Netscape Communications Corp is poised to announce version 4.5 of its Communicator internet browser. Ramanadhan Guha, principal engineer, says new features will include smart browsing and related links providers. Smart browsing includes what the company calls its internet keyboard. At the moment, users who type something in the location bar – Calvin Klein, say – will get 17,000 hits from AltaVista, Guha says. We will be providing a service where typing a trademark takes you to the appropriate home page. This feature should especially appeal to families, since typing Bambi will take kids to Disney.com rather than the Bambi.com porn site. Similarly, Whitehouse will reach Whitehouse.gov rather than the adult entertainment site at Whitehouse.com. Guha explains that related links providers can monitor surfers in order to suggest other interesting sites that the user might not have found for themselves. Both new features are intended to move web publishing away from the print model, where reading a magazine means that the publisher of that magazine completely owns you. Instead of imposing that bilateral relation, Guha wants multilateral relations like the related links provider concept to flourish. Dun & Bradstreet might offer information about the company you’re about to give your credit card number to, he suggests. The point about the network is that we are all connected, he explains. You can do things you couldn’t dream of doing in print. Guha says that as a company, Netscape is opposed to the sort of projected Web-TV convergence which assigns a passive role to surfers. As he puts it: Making the net into TV? That’s blasphemy!
