Moderator: Dale Taylor, moderator.
43 Attendees.

The topic of this meeting is a series of presentations of local "yellow pages" or directories available over the internet.

ANNOUNCEMENTS:

Jay announced that Westnet has a new pop in Simi.

Frank Dzuiba announced Silicon Beach has a new pop in Buellton. Two more at to be named locations in cities north of SB will be on-line soon.

Jan announced that Kinkos will offer internet service in partnership with Silicon Beach soon.

MTD (name?) announced that the working prototype for the kiosk will be on-line in about 8 weeks. Hopefully 1q96 it will be available to the public.

Ann Cameron announced that Kai Kraus will be doing a benefit at the Lobero on 2/7/96 at the Lobero for $15/ticket. Lots of prizes.

Dana Simmons announced the next meeting will be on "Internet Demographics" on 1/24/96

PRESENTATIONS:

Andre Duran talks about MindWire, a solution which News Press will use for its subscriber services. His goal has been to develop PC communications and applications to enhance business usage where images are involved. They got started before Internet got big. They have something like a web browser-- but it connects to a special server. MindWire is the name of there product. It automatically updates software on client. Next 3 years will yield a lot of new applications besides web browsers. Mindwire allows existing applications to work over the internet. A video conferencing package has been ported. Other applications have been developed using Visual Basic--development is quick. Mindwire takes care of the hard part of getting applications on the Internet. Other applications mentioned or shown were a real estate multiple listing service, and an Adobe acrobat lookalike, and a forms generator, as well as many others. Andre emphasized that his product was now available and provides a simple user interface-- "AOL in a box". It has lots of security and auditing and control. Client software is free and servers are $500 to $1500. Encryption will be available next year.

Milo Crips of Interactive Vision presented next. He has an engineering and marketing background, and is interested in the automation of catalogs, especially technical ones. He has worked with Andre Duran on the creation of a catalog mechanism. He has been creating home pages for manufacturers-- viewed this a means of distribution of information. More than just the page was created. 6-10 million business will be on-line in the next few years. Thinks that indexing should be worth $10 to $30 /month. Thus indexing should be a good business by itself. The approach he uses automatically creates a web page skeleton. He is creating 1000 entry indices at the rate of one every 2 weeks. He feels that information is not optimally organized using SIC codes. His web pages demonstrated animation and well organized, striking graphics.

Frank Dzuiba showed the Silicon Beach Yellow Pages-- The SB On-line Directory. If you want to find out about more than who has a web site, the SB Online can provide that information. Costs for web linked yellow page advertisements will be about $25/month plus a modest setup fee-- a few hundred dollars. This cost is a lot lower than the paper yellow pages. Franks yellow pages will be associated with a WAIS server giving extensive search capability. An example of "Direct Marketing Services" was shown. Their response forms result in e-mail or faxes. "yellowpages.santa-barabara.ca.us/" is the url. Alphanumeric buttons to go to particular letters. Clicks on specific entries bring you to the web page or ad. The ads are accessible over the rest of the Internet. Questions: How will we discriminate between providers of yellow pages? Franks says the winner will be he who has the "best" service--most useful, easiest to find information on, etc.. How does this compete with CD-ROM? Content is more than addresses/names, more information.

Jay Hennigan of WestNet. He has yellow pages which is free and open to the community. 29 categories are supported. Government, business, community services, ISPs, etc. This is a free service supported by WestNet. Anyone can submit their URL for a link at help@westnet.com. They want to head towards more unification of the different "white pages".

Next meeting is 1/24/96.

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