Implications of Push
Technology for Information
Management
Laura Larsson
larsson@u.washington.edu
Health Services
University of Washington
revised June 1998
Objectives
to learn what “push technology” is
 to look at who is pushing information at
us
 to learn about the different methods of
receiving pushed information
 to see if the advantages outweigh the
disadvantages
 to learn what to do about “pushGlut”

The Past and Present
newspapers
 radio
 TV
 magazines
 comics
 newsletters

“Push” Technology
today we are in a new era of information
dissemination
 personal considerations (the content
user)
 business considerations (the content
producer)

Personal Considerations
for those who have access to it, email is
generally considered by many to be
their personal favorite news delivery
system
 but it does not quite satisfy the need for
regularly updated (hourly) business or
health news
 nor can it provide us with graphics with
its visual excitement

Personal Considerations,
continued...
the Web is pretty passive - you go to it
and rummage around until you find
something useful amidst the irrelevant
information
 not always very efficient since you can
get thousands of hits
 difficult to have the time to search AND
to evaluate the results

Business Considerations
having the consumer stumble across
your site is not good business
 business needs a way of getting
information to you, the user, and to their
employees
 push is also known as "webcasting"

What is Push Technology?
the "push" technologies are new
services, which have created software
tools, that learn what information you
want to receive via the Web and bring it
to your desktop
 they push (via email or the Web)
personalized information to your
desktop
 webcasting was introduced by the
PointCast Network in May 1996

What is…?, continued...

enables businesses to
develop a consistent base of users
target their content and
advertisements more effectively
offer end users the information they
need
Push Agents
the software which grabs the
information provided by the content
provider or push vendor for you is
known as an agent
 you download or purchase the software
from the content provider through a
server

Channels
the topic areas are called “channels”
 a channel is a mechanism for
transmitting Web-based content and
applications
 channels feature selected content from
the Web sites of services that have
affiliated with the respective providers

Content Providers

the people and companies which
provide the push vendors with
information are called “content
providers”
content providers and push vendors
can be the same people
e.g., Reuters and AP are content
providers for news services
e.g., companies which write press
releases or advertising are also
content providers
Push Vendors
provide different content/information
because they have contract with
different content providers
 provide access to varying numbers of
channels (topics)
 usually requires specific software (for
downloading or caching the content)
 prices: free through variable pricing
through a subscription

Selected Push Vendors
Air Media, AirMedia Live Internet
Broadcast Network
 Alpha Microsystems, AlphaConnect
StockVue
 BackWeb, BackWeb Technologies
 Berkeley Systems, AfterDark Online
 Caravelle, Transceive

DataChannel, DataChannel
 Diffusion, IntraExpress
 Firefly, Firefly
 InCommon, Downtown
 Intermind, Communicator
 Marimba, Castanet

Microsoft, IE 4.0
 NETdelivery, NETdelivery
 Netscape, Communicator
 PointCast, The PointCast Network
 Smartpartner, FirstFloor,
 Wayfarer, INCISA
 Source:
http://www.torso.com/webcasting.html

AfterDark




is a series of screen savers which brings
news and information direct to your desktop
Sports Illustrated Online, USA TODAY, The
Wall Street Journal Interactive Edition, and
ZD Net Computing Central, stock quotes and
sports scores
you can customize the news you want, and
determine how often the news is updated.
download After Dark Online from
<http://www.afterdark.com/>
After Dark Image
AirMedia



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content providers include CNN, Reuters,
Knight-Ridder, US Newswire, UPI
offers various service plans running from free,
PowerUp, to their Premier Plan for
$5.95/month (plus email notification is $9.95)
headline news and stories
uses application software
notification of updates via animated icons
<http://www.airmedia.com/>
AirMedia Image
BackWeb

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


has 40 channels (games, online shopping,
software, etc)
download program
gives user multimedia
can create specialized channels for
businesses
hard disk drive hog (takes up lots of space)
<http://www.backweb.com/>
BackWeb Image
Downtown, InCommon
uses a toolbar, called a channel bar, to
deliver information
 green square indicates new content
 easy to add channels and to
personalize content
 use buttons to enable you to do the
personalizing
 <http://www.incommon.com/index.html>

FireFly Passport





produces tools which enable content providers to
register and push information to users
innovative profile management tool (Passport Office)
advanced collaborative filtering technology (Catalog
Navigator)
helps users find others who share their tastes while
enabling sites to learn about their users’ interests
(Community Navigator)
http://www.firefly.net/
HeadLiner, Lanacom




said to be a competitor of PointCast
free software from
http://www.lanacom.com/Pro/base.html
features the ability to display headlines in the
conventional manner (news ticker, screen
saver, and web page articles)
also uses a unique and extremely nifty
display called the NewsTitle viewer
 this
is a ticker that scrolls news for you in the title
bar of your applications
SmartPartner, FirstFloor
supplier of web-based document
delivery products and technologies for
application developers
 agents, targeted notification, and off-line
viewing
 program is called Smart Catalog and is
available from
http://www.firstfloor.com/index.html

Individual’s HeadsUp

Is a personalized, interactive news
service (30 day free trial)

high-technology, business & financial
services, and healthcare
<http://www.individual.com/services/hea
dsup/headsup.htm>
 scan >20,000 stories and 700 sources
 delivery by fax or email

Intermind (Software)




you select which topics you'd like to receive
from the Web sites you specify
maintains a database of information on a
user's hard drive from which it builds HTML
pages that are presented in their browser
employs a “publish-and-subscribe” system
enables businesses and individuals to easily
publish customizable channels of multimedia
content and push it to customers or
employees
Intermind, continued...


Communicator 2.0 is due in June or July
is expected to include a "dynamic publisher"
option that allows providers with database
content to generate updates on the fly based
on users' interests
 e.g.,
H.O.T. Coupons can provide coupons based
on your Zip code automatically

http://www.intermind.com/
Individual’s Newspage

requires proprietary software
(Headliner) to manage the news from
this site
 headlines
delivered in three formats; Ticker
Bar, Screen Saver or News Title bar
create a profile of your interests after
registration
 <http://www.newspage.com/>

Newspage Image
Newspage: Health Topics
Marimba Castanet (Software)
a software tool for content providers
 uses Java-based software and delivers
Java-based software
 multimedia
 variety of channels of information
including games, databases, audio...
 http://www.marimba.com/

Marimba Image
Microsoft's Webcasting

Microsoft's Channel Definition Format is
primarily based on XML (eXtensible Markup
Language), a proposed standard which lies
somewhere between HTML and SGML in
graphic flexibility. The World Wide Web
Consortium has a draft of XML at the
W3.ORG"
 Source:
Vin Crosbie, Webcasting listserv, March
13, 1997…
<http://www.pushconcepts.com/microsoft.htm>

<http://www.microsoft.com/ie/ie40/content/cdf
ben.htm>
Microsoft Active Channel Image
NETDelivery
"Community Marketing" - link people
with common interests and shared
affinities to organizations that offer
valuable information, products and
services
 delivery of catalogs and information
 subscriber "Bill of Rights" that protects
users’ personal information
 <http://www.netdelivery.com/>

Netscape Netcaster

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Netcaster is the new component of Netscape
Communicator that enables push delivery of
information and offline browsing
users can subscribe to the information they want and
have it delivered automatically
offline browsing of downloaded info
background downloading and user-scheduled
updates
Marimba Castanet support
<http://home.netscape.com/comprod/products/comm
unicator/netcaster_frameset.html>
Netcaster Image
PointCast Software




is the most well-known push service
was the first push service to broadcast up-tothe-minute news directly to a viewer’s
computer
pioneered the concept of broadcasting
personalized news and other information
tailored to the interests of each viewer
download special software which streams
information across your computer’s screen
from <http://www.pointcast.com/products/20.html>
Pointcast’s Success



works with businesses to create “extranets”
companies create business-to-business
extranet broadcasts by selecting webcasts
from desired partners and suppliers
PointCast is already pulling in an estimated
$7 million per quarter just from ads
 source:
<http://www5.zdnet.com/cshopper/content/9705/cs
hp0048.html>
Wayfarer INCISA





designed primarily for corporate users to
push information to their employees
delivers updated information within 15
minutes
combines businesses content with content
from outside content vendors
delivers headlines using reusable Shockwave
animations combined with custom graphics
and sound
http://www.wayfarer.com/
Really Personal
create your own Web page on Excite or
Crayon
 **Laura’s Channel (Excite)

<http://home.excite.com/>

**Larsson Times (Crayon)
<http://crayon.net/>
Laura’s Channel Image
Larsson Times Image
Larsson Times, continued...
Summary of Push Methods

stand alone programs (PointCast)
 streaming
 program
goes out and comes back with
headlines and information
wallpaper/screen saver programs
(AfterDark)
 Web page programs

How Do You Know When New
Information Has Been
Delivered?

push clients notify users
 green
lights on your computer
 through E-mail
 playing a sound
 displaying an icon on the desktop
 popping up an application
 displaying headlines on a screen saver,
wallpaper, or a scrolling ticker tape
Who Uses Webcasting?



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religious organizations
newspapers
businesses
universities
Questions to Consider before
Signing Up to Get Content
can you select the content you want and
as much of it as you want?
 can you decide how you want to get the
information?

 by
downloading a program (agent)
 surfing to a content provider’s site to get
the information you need
 do you want a screen saver, a banner, or
??
Questions...
 do
you know anything about the
content providers, i.e., are they well
known providers?
 how often is the content updated?
Questions, continued...
 is
the content free or worth it if I
have to pay?
 how much time do I have to read
the content?
 is the program I have to download
easy to install and use?
Advantages of Push
Technology
designed to enhance the information
processing and collection abilities of
knowledge workers
 they allow us to determine (customize)
what is delivered to our desktops, and
to choose when and how we want to
view it

 we
can schedule updates when we want
them
Advantages, continued...
a time saver because you don’t have to
spend the time looking for information; it
comes to you
 because there are two different flavors
of "push": one for consumers (individual
users) and another for businesses you
can tailor information to your needs at
home, and at work

Advantages, continued...
each information pusher makes different
deals with different partners which
means you have access to different
newspapers and sources of information
 the next versions of Microsoft Internet
Explorer and Netscape Navigator will
have channel changers built in
 will eventually enable offline browsing

Advantages, continued...
users don’t have to fool around with
Boolean logic
 You assign an electronic agent to seek
out information that falls under a
predetermined topic and return it to your
desktop

Problems with Push
Technology



may require a separate program
lack of standards for channels
Setting up a profile can be a problem
 With
some push technologies, you can only have
one "must contain" word or phrase per topic. An
"OR" version would help a lot

Still too much dross in with the good
information; i.e., push technology may never
be precise enough to be truly useful
Problems with Push
Technology

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You will likely never see the kind of valuable
information that only a manual search can
uncover
Can we trust filters or profiles to provide the
most relevant information?
Users may require some help setting up a
profile
It can be a big drain on a user’s Windows
system resources
Problems, continued...

Push technologies don't always work
the way you’d like them to work
 e.g.,
a minor interest may assume major
importance through no fault of yours

When you click on a newspaper article
from the New York Times, you may be
asked to pay to read it (SURPRIZE!)
Problems, continued...

no overarching table of contents or
search engine
 All
the newspaper/magazine/newsfeeds
need to band together to produce a
comprehensive searchable current events
database

if you subscribe to more than one
service, you may end up with duplicate
articles
Problems, continued...
Users may have to register with a
content provider which then determines
which content goes to that viewer
 The user may also be required to pay
for segments of the information on
particular sites

Problems, continued...

Some of the vendors only archive
information for short periods of time (as
little as 6 months)
 links
won’t work after awhile which means
you cannot link to that information

The lines between technology providers
and content providers will become
increasingly blurred
Problems...
Philosophical - and method of working question:
 Do people want tools to find information
themselves, or are they content to have
it served to them?

How Do You Prevent
PushGlut?
don’t sign up for more than two push
services
 limit the number of channels you select
 watch how often you schedule updates
 don’t forget about using email updates
instead of desktop push
 reevaluate often since new players are
coming online all the time

Preventing PushGlut...
ask yourself ...
 if the data you see streaming across
your desktop is really valuable enough
to use up your precious time, i.e., is it
valuable?
 is it exactly what you want?

Preventing PushGlut...

how many clicks does it take to get to
the information?
 do
you have to drill down to get it or does
the whole story display

sometimes it’s easier to be your own
filter and go out after what you want
through the search engines
The Future
personalization of information
 channel-surfing may well replace Websurfing as the pastime of choice on the
Internet
 likely to be lots of opportunity to be
“informed”

The Future, continued...

businesses will make money
 36
percent of all advertising revenues on
the Internet will be generated by push
technologies--a $5.7 billion piece of a
$19.1 billion Web market pie
 source:
<http://www5.zdnet.com/cshopper/content/
9705/cshp0048.html>
Summary...
we’ve defined push technology
 we’ve looked at a few examples of
companies doing Webcasting
 we’ve seen how they push their
information at us
 we’ve discussed some of the problems
 we’ve peeked at the future

Appendix: Definition of Push
Model

A data distribution model in which
selected data is automatically delivered
into the user's computer at prescribed
intervals or based on some event that
occurs. Contrast with the pull model, in
which the user specifically asks for
something by performing a search or
requesting an existing report, video or
other data type.