RE: Can Gnus read HTML format email messages?

[gorkab@sanchez.com (Brian Gorka)]

by Frank Barnako 

** Special edition: Push technology companies at peril

A prediction that the next-generation of Web clients and browsers
from Netscape and Microsoft will drive "push" technology companies
out of the consumer market was made Thursday by a veteran Net
entrepreneur and consultant.

Vin Crosbie, president of consulting firm Digital Deliverance, told
DBC Internet Daily, Microsoft's CDF (channel definition format) and
Netscape's Netcaster formats will become the predominant
push-delivery vehicles for publishers.

Products like PointCast, Intermind, and BackWeb, which allow users
to subscribe to Web sites' content packages for automatic delivery,
each require users to download a software program. None is
compatible with the other, and some can cause computer lockups and
crashes. No one company can deliver all the Net's content, so
consumers have to download several clients. To Crosbie, it's a
non-nerd's nightmare.

"But publishers have to do something," Crosbie said. "They all have
Web sites, but no circulation. Their business model is, in
publishing terms, to hope a reader will call the circulation
department every day and ask for home delivery of the current
edition. That goes against our habits. When we want something, we
want it now."

** The next big thing: the old thing

Crosbie's solution is HTML-coded e-mail, offering publishers the
opportunity to include not only text but also graphics and,
eventually sound and video. This is also at the core of his New
York City consulting business; helping publishers like the New
Century Network's just-debuted Web site (http://www.newsworks.com )
to utilize e-mail to deliver readers what they want, when they want
it.

He says the catalyst for the spectacular growth of the World Wide
Web was Netscape co-founder Mark Andreessen's work that produced a
Web browser that could display graphics. E-mail, already the Net's
'killer app', says Crosbie, "is about to become catalyzed by HTML
e-mail. Since everybody has it, publishers should use it." 

** Focus, focus, focus

But not all publishers "get it." That's why he thinks Denver-based
Mercury Mail is on the right track when its service allows users to
filter what they receive. "You subscribe to news about your team,
and get whatever the team does." Crosbie argues publishers think in
terms of sports "pages." Readers think in terms of "sports" or
"teams". He believes push technology companies and e-mail
publishers should take notice of this need he describes as
"discretion," delivering to users only the information in which
they are interested. He is hopeful the e-mail project he's
developed for NCN will prove that. It is due to begin operations
late this Summer. 

** Some advertisers get it

Crosbie got into the Net business while developing content concepts
and marketing strategies for one of the first two free e-mail
services. Freemark failed, but Juno is alive and well, and finding
support from advertisers, says Crosbie. "It's fine to put your ad
on a Web site and hope people will come to see it a few times a
week," he argues, "but isn't it better to have guaranteed delivery,
daily, to a guaranteed list of advertiser-desirable targets?"

** Vin Crosbie is president of Digital Deliverance, a new media
business planning and strategy firm specializing in information
marketing and circulation issues. He can be contacted via email at
crosbie@well.com.  


The Internet Daily (TM) is originally published and edited by Data
Broadcasting Corp. (NASDAQ: DBCC)


>----------
>From: 	Justin J. Sheehy[SMTP:justin@linus.mitre.org]
>Sent: 	Thursday, July 03, 1997 2:22 PM
>To: 	ding@gnus.org
>Subject: 	Re: Can Gnus read HTML format email messages?
>
>The following message is a courtesy copy of an article
>that has been posted as well.
>
>"Matthew Wong <Matthew Wong"<matthew@servo.engga.uwo.ca> writes:
>
>> I just read a disscussion on can vm read HTML format email, just wonder
>>does
>> Gnus read HTML format email?? Either thru W3 or netscape??
>
>"HTML format email" is a rather silly phrase.
>
>HTML is a format for web pages and similar things, often transmitted
>by HTTP.  It is not a valid format for email messages.
>
>You can probably get w3 to read it, but you should soundly beat the
>authors of the message and the authors of their software instead.
>
>-- 
>Justin Sheehy
>
>In a cloud bones of steel.
>  
>
>
>