Webcasting is a new way out of the Web maze, and it was the topic of a Special Report in the Feb. 24 issue of Business Week. BW Online's guest on Feb. 23 was Kim Polese, co-founder and chief executive of Marimba Inc., one of the startups creating software for Webcasting. She was online with Robert D. Hof, BW correspondent in San Francisco, who contributed to the BW report.
Here's a sample:
JackBW: WTSGREG in our AOL audience has a question for Marimba's Kim Polese.
Question: Who do you see surviving in the new "push" technology battle? Many services are doing it. What makes Marimba the leader in this area?
KimPolese: There's more to being successful than simply doing a push of information. A lot of companies in this space are sending "eye candy" to your screen, but they're not enabling real applications to be pushed and updated. So, for example, this is the difference between a little notification popping up telling you that the stock price of Intel just rose two points vs. a financial portfolio channel which actually has dynamic interactivity with charts that can allow you to perform "what-if" scenarios about market conditions, all customized to you. The simple "push" companies, sort of eye-candy providers, are in trouble. Those companies will find that what they're doing will soon be incorporated into regular operating systems by companies like Microsoft.
