Internet commerce mtg, Denver

["Vladimir Z. Nuri" <vznuri@netcom.com>]

I went to an Internet commerce convention meeting in Denver
last week, and thought some here would be interested in 
some of the topics and companies. 

the most important company I saw at the meeting is called
"YellowNet". I knew this would happen someday, but this company
is attempting to build up a *world wide* online business
directory accessable over the web. they are trying to 
build up the infrastructure to handle up to 1M hits per
day. a rep told me they were going to go all out in a 
publicity blitzkrieg at the beginning of Oct. , but for
now they are getting ready for prime time. its currently
a private company but I suspect they may go public in
a year or two.

the rep told me something interesting: he said that every
Bell phone book is actually "seeded" with dummy names
so they can detect copyright infringers. if you come out
with a business directory, these Bells will just scan for
the fake names that they have inserted into their own listings.
if they find them, supposedly they can show them to a copyright
judge and he will immediately close down your operation and
fine you, almost no questions asked. I didn't know how much
of this really happens (the legal stuff sounded questionable
to me) but it is an interesting "real world" instance of
copyright terrorism prevention that the "information liberation
front" would have to contend with. 

the rep told me that they were willing to go to "phillipine
calling houses" that do nothing but contract out to companies,
and have the laborers dial the long lists of phone numbers
to verify them. as I understand it they exist and supposedly
the long distance is so cheap now that they are actually
profitable being run out of the phillipines or wherever.
he said his company was about to do this when
they found a national CD directory of businesses, and they
were grudgingly willing to license the CD informtion for the web pages.

anyway, cpunks, you may be interested in getting into
the ground floor of something like this. the yellow pages
are an *extremely* lucrative source of income for phone
companies and if they don't compete over the web, I think
they are going to become increasingly obsolete-- esp. when
the Web becomes accessable to the home more readily through
e.g. cable companies.

the URL: http://www.yellownet.com

what I am suspecting however is that these kinds of services
are going to be common, and it will not be that difficult to
get your *pointer* into them for free. as far as them offering
advertisements, though, I can't see how they could charge
much more than a standard web site service charge for some
pages. in other words, the days of hundreds of dollars for
a display ad are probably not going to happen on the web,
IMHO. and I don't see how they could charge for mere pointers
at all, given that the competition will probably give them
away.

--

the other major companies at the show were generally large and 
small internet providers, and a lot of web page consulting firms
(large and small). various network connection providers &
consultants, etc.

another thing I would like to clue everyone in on, if it
isn't already obvious: the Web is going to go crazy as
companies realize they can have dynamic forms to serve
customers without any clerks required. this is going to 
be a *very* hot area of development over the next few
years IMHO.

 it is really not that big of deal to have
an inert "online brochure" but the technical capability
required to do programming behind forms to interface with
company databases is not trivial, and I think this is
going to become an extremely hot occupation over the next
few years. in other words, programmers who can customize
web sites to interface to the existing company's databases
and computer infrastructure will be very valuable. this
is called "CGI"; many of you are probably already experts
in it. (if you are, I'd like to talk to you about an 
application I'm trying to write...)

examples of this are infinite, but a few: a customer could
query the company inventory, find what stores are nearest
to his home, find what store has what he wants in stock immediately,
check on special prices and discounts of the moment, etc.
he might be able to put himself on a company mailing list,
etc.  so far I have not seen this very widespread, these
customized web applications, but I think they are really
going to proliferate massively.

I have also been seeing a lot of excitement over Java, and
I think this really has the potential to become a "net
standard binary interchange format". however I think the
day when the Java apps are proliferating all over the
net will be quite awhile away (6 mos or more at least) and
that businesses are still probably going to want to use
the more prosaic form interfaces for compatility 
and simplicity.

Java is really starting out right, in that it begins as
day 1 as a total free, open standard. Sun and Netscape are
not claiming burdensome proprietary rights to it. this
makes it amazingly attractive. the market has shown repeatedly
that it will often go with an inferior open standard in
preference to a technologically superior closed one. (and
IMHO with good reason.. the market is pretty rational, just
not in ways technophiles necessarily expect).

another thing I saw that Sun is promoting: they now have
Web authoring applications that require almost no HTML
expertise whatsoever. you can drag and drop pictures where
you want them in the documents etc.  I suspect this may
become the preferred way to work on web documents in the future
to the point that people who actually memorize all the HTML
commands may be in the minority. this actually argues in favor
of a HTML that is not necessarily that pretty or syntactically
consistent (of course, both aspects have already been pretty
much lost in the mad rush to add new features anyway). 

--

another thing I'd like to point out is that there are a lot
of hackers here with specialized knowledge into the web
and perl and other tools, and in our culture (the cypherpunk
list, e.g.) these things are considered pretty simple, mundane,
and obvious, but there is
an enormous business culture out there with a lot of money
and not very many clues about this technology. the consulting
opportunities for "small fries" are becoming very attractive
and widespread. it is easy for us to say, "oh, that's no big
deal, why would anyone pay money for that??" but in fact what
is happening is that people are paying *big* money for simple
things like HTML expertise.

there were a total of about 50 classes at this show, and you'd
be really surprised how many were on fairly basic subjects like
"what is the internet? what is the web? what can it do for me?"
etc.  however many of these classes focused on secure banking
transactions.

and cryptographic expertise will probably move to the forefront
of job requirements in about a year for these kinds of jobs, I
would imagine. they will probably tend to emphasize the need
for background in security related applications. right now there
are a lot of toy, insecure applications but it is only a matter
of time before people realize that if you really want to get
serious, you have to have cryptography tied in and sharp people
to plug all possible security holes, and you don't want stuff
made out of "bubblegum and baling wire".

so it appears that cypherpunks are really positioned on the crest 
of a tidal wave!! any of "us" who have been on the list in the
pre-web era are beginning to feel like old fogeys from the 
prehistoric era!! it seems that cyberspace for the elite was
born with the Internet, but "cyberspace for the unwashed masses"
was born with the Web.


--Vlad Nuri