New consumer online services Available to Purchase

In bringing this session into the Online Conference we are approaching a new era perhaps for some of us who are professional online database users. Some of the people on the platform have very clear ideas what they want to do with online technology and may have even relatively little experience of the things that you and I have modestly been doing for a number of years. The idea is to see where the subject matter, the content and the delivery mechanisms are converging, and I hope that by the end of the session you will have a clear idea of what these new consumer services are likely to offer to the wider public, and whether they have an application for us professional online information users. The best way to get started is to have a series of presentations by the panel members in as much detail as they think necessary to describe their products. Not exactly product reviews — I hope that they will share with us some of their fears as well as some of their boasts of what their services can do, what their technical problems have been, and what advantages they see in moving into this market. The first speaker that I have to introduce is Pascal Cusset, who joined Apple Computer France in 1987 and Apple Computer Europe in 1992. In his current position he is managing and developing eWorld in Europe. Before coming to Apple France he worked with Oric International in Paris as a product manager for a line of workstations aimed at creating and running videotex services, using the famous French service based on the Minitel.