Companies are increasingly turning to the World Wide Web to spread the word on their products and services
Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols
A year ago, only a seasoned Internet surfer could tell you that WWW stood for the World Wide Web, an Internet-borne distributed collection of documents that you can navigate via hypertext. Today, the Internet's popularity is booming, and it's being partly driven by the WWW's red-hot popularity.
The Internet has a rich assortment of information resources and retrieval tools, such as Archie, gopher, and WAIS (Wide Area Information Service). The WWW, based on the HTML (hypertext markup language), is proving more successful than its predecessors because of its flexibility and its easy-to-use and colorful front ends, such as the NCSA's (National Center for Supercompu
ting Applications) Mosaic.
NCSA Mosaic is, and will continue to be, a freeware program; however, NCSA recently turned over Mosaic's commercial development to Spyglass (Savoy, IL). Companies wishing to use Mosaic in their products must go to Spyglass for its Enhanced NCSA Mosaic, which requires less memory than NCSA Mosaic and is more consistent across its Mac, Windows, and Unix versions.
Enhanced Mosaic 2.0, which will add support for security and authentication for business transactions, is slated to ship by the end of this year. Spyglass already has agreements in place to supply Enhanced Mosaic to DEC, FTP Software, IBM, and book and on-line publisher O'Reilly & Associates. And NEC (Tokyo, Japan) will develop and distribute a Japanese-language version of Spyglass's Enhanced NCSA Mosaic.
The freeware version of Mosaic will incorporate some Spyglass improvements. Other improvements, such as secure transaction processing, will be limited to Spyglass commercial versions. Before the Spyglass
deal, NCSA already had contracts for Mosaic's commercial development in place with such companies as Quarterdeck Office Systems and Spry. According to Joseph Hardin, associate director of NCSA's Software Development Group, NCSA will honor these agreements, which means that these companies will have access to the source code for improved freeware versions in the future. In addition, these companies can form new agreements with Spyglass.
But not all companies are turning to Spyglass for commercial versions of Mosaic. Mosaic Communications (Mountain View, CA, (800) 638-7483, http://mosaic.mcom.com) plans to follow its intended October release of Mosaic NetSite Communications Server, for delivering nonsecure content, with a commerce server in November. The latter version of Mosaic's Unix server version incorporates RSA Data Security technology to enable secure commerce over the Internet. The company also rewrote the Mac, X Window System, and Windows NCSA Mosaic clients to support smooth operation over 14.
4-Kbps and higher modems.
Businesses that have been baffled by how to establish a presence on the Internet, which has traditionally been hostile toward advertising, are rushing to set up the WWW servers. These servers provide everything from customer support, such as Novell's WWW server (http://www.novell.com:80/./), to marketing. Companies are also turning to secure transaction servers to boost their sales.
For example, a company called Quote.Com is selling a service that provides Standard & Poor Reports, Business Wire, Hoover Company Profiles, and time-delayed stock quotes from its WWW server, (http://www.quote.com). Such information is already available on-line from major services, such as CompuServe. But the Internet and a WWW server let a small company compete with corporate giants in the on-line information game. Similarly, a start-up called Infoseek (Santa Clara, CA) will introduce this fall a low-cost information service accessible via the Internet that could compete with proprietary sys
tems such as Mead Data Central and Dialog.
The WWW is not limited to traditional on-line information resources. Seattle-based Dealer Internet Services Corp. is providing ``virtual showrooms'' for car dealers. The DISC WWW servers provide electronic car brochures and photographs. For example, the WWW address http:/www/freerange.com/rood/disc.html shows you the wares of a Seattle Volvo dealership.
For businesses that don't know how to spin their way into the WWW, enterprises like MecklerMedia's (Westport, CT) MecklerWeb will partner with other companies that want to become WWW players. Paul Gudelis, director of Internet development, says his company will set up special-interest domains and help businesses establish their own WWW virtual storefront. On-line service provider CompuServe says that by the second quarter of 1995, it, too, will establish WWW servers for commercial clients and provide Internet access via an international X.25 network.
The commercialization of the Internet is well u
nder way, but it's happening in ways beyond the imagination of the networks' founders.
Illustration: Air Mosaic from Spry ((206) 447-0300) gives networked users access to the WWW with new features like user-definable hot lists, a full-screen kiosk mode, a search function, and enhanced stability.
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sjvn@access.digex.net
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