Comment - Surf's Up: A Bankers' Guide To Riding the Internet Wave

Surfing the Net - searching the Internet for information on just about any topic imaginable - has won wide popularity among providers of financial products and services.

Hundreds of financial companies are hooked into the international network of computer networks, along with educational institutions, government offices, commercial ventures, nonprofit groups, and individuals.

Created in the early 1970s by the United States Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, the Internet now lets millions of people share information through inexpensive personal computers and local telephone calls.

Without much technical background, bankers and their customers can obtain free computer programs, participate in discussion groups on all categories of topics, review on-line literature, and inspect all types of graphical images.

Banks are using the Net to provide customers and potential customers with information about their services. Customers are using it to access their own confidential account records and conduct business directly with banks.

The most widely used application is electronic mail - E-mail - by which anyone connected to the Internet can cheaply transmit messages or documents to individuals or groups around the world.

Access to the Internet is provided by many companies at various prices. The most popular seem to be America Online, Compuserve, Delphi, Genie, and Prodigy. The cost is generally between $10 and $20 per month.

Many banks are preparing their own customized access. Customers would first view information about and have access to services of the bank, and then would have a window to connect to the whole Internet.

Whether or not they provide the access medium, many companies, including financial service providers, are establishing "home pages," which allow a person to view information about the companies once access to the Internet is established.

To surf the Internet, the user needs a "browser" software program. The first browser widely used in the Windows environment was Mosaic. The most popular recently is Netscape Navigator; when the vendor's stock started trading publicly, the share price doubled the first day.

The browser connects the user to an interface with the Internet. The easiest and most popular are graphical interfaces that function as front ends to the World Wide Web. (Graphical interfaces have become more popular than text-based interfaces such as Gopher.)

Users connected to the interface can use various searching tools (search engines) to find the sites to read. Some of the most popular search engines are Yahoo, Lycos, WAIS, WWW Worm, WebCrawler, Veronica, EINET and CUSI.

A multitude of topics, specific financial institutions, and individuals can be found by searching certain words or word combinations.

Transmitting information through the Internet is much quicker and less expensive then using the telephone or sending a facsimile transmission. In addition, voice transmission is possible with the right software. The cost is the same whether the transmission is going across town or halfway across the world.

A search on the Internet usually leads to a home page - a document about a particular business, organization, or individual. The home page can provide text as well as audio and video presentations.

The names of home pages and other sites on the Web are referred to as universal resource locators (URLs) and are seen as a combination of lowercase letters and punctuation (such as "http://www.bdbc.com" for our law firm).

Some of the search engines use the specific URL to find the home pages or other information desired.

Some of the most popular URLs on the Internet are:

*http://www.whitehouse.gov - the White House.

*http://www.city.net - City Net, which leads to information on about 1,000 cities.

*http://espnet.sportszone.come/ - ESPNet, which has sports information.

*http:ford/ford/home.netscape.come/home/whats-cool.html - What's Cool.

*http://www.law.vill.edu/fed-agency/fedwebloc.html - federal agencies .

However, there are many more resources that may be of interest to bankers. Some are listed to the right.

I hope you enjoy surfing the Net. Don't stay up too late!

Mr. Eisen is a partner in the Nashville law office of Banker, Donelson, Beaman & Caldwell.

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