The PointCast Inc business model changes so frequently that it is hard to pin down where the company is coming from these days and in the latest departure from its core business of creating an active screen saver by distributing regularly updated news over the Internet, the company is planning to use the Teletext concept to deliver news to users not connected to the Internet. It is teaming up with WavePhore Inc, Tempe, Arizona to insert its material into the vertical blanking interval of more than 250 Public Television Service stations US-wide. By broadcasting its data via the television signal, says Inter@ctive Week, PointCast will be able to sidestep the problems it has hit in clogging corporate data networks, and becomes viable for residential users that do not want to use their telephone lines to handle PointCast’s frequent sorties to the Internet to retrieve news. Intel Corp’s Intercast receiver, already included in some multimedia computers, will be needed to capture the broadcast data.
