From: newaccounts@wired.com
Date: Tue, 13 Dec 94 22:31:45 PST
To: cypherpunks@toad.com
Subject: Welcome to HotWired!
Message-ID: <199412140636.BAA14207@bb.hks.net>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain


-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----

Welcome to HotWired!
++++++++++++++++++++
The  verification number for "cypherpunks" is: 96472

You may also use the following URL to verify yourself, using
cut and paste if you can:

http://hard.wired.com/cgi-bin/users/ver?number=96472

Note: This is your *verification* number, *not* your HotWired
password.  Your HotWired password is the password you gave us when you
created your account, and has not changed (and won't change unless you
change it).  Please type (or copy and paste) this number into the
verification form. To reach the verification form, connect to
HotWired, click Yes to signify that you are a member, and click on the
region of the image map that reads, "You should verify NOW." (You
really should.) You can also reach this directly as

http://www.hotwired.com/Login/verify.html  

You will then be able to take advantage of the full range of HotWired
services.

Thanks!

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

HotWired FAQ

    What Is HotWired?
    HotWired is new thinking for a new medium. We call it a
    cyberstation, a suite of vertical content streams about the
    Digital Revolution and the Second Renaissance with an
    integrated community space. While HotWired is currently
    bound by technological limitations that restrict bandwidth, it
    represents the genetic blueprint that will evolve into the
    overarching media environment of the next century. 

    At the core of HotWired's editorial is point of view. We are
    not in the content business, we are in the context business.
    People today don't have the time or inclination to make sense
    of the data flood. HotWired is Wired's answer to the need for
    professionalism in a new medium that has been filled until
    now with something that resembles public access television
    programming. 

    HotWired is live, twitching, the real-time nervous system of
    the planet. 

    What Does HotWired Look Like?
    HotWired is a stunning reinterpretation of the World Wide
    Web. Developed by Creative Director Barbara Kuhr of the
    award-winning design firm Plunkett + Kuhr, HotWired's
    look is clean and bright, filled with playful logos by Dutch
    designer Max Kisman and bursting with world-beat colors. 

    HotWired can be accessed on the Internet via the World Wide
    Web and a client application such as Mosaic or NetScape (though
    be warned, NCSA Mosaic for Windows has a bug which makes it 
    unusable). 

    How Is HotWired Different? 
    HotWired doesn't look like any online service out there - it
    zigs where all the others zag. (HotWired's unofficial design
    watchword was "war on bevelled edges.") Its content and
    perspective are as innovative as those of its mothership, Wired
    magazine, while at the same time being utterly different. Its
    community space is technologically unrivalled - the first
    graphical conferencing system for the World Wide Web. 

    Isn't Advertising Anathema on the Net? 
    The Net community does indeed react negatively to invasive
    advertising - the kind of spamming conducted recently by the
    Arizona lawyers Canter and Siegel, which elicited a massive
    rejection by the Net's immune system. The advertising on
    HotWired is the opposite of invasive. 

    Each advertiser is accessible only through a single discreet
    banner at the head of a content section. Most advertising is 90
    percent persuasion and 10 percent information; advertising on
    HotWired reverses this ratio. And the privacy of members is
    guaranteed by HotWired's unqualified commitment to never
    divulge a member's personal information to advertisers. 

    Why HotWired, Why Now?
    Because while Big Media and the telecom behemoths have
    been busy forming "strategic alliances" to build the
    "information superhighway" and sending out press releases
    about the tests they're launching any day now, thousands of
    companies and millions of people have quietly built a new
    interactive medium called the Internet. 

    This medium is not magazines with buttons, any more than
    television was radio with pictures. It's a new medium with a
    new aesthetic, a new commercial dynamic. 

    Many media companies shovel their leftovers into the online
    world and call it content. HotWired is not one of them. 

    Where Wired is a clear signpost to the next level, HotWired is
    operating from that next level. HotWired is a constantly
    evolving experiment in virtual community. It's Way New
    Journalism. It's Rational Geographic. 

    Today is like 1948; a new medium has reached critical mass.
    We're trying to help define the future of that medium before
    it ends up like television. 

    So if you're looking for the soul of our new medium in wild
    metamorphosis, our advice is simple. Get HotWired. 

    What Does HotWired Cost? 
    HotWired is free to members. HotWired's revenue model is
    similar to broadcast media - content supported by sponsors.
    HotWired's sponsors are some of the bluest chip advertisers in
    America, including IBM, AT&T, Volvo, Sprint, MCI, Zima
    (Coors), Internet Shopping Network (Home Shopping
    Network), Club Med, etc. 

    What Hotwired Is Not
    HotWired is not Wired magazine with another name (Wired
    works perfectly well in print, thank you). It's not a so-called
    online magazine (print content reduced to ASCII and shoveled
    into another medium, narrowband interactive). It's not
    video-on-demand (a pie-in-the-sky marketing concept
    created by out-of-touch old-media executives to justify their
    headlong rush into a new medium they don't understand,
    broadband interactive). It's not an online service like Prodigy
    or AOL (now rendered obsolete by the explosion of interest in
    the Internet and the development of the Web and graphical
    browsers). 

    And like Wired before it, HotWired is not a cold, marketing
    concept, but the heartfelt expression of the passion of its
    creators. 

- ---
[This message has been signed by an auto-signing service.  A valid signature
means only that it has been received at the address corresponding to the
signature and forwarded.]

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: 2.6.2
Comment: Gratis auto-signing service

iQBFAwUBLu6SbCoZzwIn1bdtAQHuEwGA3eIONz/osE9684/lB2U8qXM+e2NxJhYw
nQCC0yOux4zkXVvIfGMnlmP4SaTIQvNy
=n77t
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----