AOL Offers New User Interface
By ANICK JESDANUN
.c The Associated Press
NEW YORK (AP) - America Online is introducing an interactive calendar and expanding a digital photo service in anticipation of a world where people are not tied to their computers for Internet access.
Company officials said they designed the new AOL 5.0 user interface with wireless phones, hand-held organizers and other portable devices in mind. The software is scheduled for release in New York today.
The calendar feature, for instance, will let subscribers keep track of appointments and birthdays and exchange their kids' soccer schedules with one another.
But computer-based calendars are often impractical to use because they require people to be at a computer to find out where they need to be. AOL hopes to get around that restriction by making its system adaptable for portable devices.
Zia Daniell Wigder, an analyst with the Internet research firm Jupiter Communications, said portable devices represent a largely untapped market and companies that enter it first have the advantage.
''Everyone's scrambling to figure out how users will interact in these devices,'' she said. ''It's becoming hypercompetitive.''
With more than 18 million subscribers using its flagship service worldwide, AOL is the largest Internet service provider.
The AOL 5.0 interface could help the company meet its stated goal of offering ''AOL Anywhere.'' The company also hopes the new features will encourage subscribers to stay online longer and allow AOL to boost rates for online ads.
In addition to the calendar, AOL will expand to the rest of the nation a digital photo service it runs with Eastman Kodak Co.
The ''You've Got Pictures'' service, tested in a few cities this past summer, allows photofinishers to send electronic copies of pictures to AOL accounts. From those accounts, consumers can arrange photos in online albums, send them as e-mail to friends and family, or order reprints and enlargements.
With the new interface, subscribers will be able to view pictures using portable devices as well, making them as mobile as photo albums.
AOL 5.0 will also recognize how computers connect to AOL so that those using higher-speed connections could get more video clips and other items that do not work as well at regular speeds. Such broadband access is only beginning to enter the home market.
AOL, fearing it could be denied parts of the broadband market, is currently lobbying regulators to force AT&T and other cable providers to sell it access to high-speed cable data networks at wholesale prices. AOL already has deals with a satellite TV firm and phone companies to offer non-cable broadband services.
AP-NY-10-05-99 0235EDT
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