
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: THURSDAY, October 20, 1994                   TAG: 9410200058
SECTION: BUSINESS                    PAGE: B-8   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Knight-Ridder/Tribune
DATELINE: SAN JOSE, CALIF.                                LENGTH: Medium

THIS YEAR EVEN SANTA WILL BE ON THE INTERNET

If you can't visit Santa at the North Pole this Christmas, you might want to drop in on him at north.pole.org/santa/.

That's the Internet computer address for the Cyberspace Christmas Campaign, an attempt to use the computer network to raise money for charities.

When it opens Thanksgiving Day, Santa's digital workshop will include Christmas trees, songs and recipes.

Veteran Internet innovator Carl Malamud is asking corporations to get into the Christmas spirit with donations of as much as $25,000 each.

The idea is to attract users to the site on the Internet's World Wide Web with a multimedia blitz of Christmas attractions, slip in a little information on worthy charities and have corporations foot the bill.

Each time a user visits a charity's site, the sponsoring corporation will kick in a dime, up to its agreed-upon limit.

Visiting the site requires an Internet connection and a ``browser,'' such as Mosaic, for using the World Wide Web. The Web, a deceptively simple method for linking computers around the world, is the fastest growing feature of the Internet.

The Christmas display demonstrates the huge spread in the Internet's reach and capabilities in the past year. Last year, about 7,000 people sent simple e-mail messages to Santa.

This year, that's just the beginning. There's a fill-in form that provides boxes to check for ``good little boy,'' ``good little girl'' or ``other,'' as well as a space for a gift wish list.

Digital Christmas trees are available for downloading and decorating with digital mistletoe, candy canes and toy soldiers. The trees come in four sizes, with larger trees and snazzier graphics taking longer to download.

More information about the Cyberspace Christmas Campaign is available by sending an e-mail message to elfmaster(at)north.pole.org. Starting on Thanksgiving Day, the World Wide Web site can be reached at http:

by CNB