A new Canadian company is pitting itself against on-line personalized information provider PointCast Canada with software that allows users to control and manage Internet information.
The principal difference with Lanacom’s HeadLiner is that users will have to pay for the luxury of avoiding the advertising upon which PointCast relies.
Both services allow users to choose categories of information in which they are interested. Updates are then sent to their computers on an ongoing basis. However, PointCast is offered free to users because, like radio and television, it carries advertising. The new service, called HeadLiner, comes with a price tag.
‘We’re going up directly against (PointCast),’ says Lanacom President Tony Davis, adding that, until now, PointCast has been ‘the only game in town.’
Since the launch of PointCast, 80,000 Canadians have registered for the service, with 1,000 more signing on each day, according to the Toronto-based company.
Lanacom’s Davis, who created the pc fax communications tool WinFax, describes HeadLiner as ‘PointCast on steroids’ adding that his company’s software gives users more control over the information they receive.
Rather than providing news like PointCast (which is in partnership with The Globe and Mail New Media Centre, among other services), Lanacom’s HeadLiner software leverages information that is already on the Web, says Davis.
Users can pre-choose sites and customize how they appear on the screen, he says. Essentially, the software saves the user the time it takes to log on and off each bookmarked site several times a day by displaying headlines on chosen subjects.
The NewsTitle format, for example, displays information across the title bar of an active application. Alternatively, a user can choose to have information displayed as a screen saver, or on a ticker bar on the desktop.
Although HeadLiner can be downloaded free off the Internet, a new version called the Plus Pack, to be released sometime this month, will have added enhancements and will retail for under $50, Davis says.
According to company literature, HeadLiner was designed with corporations and intranets in mind. Davis says that Lanacom’s software is more efficient than PointCast because HeadLiner bandwidth requirements are minimal.
PointCast marketing manager Jennifer Stewart agrees the two products are very different. She says HeadLiner puts users onto the Web, while PointCast gathers information and sends it to users. So HeadLiner users accumulate on-line costs and software costs, while PointCast users receive their information for free, says Stewart.
As for advertising, while PointCast has had some support (a billboard campaign, created by Bensimon Byrne went up this summer), HeadLiner is taking a low-key approach – at least for now.
Davis says the product has some Web-based advertising – with links between some of its content suppliers and itself – and may do trade publication advertising in the future.
Like PointCast, the Mac version of HeadLiner is still being developed.
