Greetings!
I'd like to correct an oversight in the latest "Top 20 Listserv lists"
message that was distributed today on net-happenings.
The HOTT (Hot Off The Tree) electronic magazine is the largest circulation
listserv. The latest figures are noted below; they were compiled in mid-
June by the UCSD sysop.
A Media Kit comprised of three articles from The Los Angeles Times, the
Voice of America, and the Knight Ridder news syndicate follow the message
from the sysop.
Note: I trust that the list owner of lstown-l will edit out the three
articles. If the list is not moderated, I apologize for the length of
this message.
Ciao!
Forwarded message:
> From [log in to unmask] Tue Jun 14 12:53:38 1994
> Message-Id: <[log in to unmask]>
> X-Sender: [log in to unmask]
> Mime-Version: 1.0
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
> Date: Tue, 14 Jun 1994 12:52:51 -0700
> To: [log in to unmask] (David Scott Lewis)
> From: [log in to unmask] (Jim Madden)
> Subject: Re: Jim, REALLY ... I need an update!
>
> There are 38,382 names on the list at the moment. Probably 400 of them
> won't really deliver to anyone but will bounce back when you send to them.
> Some considerable part of the work of keeping the list going is figuring
> out how to deal with those.
>
> The file of mail addresses on the list is 913310 bytes long.
>
> Jim Madden
>
> At 10:49 AM 6/14/94 -0700, David Scott Lewis wrote:
> >SIMBA needs to know the current subscriber count. Too, I'll be speaking
> >at the Public Relations Society of America annual conference tomorrow. I'll
> >need to know for that meeting as well. And Connect Magazine is writing
> >a story on HOTT. Guess what: They need to have an updated circulation
> >figure.
> >
> >On a related subject, NovaLink needs to know the address file size. (My
> >deal with likely be with NovaLink.)
> >
> >Thanks, Jim!
> >--
> > *************************************************************************
> > * David Scott Lewis *
> > * Editor-in-Chief and Book & Video Review Editor *
> > * IEEE Engineering Management Review *
> > * (the world's largest circulation "high tech" management journal) *
> > * Internet address: [log in to unmask] Tel: +1 714 662 7037 *
> > * USPS mailing address: POB 18438 / IRVINE CA 92713-8438 USA *
> > *************************************************************************
>
>
>
LOS ANGELES TIMES BUSINESS SECTION "LEAD" ARTICLE ON HOTT
Title:
Paper-Less Publisher
Computers: Irvine 'infomaniac's' 'e-magazine' exists only in
cyberspace.
Source: Los Angeles Times (LT) - WEDNESDAY March 2, 1994
By: DEAN TAKAHASHI; TIMES STAFF WRITER
Section: Business Page: 1 Pt. D Col. 2
Story Type: Infobox; Profile
Word Count: 1,518
TEXT:
IRVINE - David Scott Lewis calls himself an "infomaniac."
In 1975, when he was 17, he built a personal computer from
the first available Altair kits. He became a "hacker" and
served as a consultant to "WarGames," a 1983 film about a teen-
age computer nerd who nearly triggers a nuclear war.
Today, the 35-year-old Lewis cruises the Internet, the
global electronic supernetwork known simply as "the Net" that
links 20,000 computer networks and boasts 20 million users. He
spends an hour or more a day perusing more than 200 groups of
on-line information. He even acquired an Internet address -- a
sort of ID number -- for his 19-week-old daughter on the day she
was born.
So naturally, this walking encyclopedia and information
junkie is a fitting editor and publisher of an Internet
magazine, Hot Off The Tree, which summarizes more than 100
printed publications and explores our technological world.
His "publication" circulates electronically -- only in cyber-
space -- and is a sign of the coming grass-roots explosion in the
electronic publishing world.
"I think the Internet may be as important to publishing as
the Gutenberg printing press," he said. "It means that anybody
can be a publisher, as long as they understand the Internet. I
haven't spent a nickel and I'm putting out an international
magazine and rounding up tens of thousands of subscribers."
*
Lewis got the urge to start a free electronic magazine to
track the hottest and the worst technologies after reading a
1992 NASA-Pentagon report that suggested techies might prefer
reading on-line.
"Ted Turner and Rupert Murdoch, watch out," Lewis jokes.
Susan Jurist, a visual arts librarian at UC San Diego,
published Hot Off The Tree for about a year before it became
too much of a burden. She had 2,000 subscribers when she halted
publication last fall.
In December, Lewis asked if he could take it over, and she
agreed. UCSD officials agreed to maintain the mailing list in
the beginning for his first few issues, which will not carry
advertising. Lewis intends to publish and edit HOTT about 10
times a year in his spare time from his home in Irvine.
Lewis has taken steps to dramatically boost HOTT's circu-
lation. He sent a mass solicitation to various Internet user
groups in January and included the text of the speech by AT&T
executive Robert Kavner at the recent Consumer Electronics Show
in Las Vegas. A direct mailing on paper could have cost him at
least $45,000, but providing the same information on the
Internet cost nothing.
After less than two months, more than 31,000 people sent
Lewis messages saying they wanted to subscribe to HOTT, which he
calls the "first periodical for the global citizenry in cyber-
space."
Lewis' electronic magazine venture is expected to cost him
less than $5,000. Loading the magazine onto the Internet costs
nothing more than getting an Internet address, which he has for
free thanks to his work over the past seven years as an editor
of a quarterly journal for the Institute of Electrical and
Electronics Engineers.
*
Once Lewis completes an issue, he sends it to an Internet
host computer in San Jose, which transmits it to a computer
system at UC San Diego, where the mailing list is kept. Then
the university transmits it worldwide to everyone on the list.
"I could do this from a ski slope in Wyoming as long as I
had access to a computer and modem," he said.
Kathryn McCabe, editor-in-chief of Online Access, a printed
magazine that covers electronic bulletin boards, said her
journal keeps track of 150 electronic magazines.
Most electronic journals, ranging from Computer Underground
Digest to AIDS Treatment News, hit a focused readership and
compete only with printed trade journals of limited circulation.
"If he has 31,000 people, that is successful," said McCabe,
"These things have taken off on the Internet because the eco-
nomics are so much better when you don't have to print on paper."
Lewis' magazine should also draw additional readers because
it will be posted for viewing on a variety of computer networks
within the Internet, including an Air Force network and numerous
overseas networks. Lewis has received hundreds of electronic
letters asking for subscriptions, from a Russian scientist
working at the University of Sains in Malaysia to academics in
Beijing.
Not bad for an electronic magazine that will resume publish-
ing later this month.
It's difficult to determine how many people actually read an
on-line magazine and even to define what one is, said Daniel Dern,
author of the Internet Guide for New Users and outgoing editor of
Internet World magazine in Newton Center, Mass.
"What Mr. Lewis is doing with HOTT is exciting in itself and
also as a demonstration of how to reach a large audience on-line,"
said Dern. "It really is experimental."
*
The timing for these "e-zines" couldn't be better. With the
growing popularity of the information superhighway, the general
media have published more than 2,000 articles on the 'Net. How-to
books for Internet novices proliferate. Lewis believes his
magazine will become must reading among the 2.5 million serious
'Net users like himself.
"We've hit upon a publishing phenomenon," said Rosalind
Resnick, a Hollywood, Fla., resident who monitors electronic
newspapers and magazines and started her own Internet publication,
the Interactive Publishing Alert, this month. "After sending out
e-mail, I got my first paying subscriber in seven hours."
Lewis said he will keep his full-time job while working as
editor, publisher and sole employee of HOTT. Since January, he has
been president of Cellsys Inc., a start-up Van Nuys company that
is creating wireless communications products, such as radio-
controlled home appliances. Previously, he worked for eight years
as a marketing executive for a factory automation firm in Irvine,
Noubas.
His bookshelf includes "fun" titles such as "Neurocomputing,"
"Virtual Reality Systems," "Silicon Valley Fever," "Numerical
Analysis," and "Technological Forecasting for Decision Making."
"If anyone can pull this off, David can," said Ira Moskatel,
a high-tech attorney in Century City who has known Lewis for nine
years. "He's a walking encyclopedia."
Larry Lasker, who co-wrote the screenplay for "WarGames," said
Lewis has a talent for making technological subjects understandable
to novices.
"As a hacker, you could tell he knew his way around," Lasker
said. "He was an incredibly fast reader. He was always motivated
to find information if he didn't have it."
Edward Roberts, a professor of management information at the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, said Lewis clearly has the
energy to be successful with HOTT. "He has a craze for scanning
information and cramming it into his head and putting it together
into tidbits."
Lewis boils down newspaper articles from about 100 newspapers
and trade journals into summaries because most busy users don't
want the entire story as long as they know where to find the full
text.
Summaries can be useful because the Internet is more like an
ocean of information, where it is difficult to find things, than a
highway. Lewis said he doesn't have to pay royalties to publica-
tions as long as he gives proper credit.
Because of its combination academic and "cyberpunk" outlaw
roots, commercial advertising on the Internet often draws the
wrath of users fond of "flaming." Because messages on the 'Net go
uncensored, users often unload curses and vitriol on the adver-
tising sponsor.
But Lewis believes users will accept tasteful ads in the form
of promotional stories known as "advertorials," which in HOTT will
take the form of perspectives from computer company chief execu-
tives, helpful hints, or new product announcements.
"The market will speak," said Dern. "It's hard to know what
the reaction will be and it depends on how it's done."
*
Lewis says HOTT will have eight times as much news in it as
ads. Once the circulation hits 50,000, Lewis said he will seek
sponsors who would be charged somewhere between $2,000 and $3,500
per screen of advertorial. A few sponsors have already approached
him.
Since HOTT is targeting the heaviest users of the Internet,
Lewis believes advertisers will pay dearly to reach them.
"I hope to make good money as the circulation goes up," Lewis
said. "Although I'm not sure if it's more of an adventure or a
venture."
Hot Off The Tree (HOTT) at a Glance
* Founded: January, 1994
* Headquarters: Irvine
* How to subscribe: Send an electronic mail request to:
[log in to unmask] Leave the "subject" line blank and in the body
of the message type SUBSCRIBE HOTT-LIST.
* Editor and publisher: David Scott Lewis, 35
* Format: Technology magazine published and distributed via
Internet
* Estimated subscribers: 31,000 worldwide
Source: Hot Off The Tree; Researched by JANICE L. JONES /
Los Angeles Times
Navigating the Internet
Here are some of the publications designed for both novice
and experienced on-line explorers:
The Internet Complete Reference
* Authors: Harley Hahn and Rick Stout
* Publisher: Osborne McGraw-Hill
The Internet Directory
* Author: Eric Braun
* Publisher: Fawcett Columbine
The Online User's Encyclopedia: Bulletin Boards and Beyond
* Author: Bernard Aboda
* Publisher: Addison-Wesley
A User's Introduction to Unix
* Author and Publisher: Berkeley / Decision Systems
Source: Various publications; Researched by DEAN TAKAHASHI /
Los Angeles Times
CAPTION:
Photo: COLOR, David Scott Lewis compares Internet to the Gutenberg
printing press.
Photo: The paperless Irvine-based publisher of Hot Off The Tree calls
himself an "infomaniac."
MARK BOSTER / Los Angeles Times
DESCRIPTORS: LEWIS, DAVID SCOTT; HOT OFF THE TREE (ELECTRONIC
MAGAZINE); INTERNET (COMPUTER NETWORK); ELECTRONIC
MAIL; ELECTRONIC PUBLISHING
Copyright (c) 1994, Times Mirror Company
END OF ARTICLE
Comments:
There are a few minor mistakes. For example, my former employer
is Nouvas, not Noubas. And Ed Roberts is the David Sarnoff (endowed
chair) in the Management of Technology at MIT. Cellsys designs and
develops wireless communications protocols and processors for the
emerging Personal Area Networks (PANs) market; Cellsys does not
manufacture "radio-controlled home appliances." (Is that like a
flying toaster, just like the screen saver?!)
VOICE OF AMERICA TRANSCRIPT
Date: 7 March 1994
Type: "Making Democracy Work," # 407
Number: 3-16723
Title: "Information Highway Magazine"
Byline: Greg Flakus
Telephone: +1 310 575 7228
Dateline: Los Angeles
Editor: vo'hs
INTRO: As interest in the so-called Information Superhighway continues
to increase, more and more computer owners worldwide are using their
modems to jump on the currently available roadway -- the network of
online networks known as the Internet. As VOA's Greg Flakus reports
from Los Angeles, one high-tech entrepreneur has taken to the highway
with a cyberspace magazine that keeps readers up to date on the latest
cutting-edge electronic innovations.
TAPE: CUT ONE Sound from modem (:07)
TEXT: All you need to read the electronic magazine called "HOTT" is a
computer, a modem and an Internet address. Once you have access as a
subscriber, the magazine can be downloaded for free. "HOTT" stands
for "Hot Off The Tree" and it contains the latest information
available about research and commercial applications in advanced areas
of computing.
The electronic magazine for computer buffs was taken over by self-
described "infomaniac" David Scott Lewis last December. Mr. Lewis now
has far more than 30 thousand subscribers and more are signing on all
the time. Mr. Lewis says the magazine makes money from corporate
sponsors who place advertising in the form of specialized messages he
calls "advertorials."
TAPE: CUT TWO Lewis (:22)
"Rather than placing ads -- one screen is sold for advertorials and
that is of three types -- CEO (Chief Executive Officer) perspectives,
(hardware and software) tips and techniques, or significant new product
announcements. So, it is information that the Netters, when they read
it, it will not turn them off."
TEXT: Mr. Lewis says advertisers realize the importance of reaching
this audience with straightforward information because readers of the
electronic magazine are not only technologically knowledgeable but are
influential in establishing market preferences.
TAPE: CUT THREE Lewis (:36)
"The circulation is already larger than virtually all the specialized
industry trades (magazines). Actually, there is no industry trade
that is specialized that I can think of that has a larger circulation.
So, for one, they get to hit a target market that is very Internet
savvy and also a target market that because they are Internet savvy
tends to be very computer savvy, so they tend to be the innovator
class of the diffusion curve. Of course, those are the people who, by
word of mouth, can often make or break a technology."
TEXT: The potential target audience for "HOTT" is enormous. David
Scott Lewis notes that there are already 20 million Internet users and
that their number is growing at a rate of one and one half million a
month!
Mr. Lewis gets the information for his online magazine by poring over
hundreds of publications and making summaries of articles that he
believes are of interest to his readers. Because of the Internet's
international reach, Mr. Lewis says U.S. trade magazines are happy to
let him use material as long as he cites the source.
TAPE: CUT FOUR Lewis (:11)
"Most of these trades, because they are mostly from the United States,
have virtually no exposure overseas. Now they are going to get
tremendous exposure overseas."
TEXT: David Scott Lewis says he does pay for some articles used in
the magazine, but that he keeps his focus narrow, putting in only the
latest in specialized technical information for the computer literate.
TAPE: CUT FIVE Lewis (:32)
"If they (emerging technologies) are hot from a research perspective,
like neuromorphic systems would be a hot topic or artificial life
would be a hot topic -- or from the commercialization perspective,
like interactive multimedia and wireless communications. But, those
are the only areas I am focusing on. If it is just another spread-
sheet, I could care less. It won't get covered. So, it really is the
hot technology -- no pun intended -- but it really is the hot and sexy
technologies that we are focusing on."
TEXT: As if publishing an innovative, electronic magazine ten times
a year are not enough, David Scott Lewis is also the president of
the Los Angeles-based Cellsys, Incorporated -- a company developing
wireless communications processors for computer users. (signed)
END OF TRANSCRIPT
From [log in to unmask] Mon Apr 18 20:14:35 1994
Return-Path: <[log in to unmask]>
Received: from dub-img-1.compuserve.com by mail2.netcom.com (8.6.4/SMI-4.1/Netco
m)
id UAA19440; Mon, 18 Apr 1994 20:14:32 -0700
Received: from localhost by dub-img-1.compuserve.com (8.6.4/5.930129sam)
id DAA29009; Tue, 19 Apr 1994 03:12:45 GMT
Date: 18 Apr 94 23:08:50 EDT
From: Michael Finley <[log in to unmask]>
To: David Scott Lewis <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: St. Pioneer Press column
Message-ID: <[log in to unmask]>
Status: RO
#SOM##bizremote,perstech,HOTT,finley#
For use: Sunday, April 17, 1994
On The Edge
Virtual Heat From the Internet Tree
by Michael Finley
Exclusive to St. Paul Pioneer Press
Think of the vast Internet computer network and different capabilities come to
mind -- e-mail, bulletin board messages, research databases, downloadable
software. But a delivery system for a paperless magazine? There is one, a sort
of techie Reader's Digest synopsizing late-breaking technology news from over
100 publications. It bills itself as the "first periodical for the global
citizenry in cyberspace."
The electronic magazine, or e-zine, is called HOTT, which stands for Hot Off
The Tree. HOTT is the brainchild of one David Scott Lewis, a San Fernando
Valley entrepreneur in the burgeoning wireless business who came upon an
existing but struggling version of HOTT, with only 2,000 subscribers, and began
dreaming grand dreams of reviving it, making it a regular thing (ten issues per
year) and expanding its each. Lewis sent a single e-mail solicitation to
Internet's user base -- a free phone call to 20 million people -- and overnight
added 35,000 new subscribers.
Typical topics for HOTT include the latest thinking on virtual reality, neural
networks, speech recognition, microelectronics, the fate of "big iron,"
intelligent agents, ubiquitous computing, genetic & evolutionary programming,
fuzzy logic, wireless networks, smart cards, video phones, set-top boxes,
nanotechnology, and massively parallel processing.
I even found, listed among the next issue's features, a Pioneer Press column
of my own, on handwriting pads. I think I will feel a little feeble among all
those techno-heavyweights. Actually, that's not fair -- the articles are a good
mix including technical journals, consumer magazines and daily newspapers.
As metaphors go, "hot off the tree" is a bit perplexing -- trees generally
don't produce hot things. Greased griddles and printing presses produce hot
things, sort of, but then the acronym would be HOGG, or HOPP, also less than
perfect. But the whole point of HOTT is that any heat it produces is virtual
heat. It is in fact a formidably cool operation, drawing its power from low
operating costs and absurdly easy access to both publishable information and the
e-zine's global readership.
Lewis, who is said to have started an Internet address for his baby girl the
day she was born, didn't invent the e-zine. There are scores of low-budget,
"virtual magazines" out there, often syndicating themselves to regional bulletin
boards, containing a hodgepodge of everything from financial news to political
rants to record reviews.
A handful are very big and very prestigious. Prodigy publishes a version of the
Los Angeles Times; CompuServe publishes an online US News & World Report.
But they are published more for promotional considerations, or as
accommodations to the electronic age, or just to keep a foot in the online door.
HOTT, by contrast, stands and falls with the Internet. It is of, by, and for
people fascinated by the changing technological landscape.
People involved in conventional (paper) magazine publishing may not want to
read what follows. All Lewis has to do to publish an issue is to cull the most
interesting tidbits in emerging technology from the various online services,
edit them executive-summary length, compile them all into a master file, and
upload the file onto an Internet host computer that then transmits it to a
computer system at UC San Diego, where the original HOTT's mailing list is
maintained.
Then the university transmits it worldwide -- HOTT has subscribers everywhere
-- to everyone on the list. In about an hour, everyone has it, while the news is
still -- hot.
No paper, no ink, no cropping, no haggling with advertising reps, PR flacks,
designers, writers, or publishers. No ringing telephones. No direct mail
solicitations. No postage. No prima donna columnists.
HOTT isn't as glossy as Sports Illustrated, and so far it doesn't have pictures
and isn't especially Windows-friendly, although a graphical Mosaic version is
promised sometime next year. But even without the four-color glamour of
conventional magazines, it represents perhaps one of the freshest approaches to
publishing since, oh, Gutenberg. The only limitation I can pin on it at this
point is that it is English-language only.
Lewis foresees a typical issue of HOTT as being about 80 pages long -- about
120 screens. Another change down the road will be the participation of corporate
sponsors. HOTT will publish not ads, but paid advertorials -- promotional, but
with an emphasis on information. Make no mistake, David Scott Lewis ("There are
too many plain David Lewises") is in this to make money, and I'm betting he will
make a lot.
If you have Internet access, through your work or university, or via individual
doorways like Delphi or Internet-in-a-Box, it's easy to subscribe to HOTT,
provided you follow directions well. Simply send an electronic mail request to:
[log in to unmask]
Leave the "subject" line on your message blank. In the body of the message
type:
SUBSCRIBE HOTT-LIST
You have to do it exactly that way, because the subscription system is
automated. No biological entities are opening envelopes at that address. That
may be HOTT, but it's also cold.
The first issue of the new, resurrected HOTT, will be available any day now, so
speak up now and obtain that virtual collector's edition premiere issue.
Did I mention that a subscription is free?
Michael Finley is president of Communicating Quality, a St. Paul firm consulting
on technology and management issues. You can write to him via the Pioneer Press,
contact him through CompuServe account 71344,2517, or Internet
[log in to unmask] .
#EOM#
|
