On the Way to the Web

Making Contact.-Online in the 80s.- Early entrepreneurs.- Timesharing and PSNs.- Compu-Serve and Comp-U-Card.- Wasted resources and personal computers.- The prefect business opportunity.- Design and beta-testing the first online service.- Hacker toys or consumer service?.- The Source.-The uncertain entrepreneur.- From liquor to consulting.- Recycling hardware and ideas.- Telephones and computers.- A wireless Internet.- Videotext, cable TV, and computers.- The off-the-shelf computer network.- Tariffs and information providers.- Backers.- Opening Day: 'This is the beginning of the Information Age!'.- Content and Competition.-Revenue issues. Playing games at 300 bps.- News.- The problem with online shopping.- Downloadable software.- Advertising and online presence.- Online gaming. Paying the bills.- New social networks.- Mainstreaming online.- In search of cheap connections.- Chatting: the killer app.- What it looked like.- Looking Backward.- How'd we get here?.- The Victorian Internet.- Hyperlinks in the 1950s.- ARPAnet.- Packet-switching.- The knowledge industry moves in (Dow Jones, Knowledge Index, et al).- Corporate computing.- Modems and home computers.- Bulletin boards (BBSs).- 'What do we do next?' The noble idea.- E-mail and one-liners.- FTP, Gopher, and USENET.- More Entrepreneurs.- Modem millionaires.- The new competition (PLink, QLink, DELPHI, and more).- Content is king. Publishing, percentages, and partnerships.- Digressions: downloadable music, motives, and games.- Variations on a theme: Cable TV and phone nets, videogame consoles online (battle of the mediums).- Downloadable software and shareware.-Heavy Hitters and Growing Pains.- SIGs and Forums. FSBO and auctions.- Online casualties.- GEnie.- AOL.- Prodigy (How not to run an online service).-Advertising wars.- Viruses.- Pranked and turfed! The numbers increase.- Scammers and hackers move in.- Billing: Flat rate versus by-the-minute.- What it really cost.- Competition, Cooperation, and Coercion.-'My

Michael A. Banks is the author of more than 40 books, among them several titles that deal with Internet topics, including The eBay Survival Guide; Web Psychos, Stalkers, and Pranksters; The Modem Reference; PC Confidential; and Welcome to CompuServe. He is coauthor of CROSLEY: The Story of Two Brothers and the Business Empire that Transformed the Nation (Clerisy, 2006), the biography of twentieth-century industrialist/entrepreneur and communications magnate Powel Crosley, Jr. (This book made the New York Times extended bestseller list, the Wall Street Journal hardcover business book bestseller list, and the Business Week bestseller list. Having sold 45,000 copies during its first three months of existence, it received a full-page writeup in the February 12, 2007, issue of Publishers Weekly.) He has written hundreds of magazine articles and served as a contributing editor and columnist for Computer Shopper, Windows, and other magazines. Banks has been online since 1979, when he caught his first glimpse of CompuServe. During the 1980s, he was involved in a number of Internet firsts, including online book promotion. He has helped maintain bulletin board systems, was a special interest group (SIG) manager on DELPHI for a number of years, and worked in a consulting capacity for CompuServe and The Source. He wrote one of the first guides to online services, The Modem Reference (Brady/Simon & Schuster), which introduced hundreds of thousands of users to modems and the online world. Because of his reputation as a modem and telecommunications expert, GEnie and BIX (Byte Information Exchange) created special online forums for Banks early blogs. He has also advised a number of businesses in the area of online marketing.