Moon Mission

Friday, March 7, 1997 by Dave Winer.

If you're a marketing person in the Internet space, an interesting story is developing as we piece together the outline that represents the structure and products offered by the Macintosh net development community. I'm sharing all the information on my website as it becomes available.

I started by making a list of the web development products that I use or people that I work with use. This list is at:

http://www.scripting.com/davenet/stories/macWebMarket/

Then I put a form up that allows Mac net developers to register their products. This morning I started reviewing the sites. Some very interesting products that I didn't know about or didn't understand.

As I visit sites, I believe every one should have a "What is XXX?" page, which explains to a total newcomer, what their product or service is. It's the first thing I want to know. It's the page I want to point to. I think in most cases this should be the home page.

I'm learning a lot about the shape of the market by just doing the categorization. There are more complete databases available (I'm pointing to them as I go) but they require me to ask questions, rather than making a presenfation broken out into categories.

There's value in doing this kind of survey on a periodic basis. This world changes every week with new products and people moving forward quickly. The shelf life of surveys like this is very short, I think.

What it's for 

As I said in the last piece, we're doing the news site for Apple's InternetWorld web presence. All the production for the site will be done in real-time at the Apple booth at the show. Wish us luck! Look for the News Room corner of the booth. It's coming together. It won't be seat of the pants, quite, but it will feel like a moon mission. It already does.

Anyway, an interesting picture is developing. If you want to watch it, tune into http://www.scripting.com/ over the next few days. Reload often. Then we'll jump off from there to Los Angeles, the InternetWorld keynote stage and then the Apple News Room booth.

I'll let you know, via DaveNet, when the Apple site goes on the air. With any luck it should happen sometime on Saturday.

It's going to be quite a trip!

Dave

PS: In Netscape, to force a reload of a dynamic page, hold down the Option key and choose Reload from the View menu. This is called "Super Reload" and it's an essential skill for anyone viewing a dynamic news page. Not sure how to do this on Windows or in MSIE.