Seidman's Online Insider - Vol. 5, Issue 2
============================================================================
Seidman's Online Insider - Vol. 5, Issue 2
Visit the Online Insider on the Web for additional content and access to
the Insider Talk discussion forums. A new Seidman's 25 is coming soon.
< http://www.onlineinsider.com >
============================================================================
Copyright (C) 1998 Robert Seidman. All rights reserved. May be
reproduced in any medium for noncommercial purposes as long as
attribution is given.
IN THIS ISSUE
- Editor's Note
- What's Happening in Insider Talk
- Online Banking Revisited
- AOL 4.0 In Preview Mode: Too Bad
- Netscape Gets Rocked, Rolls On With New Home Page
- Don't Believe Everything You Read
- Stock Watch
- Subscription Info
Editor's Note
=============
There will be no newsletter next week. I'll be back with the Jan. 25
issue. I met with representatives of Microsoft about the Justice
Department case against the company after this week's deadline. Look
for a recap in the next issue.
Note: the web version of this week's newsletter is slightly longer and
contains some content that's not in the e-mail version. This wasn't
done to lure you to the Web site, but to keep under the 25Kb limit
that causes issues with many e-mail systems.
What's Happening in Insider Talk
================================
The insiders talk about threaded vs. linear forums (in a linear
fashion!).
< http://www.wellengaged.com/engaged/seidman.cgi?c=online&t=13&q=117 >
Online Banking Revisited
=======================
I have some good news for a lot of you. Online banking is cheap, and
online banking is easy. Online banking can save you time, and online
banking can save you money.
Now, that's a pretty ringing endorsement. And there really isn't a
catch, not for most of you, anyway. But for some of us, there's always
a catch. For me that catch has been the desire to do my online banking
in the environment I wanted: Quicken. I've been a Quicken user for
years, and was actually considering switching to Money 98, just to try
it (conversion from Quicken is painless), but that -- like a few other
aspects of my online-banking dreams -- didn't work out.
Not only have I been using Quicken, I've been using Quicken with
CheckFree to pay my bills. It all works directly from Quicken, and once
you've set it up it's extremely easy. But I'd been hankering for an
approach that would let me go directly through my bank for a couple of
reasons. First, there's a cost factor. CheckFree costs roughly $7 to
$10 a month (or more, depending on how many bills you have to pay).
While $9.95 will get you 15 bills a month, it doesn't take a rocket
scientist to figure out that 15 bills' worth of 32-cent stamps will cost
you only $4.80. There is some time to be saved (I can pay a bill in
CheckFree much faster than I can write out a check, put it in the
envelope, etc.). What bothered me about the cost is that some banks
were offering FREE online bill paying. Second, if you have online
banking, you don't have to worry as much about tracking all your
transactions. For example, I do pretty well with putting my
transactions in Quicken, but now and then I miss an ATM withdrawal and
have to figure out why my balance isn't right. With online banking, all
your transaction information is provided for you.
So I finally went down and opened an account at the local Citibank
branch. Citibank had two things going for it. One, there's no charge,
regardless of your balance for online banking and online bill paying.
Two, at least the last time I checked, Citibank would work with both
Quicken from Intuit and Money from Microsoft. Bzzzzzt. Not exactly.
At one point Citibank had a relationship with Microsoft, and I suspect
that in the near future, because of a new standard called Open Financial
Exchange (OFX), Citibank will work with Money or any software that
supports OFX. More on this in a bit.
Meanwhile, I met for dinner with a friend who also uses Citibank and
Quicken. It's great, he told me. "All I have to do is download the
stuff via the Web site and import it into Quicken." When I asked whether
he pays his bills via Quicken or the Citibank Web page, he told me he
can't pay his bills from within Quicken with Citibank..
That didn't sound great to me. I've been spoiled because I've never had
to import anything into Quicken, and the thought of not paying my bills
directly from Quicken wasn't too appealing to me, either. So I
installed and took a look at Citibank's Direct Access software, via both
its own proprietary network and the Internet. Now, first let me say
that whichever way you go, the setup works pretty well if all you want
to do is pay your bills and balance your checking account or move money
from savings to checking and things like that. In other words, the
software works pretty well for what I imagine most people want to do.
But this approach has a couple of drawbacks. For one thing, like it or
not, I have accounts that are NOT with Citibank. Since I can't maintain
these accounts via Citibank's online-banking solution, I would have to
maintain them somewhere else. Also, I like being able to look over my
finances without having to be connected. Finally, the seamlessness of
paying bills directly from Quicken is so much easier -- IF you're using
Quicken. So, I was somewhat disappointed. The thought of setting up all
the payments on Citibank's servers and then importing all the info into
Quicken wasn't appealing.
I figured there must be a way to work directly within Quicken and bypass
that other stuff. I looked for some instructions on the Citibank
Internet service. Nada. I searched the newsgroups and couldn't find
anything. Finally, at 1:30 a.m. when I was playing with this, I did
something that surprised me. I picked up the phone and dialed
Citibank! And it was a memorable event in two ways. One, someone
answered the phone, and quickly. Two, the person on the other end of
the line was not only very nice, he was very knowledgeable and proceeded
to ask some questions and then tell me what my options were.
First, the good news. Because Citibank does have a relationship with
Intuit, I can set things up to do everything from with Quicken!
Essentially, Intuit will sit in the middle, pulling my information from
Citibank and then allowing me to pull it directly from Intuit.
Similarly, the bill payment will go through Intuit's bill-paying
service, but because Citibank has a relationship with Intuit, there will
be no charge. (As a stand-alone service, like CheckFree, Intuit's
service is $9.95 a month, which isn't surprising since CheckFree is the
service behind Intuit's bill-paying service, though with Intuit you can
pay 20 bills for that price instead of CheckFree's 15). So, I will be
able to do everything I did before and now also reconcile my account and
make sure I never miss an ATM withdrawal!
The only real bad news with this approach is that Citibank itself won't
actually be handling the bill payment. If I were going directly via
Citibank, I'd be more confident that the bills would be paid quicker.
Since I believe that Intuit uses "CheckFree" as its processing center for
bill payments, I'm guessing any payment will require 5 day advance notice.
Such advance notice isn't required with Citibank, but it is required with
CheckFree. I won't know for sure unti all the paperwork is processed.
Also, I was advised that the transaction information I'll get about my
accounts may be a day or two behind what I'd get if I were going directly
through Citibank. But for me, this is a small price to pay.
There's a barrier here, too. I had to request a form from Citibank (which
I haven't received yet) and I'll have to fill out the form, send it back
in and wait for notification that everything has been set up before I can
begin using Quicken for online banking via Citibank. It would have been
nice if I could have filled out the necessary enrollment when I was at the
branch.
I had the opportunity to speak with Josh Grotstein, the NBC Interactive
and Prodigy alumnus who is now division executive, global
Internet/intranet programs, for Citicorp. According to Grotstein, plans
call for deploying OFX capabilities for Citibank online banking sometime
during the first half of the year. Since this will allow direct
integration into Microsoft's Money, it will give Money users the
convenience of doing all their online banking directly from the Money
software. Also, OFX doesn't require the financial institutions to form
special relationships (a la Citibank and Intuit) with the software
manufacturers.
Grotstein said Citibank will continue to refine the Internet banking
service based on feedback from end users. Specifically, those customers
switching from the direct-connect to the Internet service complain that
the Internet-based service is slower. Indeed, in my experience that was
the case, but I'm not sure Citibank could do much to improve speed.
Given the Web-ness of the service and the encryption needed for security
purposes, I found the Internet service pretty quick. Think of
connecting to a text-based bulletin board or other text-based service at
28.8 kilobits per second and compare that with the speed of viewing even
the fastest Web pages and you'll get an idea of what Internet-based
services are up against here.
Grotstein said the planned enhancements for the year include launching
some personalized services (he couldn't be specific at this time) and
communities of interest for Internet customers (via the software The
Mining Co. uses for its Web site). Like the other banks, Citibank wants
to get involved in "enabling electronic commerce," Grotstein says.
Citibank wants its piece of the transaction pie. Grotstein thinks that
what we're currently seeing in the way of electronic commerce is great,
but that it's very much only a precursor to the types of service and
commerce that will come. Look for some commerce-related announcements
from Citibank within a few months.
Here are some links related to this story:
Intuit < http://www.intuit.com >
Microsoft Money < http://www.microsoft.com/money >
Citibank < http://www.Citibank.com >
NationsBank < http://www.nationsbank.com >
Open Financial Exchange < http://www.ofx.net >
AOL 4.0 In Preview Mode: Too Bad
================================
Don't let the headline fool you -- I think the forthcoming AOL 4.0
software, previously code-named Casablanca, has some nice features. I
consider it, at least from an end-user perspective, only a moderate
(rather than a major) upgrade of the 3.0 software. Key benefits are
improved navigation (mostly via an improved, customizable tool bar).
The navigation of e-mail has been changed; some will love this and some
will hate it. But nobody will knock improvements to the e-mail software
that include a spell-checker and the ability to include stylized fonts
and embed graphics directly in e-mail messages. There are several other
features, but the main feature of interest may well be the one that lets
you switch to a different screen name on your account without
disconnecting the line. Especially where busy signals are a problem,
this, at least for those who don't connect to America Online via TCP/IP
(i.e., almost ALL AOL users), can offer a big time savings.
Unfortunately, AOL has taken to disabling this functionality during peak
periods. To me, this indicates that AOL either is hell-bent on making a
really useful feature not nearly as useful or still doesn't have enough
access lines during peak times to support all the customers who want to
access the service.
Fortunately, AOL limited the initial preview round to 50,000 customers
who were able to download the software. But unfortunately, at least as
of this writing, AOL has opened it up to some more folks, which means
the first round of people either didn't tell AOL anything it didn't
already know or didn't tell it anything it wants to hear.
Here's something AOL probably doesn't want to hear, but can't help but
be aware of. The program, at least the 32-bit version of AOL 4.0 for
Windows 95, is a pig of a program. It consumes a lot of memory and a
lot of resources and is slow to load. AOL says all that's required is a
Pentium-class PC and 16 MB of RAM. I don't buy that. I did run the
software on a Pentium 133-MHz with 32 MB, but I couldn't run it along
with any other programs for very long without causing the machine to
crash, and AOL was very, very slow to boot up on that machine. More
annoying is that on my Pentium II 266-MHz, which now has 128 MB of RAM,
it consumed a lot of memory and a lot of Windows resources. And I found
that when I left the AOL program up (whether it was connected or not)
for more than several hours, I had to reboot my machine.
While AOL 3.0 lacks the new features of AOL 4.0, it will run better on a
Pentium 90 with 32 MB (in fact, it will run better on ANY configuration,
but that's neither here nor there, I guess). I think most people
running less than a Pentium 166-MHz with 32 MB of RAM will complain
about the drain the AOL 4.0 software puts on their systems. This may
not be the case with the 16-bit version, which I didn't test.
Now, all that said, the program IS worth taking a look at. So if you're
on AOL you might want to head over to keyword: PREVIEW to see whether
you can download it. I just hope AOL holds back the actual release
version until the software is more efficient at utilizing memory, CPU
and Windows resources.
Netscape Gets Rocked, Rolls On With New Home Page
=================================================
On Monday, Netscape warned that it had lost money for the quarter ended
Dec. 31. Netscape expects the loss to range between $85 million and $89
million, including special charges related to the acquisition of Actra
and Kiva as well as a restructuring charge.
To look at this simplistically, Netscape is having a tougher time
cracking the enterprise market than it thought it would. IBM has
dominated in this market for some time. On the bright side, even
Microsoft hasn't been able to win the enterprise market. Of course,
Netscape doesn't have all that "other" revenue that Microsoft has, and
that's the problem. According to preliminary estimates by Morgan
Stanley Dean Witter analyst Mary Meeker, Netscape's revenue in the
enterprise sector fell from around $150 million in the quarter ended
Sept. 30 to $130 million in the quarter ended Dec. 31. Making matters
worse is the continued decrease in revenue via the stand-alone browser
(from $28 million in the third quarter to $17 million in the fourth,
according to Meeker's estimate). What's even worse is that advertising
revenue dropped from $27 million in the third quarter to $22 million in
the fourth quarter. Could it be that the advertisers realized most of
the impressions generated on Netscape went unseen by the multitudes who
have never changed their browser settings to default to a different
start page? If that's the case, Netscape isn't being idle.
As reported a few weeks ago, Netscape this week launched a new version
of its home page at www.netscape.com. The new version of the site is
easier to use and is more useful in that an Internet-search capability
(via one of nine search engines or directories) is prominently
displayed. The redesigned home page is a step in the right direction,
but I don't think it's enough. I hope this is only the first step,
because Netscape still gets its foot in a lot of people's doors via its
home page. A tremendous opportunity has been wasted by Netscape in the
past few years, but it's not too late for the company to turn all of its
"default" visitors into folks who might actually find the site useful.
Netscape's challenge here is to provide a truly compelling home page.
While overall the site is becoming more compelling, the home page still
falls short of making people think, "Hey, I want to come back here."
But, of the several versions tested, the version that's up on the site
"tested the most successfully in both qualitative feedback as well as in
user click-throughs," according to Netscape's Jennifer Bailey, vice
president, Web site.
As of this writing, Netscape stock is lower than it's ever been since
the original initial public offering price. At less than $19, it seems
like a real bargain to some, especially since -- as several of you
pointed out to me in e-mail -- the worst thing that would happen is
someone with strength in the enterprise market would buy Netscape (which
would drive up the price).
Don't Believe Everything You Read
=================================
Not even in Business Week! No, I'm not talking about Business Week's
pointing to CNET CEO (and current Numero Uno in Seidman's 25) Halsey
Minor as one of 1997's best entrepreneurs in its Jan. 12 issue -- I'm
talking about the small "Focus: The Internet" piece that ran as a part
of Industry Outlook for the information sector.
"But no matter what technology and entertainment 'content' is pushed on
the Web in 1998, one thing is certain -- money will be made," said the
piece by Paul Eng.
"Revenues from Web advertising -- which reached more than $1 billion in
1997 -- are expected to more than double this year, according to market
researcher Jupiter Communications Co. That's enough to make the media
giants Web-savvy in a hurry," the piece concluded.
Sigh. Et tu, Business Week?
That piece broke my heart because it continues, in a big way, the myth
that says thar's gold in them thar hills! I think there is gold, but it
wasn't there for most in 1997, certainly NOT the big media. And it
won't be there in 1998, no matter what Jupiter or anyone else says.
Repeat after me: THERE WAS NOT 1 BILLION **REAL** DOLLARS' WORTH OF WEB
ADVERTISING REVENUE IN 1997. There may well have been $1 billion in
paper revenue, but as some of you have pointed out to me, if you take
away all the dollars in bartering (hey, I'll give you $25 million worth
of impressions if you give me $25 million worth of impressions) and
agency fees, there's not $1 billion worth of real revenue. Take away
Yahoo!, Excite, etc., Netscape and AOL, and you've easily covered half
of all the Internet/online-related advertising revenue. So, how can
Business Week be so damn certain money will be made?
Sure, it's a certainty that some sites will make money via advertising
(Yahoo! and Lycos, for example), but I think the certainty as described
by Business Week is still a couple of years away. I hope I'm wrong, but
I'd bet I'm not.
See you in two weeks!
Stock Watch for the Week Ended Jan. 9, 1998
===========================================
Courtesy of InfoBeat's CLOSING BELL < http://www.infobeat.com >.
52 Wk 52 Wk P/E Week
SECURITY CLOSE HIGH LOW Ratio CHNG
---------------------------------------------------------------------
AT&T Corp................ 60 13/16 64 30 3/4 20 +3.4%
Amazon Com Inc........... 51 1/8 66 15 3/4 -14.0%
America Online Inc....... 85 3/8 93 3/16 33 1/4 -4.7%
Apple Computer Inc....... 18 3/16 29 3/4 12 3/4 +11.9%
At Home Corporation Ser A 21 7/8 30 5/8 16 5/8 -8.8%
C/Net.................... 23 7/8 46 1/2 15 3/4 -11.5%
CMG Info Svcs. Inc....... 28 3/4 32 1/4 10 7/16 -6.1%
Cendant Corporation...... 33 7/16 34 15/16 19 1/4 40 -1.4%
Cmp Media Inc Cl A....... 17 29 3/8 13 3/4 25 -1.4%
CompuServe Corp.......... 11 7/8 14 9/16 8 7/8 -1.5%
Concentric Network Corp.. 9 3/4 16 7 7/8 -6.5%
Cybercash Inc............ 11 5/8 24 1/4 10 1/2 -8.8%
Earthlink Network Inc.... 26 26 1/4 8 5/8 +2.9%
Excite Inc............... 29 7/8 35 7 1/2 -6.4%
FTP Software Inc......... 2 3/16 8 3/8 1 1/2 -11.3%
GTE Corporation.......... 49 1/2 52 1/4 40 1/2 17 -2.5%
H & R Block Inc.......... 40 5/16 45 3/4 28 5/8 44 -8.8%
Hewlett Packard Company.. 62 72 15/16 48 1/8 21 -3.9%
IBM...................... 100 1/16 113 1/2 63 9/16 17 -5.2%
Individual Incorporated.. 4 1/16 11 7/8 2 5/8 -4.4%
Infoseek Corporation..... 10 14 1/2 4 3/8 -3.9%
Lycos Inc................ 33 1/8 42 11 3/16 -17.0%
MCI Communications Corpor 42 1/16 45 27 5/16 42 -1.4%
Mecklermedia Corp........ 25 1/8 30 16 1/2 58 +5.7%
Microsoft Corporation.... 127 150 3/4 81 5/8 48 -3.1%
Mindspring Enterprises In 29 1/4 34 5/8 6 3/8 -6.7%
Netcom On Line Communicat 24 1/4 24 3/8 7 7/8 +2.1%
Netmanage Inc............ 2 13/16 6 5/16 2 3/32 -11.7%
Netscape Communications C 17 11/16 49 1/2 17 3/4 -24.3%
Network Solutions Inc. Cl 16 7/8 26 3/4 11 3/4 84 +30.4%
Onsale Inc............... 15 1/4 35 1/4 4 5/8 -11.5%
Open Market Inc.......... 10 3/8 17 3/8 6 1/2 -1.1%
Oracle Corporation....... 18 3/4 42 1/8 20 1/8 26 -18.4%
Psinet Inc............... 6 13 3/8 4 1/4 +11.6%
Quarterdeck Corp......... 1 15/16 6 5/16 1 3/16 +1.6%
Realnetworks Inc......... 14 1/16 19 3/8 13 1/2 -1.3%
Security First Network Ba 6 3/4 14 1/4 5 1/4 -10.0%
Silicon Graphics Inc..... 11 3/8 30 5/16 11 9/16 46 -11.2%
Sportsline Usa Inc....... 16 11/16 17 5/8 7 +42.0%
Sprint Corporation....... 56 1/8 60 5/8 38 7/8 25 -3.2%
Spyglass Inc............. 5 15/16 14 1/8 4 1/16 +17.2%
Sun Microsystems Inc..... 40 7/8 53 5/16 25 7/8 21 -1.5%
Vocaltec Communications L 20 3/8 33 1/4 5 1/4 +2.5%
Worldcom Inc............. 28 13/16 39 7/8 21 1/4 -3.7%
Yahoo Corporation........ 61 7/8 71 12 41/64 -6.6%
Dow Jones 30 Industrials. 7,580.42 -4.8%
-------------------------------------------------------------
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Seidman's Online Insider - Vol. 5, Issue 2
Visit the Online Insider on the Web for additional content and access to
the Insider Talk discussion forums. A new Seidman's 25 is coming soon.
< http://www.onlineinsider.com >
============================================================================
Copyright (C) 1998 Robert Seidman. All rights reserved. May be
reproduced in any medium for noncommercial purposes as long as
attribution is given.
IN THIS ISSUE
- Editor's Note
- What's Happening in Insider Talk
- Online Banking Revisited
- AOL 4.0 In Preview Mode: Too Bad
- Netscape Gets Rocked, Rolls On With New Home Page
- Don't Believe Everything You Read
- Stock Watch
- Subscription Info
Editor's Note
=============
There will be no newsletter next week. I'll be back with the Jan. 25
issue. I met with representatives of Microsoft about the Justice
Department case against the company after this week's deadline. Look
for a recap in the next issue.
Note: the web version of this week's newsletter is slightly longer and
contains some content that's not in the e-mail version. This wasn't
done to lure you to the Web site, but to keep under the 25Kb limit
that causes issues with many e-mail systems.
What's Happening in Insider Talk
================================
The insiders talk about threaded vs. linear forums (in a linear
fashion!).
< http://www.wellengaged.com/engaged/seidman.cgi?c=online&t=13&q=117 >
Online Banking Revisited
=======================
I have some good news for a lot of you. Online banking is cheap, and
online banking is easy. Online banking can save you time, and online
banking can save you money.
Now, that's a pretty ringing endorsement. And there really isn't a
catch, not for most of you, anyway. But for some of us, there's always
a catch. For me that catch has been the desire to do my online banking
in the environment I wanted: Quicken. I've been a Quicken user for
years, and was actually considering switching to Money 98, just to try
it (conversion from Quicken is painless), but that -- like a few other
aspects of my online-banking dreams -- didn't work out.
Not only have I been using Quicken, I've been using Quicken with
CheckFree to pay my bills. It all works directly from Quicken, and once
you've set it up it's extremely easy. But I'd been hankering for an
approach that would let me go directly through my bank for a couple of
reasons. First, there's a cost factor. CheckFree costs roughly $7 to
$10 a month (or more, depending on how many bills you have to pay).
While $9.95 will get you 15 bills a month, it doesn't take a rocket
scientist to figure out that 15 bills' worth of 32-cent stamps will cost
you only $4.80. There is some time to be saved (I can pay a bill in
CheckFree much faster than I can write out a check, put it in the
envelope, etc.). What bothered me about the cost is that some banks
were offering FREE online bill paying. Second, if you have online
banking, you don't have to worry as much about tracking all your
transactions. For example, I do pretty well with putting my
transactions in Quicken, but now and then I miss an ATM withdrawal and
have to figure out why my balance isn't right. With online banking, all
your transaction information is provided for you.
So I finally went down and opened an account at the local Citibank
branch. Citibank had two things going for it. One, there's no charge,
regardless of your balance for online banking and online bill paying.
Two, at least the last time I checked, Citibank would work with both
Quicken from Intuit and Money from Microsoft. Bzzzzzt. Not exactly.
At one point Citibank had a relationship with Microsoft, and I suspect
that in the near future, because of a new standard called Open Financial
Exchange (OFX), Citibank will work with Money or any software that
supports OFX. More on this in a bit.
Meanwhile, I met for dinner with a friend who also uses Citibank and
Quicken. It's great, he told me. "All I have to do is download the
stuff via the Web site and import it into Quicken." When I asked whether
he pays his bills via Quicken or the Citibank Web page, he told me he
can't pay his bills from within Quicken with Citibank..
That didn't sound great to me. I've been spoiled because I've never had
to import anything into Quicken, and the thought of not paying my bills
directly from Quicken wasn't too appealing to me, either. So I
installed and took a look at Citibank's Direct Access software, via both
its own proprietary network and the Internet. Now, first let me say
that whichever way you go, the setup works pretty well if all you want
to do is pay your bills and balance your checking account or move money
from savings to checking and things like that. In other words, the
software works pretty well for what I imagine most people want to do.
But this approach has a couple of drawbacks. For one thing, like it or
not, I have accounts that are NOT with Citibank. Since I can't maintain
these accounts via Citibank's online-banking solution, I would have to
maintain them somewhere else. Also, I like being able to look over my
finances without having to be connected. Finally, the seamlessness of
paying bills directly from Quicken is so much easier -- IF you're using
Quicken. So, I was somewhat disappointed. The thought of setting up all
the payments on Citibank's servers and then importing all the info into
Quicken wasn't appealing.
I figured there must be a way to work directly within Quicken and bypass
that other stuff. I looked for some instructions on the Citibank
Internet service. Nada. I searched the newsgroups and couldn't find
anything. Finally, at 1:30 a.m. when I was playing with this, I did
something that surprised me. I picked up the phone and dialed
Citibank! And it was a memorable event in two ways. One, someone
answered the phone, and quickly. Two, the person on the other end of
the line was not only very nice, he was very knowledgeable and proceeded
to ask some questions and then tell me what my options were.
First, the good news. Because Citibank does have a relationship with
Intuit, I can set things up to do everything from with Quicken!
Essentially, Intuit will sit in the middle, pulling my information from
Citibank and then allowing me to pull it directly from Intuit.
Similarly, the bill payment will go through Intuit's bill-paying
service, but because Citibank has a relationship with Intuit, there will
be no charge. (As a stand-alone service, like CheckFree, Intuit's
service is $9.95 a month, which isn't surprising since CheckFree is the
service behind Intuit's bill-paying service, though with Intuit you can
pay 20 bills for that price instead of CheckFree's 15). So, I will be
able to do everything I did before and now also reconcile my account and
make sure I never miss an ATM withdrawal!
The only real bad news with this approach is that Citibank itself won't
actually be handling the bill payment. If I were going directly via
Citibank, I'd be more confident that the bills would be paid quicker.
Since I believe that Intuit uses "CheckFree" as its processing center for
bill payments, I'm guessing any payment will require 5 day advance notice.
Such advance notice isn't required with Citibank, but it is required with
CheckFree. I won't know for sure unti all the paperwork is processed.
Also, I was advised that the transaction information I'll get about my
accounts may be a day or two behind what I'd get if I were going directly
through Citibank. But for me, this is a small price to pay.
There's a barrier here, too. I had to request a form from Citibank (which
I haven't received yet) and I'll have to fill out the form, send it back
in and wait for notification that everything has been set up before I can
begin using Quicken for online banking via Citibank. It would have been
nice if I could have filled out the necessary enrollment when I was at the
branch.
I had the opportunity to speak with Josh Grotstein, the NBC Interactive
and Prodigy alumnus who is now division executive, global
Internet/intranet programs, for Citicorp. According to Grotstein, plans
call for deploying OFX capabilities for Citibank online banking sometime
during the first half of the year. Since this will allow direct
integration into Microsoft's Money, it will give Money users the
convenience of doing all their online banking directly from the Money
software. Also, OFX doesn't require the financial institutions to form
special relationships (a la Citibank and Intuit) with the software
manufacturers.
Grotstein said Citibank will continue to refine the Internet banking
service based on feedback from end users. Specifically, those customers
switching from the direct-connect to the Internet service complain that
the Internet-based service is slower. Indeed, in my experience that was
the case, but I'm not sure Citibank could do much to improve speed.
Given the Web-ness of the service and the encryption needed for security
purposes, I found the Internet service pretty quick. Think of
connecting to a text-based bulletin board or other text-based service at
28.8 kilobits per second and compare that with the speed of viewing even
the fastest Web pages and you'll get an idea of what Internet-based
services are up against here.
Grotstein said the planned enhancements for the year include launching
some personalized services (he couldn't be specific at this time) and
communities of interest for Internet customers (via the software The
Mining Co. uses for its Web site). Like the other banks, Citibank wants
to get involved in "enabling electronic commerce," Grotstein says.
Citibank wants its piece of the transaction pie. Grotstein thinks that
what we're currently seeing in the way of electronic commerce is great,
but that it's very much only a precursor to the types of service and
commerce that will come. Look for some commerce-related announcements
from Citibank within a few months.
Here are some links related to this story:
Intuit < http://www.intuit.com >
Microsoft Money < http://www.microsoft.com/money >
Citibank < http://www.Citibank.com >
NationsBank < http://www.nationsbank.com >
Open Financial Exchange < http://www.ofx.net >
AOL 4.0 In Preview Mode: Too Bad
================================
Don't let the headline fool you -- I think the forthcoming AOL 4.0
software, previously code-named Casablanca, has some nice features. I
consider it, at least from an end-user perspective, only a moderate
(rather than a major) upgrade of the 3.0 software. Key benefits are
improved navigation (mostly via an improved, customizable tool bar).
The navigation of e-mail has been changed; some will love this and some
will hate it. But nobody will knock improvements to the e-mail software
that include a spell-checker and the ability to include stylized fonts
and embed graphics directly in e-mail messages. There are several other
features, but the main feature of interest may well be the one that lets
you switch to a different screen name on your account without
disconnecting the line. Especially where busy signals are a problem,
this, at least for those who don't connect to America Online via TCP/IP
(i.e., almost ALL AOL users), can offer a big time savings.
Unfortunately, AOL has taken to disabling this functionality during peak
periods. To me, this indicates that AOL either is hell-bent on making a
really useful feature not nearly as useful or still doesn't have enough
access lines during peak times to support all the customers who want to
access the service.
Fortunately, AOL limited the initial preview round to 50,000 customers
who were able to download the software. But unfortunately, at least as
of this writing, AOL has opened it up to some more folks, which means
the first round of people either didn't tell AOL anything it didn't
already know or didn't tell it anything it wants to hear.
Here's something AOL probably doesn't want to hear, but can't help but
be aware of. The program, at least the 32-bit version of AOL 4.0 for
Windows 95, is a pig of a program. It consumes a lot of memory and a
lot of resources and is slow to load. AOL says all that's required is a
Pentium-class PC and 16 MB of RAM. I don't buy that. I did run the
software on a Pentium 133-MHz with 32 MB, but I couldn't run it along
with any other programs for very long without causing the machine to
crash, and AOL was very, very slow to boot up on that machine. More
annoying is that on my Pentium II 266-MHz, which now has 128 MB of RAM,
it consumed a lot of memory and a lot of Windows resources. And I found
that when I left the AOL program up (whether it was connected or not)
for more than several hours, I had to reboot my machine.
While AOL 3.0 lacks the new features of AOL 4.0, it will run better on a
Pentium 90 with 32 MB (in fact, it will run better on ANY configuration,
but that's neither here nor there, I guess). I think most people
running less than a Pentium 166-MHz with 32 MB of RAM will complain
about the drain the AOL 4.0 software puts on their systems. This may
not be the case with the 16-bit version, which I didn't test.
Now, all that said, the program IS worth taking a look at. So if you're
on AOL you might want to head over to keyword: PREVIEW to see whether
you can download it. I just hope AOL holds back the actual release
version until the software is more efficient at utilizing memory, CPU
and Windows resources.
Netscape Gets Rocked, Rolls On With New Home Page
=================================================
On Monday, Netscape warned that it had lost money for the quarter ended
Dec. 31. Netscape expects the loss to range between $85 million and $89
million, including special charges related to the acquisition of Actra
and Kiva as well as a restructuring charge.
To look at this simplistically, Netscape is having a tougher time
cracking the enterprise market than it thought it would. IBM has
dominated in this market for some time. On the bright side, even
Microsoft hasn't been able to win the enterprise market. Of course,
Netscape doesn't have all that "other" revenue that Microsoft has, and
that's the problem. According to preliminary estimates by Morgan
Stanley Dean Witter analyst Mary Meeker, Netscape's revenue in the
enterprise sector fell from around $150 million in the quarter ended
Sept. 30 to $130 million in the quarter ended Dec. 31. Making matters
worse is the continued decrease in revenue via the stand-alone browser
(from $28 million in the third quarter to $17 million in the fourth,
according to Meeker's estimate). What's even worse is that advertising
revenue dropped from $27 million in the third quarter to $22 million in
the fourth quarter. Could it be that the advertisers realized most of
the impressions generated on Netscape went unseen by the multitudes who
have never changed their browser settings to default to a different
start page? If that's the case, Netscape isn't being idle.
As reported a few weeks ago, Netscape this week launched a new version
of its home page at www.netscape.com. The new version of the site is
easier to use and is more useful in that an Internet-search capability
(via one of nine search engines or directories) is prominently
displayed. The redesigned home page is a step in the right direction,
but I don't think it's enough. I hope this is only the first step,
because Netscape still gets its foot in a lot of people's doors via its
home page. A tremendous opportunity has been wasted by Netscape in the
past few years, but it's not too late for the company to turn all of its
"default" visitors into folks who might actually find the site useful.
Netscape's challenge here is to provide a truly compelling home page.
While overall the site is becoming more compelling, the home page still
falls short of making people think, "Hey, I want to come back here."
But, of the several versions tested, the version that's up on the site
"tested the most successfully in both qualitative feedback as well as in
user click-throughs," according to Netscape's Jennifer Bailey, vice
president, Web site.
As of this writing, Netscape stock is lower than it's ever been since
the original initial public offering price. At less than $19, it seems
like a real bargain to some, especially since -- as several of you
pointed out to me in e-mail -- the worst thing that would happen is
someone with strength in the enterprise market would buy Netscape (which
would drive up the price).
Don't Believe Everything You Read
=================================
Not even in Business Week! No, I'm not talking about Business Week's
pointing to CNET CEO (and current Numero Uno in Seidman's 25) Halsey
Minor as one of 1997's best entrepreneurs in its Jan. 12 issue -- I'm
talking about the small "Focus: The Internet" piece that ran as a part
of Industry Outlook for the information sector.
"But no matter what technology and entertainment 'content' is pushed on
the Web in 1998, one thing is certain -- money will be made," said the
piece by Paul Eng.
"Revenues from Web advertising -- which reached more than $1 billion in
1997 -- are expected to more than double this year, according to market
researcher Jupiter Communications Co. That's enough to make the media
giants Web-savvy in a hurry," the piece concluded.
Sigh. Et tu, Business Week?
That piece broke my heart because it continues, in a big way, the myth
that says thar's gold in them thar hills! I think there is gold, but it
wasn't there for most in 1997, certainly NOT the big media. And it
won't be there in 1998, no matter what Jupiter or anyone else says.
Repeat after me: THERE WAS NOT 1 BILLION **REAL** DOLLARS' WORTH OF WEB
ADVERTISING REVENUE IN 1997. There may well have been $1 billion in
paper revenue, but as some of you have pointed out to me, if you take
away all the dollars in bartering (hey, I'll give you $25 million worth
of impressions if you give me $25 million worth of impressions) and
agency fees, there's not $1 billion worth of real revenue. Take away
Yahoo!, Excite, etc., Netscape and AOL, and you've easily covered half
of all the Internet/online-related advertising revenue. So, how can
Business Week be so damn certain money will be made?
Sure, it's a certainty that some sites will make money via advertising
(Yahoo! and Lycos, for example), but I think the certainty as described
by Business Week is still a couple of years away. I hope I'm wrong, but
I'd bet I'm not.
See you in two weeks!
Stock Watch for the Week Ended Jan. 9, 1998
===========================================
Courtesy of InfoBeat's CLOSING BELL < http://www.infobeat.com >.
52 Wk 52 Wk P/E Week
SECURITY CLOSE HIGH LOW Ratio CHNG
---------------------------------------------------------------------
AT&T Corp................ 60 13/16 64 30 3/4 20 +3.4%
Amazon Com Inc........... 51 1/8 66 15 3/4 -14.0%
America Online Inc....... 85 3/8 93 3/16 33 1/4 -4.7%
Apple Computer Inc....... 18 3/16 29 3/4 12 3/4 +11.9%
At Home Corporation Ser A 21 7/8 30 5/8 16 5/8 -8.8%
C/Net.................... 23 7/8 46 1/2 15 3/4 -11.5%
CMG Info Svcs. Inc....... 28 3/4 32 1/4 10 7/16 -6.1%
Cendant Corporation...... 33 7/16 34 15/16 19 1/4 40 -1.4%
Cmp Media Inc Cl A....... 17 29 3/8 13 3/4 25 -1.4%
CompuServe Corp.......... 11 7/8 14 9/16 8 7/8 -1.5%
Concentric Network Corp.. 9 3/4 16 7 7/8 -6.5%
Cybercash Inc............ 11 5/8 24 1/4 10 1/2 -8.8%
Earthlink Network Inc.... 26 26 1/4 8 5/8 +2.9%
Excite Inc............... 29 7/8 35 7 1/2 -6.4%
FTP Software Inc......... 2 3/16 8 3/8 1 1/2 -11.3%
GTE Corporation.......... 49 1/2 52 1/4 40 1/2 17 -2.5%
H & R Block Inc.......... 40 5/16 45 3/4 28 5/8 44 -8.8%
Hewlett Packard Company.. 62 72 15/16 48 1/8 21 -3.9%
IBM...................... 100 1/16 113 1/2 63 9/16 17 -5.2%
Individual Incorporated.. 4 1/16 11 7/8 2 5/8 -4.4%
Infoseek Corporation..... 10 14 1/2 4 3/8 -3.9%
Lycos Inc................ 33 1/8 42 11 3/16 -17.0%
MCI Communications Corpor 42 1/16 45 27 5/16 42 -1.4%
Mecklermedia Corp........ 25 1/8 30 16 1/2 58 +5.7%
Microsoft Corporation.... 127 150 3/4 81 5/8 48 -3.1%
Mindspring Enterprises In 29 1/4 34 5/8 6 3/8 -6.7%
Netcom On Line Communicat 24 1/4 24 3/8 7 7/8 +2.1%
Netmanage Inc............ 2 13/16 6 5/16 2 3/32 -11.7%
Netscape Communications C 17 11/16 49 1/2 17 3/4 -24.3%
Network Solutions Inc. Cl 16 7/8 26 3/4 11 3/4 84 +30.4%
Onsale Inc............... 15 1/4 35 1/4 4 5/8 -11.5%
Open Market Inc.......... 10 3/8 17 3/8 6 1/2 -1.1%
Oracle Corporation....... 18 3/4 42 1/8 20 1/8 26 -18.4%
Psinet Inc............... 6 13 3/8 4 1/4 +11.6%
Quarterdeck Corp......... 1 15/16 6 5/16 1 3/16 +1.6%
Realnetworks Inc......... 14 1/16 19 3/8 13 1/2 -1.3%
Security First Network Ba 6 3/4 14 1/4 5 1/4 -10.0%
Silicon Graphics Inc..... 11 3/8 30 5/16 11 9/16 46 -11.2%
Sportsline Usa Inc....... 16 11/16 17 5/8 7 +42.0%
Sprint Corporation....... 56 1/8 60 5/8 38 7/8 25 -3.2%
Spyglass Inc............. 5 15/16 14 1/8 4 1/16 +17.2%
Sun Microsystems Inc..... 40 7/8 53 5/16 25 7/8 21 -1.5%
Vocaltec Communications L 20 3/8 33 1/4 5 1/4 +2.5%
Worldcom Inc............. 28 13/16 39 7/8 21 1/4 -3.7%
Yahoo Corporation........ 61 7/8 71 12 41/64 -6.6%
Dow Jones 30 Industrials. 7,580.42 -4.8%
-------------------------------------------------------------
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