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There are 2 messages totalling 606 lines in this issue.

Topics of the day:

  1. INSIDER> Seidman's Online Insider -- Prodigy Buyout
  2. INSIDER> Seidman's Online Insider - Part I

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date:    Sun, 12 May 1996 22:42:41 -0500
From:    Gleason Sackman <[e-mail]>
Subject: INSIDER> Seidman's Online Insider -- Prodigy Buyout

Date:         Sun, 12 May 1996 21:11:24 -0400
From: "Robert D. Seidman" <[e-mail]>
Subject:      Seidman's Online Insider -- Prodigy Buyout
To: Multiple recipients of list ONLINE-L
              <[e-mail]>

Prodigy Buyout Announced
====================

We're not so vain here at the Online Insider that we believe that Prodigy
management announced the buyout from Sears and IBM on Sunday just so it
could sneak into this week's newsletter.  But hey, sooner or later the
Sunday distribution was bound to pay off for me!

The press release started off this way:

"International Wireless Incorporated and a group of Prodigy executives,
announced the acquisition of Prodigy Services Company from its owners, IBM
Corporation and Sears, Roebuck and Co.  The announcement was made today
by Greg Carr and Terry Dillon, Co-Chairmen, International Wireless, and
Edward A. Bennett, President & Chief Executive Officer, Prodigy."

International Wireless will acquire Prodigy in its entirety, and the
acquisition will be led by Prodigy management.  Financial terms were not
disclosed and the acquisition is subject to regulatory approval, which is
expected in June.  Though no details were given, Bennett told reporters
that it was on the higher side of the $100 million to $250 million that
had been floating around in the press recently.

Also participating as both a financial and strategic partner is Grupo
Carso, which owns Telmex, Mexico's telephone and telecommunications
company.  It would appear at first blush that Grupo Carso is the "deep
pockets" funding the buyout.

Greg Carr is also co-founder and Chairman of the Board for Boston
Technology.  Boston Technology provides equipment in software for several
major telecommunications company.  One of their specialties is voice mail
services.  There is some synergy between Boston Technology and the service
Prodigy is attempting to become.

This afternoon I had the chance to speak with Ed Bennett, who will remain
as President and CEO of Prodigy (and join the board of International
Wireless) and Greg Carr of International Wireless.

I asked Bennett if Prodigy is still on track to move towards moving away
from the proprietary Prodigy service and positioning itself as an Internet
service. Bennett advised that within a year, Prodigy will be a totally
TCP/IP based service without any of the proprietary software that exists
today.  But it's more than just about connectivity and access to Bennett,
who envisions Prodigy as  "a fully interactive mega online web site,"
Indeed Bennett wants Prodigy to become "The world's largest web site".
That opens up some interesting possibilities.

When I asked Bennett and Carr if they would try to form strategic
partnerships with access and connectivity companies and I could almost
hear Carr smiling through the telephone.  At Boston Technologies, there
are existing relationships with Ameritech, AT&T, AT&T Wireless, Bell
Atlantic,  BellSouth, NTT, Southwestern Bell, TelMex, Time Warner and GMCC
of China.

"Ed and I believe that some of those telephone companies might be
interested," said Carr.

I believe they're right.  Carr said that Prodigy and Boston Technology
will probably announce a more formal alliance that will involve technology
sharing and co-marketing.  The affiliation with Boston Technology could
help Prodigy in the international space, as more than 50% of Boston
Technology's business is currently done outside the United States.  (This
is separate from the recently announced InternationalLink service, a new
Web site which integrates links to various web-based international online
services at < http://www.internationalink.com >.)  Carr advised that the
first international expansion will be in Mexico, where a Spanish language
version of the Prodigy service will be launched.

As some of you know, I recently balked at Bennett's buyout plan.  I even
went as far as saying that Bennett should be fired.   At the time though,
I was working with out all the data.  As it turns out, it would seem that
Bennett submitted a plan a few months after joining Prodigy.  The plan was
approved by the partners ("because it was a good plan," according to
Bennett.)  But a funny thing happened on the way to the fair.  Sears
decided it didn't want to be in the online business anymore and they were
pretty public about wanting to sell the service.   This apparently scared
off IBM and the net result was that the plan never got the funding, or the
chance it needed.  "It was a real conundrum," said Bennett.  Indeed.  That
being the case, I think the "Bennett Maneuver" was appropriate, and he
should be congratulated.

"The buyout is not the silver bullet that's going to solve Prodigy's
problems,'' said Adam Schoenfeld, a vice president at Jupiter
Communications, a market research firm in New York, in a story by Reuters.

"Prodigy is still Prodigy. Ed Bennett is a really smart executive, but he
and his team are not miracle workers...I give them a low chance for
long-term survival,'' Schoenfeld said.

In the online space of America Online and CompuServe, I'd agree with
Schoenfeld.  But Prodigy doesn't have to play on that field and in that
league to be a profitable company.   I believe there is a business in the
"content" space, and that if Prodigy can keep some of their content
superstars on board, that their chances for success are better than what
Schoenfeld predicts.

As an online service that competes with America Online, CompuServe and
others, I think Schoenfeld is on the money. They still have "about a
million" subscribers (which would make them number 4 behind AOL,
CompuServe and MSN), according to Bennett, and he plans to work hard to
keep the loyal following.

"We'll do our best to give the content they deserve, do our best to
communicate about all the new features we'll be undertaking, and make the
necessary improvements to the service," said Bennett.   But I didn't get
the sense from Bennett that there would be a big push to acquire new
subscribers for the online service, and I wouldn't be surprised if
the big push comes in the form of getting folks, regardless of what
service they're on, to come look at Prodigy's content.

If Prodigy is to succeed in the content space, what they're really
counting on is advertising revenue.  Something, which on the web, has not
proved to be a viable business yet.   Bennett expressed that he was very
bullish on the advertising possibilities on the Web, though he admitted
that he didn't necessarily see it getting to be the "huge" business some
have forecasted.  Still, Bennett sees close ties to the cable industry he
came from.

"It took years to get advertisers to believe in the cable audience," said
Bennett.  "The issues that the cable went through, 'is anyone watching?'
'how do you measure them?'," are the same issues which are being asked on
the Web now according to Bennett.  Bennett believes these issues will be
resolved, but thinks the end result will be different than television,
radio or print ads because the Web is an entirely different medium.

Schoenfeld is right to be cynical about Prodigy's chances for success.
But I'm not sure they need a miracle to succeed as a content production
company.  What they need is a lot of good content, and good tools for chat
and messaging on the Internet (Bennett said that in addition to using
existing Internet tools like IRC, they are working on developing software
for chat and messaging.  Maybe they'll license AOL's virtual places??)  If
we take a look at Yahoo, which as of Friday, had a market value of over
$865 million,  I get more optimistic.  Still, Yahoo has something Prodigy
doesn't have -- alliances with players like Softbank and Ziff-Davis.
Yahoo also is already generating gads of traffic.   But relationships with
Grupo Carso and Boston Technologies aren't a bad place to start.
Ultimately what Prodigy needs is a lot of people (I mean a LOT of people)
looking at their Web sites.

Prodigy's highly-touted new Web service dubbed "Stim" is expected to be
launched sometime this week during the E3 conference in Los Angeles.

For now Bennett and crew can breath a sigh of relief and get on with the
business of running their company without the albatross of uncommitted
partners around their neck.  Bennett has spoken of driving a company with
highly motivated employees.  How to motivate?  One way is certainly stock
options, and Bennett continues to say this approach will be used.   Stock
options are good, but an IPO would be even better.  According to printed
reports, Bennett continues to say that an IPO could happen given the right
circumstances.  And what a story that would be, if after some time,
Prodigy has an IPO and it does well.  I don't see it being a mega
Internet/Online company like an AOL or a Netscape, but again, it doesn't
need to be.  Bennett thinks Prodigy can now be a swift moving, nimble
company.  If Bennett can motivate his employees and everyone is having fun
producing content, what sweet icing on the cake a successful IPO would be
for them.  But there is a lot of work in front of them for that to happen.

"I've had about three hours of sleep in the last week, and most of it came
last night," said Bennett.    Bennett knows that this is only the
beginning of the story, so there still may be many sleepless nights in
front of him.

------------------------------

Date:    Sun, 12 May 1996 22:43:26 -0500
From:    Gleason Sackman <[e-mail]>
Subject: INSIDER> Seidman's Online Insider - Part I

From: "Robert D. Seidman" <[e-mail]>
Subject:      Seidman's Online Insider - Part I
To: Multiple recipients of list ONLINE-L
              <[e-mail]>

============================================================================
                         Seidman's Online Insider
============================================================================
      Weekly Summary of  Major Online Services and Internet Events
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Vol. 3 Number 19                                        May 12,  1996
============================================================================

Copyright (C) 1996 Robert Seidman ([e-mail]).  All rights
reserved.   May be reproduced in any medium for non-commercial purposes,
so long as attribution is given.

IN THIS ISSUE
=============
-America Online: Good News/Bad News
 -Earnings announced w/Record Revenues
 -Deal for Japanese AOL Announced
 -New Pricing Announced
 -Stock Slides
-CompuServe Stock Watch
-Here Comes Da Judge
-Stock Watch
-Disclaimer
-Subscription Information.

**Prodigy Buyout Announced  -- Separate E-mail**

News on the Prodigy buyout will be sent in a separate e-mail message.
This is being done so that America Online members will not have to
download the newsletter.  While this is primarily a problem on America
Online, there are several services which seem to have problems when e-mail
exceeds 25Kb.


Part I

America Online: Good News/Bad News
==================================

*Earnings Announced w/Record Revenues

America Online reported net income of $15,127,000, or $0.14 per
share (which beat analysts prediction by a penny), for the quarter ending
3/31/96 after taking into account special charges of about $850,000
relating to the acquisition of Johnson- Grace, Inc., as well as goodwill
amortization  of $1,825,000.  This was versus a loss of $3.3 million or
$0.05/share (which included a $7.6 million charge for acquired research
and development) the previous year.

Revenues rose to $312.3 million, a 185% increase over the same quarter
last year.  Revenues from merchandising, advertising, transactions and
network access were $26.9 million.

Strong first quarter growth due to high sales of personal computers during
the holiday season led to AOL adding 905,000 net subscribers for the
quarter ending 3/31, which according to the AOL press release put them at
"approximately" 5.5 million subscribers at the end of March.

Though this is all good news for AOL, the best news was perhaps this blurb
from the press release:

"In the year since it acquired Advanced Network & Services, Inc. and
started to build its own dial up TCP/IP network, the Company's AOLnet has
grown to more than 100,000 28.8 kbps modems deployed in more than 400
cities throughout the United States.  Just six months ago, AOLnet
comprised fewer than 25,000 modems and in that time traffic on the
Company's network has leaped from about 20 percent to greater than 50
percent."

This is great news for AOL because one of their biggest expenses is what
they pay SprintNet for network access.  Everything they can shift over to
their own network represents significant savings for them.

*Deal for Japanese AOL Announced*

America Online  announced a joint venture with trading giant Mitsui & Co.,
Ltd., and Nihon Keizai Shimbun, Inc., (Nikkei), which publishes arguably
Japan's leading business newspaper.  The joint venture hopes to offer an
interactive consumer online service in Japan with localized, Japanese
language content by the end of this year.

AOL will own 50% of the venture, Mitsui will own 40%, and Nikkei 10%.
Mitsui and Nikkei will contribute more than $56 million (6 billion yen) to
fund the launch of the service.  Additionally, Mitsui has purchased
approximately $28 million (3 billion yen) of convertible preferred stock
in America Online.

AOL's European partnership with Bertelsmann has already kicked off in
several European countries.  AOL continues to take the path of strategic
partnerships in key international markets.

For more information on the Japanese online market, check out the page
from e-media at < http://www.e-media.com/jpn >.  You have to suffer
through the first part of the page which is basically advertising for,
well, e-media!  But, there is good info and links to the various players.

*New Pricing Announced*

Last week you may recall reading these words from AOL CEO, Steve Case:

"We've done a lot of price testing -- of lower and higher monthly fees,
with varying amounts of free time -- and there's a reason why we're still
at $9.95 for 5 hours.    If we thought we could attract more customers
with a different price point, we'd do it," said Case by e-mail.


A few days later, Mr. Case was singing a slightly different tune when the
company announced its "20/20" plan.  The new plan will be available
effective July 1, offering 20 hours of access for $19.95 a month.
Additional hours beyond 20 hours will be billed at $2.95/hour.

"Loyal members who have personalized the service for themselves, shared
AOL with families and recommended AOL to others are a big part of our
success. With the new plan, we are saying 'thank you' to these members and
making it easier and more affordable than ever before for them to share
the magic of AOL with their families," said Case in the press release on
the new plan.

Now the two Case quotes may seem sort of at odds with each other, but not
necessarily.  Besides, you don't get to be a multi-millionaire CEO of a
company with almost a $5 billion market value without being a pretty smart
guy.  Unfortunately (at least for me), part of being smart also means
sometimes being elusive, and Case was pretty slippery when I pressed him
last week.  Case may be right in saying that a new price point won't
attract more customers.  But in the short term, this plan seems more about
keeping existing customers and reducing churn than attracting new
customers.


*Stock Slides*

At one point in the week, the stock got as high as $71/share.  Seemingly
it soared on rumors of the Japanese venture as well as predictions for a
good quarterly report.  The slide seemed to start on worries over the new
pricing plan.  It was later compounded, seemingly, by a Reuters story
which quoted traders quoting Mary Meeker's earnings release analysis.

The Reuters story started like this this:

--
"   Shares of America Online Inc. continued their decline after falling
ten percent Wednesday, and traders said that a Morgan Stanley analyst
cited concerns about a higher "churn" rate of customers.

   Churn rate refers to customers who sign up to subscribe to a service
and then quickly leave and go to another one.

    Mary Meeker, the Morgan Stanley analyst, also said that the company's
earnings were a little stronger than she had expected, but that she
believed the stock should take a breather, traders said. Meeker was not
immediately available."
--

Thanks to Meeker, I actually got my hands on a copy of her earnings
analysis, and while there is nothing incorrect in the Reuters story, it
left out most of what Meeker really had to say.  On the whole, the
analysis from Meeker was nothing but good news for AOL.  Of course, the
title of her analysis was "EPS Strong; Stock May Have Lost Some Mo'", so
it isn't hard to understand why someone might have jumped at the stock
price comments.  Indeed Meeker did say that AOL management did "caution
about spring/summer seasonality and a higher rate of churn than usual in
the month of April."

"This, combined with a big recent run up in stock price (shares hit an all
time high on 5/7/96 at $70 but traded down to $63 post EPS call) could, in
our opinion cause AMER shares to stall for a while," said Meeker in her
report.

"AMER shares have been stoked by loads of good news and positive momentum
over the past 3 years, and while the news is still great, we think it's
gone from super-great to just great.  And we know what that can mean for
momentum stocks...," said Meeker.

Some General Comments...

Meeker's report stated that Morgan Stanley continues to believe AOL will
hit their target of 10 million subscribers by the end of June 1997.  With
AOL saying they're near the 6 million member mark, they need to add a net
of 4 million subscribers in the next 13.5 months to hit 10 million by the
end of June, 1997.  I believe with increased international subscriptions,
they can achieve this goal, but I don't see how they can do it based on US
growth alone.  AOL had excellent growth for the quarter ending 3/31, but
that was helped tremendously by the holiday rush. Even AOL warns about the
seasonal trends.  In the post-holiday quarter, they added 905,000
accounts.  They did not announce 6 million US subscribers by close of
business on 5/10, and if they had, I would have been surprised because
that would mean they are outpacing the 905K growth (about 452,500 net subs
every 45 days).  In order to hit the 10MM target by the end of June, 1997
they'll need to add about 888,888 customers per quarter (roughly
296,300/mo.)  If the quarter ending March 31 represents a stellar quarter,
I think averaging growth of 888K subs/quarter may be a difficult task.
However, if they can grow at the rate of about 100K/quarter or better in
Europe (and later on, Asia), they shouldn't have any trouble making the
10MM target.

As for the price plan, I know many of you are thinking, "What crap!
That's not good enough."   We may be in a world where a lot of us want
everything at one low price-- including unlimited AOL, but that's not
necessarily the real world.  At least not yet.  Though I still suspect
that we'll see some sort of unlimited plan for accessing AOL from other
ISPs, you're not going to see such a plan direct from AOL, which provides
access, too, anytime soon.  In fact, you won't see it until AOL absolutely
has to do this to succeed.  Given the current data, there's nothing to
indicate they have to do this at all right now.   For all the talk about
churn, as long as they're adding subscribers a lot faster than they're
losing them, life is still pretty good for them.   When the day comes that
they near losing subscribers faster than they're picking them up, we might
expect to see a "real" value plan that includes unlimited access.  But you
won't see that as long as new growth is way ahead of churn.

The 20/20 plan is a very smart slow-roll for AOL.  It won't please the
most hard-core of users (though they should be happier than they are
today), but it will please MOST of their heavier users.   It will appeal
to everyone currently using around 20 hours, and will appeal to most of
the folks using more than 20 hours who do NOT want to leave AOL.   Last
week I suggested such a plan may hurt their financial performance, but the
news that more than 50% of subscribers are now accessing from AOLNet (at a
cost to AOL of less than half of what they pay SprintNet, according to
Mary Meeker), can go a long way in offsetting the potential loss of
revenues.   There is also the suggestion that some people will sign up for
the 20/20 plan and not use all 20 hours, and I'm sure this will happen at
least to some extent.

Combined savings gained in the subscriber shift to AOLNet and expanding
revenue from non-core business -- especially advertising, should also help
offset any revenue impact of the new 20/20 plan.

Getting new customers is only part of the game, AOL is now shifting to the
mode of figuring out how to keep them.  Both from a technical side and a
management side they are working to improve the companies infrastructure
and Case maintained in the companies conference call that they will
continue to strive for better customer support.  Additionally, the 3.0
release of AOL software, currently in beta testing, gets around the number
one complaint I hear about AOL -- forced graphics download.



CompuServe Stock Watch
======================

I've received many letters explaining to me why the CompuServe IPO was a
great IPO.  Remind me to write one back to them that says, "HA!"
Seriously, I understand that CompuServe did well because they brought
$33/share (the IPO price) into the company.  Many of the letters I
received suggested, in well reasoned manners, that a soaring stock price
only means anything if there are secondary shares offered.   From where I
sit, that's a pretty huge thing because, H&R Block only spun off about 18%
of the company, and is hoping to sell the remaining 82% over the next
year.  Had the stock soared, at least it would have had a nice place to
fall down to.  But it never got over $35 and at the market close on
Friday, it was down to $25.50, about 23% less than the IPO price.  Now if
it were me, I wouldn't be too thrilled that in the several weeks following
the IPO, the perceived value of my company was down 23% when I still was
trying to sell stock for the remaining 82%.

Here's hoping that CIM 3.0 is coming SOON...

In other CompuServe news, executive VP and chief technical officer Sandy
Trevor resigned from the company to join a family business effective May
3rd.  Trevor, who joined CompuServe in 1971 is credited by CompuServe for
the invention of multi-user chat, formerly known as CompuServe CB.

Sources tell me that along with Trevor goes new technology that has as
much of 5 years worth of work in it.  Replacing this new technology is
allegedly a new project code-named "Red Dog".  I don't know about the
project, but I like the code name a lot!



Here Comes Da Judge...
=======================

...Or the judges, in this case.  The evidence has been collected, the
arguments have been made.  Now it's time for a panel of three judges, U.S.
District judge Stewart Dalzell, Dolores K. Sloviter, chief judge of the
U.S. Third Circuit Court of Appeals, and U.S. District Judge Ronald L.
Buckwalter to decide whether the "communications decency" legislation
passed as a part of sweeping telecommunications reform earlier this year,
is constitutional.  The hearings, which took place over a 5 day span which
began in March and ended last week, clearly left the judges with many
questions regarding the constitutional validity of the "indecency" laws.
A ruling is expected sometime within the next several weeks.

Separately, our friends at the American Family Association (AFA) are now
whining because the FBI refused to investigate allegations that CompuServe
has violated the Communications Decency legislation by posting nude
pictures  on their service.  Recently, the Justice Dept. advised the AFA
that until the case mentioned in the paragraph above is resolved, they had
agreed not to prosecute or investigate based on the new law.  So the
Justice Dept. forwarded it to the FBI, and apparently the FBI smelled this
rotten egg a mile away, threw up their hands and said NO WAY!

It's getting to the point where Patrick Trueman the director of
governmental affairs for AFA is starting to get on my nerves.   I mean, I
am all for families, and I am all for kids being protected from things
that maybe they aren't ready to see.  I'm all for that.   But the weekly
whiny press releases from Trueman are starting to suck.  Still, Trueman
came through with one important bit of information in this week's rant.

"The fact that CompuServe allows parents to block pornography is not
sufficient to block liability under the Communications Decency Act,"
Trueman said.

"Congress anticipated that on-line companies would block out
all pornography that they may provide to their users on their service
unless an adult specifically requests it.  CompuServe has turned the law
on its head, by providing pornography to all its users, including
children, claiming that it should be the parents' responsibility to block
out such material," said the press release.

I must have missed that part of the congressional coverage and it seems to
me that most of congress doesn't have enough familiarity with the services
to have anticipated any such thing.   Now the one interesting nugget from
the release:

"By CompuServe's own figures, far less than 1% of parents have
initiated parental controls (only .128%)," said the press release.

If true, that is a very interesting figure and I'd agree that the online
services need to do a much better job of forcing parents to make a
decision.

But I think Trueman goes to far when he  suggests that the reason that the
parental control usage is so low is "likely because few parents are aware
that their children have unlimited access to pornography on CompuServe."
You would think CompuServe was running the "Sex Shack" or something.  It's
just skin.  No kiddy porn, no sexual acts, no animals.. Just naked people.
Do parents have a right to protect their children from "just naked
people"? Sure they do, and CompuServe gives them a way to do this.  Does
CompuServe (and other services) have an obligation to do a better job of
making parents aware of the content control tools?  Probably, but either
way CompuServe is a far cry from a service with unlimited access to
pornography.

In an unrelated development, CompuServe announced an expanded commitment
to the Platform for Internet Content Selection (PICS) rating platform and
announced that all CompuServe content on the Internet would be PICS
compliant by July 1, 1996.  Additionally, CompuServe announced a corporate
sponsorship of the Recreational Software Advisory Council on the Internet
(RSACi) content-labeling advisory system, a PICS-compliant rating system
that will be used to rate CompuServe's Internet content.
---
TV GUIDE is now Online ALL THE WAY.  They've been teasing us with bits and
pieces of TV Guide at the I-Guide site at < http://www.iguide.com >, but
now the whole thing is there at < http://www.tvguide.com >.  Well, almost.
As of Sunday, the Week beginning 5/12 was not up yet.  I'll cut them some
slack for this week since they have a Teri Hatcher photo on the main
page...



Stock Watch for the Week Ending May 10, 1996
============================================
In its May 13 issue, Barron's reports on a survey from portfolio managers
who ranked Yahoo and Netscape as their least favorite stocks!  According
to Barron's most of the managers were nuetral on the two stocks, but that
among those who weren't nuetral, the bulls outnumbered the bears.  Intel
was the favorite, followed by Motorola.


                                This     %      52      52
                                Week's  Change  Week    Week
Company Name            Ticker  Close   1 Week  High    Low
============            ======  ======  ======  ======  ====

@Net Index              IIX     $263.12   3.8%  $263.12 $185.76
America Online          AMER    $58.13   -7.2%  $71.00  $16.75
Apple Computer          AAPL    $27.25   14.1%  $50.94  $23.00
AT&T                    T       $61.13    2.9%  $68.88  $49.13
BBN Corporation         BBN     $27.00   -2.3%  $48.75  $16.50
CMG Information Svcs.   CMGI    $32.00    7.7%  $50.25  $5.50
CompuServe              CSRV    $25.50   -3.8%  $35.50  $25.00
CyberCash Inc.          CYCH    $39.25   11.3%  $64.50  $24.50
Excite Inc              XCIT    $17.19  -10.7%  $21.25  $13.13
FTP Software            FTPS    $9.25    -6.9%  $40.63  $8.13
H&R Block               HRB     $35.13    0.0%  $48.88  $31.50
IBM                     IBM     $106.38  -1.6%  $128.88 $83.13
Lycos Inc.              LCOS    $17.50    4.5%  $29.25  $14.00
MCI                     MCIC    $29.13    0.4%  $31.13  $19.09
Mecklermedia Corp.      MECK    $16.00    3.2%  $24.38  $8.50
Microsoft               MSFT    $114.88   3.6%  $115.25 $78.88
Netcom                  NETC    $35.63   -6.2%  $91.50  $19.22
NetManage               NETM    $14.38    1.3%  $34.00  $9.38
Netscape Comm. Corp     NSCP    $60.25    6.6%  $87.00  $22.88
News Corp.              NWS     $22.25   -3.8%  $25.13  $18.50
Oracle Corp.            ORCL    $33.88    1.7%  $36.66  $21.25
PSINet Inc.             PSIX    $16.19   -4.8%  $29.00  $6.75
Sears                   S       $51.13    1.8%  $53.25  $26.81
Spyglass Inc.           SPYG    $30.00   -4.8%  $61.00  $13.25
Sun Microsystems        SUNW    $57.00   -0.7%  $59.13  $19.75
UUNET Technologies      UUNT    $61.63   -2.2%  $98.75  $21.75
VocalTec LTD            VOCLF   $11.25    0.0%  $20.75  $8.50
Yahoo                   YHOO    $31.25   -2.3%  $43.00  $24.50

Disclaimer
==========
I began writing this newsletter in September 1994, at the time I
was working for a technology company now owned by MCI.
In March 1995, I began working for International Business Machines
Corporation.  I speak for myself and not for IBM.



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End of NEWSLTR Digest - 10 May 1996 to 12 May 1996
**************************************************