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Politics : Ask Michael Burke -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Earlie who wrote (37599)	11/26/1998 5:05:00 PM
From: stak	Respond to of 132070

Earlie, >> topic close to my heart. << Mine too. >>With no new applications to drive sales, the box builders have to stretch. The only game in town is the internet game, so it gets the pizzazz and hype this Christmas.<< I feel that voice-speech recognition is the exception to your rule here. How will the 'net play itself out this Christmas?? Seems to me this favors the telcos and the content companies not the boxmakers?! >> Email is cheap (although typing is time-consuming compared with talking on a phone), << Tried voice e-mail or speech recog entry?:) >> I've done enough survey work on the topic to know that the average guy or gal is simply no longer agog or excited about the internet<< I think it's a content problem and also bandwidth is a barrier too. Megaband gives multimedia and that's basically TV all over but interactive. >>The belief that the net will become the ultimate shopping mall is another daffy duck idea from my perspective. Every company has its web page, which means there are simply too many to conceptualize, never mind visit. << The recipe needs work. What would you do? >>Net advertising is very ineffective, and companies are beginning to see this. Most web advertising is one net company advertising with another web company. A form of incest. Most of us don't even notice the ads anymore. << So what is AOL going to do for revenue if the ad dollars dry up??? How does one measure efficiency of ad dollars spent? The ads do become" invisible" don't they... >>Does access speed really count? Yes it does to the aficionados, but again, we are talking small minorities. When one looks at how much of our time on the net is spent reading the pages, the access speed is really not a big fraction nor is it terribly important. Slow access can be annoying, but I doubt that blazing fast access will add large fractions to the net's user community.<< I offer a friendly challenge to reassess the speed factor. Speed kills in the internet game. Speed is the penultimate thing with the net! That is until we get up to reliable Megabit(6-8Mbps?) transfers that are equal to full screen, 30 frame per second video. After that speed, it all goes for naught. Up til now the net has gone by the lowest common denominator. That is--make the pages "small" enough that they download quickly for everyone. I think we'll see a very abrupt change going to the highest common denom. That is pages with mostly Megabit downloads(video), instead of Kbit downloads. >>I've had a lot of fun asking acquaintances three questions. Have you tried the internet? (many have....roughly half). Were you initially excited about it? (most were,...initially). Do you still use the net more than occasionally and are you still excited about it? (Most use it only rarely and are definitely not excited,..."it got boring"). Try this out on your friends and see what you find.<< Unfortunately I have to agree with you. Been there, done that sound familiar? >>But is it the second coming? Not<< I disagree here. It might take 20 years to get ingrained into our daily lives but it's coming without doubt... It'll be much more pervasive than the cell phone is at this time. >>The average guy and gal are the keys to big markets. If they are not interested, a big market does not exist. << So true! How do you get people psyched about the net?? >>The net stocks are priced on a dream. Reality will intrude.<< There you go with your understatement thing again;-). Have a good one, stak

To: Earlie who wrote (37599)	11/26/1998 5:13:00 PM
From: yard_man	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 132070

Very good post Earlie. I think there is one use of the internet that is made by a large number of folks that I know. People purchasing big ticket items (not commodities) will often hunt for price information on the web. Cars for example. Lot's of folks that I've known looking for a new car -- will first come on the web and get an idea of price before heading to the local dealership. Of course, PC's used to be a big ticket item <g> The web is kind of convenient for certain financial products as well, insurance, mortgages -- even in these instances people use the net as a means for price shopping but often go with someone local they know. -- Check out CB's post concerning her reasoning on staying with her broker even once she got to doing trading on the net. The same is true of myself, I stuck with someone who I knew through a local office -- if a mistake is made I have someone I can call that I know. Re: Email being cheap. Some of my friends are very. So while I would very much prefer a phone call -- we communicate via e-mail. Re: Internet shopping vs. catalogue shopping. Until it gets easier to use and for inventory to be completly represented on the web -- the catalogues have a decided advantage, it seems to me. If the web malls ever do get competitive there -- it boggles my mind how they can be any better -- they simply have to carry the overhead of the information technology. For the existing catalogue merchants -- I don't know of any that have went on the web and phased out the printed catalogues, but I would bet that that would hurt sales quite a bit. Some misguided company is bound to try this -- will be interesting. Supposing that one is shopping on the net there is another factor to consider -- the ease of someone else or software doing the price comparison for you. If price comparison does get really easy via the web perhaps there will be a benefit there.

To: Earlie who wrote (37599)	11/26/1998 7:45:00 PM
From: Ilaine	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 132070

Hi Earlie, I am going to throw out my comments for what they are worth, I have no idea whether what I say has any broader application, although I suspect so: I first started using the Internet, although it wasn't the Web, direct dial using, I think, Unix, in 1983, using Westlaw and Nexis. My law school had both, available for free for students, 2800 modem, and I was research editor of the law review so I used it every day. Slow as molasses, but faster than using the books. At that time lawyers who were older could not use it, they couldn't understand it. In 1994, I signed up for Grateful Med, and that was what I used to research medical malpractice, it was again direct dial and Unix, and I also signed up for Compuserve, and used that for research also. By then, it was using the web, but again it was slow, and tricky. The National Library of Medicine changed over to the Net, I think in 1996. Fast forward to 1998, I can't get over the changes, and I still use the Internet for legal research and medical research. Nothing else comes close. If you go to a medical library, you will use PubMed, which replaced Grateful Med. Doctors all over the world access information on-line, the medical information on-line is one of the world's great treasures. What doctors want now is the ability to visualize patients over the net, they want net video to be commonplace. They want to be able to look at x-rays, heart charts, in real-time, to be able to get a second opinion from the leaders in the field while they are sitting in their offices in rural backwaters. Similarly, there is an awful lot of legal information online, and if you want to pay for more, there is Lexis and Westlaw. Lawyers want to be able to access cases up-to-the-minute, see what is going on at the local courthouse, bring in expert witnesses via video. There are an unbelieveable number of newspapers and magazines online, some of which are free, some of which are not. Bottom line, not just investors, but business people use the internet every day. My father's third wife uses it to keep track of her trucks, for example, she has a moving company. If you want to know who uses the Internet, ask the people who are making money, running companies, running the government, running universities, doing cutting edge scientific research. If you think the Internet is a fad, I think you'll be surprised. CobaltBlue

To: Earlie who wrote (37599)	11/27/1998 7:59:00 AM
From: Skeeter Bug	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 132070

earlie, people like the net for 1 reason and 1 reason only. it is cheap. period. cheap information. cheap prices. profits won't be made as net supply has grown even faster than net demand. look at mu, though. the "pros" have no concept of basic supply and demand. all they understand is demand. that is, until they get slapped in the face...

To: Earlie who wrote (37599)	11/30/1998 6:39:00 PM
From: stak	Respond to of 132070

Earlie, Forget what I said about 30 fps video. @Home has backed right off of the idea for now... news.com @Home to limit video downloads By Corey Grice Staff Writer, CNET News.com November 30, 1998, 11:50 a.m. PT @Home Network will limit the length of broadcast quality video downloads over its high-speed cable network, the company revealed in its latest regulatory filing. A quarterly filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission shows that the company has limits on "streaming video services that include video segments longer than ten minutes in duration." @Home executives said the limits apply only to broadcast-quality video segments that carry images at a speed of 30 frames-per-second--a technology that few, if any, Internet companies are currently delivering. Most streaming video over the Net occurs at 15 frames-per-second. Cable systems are divided into several 6 mHz channels. For example, a system with 750 mHz of power has the capacity to deliver up to 125 channels. @Home's high-speed network occupies the same space on its cable operator partners' systems as a standard television program, one 6 mHz channel. So there is currently no way for @Home to deliver TV-quality video--plus data services and Internet access--in that same space. "There's no technically feasible way to do it on any network," said @Home spokesman Matt Wolfrom. "If every user wanted to suck in TV quality video it would bring down any network." The 10-minute time limit serves as a reminder that, despite the industry's efforts, broadcast-quality video-on-demand, full half-hour newscasts, or downloadable movies are still far from being a reality. @Home believes the ability of "multiple users to access video-on-demand at TV quality over a single channel is nowhere near reality in the next five years." [snip]