ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Thursday, December 12, 1996 TAG: 9612120023
SECTION: BUSINESS PAGE: B-10 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: NEW YORK
SOURCE: DAVID E. KALISH ASSOCIATED PRESS
Morning breaks as you wake to customized news and weather reports beamed across a video screen. You click on your favorite stock, up in early trading. A video clip and text spring up with news of the firm's merger. Without delay, you execute the sale of 50 shares.
Hop to an electronic storefront. Photos of snazzy shoes entice you to spend. The price is electronically subtracted from bank account records stored in your home computer. All this is done on a big screen that doubles as a television, triples as a home security system.
Believe the Internet hype. Much of this is now possible or will be soon. The Web revolution that promised to forever change how we live and work is nearly here - and working furiously to get out the kinks.
The kinks abound. It takes too long to log onto and download Web text and fancy graphics via phone networks originally built for voice calls.
Only about 10 percent of U.S. households have Internet access, far less than the critical mass needed for profits by most advertisers, Web publishers and other companies investing in the Internet. Security is a worry: Make a purchase on the Internet, and your credit card number could fall into the wrong hands.
Despite this, the Internet is nearing a crucial threshold. The enthusiasm is evident in the 50,000 participants expected to attend Internet World in midtown Manhattan this week - up more than 40 percent from the exposition's spring show in San Jose, Calif.
The 550 exhibitors and other Internet companies are developing the sort of products and services that will help the Internet surmount some nagging problems.
One of the hottest trends: Internet access products that ``broadcast'' Web content to users' computers continuously, freeing them from the trouble of searching the Internet for what they want.
The first company to demonstrate the idea was PointCast, with a product that constantly delivers news headlines and other material from Web sites onto a screen saver on your PC.
One problem is home users - unlike corporations with continuous Internet connections - must dial a modem periodically to get on the Net and thus update the information.
A company solving that problem is AirMedia, which offers automatic, constant broadcasts of Web-based news, stock quotes and other information to PC users who lack a fast and continuous Internet connection. It uses a small pyramid-shaped receiver that plugs into the PC and uses wireless technology to receive Web material from the company's broadcast service.
AirMedia's technology doesn't let you custom-tailor information. But observers say improved services from broadcasters are only a matter of time. In the future, Internet systems will automatically adapt to your tastes, changing what they send depending on what you've recently clicked on.
``Essentially, every individual will have his own `newspaper' and own news feed and all the information you want. And the system will learn from day-to-day about your interests,'' said Andrew Kantor, a senior editor at Internet World magazine, which is sponsoring the exposition at the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center.
For now, experts urge consumers to use care in giving out credit card numbers. While Web technology may never be foolproof against financial fraud, developers of on-line banking technology say new scrambling and encryption techniques have made Internet transactions safer than those in the real world.
Helping the Net reach a critical mass of users are marketing blitzes by two of the largest providers of on-line service, America Online and Microsoft Network.
America Online, the nation's largest on-line service provider, is spending $100 million in advertising and mailing out millions of its software disks to potential customers.
Microsoft Network is investing heavily in a remodeled service that features a slew of new information offerings in TV-style channels. It hopes to double its 1.6 million subscribers by next summer, leapfrogging CompuServe to become the nation's second-largest on-line provider.
MSN's Web experience includes snazzy graphics and such entertainment as a 1950s-style game show that lets up to 5,000 users ``play'' each night, with winners getting such prizes as trips to exotic places.
``We are prepared not to make money for the next three years,'' said Bob Bejan, MSN's executive producer, who predicts the number of wired people in the United States will triple by 2000.
After that, he said, MSN's advertising will combine with subscriber fees to make it profitable, with ad revenue surpassing that from subscribers by early in the next decade.
LENGTH: Medium: 88 lines ILLUSTRATION: GRAPHIC: Chart by AP. color.by CNB