Toolkit Addition

ToolKit: Consider Being a Pusher (Advanced)

Push technology lets you tell your audience that you've made changes to your Web site. And it does so with ease. Ease for your visitors and ease for you.

Push lets your audience decide what they want to see; it can include your whole site, or just pieces. You decide what to offer in the push channel.

Both Netcaster (in Netscape's Communicator) and IE 4.0 allow surfers to create their own channels. All the surfer need do is add your URL to the their channel and the push is done--you need do nothing.

But, what about those visitors who don't add you?

Web surfers look for timely information. Job hunters look for fresh postings, updated employment information, and hiring trends. If your site is static or if you update infrequently, don't bother with push.

However, if you add postings often, add new contact names or employer names frequently, have chat based on timely topics, or want a lively "community", consider push.

You think push isn't worth the effort? Think again. More than 1,000,000 people use PointCast and there are 3 other push technologies to choose from -- Netscape's Netcaster, Microsoft's Channels, and Marimba's Castanet.

What follows is a brief summary of the push technology available to you, with a pointer as to which you might try first and how to go about it.

Figure out what you want to push that will attract people's attention. Is it employment stats? Resume additions? Posting information?

The determine which technology fits best.

• Channels developed for Netscape's Netcaster will not work with other push clients and require the Netscape Communicator browser.
• Microsoft's Active Channels (takes extraordinary patience to get through) require special formatting to turn a Web page into a channel. This works with PointCast, but nothing else. Tweaking it, though, will make it serviceable for Netcaster. This means that it works with IE 4.0, and with work, Netscape's Communicator.
• PointCast Connections will work on IE 4.0 and Communicator but requires a download of their software.
• Marimba's Castanet is supported by Netscape's Netcast only unless you download additional software.

Perhaps the easiest to start with, and the least browser dependent is PointCast. Use their Connections Builder. For detailed how-to information, go to their tips page.

Summary of Steps Needed to Develop a PointCast channel:

• To access the Connection Publisher, go to Personalize, Personalize Channels, Connections, Connection Builder.
• You'll get a wizard to guide you through the process in three easy steps.
• Define what your pushing and what their URLs are.
• Name the Connection.
• Configure the Connection by entering the URL of the file you are creating which will end in .cdf.

Search Tips

Search Tips: The Good Ol' Phone and a Bit of Creativity

We know that you know about the more major phone directories and lookups available on the Web. But, if you already have a name, chances are you're good enough to find that phone number on your own. The problem comes in finding the name itself.

Infospace's reverse lookup can find a name and a number if you only have an address.

Lycos's People Finder lets you put in the town and state and it will start at the beginning of the alphabet and tell you all names and addresses of each person in the town. Of course, this works best for small towns rather than metropolitan areas. You can then save the results as a word processing file and use the Find feature of the software to easily find what you're looking for.

PC 411 is not a free service. However, it's newest version (3.0) is worth taking a look at. One of its more outstanding features is called "Smart Search". If the name you're looking for isn't in the town you suggest, it will look in nearby locales. In addition, it will do multiple searches. All numbers in all directories of the US and Canada, including companies, are listed.

Creative searching is what counts. A search through Alta Vista for IBM phone number produced 926,000 results. However, in the first 10 we found Plant Floor Phone Home Page complete with names, titles, and phone numbers. If you're multi-lingual there were also pages to Israel IBM and Japan IBM in the first 20.

A search for "phone list" +.com brought only 1600 results, including CBS Studios (with names and extensions) and Innsoft (which requires a password, but lets you in without one).

In Infoseek, 9000 results occurred when we searched for site:sgi.com. But when we then searched just those results for phone, we got just 8. One of those pages was MIPS, which had a contact page listing names, titles, and phone numbers.

There is no easy way. But creativity in how you look at things and imagining how someone would try to hide a phone directory and still remember what it's called can help.

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