Pointcast
The first webcasting company; recently announced a partnership with Microsoft.



Marimba's Castanet
A Java-based webcasting program; recently announced a partnership with Netscape .

Castanet's "tuner" concept

Marimba, Inc.



BackWeb
Internet broadcasting program similar to Pointcast and Castanet.

Try a free "pc tune-up" program from BackWeb.



Diffusion, Inc., a push program primarily for business-to-business communications.


The Digital Research Initiative
The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

 

How Pushing Works

A person downloads Webcasting software. She is asked to fill out a profile specifying what type of information she'd like to receive--for example weather, computer industry news, and selected stock prices.

The profile is submitted to the Webcasting service and stored on a database.

Special software programs then search a pool of content--in most cases a selection of content ''channels'' and Web sites. The software retrieves the requested information and sends it out.

taken from a Business Week cover story about webcasting

How Pushing is Different

Most Web users today utilize "pull" techniques. Users actively seek information about specific topics, often using search engines to "pull" data from the Web onto their computer screens.

Pushing performs Web searches within pre-defined topics for a user, and downloads the results automatically to either the desktop or to a screensaver mechanism.

Currently, pushing software takes up a lot of bandwidth, so much so that some companies have banned it due to the drag it places on their Internet connection.

Why Pushing is Important

Currently, users have a limited number of channels, and sources, from which they can opt to receive "pushed" information. While a number of major news sources, such as CNN, the AP and the New York Times are all sources of information used by pushing programs, the Daily Tar Heel, for example, is not.

Advertisers are hoping to be able to use push technology to direct messages directly to the screens of individual Web users. Companies are already beginning to use push software to create their own in-house, or intranet, channels, and using them to disseminate information among their employees.

The upcoming versions of both major Internet browers, Netscape Nagivator and Microsoft Explorer, are scheduled to include pushing capabilities.


This site made by
eric
This site was created especially for students of the UNC School of Journalism's
JOMC 050 Class, and anyone else who may be interested.
For more information, please contactdaikat@email.unc.edu