Free E-Mail Available, But Expect Lots Of Ads

Soon, Internet e-mail may be as widespread and indispensable as telephone service.

Two companies plan to offer free Internet e-mail service to everyone in the continental United States who owns a personal computer and a telephone.

Are these generous corporations sacrificing their fortunes to serve the American public?

Hardly.

Advertisers will pay for the service, just as advertisers pay for broadcast television and radio.

Juno Online Services L.P. of New York City and FreeMark Communications of Cambridge, Mass., plan to roll out competing nationwide free-mail services before the end of the year.

To obtain a free electronic mail address and to correspond via free e-mail with anyone in the world, a user will just pop a free Juno or FreeMark software disk into any personal computer that uses Microsoft Windows. The software will connect the computer with the e-mail system by dialing a local phone number or a toll-free 800 number.

Will advertisements annoy people who use the free-mail services? Maybe. Will advertisers find the services overpriced or ineffective? Perhaps.

But if the free-mail services play their cards right, the ads won’t irritate or intrude, and they will be very effective.

Shop Mall of America on-line

Tour the nation’s largest mall - on-line: For the “shop-‘till-you-drop” crowd, here’s the Web site for the Mall of America in Bloomington, Minn. - the largest enclosed shopping and entertainment center in the U.S. The site, at http://www.bitstream.net/tce/mallofam/mallofam.html, features a directory of the mall’s more than 400 stores, an events calendar and a “tour” of its nooks and crannies.

Peeking into Windows

Here’s a useful Web site about Windows 95: http://www.win95.com/.

It includes a page of electronic links to hardware and software companies with products that you can run with Windows 95.

This could come in handy if you’re toying with taking the Windows 95 plunge anytime soon. Here’s why. You may need to download software updates from the companies that made various parts of your computer (like your video card or CD-ROM drive) to allow them to run with the new Windows system.

Corporate controllers take charge

To meet the challenge of global competition and reduce costs, U.S. corporate controllers are emerging as the key decision makers for purchases of new information systems, says a survey conducted by the Controllers Council of the Institute of Management Accountants (IMA), which surveyed 420 companies.

“Client/server technology is an excellent example of controllers taking the initiative to improve productivity and reduce costs in their companies,” says Susan Jayson, director of the IMA’s Controllers Council.

“More than 42 percent of survey respondents report that their companies have implemented client/server technology,” notes Jayson. “When we asked who initiated this new technology, the highest percentage of respondents (43 percent) said the controller or Chief Financial Officer had led the way.”