ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Tuesday, May 14, 1996 TAG: 9605140012
SECTION: BUSINESS PAGE: B-5 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: NEW YORK
SOURCE: Associated Press
SOFTWARE FIRMS now make it possible to download Web sites, but critics argue the process diminishes "surfing."
A handful of small software companies, applying the principles behind automatic timers and VCRs to the World Wide Web, have started to grow quickly by taking the on-line experience, well, off-line.
The companies are finding that, for some people, it is useful to download many Web pages in one swoop so they can be read later.
A user then can breeze through the information because it is already in the computer's hard drive, instead of waiting for it to come in through the phone line.
Some Internet experts have greeted the concept warily, saying it diminishes the unique ability to ``surf'' the Web and find information spontaneously.
But others point out that many people, after surfing heavily the first few weeks they sign onto the global information source, fall into a pattern of returning to the same Web sites just as people seek the same stations on their radio or TV dial.
Last week, Jim Barksdale, chief executive of influential Netscape Communications Corp., told a newspaper publishers convention that off-line software will let them routinely deliver updated news to a computer instead of waiting for a person to log on. He compared it to putting a newspaper on the doorstep every morning or afternoon instead of waiting for a person to go to the newsstand.
Or, for instance, executives who travel often can use such off-line programs to store Web info on a laptop computer to be read during a plane flight.
LENGTH: Short : 44 linesby CNB