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WAIS Inc. support of EDGAR project
- To: carl@malamud.com
- Subject: WAIS Inc. support of EDGAR project
- From: duhring@wais.com (John Duhring)
- Date: Tue, 26 Oct 93 13:46:02 PDT
Carl,
After reading the Markoff article, I know I speak for Brewster (he's still honeymooning in Bali) by offering to support your EDGAR publishing efforts with the use of a WAIS Inc. server. Is this helpful?
I agree with the view that your publishing acticities will be the start of a snow-ball effect (we are VERY close to disclosing our own plans, with an announcement due during DEMO '94 in January). The attached notice gives an idea of what we are up to.
Break a leg!!! If there is more we can do, please let me know.
John Duhring VP, Business Information Services WAIS Inc.
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WAIS Inc. pursues publishing opportunities
Much recent attention is being paid to digital distribution of information. Home shopping, digital libraries, customized newspapers, classified advertising... the list is endless. However, most of the futures being discussed will require years of network upgrades, exotic new server hardware, and dramatic price/performance breakthroughs in user devices.
However, the current Internet offers a model of what future information highways can become; where thousands of information providers can address the needs of millions of users. The technologies of the Internet, including client/server information distribution systems such as Gopher, WAIS (Wide Area Information Serves), and World Wide Web, promise to provide the tools needed by information providers. WAIS Inc., of Menlo Park, California, is positioned to provide publishing systems and services to help "Network Publishers" set up shop on the Internet.
Last April, WAIS Inc. announced their WAIS Server product line, which offers a level of stability not found in the publically available WAIS tools, as well as support, improved search characteristics (including boolean and fielded search), smaller index sizes, and enhanced reporting features. WAIS Inc. licenses their server products (binaries or in source code) to a wide range of commercial publishers, government agencies, educational institutions and libraries. Since then, WAIS Inc. has also addressed the needs of organizations with "firewall" machines with the development of the WAIS Forwarder, which allows enterprise LAN networks to exchange WAIS information with the Internet through the use of an intermediate machine.
In addition, WAIS Inc. is pursuing collaboration with publishers to set up and run an information service from their Menlo Park offices, hosting "name brand" information services for the Internet community. The service will use WAIS, Gopher and other Internet-developed tools as a publishing platform. These tools in their current state offer WAIS Inc. the ability to provide services in the following areas:
1) Subscription services: This category involves the sale of editorial product to end users or to user organizations. User access can be restricted to individual databases, requiring sign-up and setting up payment methods in advance of permitting access to editorial materials.
2) Sponsored services: This category involves providing electronic distribution of proven, popular, online services (such as news headlines, weather, sports, etc.). Initial Internet usage stats show significant activity in these areas, but users may opt to obtaining these materials for free rather than to pay for retrieving them.
3) Transaction support services: This category involves creating electronic catalogs that users can browse which conclude with the purchase of some product from a vendor. Use of the catalogs will be free to users.
As these services come online, WAIS Inc. will work carefully with its publishing partners to determine the best mix of technologies to meet the needs of commercial publishers. The WAIS Inc. online service will also become a development target and test-bed for future publishing technologies. By operating a successful Internet-based publishing service, WAIS Inc. will be able to provide network publishers with a continued stream of improved products.
The distribution channels now available for Internet based services has grown dramatically:
* An e-mail based service (agenting or email search and retrieval) can reach over 25 million readers through compuserve, AOL, and many corporate gateways.
* An interactive service can reach not only the millions of users directly connected to the Internet, but also WAIS and Gopher services can be accessed via Delphi and soon by AOL audiences.
WAIS Inc. products and services, in conjunction with the markets available through the Internet, provide publishers with an immediate opportunity to participate in the digital information businesses of the future.
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For detailed technical information, send email to info@wais.com and ask for
the 40 page Technical Description of the WAIS Inc. product line. Pricing
information is also available.
Shareware versions of current wais servers and clients for a variety of popular user platforms are available via anonymous ftp from ftp.wais.com, in the /pub/freeware directory.
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