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