************************************************************** * * * CYBERSPACE * * A biweekly column on net culture appearing * * in the Toronto Sunday Sun * * * * Copyright 1999 Karl Mamer * * Free for online distribution * * All Rights Reserved * * Direct comments and questions to: * * * * * ************************************************************** Unless you've only been using the Internet to spread an envelope-stuffing scam, you've encountered the biggest thing to hit the net since the Netscape: so- called push technology. To review, "pull" technologies like the web require you to go out and find information yourself; "push" technology sends you a packet of information based on a few user-selected specifications. There are a dozen or so push services offering news, reviews, and weather. Most services let you customize your newsfeed. For example, if I want to know who gets awarded the contract for the F-22 not who wins the Stanley Cup, I can have my push service exclude sports but include aviation news in my feed. Push services are free, paid for by banner advertising. The services split the ad revenue with the news organizations supplying the content. Despite predictions in the early days that the net was a threat to print, push offers newspapers a great opportunity to enhance revenue. Hundreds of dailies in North America create content that will never generate income beyond a geographical area. I'm never going to buy a paper copy of the Seattle Times. But if its technology section is included in a no-brainer electronic news packet, I'll happily glance at an HP banner to read industry gossip. My exploration into push began a number of months ago with PointCast Canada (www.pointcast.ca). PointCast's hook is its proprietary newsreader that downloads the news (and ads) and lets you read offline. Like about half the people who try the service, I got bored of PointCast. Reading news in front of a computer doesn't beat sitting in a Starbucks coffee shop on a Fall day, drinking cappuccino, and not caring soggy biscotti is soiling my Sunday Sun. I haven't, however, abandoned push at my day job where I've got a fractional T1 wired to my NT desktop. It's a pretty sweet life -- a life enjoyed by a growing number as corporations are hoodwinked by cleverly worded "Intranet" proposals to hook employees to the net. It is the Fortune 500 work place that push providers really want to deliver to advertisers. Where else can HP reach a purchaser right before he or she orders a dozen new printers? My push provider at work is Yahoo! (see my.yahoo.com), which supplies an innovative news ticker you can set up to scroll continuously updated headline news at the bottom of your monitor. If something catches my eye, a click on the headline downloads the full story to my web browser. It's not with out faults. Yahoo's Canadian weather seems grossly inaccurate (even their current conditions) and it takes a while for some stories to drop off the spool. I stared at the headline "Motely Crue gets plastered at ceremony" for weeks before it mercifully vanished. Despite being a daily push user, I'm not yet sure if it's a Good Thing. If push proves more popular than the web, it moves the net away from its focus on constitutionally protected speech to a unidirectional broadcast medium which governments have found very easy to control. Let's hope push doesn't come to shove.