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To: Impristine who wrote (52344)	4/22/1999 10:33:00 PM
From: Glenn D. Rudolph	Respond to of 164684

Livewire: Internet World previews latest Net fashions By Michelle V. Rafter LOS ANGELES, April 21 (Reuters) - Presenting what stylish Internet users will be sporting later this year: e-mailboxes that receive faxes, hookups through fast DSL connections, and "virtual meeting rooms" where PTA members can share calendars and watch presentations. What designer fashions shows are to the apparel industry, the thrice yearly Comdex and Internet World conventions are to the Internet business: a preview of what's in store for Net users at home and work in the weeks ahead. Last week's Spring Internet World at the Los Angeles Convention Center was no exception. Though the number of hardware and software companies strutting their stuff was off from previous years, tens of thousands of convention-goers still crowded the aisles to catch a glimpse of coming attractions. Among the most interesting for home Internet users were companies offering so-called unified messaging services. These services allow e-mail users to receive faxes, voice mail and pages in an e-mail in-box. Upon signing up for one of the services, an individual is assigned a telephone number they can give out to friends or co-workers as their fax or pager number. Faxes or pages sent to the phone number are automatically forwarded to the member's e-mailbox as password-protected e-mail attachments, where they can be opened using a viewer program. eFax.com (http://www.efax.com), formerly JetFax, showcased its free fax-to-e-mail service, which has signed up 300,000 subscribers since making its debut in February. Also on hand were CallWave (http://www.callwave.com), which launched a similar free fax-to-e-mail service, and Jfax (http://www.jfax.com), which has a unified messaging service that transfers voice mail and faxes to and from an e-mailbox. Much has been written about the high-speed Internet access that cable television operators have sold in connection with partners AtHome (http://www.athome.net) or MediaOne Roadrunner (http://www.mediaonerr.com). Internet service providers and local telephone companies were late getting their high-speed acts together. But in the past few months a number have announced trials of digital subscriber line (DSL) technology, which uses existing copper telephone lines to provide Internet access at up to 100 times the speed of current dial-up modems. The hype over DSL was visible at the convention, where EarthLink Networks (http://www.earthlink.net), Pacific Bell (http://www.pacbell.com), America Online (http://www.aol.com) and Cable & Wireless (http://www.cwusa.com) talked about their consumer DSL services, either publicly on the convention floor or in private meetings. Consumer demand for DSL is "furious," and PacBell is rolling out the service as fast as it can, said Paul Turner, a PacBell DSL marketing manager. "By the end of the year we'll have deployed DSL to switching offices serving 70 percent of our residential and business customers," Turner said. The buzz over online calendars got louder earlier this month after AOL snapped up When.com, an early leader in the still-developing space. At the convention, competitor Jintek in San Diego announced its general roll-out of its ScheduleOnline (http://www.scheduleonline.com) service and showed a version of the Web calendar for Palm Pilot users. Newcomer Active Touch is attempting to take online calendars a step further with Webex (http://www.webex.com), a virtual meeting room service the private, Santa Clara, Calif., company announced two months ago and was showing in public for the first time. A free version of Webex lets up to six people congregate in a password-protected online space to chat, watch a PowerPoint presentation, or work on schedules. Active Touch sells a turbocharged version of Webex to corporations for $1,500 a month. Some companies used the public venue to show off upgrades. San Francisco-based Alexa Internet (http://www.al...