Date: Tue, 23 Sep 1997 00:41:15 -0400 From: crispen@INTERNIC.NET Reply-To: TOURBUS-Request@LISTSERV.AOL.COM To: TOURBUS@LISTSERV.AOL.COM Subject: TOURBUS -- 23 SEPTEMBER 1997 -- SNAP! ONLINE This post contains inline ASCII graphics which look best in a monospace font like Courier. Text-to-speech readers should turn off punctuation now. /~~~~~~~~~|~~~~~~~~~~~~/~~~~~~~~|~~~~~~~~~~|~~~~~~~~~~~~~/~~~|~\ | People of All Ages Wanted for Worldwide Advisory Panel / | \ |__________|__________/__________|__________|___________/ | \ / /______|----\ | We need your advice on a variety of subjects. Weekly |//////| | | $$ drawings. For more information, send email to: |//////| | | info@AdvisoryPanel.com or http://www.AdvisoryPanel.com |//////| | ~~~/~~~\~~/~~~\~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~/~~~\~~~~ \___/ \___/ T h e I n t e r n e t T o u r B u s \___/ TODAY'S TOURBUS STOP(S): CNET'S SNAP! ONLINE TODAY'S ADDRESS: http://home.snap.com/ Howdy, y'all! :) In an attempt to confuse everyone, Bob and I are swapping TOURBUS posts this week (in other words, today's post is coming from Patrick at the University of Alabama, and Thursday's post will come from Dr. Bob way up there in Yankee-land). Why the swap? Well, CNET just launched a new service. Now, I am well aware of the fact that it seems like CNET launches a new service every other day. In fact, will all of CNET's services -- activex.com, builder.com, browsers.com, download.com, gamecenter.com, mediadome.com, news.com, search.com, shareware.com, pancreas.com, etc. -- it is becoming harder and harder to find sites on the Web that _AREN'T_ created by CNET. Still, I think that CNET's new service is so important that I had to push Bob Rankin out of the way so that I could be the first to tell you about it. :) Before we get today's tour of our little bus of Internet happiness underway, however, let's pay some bills. Today's tour is being sponsored by stockresearch.com and advisorypanel.com (see the text inside the bus at the top of today's post). Make sure that you stop by and thank both of today's sponsors for their support of my attempt to corner the ramen noodle market. :) ******************************************************************* Are You a Serious Stock Market Investor? If so, then visit Active Investment Research at FREE email Newsletter and FREE Trial Investor's Business Daily ******************************************************************* CNET's new service is called Snap! Online, and I first heard about Snap! Online at a presentation that Halsey Minor, CNET's Chairman, gave a few weeks ago at ISPCON-San Francisco. Halsey said that CNET's in-house research showed that new Internet users want 2 things: 1. Help finding interesting content (I guess Halsey doesn't know about TOURBUS!); and 2. Help understanding how to use the Web. In short, borrowing a quote from the latest Seidman's Online Insider, everyone seems to be asking "I'm on the Internet, so what do I do now?" Snap! Online is CNET's answer to that question. Snap! Online is a combination of a personalized newspaper (like My Yahoo!), a "starting point" for Web exploration (like Yahoo!), a collection of Web site descriptions (like Lycos' Point Reviews), and a snazzy, all-inclusive front end that allows you to do everything else you could ever want to do online in one place (like America Online -- in fact, Snap! Online could easily be considered to be "CNET's response to AOL"). According to a memo that CNET's Bill Graves recently mass-distributed, Snap! Online offers - Top news and features from around the Web - Up-to-the minute headlines - Chat rooms - Personalized information like weather, movie listings, stocks quotes, sports scores - Easy & efficient searching for Web sites, Web events, business listings, software to download, maps, etc. With the exception of e-mail, that sounds hauntingly similar to a description of AOL, doesn't it? Best of all, Snap! Online is completely *FREE* (which, as you might have guessed by now, is my favorite word). Snap! hopes to recover its costs with banner ads like the ones you see at Yahoo! and AltaVista. >From what I can gather from Halsey's speech in San Francisco last month and from what I have seen in CNET's press releases, Snap! Online is ultimately designed for new Internet users who have accounts with Internet Service Providers (ISPs) that have entered into partnerships with CNET. In return for pointing all of their new users to Snap! Online, all of those users will see Snap! Online pages that have the ISP's logo co-branded on it, and the ISPs will receive a share of Snap! Online's ad revenues. In the end, everyone wins. CNET gets warm bodies for their new service, new Internet users get an easy-to-understand front end from which they can start to explore the Web, and the ISPs get the double benefit of providing their customers with rich content that the ISPs don't have to bother to create or update while at the same time receiving revenue from Snap! Online's banner advertising. Now, even though Snap! Online's services are geared to new Internet users who access the Net through CNET-partner ISPs, that does not mean for a minute that folks like you and me are not welcome to take advantage of Snap! Online. In fact, I was one of the first people to sign up for Snap! Online when it debuted. :) Before I tell you how to get to Snap! Online, though, I want to make a quick comment. In our most recent TOURBUS poll, 67% of you said that when you use computers you feel proficient most of the time. Over 80% of you have been on the Net for at least a year, and 22% of you say they have been on the Net "forever." Why do I tell you this? Well, I am just not convinced that Snap! Online is going to be all that attractive to the experienced Web surfer [I may be wrong though ... let me know what _you_ think]. So why am I writing a TOURBUS post about Snap! Online? Well, I'm willing to bet that you have friends and colleagues who are brand new to the Net, who look to you for Net advice and guidance, and who have no idea where to start when it comes to exploring the Internet. If you are like me, you probably point people like that to Yahoo! or Point Reviews or to one of the mega-search engines. Well, consider Snap! to be the newest tool in your newbie-helper arsenal. :) To sign up for Snap! Online for free, just point your Web browser to http://home.snap.com/ If you are in the United States, type in your 5 digit zip code in the appropriate box, pick a user name and password for yourself, and then click on the "Enter Snap! Now" button. If you are outside of the United States, however, skip all of that and click on the words "Outside the U.S.?" on the right hand side of the Snap! homepage. This will take you to a new Web page at http://home.snap.com/main/register/1,8,home-1,00.html where our international TOURBUS riders will be able to subscribe to Snap! (again, for FREE). That's it. You're in. Simple, isn't it? Snap! Online is organized into 13 channels: Business Learning News Communities Living Shopping Computing Local Sports Entertainment Money Travel Health You can access any of these channels directly off of Snap! Online's main homepage, or you can click on the "CHANNELS" frame button at the bottom of the screen. By the way, that bottom 4 button frame -- SNAP! HOME, CHANNELS, FIND, and HELP -- appears at the bottom of every one of Snap! Online's pages. If you ever get lost, just click on the "SNAP! HOME" button. As far as new content is concerned, Snap! Online seems to take a "why reinvent the wheel" approach. Frankly, I really like this approach. Each of Snap! Online's channel pages contain only 3 new "feature" articles written by Snap! Online's in-house staff (although new feature articles are created throughout the day). These articles are well-written though, and they all contain links (a la news.com) to sites where you can find more information about that particular story, and links to other sites where you can find related information. Most of Snap! Online's content, however, comes in the form of links to articles at partner sites such as CNN Interactive, CBS SportsLine, E! Online, ESPN SportsZone, MSNBC, The Motley Fool, Epicurious Inc. Online, and Discovery Channel Online. In fact, over 70 of the Internet's top publishers are allowing Snap! Online to link to their content. Snap! Online does have its share of problems, though. Snap! Online wants to be a jumping off point for newbies to explore the Web, but Snap! Online's database of Web sites is rather paltry (currently they only have links to and descriptions of 85,000 hand-selected sites on the Web, although I am certain that that number will grow in the months to come). For a newbie just starting out on the Net, Snap! Online's limited database of Web sites will go a long way in making the Net a little less intimidating. If you are an "oldbie" like me, however, and you are used to getting *AT LEAST* 85,000 hits every time you try to search for *ANYTHING* at AltaVista, the size of Snap! Online's database can, at times, be frustrating (for example, Snap! Online's Computing:Internet:Net Culture:Spam page only has one link). Snap! Online's other problem is that its chat client is only compatible with Internet Explorer 3.02 or later. Snap! Online has signed an agreement with Microsoft making Snap! Online one of the preset channels in Microsoft's upcoming release of Internet Explorer 4.0. In other words, if you read between the lines, I wouldn't expect to see Snap! Online's chat rooms support Netscape anytime soon. :( Still, Snap! Online is a great starting point for newbies. With all of the ISPs that have recently signed on to be partners with CNET on this project, I expect Snap! Online to be a *MAJOR* Internet player for many years to come. TODAY'S TOURBUS STOP(S): CNET'S SNAP! ONLINE TODAY'S ADDRESS: http://home.snap.com/ -------------------------------- TODAY'S SOUTHERN WORD OF THE DAY -------------------------------- MINI (adjective) - a great number. Usage: "Mini battles were fawt durin' the War of Northern Aggression" (Special thanks to Andrew Roberts for today's wurd) YOU CAN FIND ALL OF THE OLD SOUTHERN WORDS OF THE DAY ON THE SOUTHERN WORD HOMEPAGE AT http://ua1ix.ua.edu/~crispen/word.html [By the way ... that's "you-ay-won-eye-ex"] =--------------------------------------------------------------------= For info on my new book "Atlas for the Information Superhighway" Visit http://ua1ix.ua.edu/~crispen/atlas.html --------------------------------------------------------------------- =====================[ TOURBUS Rider Information ]=================== The Internet TOURBUS - U.S. Library of Congress ISSN #1094-2238 Copyright 1995-97, Rankin & Crispen - All rights reserved Archives on the Web at http://www.TOURBUS.com Join: Send SUBSCRIBE TOURBUS Your Name to LISTSERV@LISTSERV.AOL.COM Leave: Send SIGNOFF TOURBUS to LISTSERV@LISTSERV.AOL.COM PROMOTE your business on the Internet TOURBUS. Reach over 80,000 people in a Net-friendly way. Our sponsors say "It works!" Make it work for you - contact BobRankin@MHV.net for details. Editors: Reprint TOURBUS in your publication for free - Ask me how. Send this copy to 3 friends and tell them to hop on the Bus! ===================================================================== .~~~. )) (\__/) .' ) )) Patrick Douglas Crispen /o o \/ .~ Network Solutions Inc. / The InterNIC {o_, \ { Business E-mail: crispen@internic.net / , , ) \ Personal E-mail: crispen@brigadoon.com `~ '-' \ } )) http://www.brigadoon.com/~crispen/ _( ( )_.' '---..{____} Warning: squirrels.