When Our Hero heard he was dead, he put 
some Stevie on the turntable).  There, finally, we get some good use of 
hyperlinks for creating sidebars (on matters such as why she likes drinking 
coffee at 6 a.m.).

Then there's the travel piece in which some whiny young lad goes on and on 
and on about how he doesn't want to leave his hotel room in Rabat and which 
tells you far more than you want to know about his thoughts while relieving 
himself in a filthy Moroccan bathroom, the pet story (I think) in which the 
writer whines about her visits to the vet, etc.

And then I looked at the time, and gosh, if it isn't past time to go home!

Oh, one fun historical note:  When Word first announced itself a few months 
back, HotWired's gossip columnist ridiculed the proposed layout, saying it 
couldn't be done on the Web. Word must've known something more 'bout 
Netscape 1.1 than HotWired did.


Adam Gaffin
Online Editor
Network World, Framingham, Mass.
agaffin@nww.com / (508) 820-7433




From owner-online-news@marketplace.com Thu Jul  6 20:22:35 1995
Received: from marketplace.com (majordom@marketplace.com [199.45.128.10]) by cnj.digex.net (8.6.12/8.6.12) with ESMTP id UAA06947 ; for ; Thu, 6 Jul 1995 20:22:34 -0400
Received: (from majordom@localhost) by marketplace.com (8.6.12/8.6.12) id QAA06375 for online-news-outgoing; Thu, 6 Jul 1995 16:37:29 -0600
Received: from emout04.mail.aol.com (emout04.mail.aol.com [198.81.10.12]) by marketplace.com (8.6.12/8.6.12) with ESMTP id QAA06368 for ; Thu, 6 Jul 1995 16:37:25 -0600