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Pushing and Pulling: How Readers Can Get Personalized Information
As communicators, most of us have ``pushed" business information at readers for most of our careers. Web-based communications have changed how we work, in that readers now want to ``pull" the information they want in the sequence most relevant to them.
Hyperlinks and news digests make it easy for readers to identify quickly what they want to know and pull it down without wading through details they don't want to read. That is the basis of the three categories of ``push" technology available today--senders of information can push the information that they wish to broadcast, yet recipients can pick and choose what they wish to take.
The first push technology was E-MAIL. It is, as many argue, the only push technology that is really working today! Services like Netscape Inbox Direct, TidBITS, and InfoBeat provide daily news headlines and briefs right to your mailbox as an e-mail message. Subscriptions to many of these services are free.
The second push technology was WEB SITES WITH CUSTOMIZABLE CONTENT. Visit these web sites and set up a profile based on your own personal interests to get a ticker that scrolls customized headlines, weather, stock quotes, horoscopes or sports scores across your desktop or downloads updates periodically to your desktop or e-mail box. Some examples are CNN Custom News, InfoSeek News Center , and MSNBC .
Pointcast became a stellar performer in this category of push technology by creating a screensaver that uses both tickers and links to personalized content channels. The ticker scroll can even be detached to remain on your desktop when the screen saver or browser is closed. By downloading periodic updates based on a profile you create, the latest information is readily available on your own desktop when you are offline. Many corporations use Pointcast on their Intranets to keep employees informed of world news and to feature their own corporate news.
The newest push technology is CUSTOMIZABLE STREAMING AUDIO/VIDEO. Most recently, The Real Player , Microsoft's NetShow, and Marimba's Castenet Tuner took push in a new direction. Using their ``viewer" software, it is now possible to customize audio and video events that are delivered right to the desktop on demand. This includes live radio and TV broadcasting, as well as taped programming.
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Copyright 1998 by Kaye Vivian (kvivian@cloud9.net) All rights reserved.
Permission to reprint is greanted as long as this copyright notice remains in tact and the article is not changed.
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