bitsifter
friday, may 23 

[rant]  The week marked the arrival of the first significant non-Pointcast push product, Netscape's Netcaster.  While Microsoft's push component is still vaporware, there were quick to point out the countless content partners they'd already signed up to support their Channel Definition Format (CDF).  This battle for mind share borders on the inane because both products are brain dead.

When you visited the Digest, a simple conversation occurred between your computer and the computer that hosts our site.  It reads like this:

Traditionally, this is called "pulling" a Web page from a Web server.  Marketing types would have you believe that "pushing" a Web page from a server is an entirely new concept when really, it just reads like this: There is very little new technology behind Netscape's Netcaster and Microsoft's Active Desktop.  It's mostly just window dressing on pull technology.  It's your computer automatically deciding when to download the newest versions of Web pages that you care about.  It's old hat.

The new hat is IP Multicasting, a technology which, in most respects resembles the technology everyone is dying to associate with the Internet, television broadcasting.  Like TV, programs (or Web sites, or files) are broadcast over the Internet from a single source.  Client programs that are listening to these broadcasts, pick-up them up and store them locally.

Multicasting saves amazing amounts of bandwidth because it discards the pull model.  If you miss a multicasted "event", you must wait until the next broadcast time to get the data.  Just like that time you missed  'Friends' and forgot to set the VCR to record.

While multicasting is easier on existing infrastructure, it does away with the essential interactivity of the current Internet.   This means that when multicasting propaganda reaches critical mass, remember, it doesn’t replace the current way you surf the web, it just enhances it.

[rant]  Last weeks big Internet commerce news was the virtual turf war that erupted between on-line giant Amazon.com and retail behemoth Barnes and Noble.   Looking to steal some thunder from Amazon’s imminent IPO, Barnes and Noble attacked on two fronts: first, by launching it’s own site and second by filing a lawsuit against Amazon for engaging in false advertising.   The litigious strategy came up short as Amazon’s stock ended up 30% at the end of day, chalk up one for the little guy.

Rather than a rant about Barnes and Nobles bullying, I think I’ll take a different tact and ask, “Who cares?”  The most recent experience I had with Amazon.Com was mostly disappointing.   While receiving automated email from the Amazon when my favorite author had released a new hardback dazzled me, I was disheartened when I saw the book in my local Waldenbooks before I’d received the book from Amazon via U.S. Snail Mail.  So, what is the advantage of ordering on-line?

Like most middle-class Americans, I like to shop.  At least once a week, Half a Mountain and I venture off to for our mall crawl.  That’d be lunch, Waldenbooks, Suncoast video, and, finally, Electronic Boutique.  We’re not looking for anything in particular, we’re simply looking for the new and the cool.

I’ve yet to have a similar experience on the Web.  While the amount of books available via Amazon is astounding, I get little satisfaction staring at the text describing a book.  I’d much rather pick the hardback book up and the feel the impressive weight of 753 pages of printed text.  This is reassuring.  This is part of the process of purchasing that Web retail can’t replace.

Amazon reported $16 million dollars in revenue and a loss of  $3 million for the quarter ending March 31.  Obviously, a market exists for online wares, but it’s a virtual market full of pretty two-dimensional pictures that lack that the retail therapy a trip to the mall provides.