The Internet Business Journal Commercial Opportunities in the Networking Age Premiere Issue -- Volume 1, Number 1 -- June/July 1993 Electronic Edition, Released May 1993 NOTE: This freely available electronic edition contains selected articles, table of contents and abstracts only. Also note that it has been designed to be compatible with electronic reader devices for the print disadvantaged, therefore, no extraneous characters, lines or tags have been used. Copyright (C) 1993 by Strangelove Press. All rights reserved. This document may be archived for public use in electronic or other media, so long as it is maintained in its entirety and no fee is charged to the user; any exception requires written consent from Strangelove Press. Contents RFC/FYI - Editorial Christopher Locke The National Information Infrastructure Dr. Vinton G. Cerf The Rise of Commercialization in the Internet Robert Larribeau, Jr Benefits of Commercial Use and Commercialization of the Internet Bill Washburn Advertising on the Internet Adam Gaffin Internet User Survey Results Thomas J. Cozzolino & Thomas H. Pierce Corporate Cybrary Networks: An Idea Whose Time Has Come Michel Bauwens The Cornell GateDaemon Consortium Martyne Hallgren National Science Foundation InterNIC Services Regular Features: Internet in the UK Susan Hallam News From Europe Michel Bauwens Internet User Profile Access-Ability: Assistive Technologies and the Net Dr. Norm Coombs Virtual Markets and Network Niches Resources for Networked Business, Commerce and Industry Government Online Network News Network The Internet in Print RFC/FYI -- Editorial Christopher Locke Welcome to The Internet Business Journal. Thanks to vocal interest from all quarters of the Internet itself -- as well as from BusinessWeek, Wired, and many others -- this first issue already has a considerable international audience. It seems the time is right: mainstream business and computer trade publications are reporting on the Internet as never before; bookstores can't keep their shelves well enough stocked with the plethora of books appearing on the subject; and the current US administration is bullish on the technology. Meanwhile, the number of individuals and organizations gaining access to the Internet is growing exponentially. But why a publication focused especially on the requirements of the business community? Everyone is familiar with the Not Invented Here syndrome, the insular notion that everything worth knowing can be found within the walls of one's own organization or institution. This usually tacit precept has often held the corporate mindset in an iron grip. Fortunately, it is beginning to break down in the face of global competition and the enormous time pressures brought to bear by the accelerating pace of product and service cycles. Many Fortune-class firms have instituted a serious quest for "best practices" in many areas of operations. Intrinsic to this search is an admission that another company -- quite possibly in an altogether different industry -- may have a significant edge in customer service or research and development or purchasing or human resource management. Introspection is simply not good enough any more. Organizations brave enough to examine their own shortcomings with respect to the not invented here mentality have made a simple decision: to talk to each other and share the business practices that seem to work best. The implications are mind-blowing. These companies will not only survive into the 21st century, but are also likely to become thriving high-performance dynamos. If you are among them, you will benefit from their collective experience; if not, they are likely to constitute your worst competitive nightmare. These industry leaders have realized that the time has finally come to throw open the windows and let in some fresh air. But how? Communication between companies, especially competing companies, has not been exactly exemplary -- precisely because the not invented here syndrome was so powerfully enforced by corporate culture. What's needed is wide ranging discourse, a sort of global conference call with everyone on line at once. Most existing communications media -- newspapers, magazines, telephone, fax, broadcast -- just don't fit the bill. The Internet does. >From simple electronic mail to sophisicated emerging technologies for managing large document collections, the resources of the Internet offer businesses unprecedented opportunities to tune in to the world beyond their own borders. Technical people in large organizations have been reaping these benefits for years. System administrators, for example, can describe thorny problems in a specialized newsgroup and, within minutes, receive advice from colleagues around the world. The archived history of such feedback constitutes a knowledge base incorporating thousands of years of hands-on experience. Now imagine that everyone in the organization -- from CEO to to field service rep -- could tap into similar knowledge repositories relating to their own work. Unlike the projections of the still somewhat distant optically-cabled future, this scenario is possible today. As embodied by the Internet, the phenomenon is already well underway. The overall impact of this universal discourse on business is impossible to predict, though a few guesses may be hazarded. It is widely acknowledged that being accessible to customers and listening carefully to their needs helps a company to respond more quickly with successful products and services. Many of those customers are already on the Net, and a surprising number of those that aren't are currently making plans to get connected. Remember when a fax machine seemed an option your company could afford to be without? That state of affairs didn't last long, did it? The same holds true today for a corporate Internet address. Companies that have no presence in this new arena will quickly fade from view. But this presence needs to be very different from what most are used to. Hucksterism will be greeted with a high-decibel barrage of flaming abuse, and rightly so. Instead of hawking products, companies will have to learn to give back as much as they take: offering useful information about their industry or technology, for instance -- and maybe even interjecting some genuine vision into the exchange. In this new context, "industry position" will come to depend not on how closely you can guard your knowledge, but on how widely you can share it. There has been much discussion recently about "intelligent agents," software modules that will pur- portedly profile your interests and independently explore vast information spaces in search of matching data or documents. These agents will depend on artificial intelligence techniques, many of which are either fairly crude or extremely speculative. While research along these lines may ultimately prove fruitful, most companies on the Internet cannot afford to wait for such futuristic "know-bots" to arrive. Fortunately, the most intelligent agents ever "devised" are already on the payroll. Provided with Net access, employees at every level will increase their exposure to external knowledge and -- unlike software "agents" - - will learn more than most companies could hope to teach them using internal resources alone. Internet access is intrinsically empowering, a giant step toward the "learning organization" so many firms know they must eventually become. But it's not all roses. The Internet is a daunting collection of online communities and information services that have evolved without top-down design. In many respects, the Net has created itself to serve its own immediate ends. Navigating this virtual discourse can involve frustration, disorientation and some very steep learning curves. While some of these drawbacks will be alleviated as the Internet attempts to accommodate its explosively expanding community of users, waiting for the ultimate user-friendly interface would unnecessarily postpone the benefits companies could be realizing today. And that's where The Internet Business Journal comes in. As demonstrated in this premiere issue, we plan to deliver pointers to valuable information and sources, whether on the Net or off: suggestions on how to get hooked up, find answers to frequently asked questions, exchange e-mail with varied networks and systems, receive LISTSERV files and postings, join USENET newsgroups, browse and retrieve information from around the world, even initiate new information services yourself. In addition, we will publish substantive articles from leaders in many fields related to the Internet. Although it will eventually be published electronically as well, The Internet Business Journal will always be available on paper. Otherwise, we could not meet our primary goal: to reduce the hurdles that have prevented many compan-ies from from getting connected to the Internet in the first place. While many readers will be newcomers to this universe, we envision a heterogeneous audience; some will inevitably have far more experience than others. If you know more than most, you're a natural candidate to write an article, or inform our readers of a little known Internet resource, and we encourage queries, submissions and proposals along those lines. In any case, we hope more advanced readers will not fault us for tending to favor those less at home on the frontiers of the Internet and its virtual business community. Our best hopes will have been realized if we can help establish a genuine community of interactive readers. In that spirit, all of us here at The Internet Business Journal extend an open invitation to all of you to send feedback on what you like, what you don't, and what you feel we may have missed -- or have gotten hopelessly wrong. The Internet is far too vast for a handful of people to cover alone, and it certainly was not invented here. Christopher Locke, Editor-in-Chief Avalanche Development 947 Walnut Street Boulder, Colorado 80302 Voice: (303) 449-5032 FAX: (303) 449-3246 chris@avalanche.com The National Information Infrastructure Dr. Vinton G. Cerf "The following is the complete written testimony of Dr. Vinton G. Cerf, Vice President, Corporation for National Research Initiatives and President, Internet Society, as given before the US House of Representa- tives, Committee on Science, Space and Technology; Subcommittee on Technology, Environment and Aviation, March 23, 1993..." The Rise of Commercialization in the Internet Robert Larribeau, Jr The author examines the birth of commercial Internet services and the challanges they face in the near future. Robert Larribeau, Jr., is currently an independent consultant who has worked in the computer and tele- communications industry for the last 30 years. He has held a variety of marketing and engineering positions working with data communications products. He has been working with ISDN technology and applications for the last seven years. In the next isuue of The Internet Business Journal (August/October), Robert Larribeau will continue his analysis of the Internet in the article, The Future for the Commercial Internet Service Providers. Stay tuned as IBJ helps prepare you for the future of commercial Internetworking. Benefits of Commercial Use and Commercialization of the Internet Bill Washburn Exectutive Director of the Commercial Internet Exchange (CIX). Bill Washburn offers readers a provocative essay on the need for a fully realized commercial Internet. "To some the idea may seem positively excessive. But I predict that the commercial utilization of the Internet will become pervasive and important to some business sectors in the economy. Many companies who have ignored most information technology advances up to now will have to embrace computing simply to incorporate Internet connectivity in their respective workplace environments. That is, Internet communications will be as huge and important to the information revolution in the next year or two as the development of microcomputers and word processing and spreadsheet packages were at the beginning of the eighties." Corporate Cybrary Networks: An Idea Whose Time Has Come Michel Bauwens Last January, Michel Bauwens, Information Officer at BP Nutrition, received a Special Award in connection with the Corporate Final of the BP Information Star Prize for Innovative Applications of Information Technology. His entry was based on the 'concept and creation of a total electronic information environment for the provision of business information to senior management'. The interview below highlights the importance of the experiment for a wider corporate environment. The author claims that the traditional model of centrally located physical libraries, may in certain cases be successfully replaced by a network of strategically placed cybrarians. Advertising on the Internet Adam Gaffin An examination of the potential and dangers of advertising on the Internet. "It sounds like an advertiser's dream: With just a few keystrokes, you can send your message to thousands of well educated, affluent people with an intense interest in just the sorts of things you sell. On the Internet, though, it could turn into an advertiser's nightmare..." Adam Gaffin is a reporter and computer columnist for the Middlesex News in Framingham, Mass. Internet in the UK Susan Hallam The Internet in the UK column will monitor Internet developments and issues in Great Britian. The Editors of The Internet Business Journal intend to foster a series of international columns which will provide a global prespective of the Internet. "Large corporations, small companies, private indi- viduals - demand for access to Internet resources is on the up and up. Service providers in the United Kingdom are recognising the market potential of this expanding audience and are hastening to provide the types of services required by a diverse group of users. For those users in the UK requiring direct access to the full range of Internet services such as e-mail, USENET newsgroups, online databases, and software and data archives, two new service providers have joined the fray. PIPEX Limited (Public IP Exchange Limited) and Demon Internet Services are now offering their subscribers direct access to the Internet. If you do not require the non-Internet facilities provided by bulletin board services (BBS) such as CompuServe and Commercial Internet Exchange (CIX), and you are not interested in paying their intermediary charges for connect time and usage when accessing the Internet, then you would do well to examine the services provided by PIPEX and Demon..." Susan Hallam is a Senior Lecturer in Information Technology at The Nottingham Trent University. NEWS FROM EUROPE Michel Bauwens The News from Europe column will monitor European developments concerning business uses of the Internet. This first issue contains a report on the European Association of Information Services (EUSIDIC) Spring Seminar on the Internet. This year's themes were The Internet, and Document Imaging. Michel Bauwens is Information Officer at BP Nutrition where he is responsible for the provision of business information to senior management. He recently received a special award in connection with the BP Information Star Prize for Innovative Applications in Information Technology, for the concept and creation of a total electronic information environment, which relies on the Internet as a global distributed library. Internet User Profile -- THE RUGGE GROUP A look at how the Rugge Group uses the Internet to facilitate operations. The Internet User Profile is a regular column that tells our readers how small or large businesses use the Internet to faciliate operations. If your company has an interesting story to tell, contact the IBJ Editors at: 72302.3062@CompuServe.Com Internet User Survey Results Thomas J. Cozzolino & Thomas H. Pierce "In late 1992, the Rohm and Haas Company began an internal project to study current and potential uses of the Internet. As part of that effort, we posted several messages to USENET newsgroups and selected mailing lists to solicit information about how other chemical companies and institutions were using the Internet..." The Cornell GateDaemon Consortium Martyne Hallgren The Internet Business Journal is particularly interested in covering university - industry/business consortiums that are concerned with or facilitated by the Internet. "The Cornell GateDaemon Consortium is a consortium of universities, industry, and other organizations formed to foster and expand the development of the GateDaemon software. The Consortium will provide resources to the GateDaemon project to deliver new routing capabilities to the Internet community on a more timely basis and to improve technology transfer between Consortium participants. Cornell University is the lead organization. Membership is open to any organization in any country who is interested in supporting and par- ticipating in the development of internetwork routing protocols..." Access to Government Information over the Internet Peggy Garvin "The following are some highlights from Meckler's Computer in Libraries Conference preconference seminar titled Access to Government Information over the Inter- net, held Sunday, 2-28-93 in Washington, D.C..." Access - Ability: Assistive Technologies and the Net (Full Text) Dr. Norman Coombs In the interest of supporting the development of the an Internet that is accessible to everyone, The Internet Business Journal, in cooperation with Dr. Norman Coombs, has made this regular column freely available on the Net. Today's phenomenal explosion of high speed data networks and online services brings information to the user instead of the user having to travel to the information source. This fact, along with the advent of adapted computer systems, means that the computer user with disabilities becomes and enabled user, not a disabled user. The development of the personal computer with adaptive software and/or hardware has been one of the most liberating innovations for handicapped persons in modern times. Thousands of us have realized that the ability to take this new powerful tool and connect it to a modem and telephone can bring the world to serve our needs. Besides opening a world of information and learning to us, it has the potential to open hundreds of new employment opportunities for a group which has the highest unemployment rate in the United States. But, what does this mean to readers of this journal who do not suffer from such disabilities? If you are responsible for a business or and educational institution, these newly empowered persons comprise a valuable pool of potential employees. Many studies show that "handicapped workers" have better records on days off for illness or late arrivals at work. Those of us who have struggled even to get a job interview understand having employment from a different perspective. If you are responsible for finding consumers for a product or potential applicants for an educational institution, these same people are also a valuable resource for you. There are over 43 million persons in the United States with physical disabilities, which is approaching twenty percent of the population. Other countries must have similar numbers. Computer telecommunications is rapidly providing access to numerous commercial and educational services and also to an expanding variety of information sources. These include online education, access to reference works, full-text books and periodicals, a wide variety of databases for education and business as well as online shopping services. While accessing them from a computer at home instead of travelling to its geographic location is convenient for most people, this ability provides an entirely new opportunity for those of us with physical disabilities. I am a college professor with a Ph.D. in history and some 30 years of teaching. Yet, it was only a couple years ago that I had the ability to connect from my PC in the office or home with an electronic encyclopedia. Before acquiring access to this technology, I had to rely on a reader and do the reading at a scheduled working time. Not long before that, I was able to "read" the entries in our college's electronic catalogue and "see" that they had my book. Yes, I knew it before, but it is different to experience it first hand. I can now look up airline schedules and fares, do catalogue shopping and on and on. Every new opportunity brings new problems with it. What are those problems, and how can information providers assist this large pool of potential employees and consumers? The answer is complicated by the fact that there are various disabilities and that people may have varying degrees of disability. Persons, like myself, who are blind, need monitor output adapted to play through a speech synthesizer. Those with vision impairment and some persons with learning disabilities need other adaptations to the computer display. Another group of persons with disabilities need adaptations to the computer input device, the keyboard or the mouse. Some need software to compensate for their inability to press 2 or more keys simultaneously. There are key guards to let users rest their hands on while using the keyboard. Depending on what particular limited muscle movement a motor impaired person may have, there are a variety of single switch devices that can substitute for both the keyboard and mouse. In future issues, this column will address the specifics of these topics as well as other related information. There are a couple general comments that can be made in this first discussion. Computer and software designers have tended to postulate an average user in designing their hardware and software. Of course, most of us miss that average. Modern car manufacturers have likewise realized there aren't many average users. The wife of one of my friends is quite short, and, before small cars became common, she had difficulty reaching the gas or brake pedals even with the seat moved forward. Her husband fastened a wooden block to the pedals! So, now we have seats that move much further, and steering wheels that tilt. The driver can adjust the car to his or her needs and wishes. Yet, we have computer designers arguing over whether a text-based output is best or a graphics display, whether keyboard input is best or a mouse. What will be best for the average user? Happily, there are also designers who talk about user definable interfaces and front ends. Then, users can select the kind of environment with which they are most comfortable. Let me use gopher menus as one partial example. When a menu of choices is displayed, the user has two types of input choices. One item is highlighted and that can be moved up and down using the arrow keys. Simultaneously, each menu item has a number next to it. The user can input that number to make a selection instead of moving the highlighted bar. Here is a simple online interface which permits the user to chose the input method he or she prefers. Prodigy has committed itself to graphics displays which thus far makes their entire system inaccessible to blind users. Good design could have provided the possibility for the customer to select graphics or text displays. Once the applications are developed, finding ways to adapt and access them later is difficult, expensive and perhaps not possible. Designing products for the widest possible spectrum of users, able and disabled, not only gives the provider the largest possible pool of users, it accommodates and assists people with a wide variety of preferences and even needs. Dr. Norman Coombs Professor of History, Rochester Institute of Technology Chair, EDUCOM's Project EASI (Equal Access to Software and Information) nrcgsh@ritvax.isc.rit.edu Other Items Covered in This Issue: Internet Tools Guide to Network Resource Tools Accessing the Inspector General's Report Review of NSFNET The draft of the paper Some Economics of the Internet Doing Business on the Internet: How the Electronic Highway is Transforming American Business Digital Information Infrastructure Guide Corporate Librarian Information Network WAIS INC Big Sky Telegraph Canadian Directory of Businesses on the Internet NREN Workshop Report Internet Business Pages New Commerce: A Report on Trends and Opportunities on the Emerging National Public Network CICNet Offers Internet Tutorial Series First UK Commercial Internet Connection COM-PRIV Archives Via FTP Biotechnet Electronic Buyer's Guide Information Technology Times Via Gopher and FTP Wyvern Technologies Now Online EDUPAGE Electronic Newsletter Internet Monthly Report EUnet CNI Copyright and Intellectual Property Forum Boston Computer Sosiety Creates New Internet Special Interest Group Scientific and Technical Information from Russia BITNET/Internet Health Sciences Resource List New Technology Information Service Who's Who in Congress Canadian Government Online Clinton Administration Paper onTechnology Initiatives US Federal Register The Center for Electronic Records of the U.S. National Archives and Records Administration Internet Talk Radio Networking Politics Software Sales Via the Internet Reuters and Business News Wire Online California Homes Networked by 2015 National Science Foundation Announces InterNIC Services Summary Report of the Spring 1993 Meeting of the Coalition for Networked Information Task Force Meeting And much much more ... Letter from the Publisher This is the premiere issue of the Internet Business Journal. We are the first information source exclu- sively devoted to providing the reader with current information about the Internet business community. I often wondered what it was like when the light bulb or telephone was invented and now find myself in a comparable situation. In the past, paradigm shifts in technology were greeted with superstition (what demon makes it glow?) or derision (who needs a machine that you have to yell into to make your voice project an insignificant distance?). Three years ago I was stunned by the sceptiscm that greeted any mention of the Internet. Today, the Internet is seen as the leading edge of not simply technological development, but also national economic policy -- for any country. The Internet is not merely a new technology -- it is a new way of doing business -- a new way of participating in democracy, a new way of creating and maintaining international communities and economic ties. We intend to be your primary source of information about the Internet business community. Follow us in 1993 as we provide your company, business school or government department with detailed analysis of the commercial Internet phenomenon; national information policy developments, access details on regional connectivity providers; and examples of a wide variety of successful Internet-facilitated, commercial enterprises. By the end of this decade, there could well be over 50 million commercial users on the Internet. We will be there to tell you their goals, their products and markets, their successes, as well as their mistakes. More than this, we will be there to tell you how to use the damn thing. Make no mistake about it: the Internet, like much of the computer industry, is not (yet) pretty. It is still a wild, untamed thing. But if you wait till it is entirely tamed to use it, you will find only images of the harvest gathered by others -- not a frontier that will enrich those who dare to move forward. To do this, we decided that the six regular issues of The Internet Business Journal will be augmented with six regular supplements. These supplements will go into detail on how to actually use the Internet and its various systems. The Internet Business Journal Supplement will guide the reader through FTP, LISTSERV, USENET, Gopher, Archie, WAIS, WorldWideWeb, Telnet and other Internet-related tools, commands, user tips and search and retrieval techniques. Together, The Internet Business Journal and Supplement will help your company unlock the treasure that is the Internet. Nothing in the considerable experience of The Internet Business Journal's team prepared us for the overwhelming response to this first edition. It is nice to feel needed, but we never imagined how needed we were! In less than four weeks after the first mention of The Internet Business Journal, we had an international list of subscribers, from Osaka, Japan, to Monteal, Quebec, to London, England, to Wellington, New Zealand. But the international character of our readership was only in keeping with the nature of the Internet itself. The real surprise was the variety of industry sectors interested in The Internet Businees Journal. Yes, of course we would attract computer manufacturers, the software industry, and telephone companies. But who would have thought that car manufacturers are interested in keeping up on the Internet? And who could have foreseen strong interest from the pharmaceutical and medical industries, public utility companies, the housing industry, steel manufacturers, law firms, and even a fireman in Palm Springs, California. Clearly, sooner than later, the Internet will become as ubiquitous to the business world as the asphalt highway, the telephone and the fax. It is going to happen, it is happening now, and you can watch it unfold in the pages of The Internet Business Journal. Follow us in 1993 as we cover the most dynamic and important phenomenon to appear before the international business community. Michael Strangelove Publisher The Internet Business Journal 1 Year (6 regular issues & 6 supplements) $149.00 (US) Corporate Rate $75.00 (US) Educational Libraries and Small Business Rate $179.00 (CND) Corporate Rate $89.00 (CND) Educational Libraries and Small Business Rate Add $50 for overseas postage Please make cheques payable to Strangelove Press STRANGELOVE PRESS 60 Springfield Road, Suite #1 Ottawa, Ontario CANADA K1M -1C7 Tel: (613) 747-6106 Internet: 72302.3062@CompuServe.Com CompuServe: 72302,3062 END OF DOCUMENT