Network Computing

At the application level, we have to establish what interactive television means and how to add value with high bandwith and interactivity … We’re laying the foundations for a huge class of opportunities.

Forward

Like any community contending with explosive growth, Internet must adapt to the stimulus provided by its newer participants, and conflicts have arisen over the purpose of the network and how it evolves. Privacy, information security, censorship, commercial content on the network are some of the big issues, along with ensuring that Internet embraces the developments we’re seeing in broadband, multimedia, personal communications and advanced intelligent networking.

Online Services in for Small Change on the Next Generation Internet

The big online services will be organized around collecting micropayments for Internet services and for Internet content, both in one convenient bill. Telephone companies might therefore make good online services, but only because of their billing systems, and only after they are demonopolized, please. Digital moneys, and particularly micropayments, are a key to the Next Generation Internet

Online Services in for Small Change on the Next Generation Internet

Internet content providers will move toward hybrid systems that price various combinations of advertising, time, subscriptions, and transactions. Collecting revenue under these new regimes in the Next Generation Internet will require billing systems better than those the telephone companies have today. The telcos can bill down to something like a nickel a minute. Internet commerce will really take off when bills can go down to a mil per packet or a penny a page.

Online Services in for Small Change on the Next Generation Internet

Internet service providers will move away from the model where you pay only for a limit on the peak rate you can send no matter how far. They will be moving toward pricing that better covers underlying costs – time, distance, traffic, bandwidth. Like PC memory, Internet bandwidth is getting cheap fast, but it will never be free in the quantities it’s needed.

Intuit Deal Fears Center On Banking; U.S. Sees Microsoft Online Domination

Online banking has had a bumpy history to date, but many in the industry feel that technology and consumer preferences have reached the point where it is fast moving toward acceptance as a mass-market service. “It’s going to be a very big phenomenon, on the scale of automated-teller machines.”

Information Highways

An Internet e-mail address will likely be as mandatory in the future as the fax is today.

Hit the Iway – And Don’t Bring a Disk, PC Mind-set, or Microwave Oven

We can now consider new kinds of computers – Internet computers, not just 370 mainframes, VAX minicomputers and Wintel PCs … Consider all kinds of Internet terminals: Internet televisions (intervisions), Internet telephones (interphones), Internet kiosks (interosks), Internet game players (interplayers), Internet teller machines (ITMs) and perhaps even interwave ovens. Eventually, we’re going to be needing home Ethernets, servers and routers to connect our various Internet computers.

Best Businesses For the Year 2000: Which 35 Opportunities Will Be Hard to Beat – and Which Will Be Obsolete

In the year 2000, just about every business will rely on online conversations for sharing information with customers, says Jerry Michalski … To make cyberspace conversations fruitful, however, they’ll need your moderating services. As an online host, you’ll be familiar with group and online dynamics and the topics of discussion. Prospects might include big companies that want to field customer questions, online publishers, and even user, trade and business organizations trying to lure new members.