Give your site some real push

You can't stop them shouting about it. Whether it's PC Magazine urging you to "join the leading edge of this boom", Wired demanding you "kiss your browser goodbye" or Forrester Research executives warning you to realise the importance of "customizable broadcast content", the Internet elite suddenly want to tell you all about "push technology".

The "technology" comes in a variety of forms, including the increasingly well-known Pointcast Network and a Java program called Castanet. The latest versions of Netscape's Navigator and Microsoft's Explorer include push too. All of it arrives shouting the same sales pitch. Tired of browsing the Web? Have the Web come to you! Download information automatically while you do something else! "Pulling" information with your browser is yesterday's idea; push is cutting edge!

If you've put a site on the Web, or if you're thinking of doing so, you might wonder just whether this clamour means the Web is about to take a turn. Should you be doing something about push?

Why push deserves the shove

Not yet, you shouldn't. Unfortunately for the Silicon Valley pushmeisters and fortunately for the un-hip status quo, push probably doesn't deliver to much of your audience right now. Pointcast and its rivals, with names like Freeloader and Headliner, share several characteristics. Most slow today's computers to a crawl. In the process, they take over your computer desktop, your browser, or both. Worse, these programs inundate you with information you don't need - just like the Web, only more so. In tech-head terms, they carry an disturbingly low signal-to-noise ratio. Most rely on content from a limited number of "affiliates", whose quality varies. And they can be as distracting as all hell.

Corporate networks may be able to use push, if network administrators can limit access to the Internet to stop users slowing the LAN to a crawl by constantly updating the sports scores. But then, the push technology wouldn't seem so sexy if its backers admitted it was a great way for the boss to shove messages in front of all the employees' faces. ("Work faster"?)

Push also constitutes a marketing con. It doesn't actually push anything; it simply automates the process of pulling down material from the Web.

A few years hence, when computers and connections are faster and the material can be more effectively tailored to your interests, this stuff may work for a wider audience - but by then, faster connections will make the old "pull" model more attractive anyway. For the moment, the sheer number of negative factors argues against them.

So as a group - to judge from personal experience and anecdotes both offline and online - these much-hyped programs are currently becoming history's most deleted software. A year from now, they may be to Web software what the Newton has been to hardware. Maybe it won't even take a year: a recent interview in the New Yorker magazine saw Microsoft technology boss Nathan Myhrvold making fun of the "push" craze. And Individual Inc. killed its Freeloader push product in late May.

Real push

But the push brigade has one thing right: Web visitors are casual visitors. You're rlying on them to come back - and they may come back irregularly, forget to bookmark your site, or just forget about you altogether.

If you're designing a site, you can avid this problem by incorporating some real "push technology". You can deliver your highly specific information straight to the doorstep of just about anyone with an Internet connection, where it can be downloaded unintrusively whenever they log on, and filed easily for future reference. It won't rely on them making the decision to update their "subscribed" pages.

Sounds exciting? It is. And it's called ... electronic mail.

If you just experienced a let-down feeling, you may be underestimating e-mail as an element of good Web site design. Most Web sites carry a message made up largely of words - words you want to deliver to as many people as possible. Even the simplest no-code Web publishing programs allow you to create links which trigger an e-mail message. Gathering e-mail and e-mail addresses on the Web allows you to deliver people new material from your Web site, simply and effectively. Most e-mail programs now automatically read Web addresses and turn them into live links, so you can direct people from your e-mail message back to your web site. And new e-mail programs read messages complete with graphics, effectively allowing you to e-mail entire Web pages.

Not too pushy

There's etiquette to be observed when you invite site visitors to submit their e-mail addresses: you should tell them exactly what they'll be getting, and then send them only that. Junk e-mail creates bad feeling and invites retaliation and bad word-of-mouth.

But the process itself itself is remarkably simple. This site invites visitors to click to send a simple e-mail message, "Lighthouse by e-mail". Once they've sent that message, they receive the content of this column each week, complete with links back to Lighthouse and to other sites with related subject matter. I paste the text from the Web site into an e-mail message in the freeware mail program Pegasus, and send it with a single button-push using that program's distribution list function. Nothing could be simpler.

And the e-mail connection has a one-on-one feel that a Web site alone may struggle to create. The people on my e-mail distribution list generate much of the column's best feedback, and constitute a reassuringly certain audience each week. Their addresses and accompanying notes also tell me what sort of people are visiting the site - a surprising number of university academics, for instance.

E-mail's been around for years, and no-one calls it "push technology". But it works a treat. Oh, and if you agree - or disagree - send me an e-mail. You can tell your friends you're using "push technology".

To sample e-mail distribution, you can ...

Sign up for Lighthouse and have a new installment delivered to your e-mail each week.

Or you can subscribe to one of the three leading computer news e-mail services ...

c|net's Digital Despatch delivers weekly computer news highlights.

ZDNet's AnchorDesk provides links to lively coverage at a dedicated Web site.

John Gehl's Edupage delivers thrice-weekly summaries of computing news culled from the mainstream press.

You can also sample Web essays:

Suck provides an acerbic new essay every weekday (although it helps if you understand the finer point of US popular culture).

Microsoft's Slate magazine resembles the excellent New Republic and comes every week in (of course) Microsoft Word format.

Push technology has excited some commentators; others aren't so sure. Here's a sample, somewhat biased against the hip new technology.

Wired magazine mounted the Web's most frenzied praise of push earlier this year (sample hype: "a new medium is arising, surging across the Web ..."

... though responses varied.

PC Magazine's on-line edition summarises push server products for corporate intranet use - and concludes, tellingly, "we found it difficult to see what value message-oriented push servers add over a more common push technology: e-mail".

PC Magazine's John Dvorak thinks push is wildly overrated: "Until Push can actually be shown to reduce time spent on information gathering, it will remain a trendy buzzword with little chance of developing into anything at all".

PC Week's Jesse Berst is a push believer but urges you not to reject "mailcasting" in favor of "webcasting".

PC World also has its doubts.

Slate magazine's Webhead column details some of push's weaknesses.

and Upside.com takes aim at push's first champion, Pointcast.

Investigate these push products - but don't say we didn't warn you ...

Pointcast was the first big push product, and remains at the top of the tree.

Freeloader brings Web pages and a heap of bright orange graphics to your browser.

Marimba's Castanet Tuner combines ultra-hip push with super-trendy Java, delivering Java applications to your computer.

Headliner is among the least obtrusive of the push systems.

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