Compuserve Cyber Mall
CompuServe has joined the growing ranks of Internet commercial sites with the opening of its Electronic Mall (http://www.compuserve.com). The Internet project is based on the 11-year-old, 170-merchant mall on CompuServe’s network. Security for the Electronic Mall will be provided by Terisa Systems, combining Netscape’s Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) and Terisa’s Secure HTTP (S-HTTP) protocols. The site, which will open its doors this fall, will host such clients as FTD Direct, JCPenney, and Land’s End. For more information, call (800) 524-3388.
Coke Central
Coca-Cola has launched its official home page (http://www.cocacola.com), which looks like a 1950s sci-fi comic book. The graphics are slick and there is a load of information about the company.
Three New ‘Zines
Three Web-based magazines making their debut on the Net are Feed , Mr. Showbiz, and Word. Word (http://www.word.com) is brought to you by the creators of Vibe and aims to be a hip magazine for the 20-something generation.
Feed (http://www.nyweb.com/feed) describes itself as “Wired meets The New Yorker.” Contributors include Yale’s computer science professor David Gelernter, Jaron Lanier, a founding father of virtual reality, and Dave Greenberg, managing editor of The New Republic.
Mr. Showbiz ) is a daily celebrity magazine in the the same vein as Premiere or Variety.
Etc…
Nynex, the Northeast’s largest local phone company, has put its Yellow Pages on the Web at http://www.vtcom.fr/nynex (it’s located in France because of U.S. regulations). Operated in partnership with the French Minitel Corp., Nynex’s site allows you to search by business name or via a map, and there are links to corporate Web sites.
Another information service on the Web has been launched by the Library Corp., whose The NlightN Universal Index ) offers data stored in more than 500 databases, news services, and Internet information sources. The service is fee-based, with prices starting at 10 cents per piece of information.
If you don’t feel like searching, you can let PR Newswire do the walking. The company has teamed with eWorks to offer its members a search-and-clip service for electronic mailing lists and Usenet News. For more information, call (800) 832-5522.
USA Today is offering an online version of its newspaper for $14.95 per month. Called USA Today Online, the service is provided on the World-Wide Web and includes news, sports scores, business information, and lifestyle reports. Pricing is meant to be on par with the paper’s printed edition. For more info, call (713) 522-3600.
This year’s National Football League college draft was the first to be broadcast live on the Internet. According to Ann Kirschner, vice president of programming and media development, the NFL Sidelines Web site (http://nflhome.com) has received millions of requests for information. The site will continue to carry NFL news, including league updates and game schedules.
Entering the voice-over-the-Net arena is CineCom ([email protected]), whose TeleTalk software transmits voices and still photographs. It operates in one-to-one or one-to-many modes.
Novell has teamed with Tumbleweed Software (415-363-7022) to introduce a set of publishing tools based on Tumbleweed’s Envoy portable-document technology. Priced at $695, Tumbleweed’s Publishing Essentials aims to make it easy to create documents that anyone on the Net with the Envoy freeware viewer can read and annotate.
Datastorm has released a new version of its Procomm Plus for Windows communications program. Version 2.11 provides TCP/IP connectivity, including telnet and FTP, and a dialing directory that allows telephone numbers or IP addresses to be specified. It’s priced at $179, with free upgrades for registered users of version 2.
Some of the largest newspaper publishers have allied to create the New Century Network (NCN) to allow local newspapers to access news, information, and advertising that can help them develop online services in their local markets. The partners are Advance Publications Inc., Cox Newspapers Inc., Gannett Co. Inc., The Hearst Corp., Knight-Ridder Inc., The New York Times Co., The Times Mirror Co., The Tribune Co., and The Washington Post Co. They also will develop solutions to distribute news in an interactive form.