Pushpull technology survival guide

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Push-pull technology survival guide

• David Strom
• david_at_strom.com
• [phone]

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Summary

• Whos left
• Understanding the publishing process
• Notable products
• Microsoft, Netscape
• Email

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About me

• Used several push technologies since day 1
  (11/96) to publish my own newsletter
• Have uninstalled most of them
• Write and edit for a living
• Push CEO test all opted for email

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Whos out

• Ifusion
• Intermind
• Travelling Software
• Individual, Inc.
• Any off-line browser -- remember them?

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Intranets vs. extranets

• I control desktop and plug-ins
• E communicate with customers
• I got lots of bandwidth to burn
• E better reach and influence
• I mailing lists and newsletter metaphor
• E TV channels

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Understanding the publishing process

• What is your business model?
• How much gear is required?
• What clients and servers supported?
• What desktop software required?
• What control do you have over update delivery?
• What reports are available?

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Is this anyway to run a publication

• Cant track subscribers
• Hard to peg costs for production, distribution,
  sales
• Circulation estimates are way off
• Incompatible mailboxes thwart content delivery
• No established advertising base, rate card, etc.

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What is the business model?

• Pervasive tuners
• Extranets, high-end publishing
• Intranets, custom publishing
• Electronic software distribution
• Remote desktop maintenance
• Selling screensaver advertising

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But there isnt any one-to-one match!

• Vendors need to decide fast what business they
  want to be in
• Otherwise MS and NSCP will be the only ones left

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What clients are supported?

• Win95, NT pretty much everyone
• Win 3.1 BackWeb, Pointcast
• Mac Marimba, Pointcast, BackWeb
• Solaris Marimba
• Java clients Diffusion

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What servers are needed?

• Usually NT, sometimes Solaris
• Sometimes more than one machine (BackWeb,
  Diffusion)

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What desktop software is needed?

• Plug-in or add-or to browser (Intermind)
• Stand-alone player that runs in background

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What control do you have over update delivery?

• Intermind lets publisher do it
• Most give this control to the desktop
• Pointcast doesnt have any controls for public
  channels!

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What kind of reports do you get?

• Range from crude to unusable
• Some just tell you subscribes to your channel
• Mostly log files that arent human readable

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My short list of notable products

• BackWeb
• Marimba
• Astound

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Microsoft

• Channel Definition Format, part of v4 IE client
• Used by PointCast Connections, uses XML
• Easy to setup channels
• No server tools to speak off, still
• Example syntax at www.strom.com/pcn.html

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Netscape

• Netcaster, part of v4 Communicator client
• Used by Marimba, based on Java
• Needs some other software on client such as Bongo
  libraries, Shockwave
• Example syntax at www.strom.com/netcaster.html

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Whither email?

• Diffusion, Revnet taking the right approach to
  extend email functionality
• Really all push is just better email management
• CDF might take off, if the tools mature
• Otherwise, HTML email is most promising thing to
  come from push