0PUSH AS A PRACTICAL TOOL

An Interview with Michael Kolowich
Michael Kolowich knows many sides of the news business. He worked as a television reporter in Boston. He has degrees from Harvard in business and engineering. Now, he is president and chief executive officer at Individual Inc., which provides news and information to an estimated 400,000 readers.
Individual developed one of the first push technologies in the business in 1990, sending specific reports on technology via fax. Now the company does it via the Internet. The company provides specific data on just about any subject you want, but business and technology are its mainstays. "Push" is hot. Just exactly what does it mean? Simply put, push means you get information delivered to your computer doorstep much like the newspaper arriving on your actual doorstep or in your rose bushes. That allows a company to treat you like a subscriber to a newspaper. "Pull" means you have to come to a Web site. It's like a newspaper depending on you to buy the latest edition from the local newsstand. Push means you're dependable; pull means you're not.
Here's how Individual's Kolowich analyzes the various media, and how push technology can work effectively for many users:.Filtering. News consumers want filtering. "It's defensive. Make sure I don't miss anything important," he says. Newspapers generally do a relatively good job at this requirement, while radio and television do not provide enough specific information.
Searching. One day information may be unimportant, but the next month that story may be critical to a decision. Newspapers have archives, but they often are not immediately available to readers except via expensive computer databases, such as Lexis-Nexis. Browsing. "I put myself in the hands of someone else whom I trust," Kolowich says. "I trust this editor or this news organization to inform me or tell me what's important or entertain me. A gatekeeper and a guide." All media can perform this function.
Communing. "Put me in a community that shares an interest," Kolowich says. "Sales people almost inevitably use a general interest topic as a conversation starter," such as the weather or a news story.
Push technology does all of the above easily by providing filtering, the ability to search, browsing, and a means to find a community with common interests. Many analysts have lauded PointCast, a system that provides news and information as a computer screen saver.
I have a sophisticated computer system at home and at work. PointCast crashes my system at least one of out three times I use it. One major computer company couldn't figure out why its system slowed to a crawl every hour at the top of the hour. Finally, the Webmaster determined that nearly every employee had PointCast as a screen server and set the top of the hour to update the information.
PointCast takes up too much space, irrespective