Web magazine goes down. Africa goes up.

I Find Karma (adam@cs.caltech.edu)
Wed, 29 May 96 18:53:25 PDT


Fwdd from Educom.

WEB MAGAZINE SUSPENDS PUBLICATION
The Web Review < http://www.webreview.com >, an online magazine targeted at
Web professionals such as site builders and administrators, has stopped
publication because advertising revenues are not covering costs. The
publisher indicated, however, that the publication would return in June if
5,000 readers would pay $19.95 for a six-month subscription, or $3.33 a
month, and pleaded: "Remember: You are voting on the future of the Web and
what you will find there. Web Review is not alone in having these
problems." (New York Times 28 May 96 C2)

AFRICA, TECHNOLOGY, AND GROWTH
Sub-Saharan Africa remains the least-connected place on earth, with almost
nothing in the way of phone lines, personal computers and Internet
connections. There is an average of one phone line for every 217 people,
and 72 percent of the population lives in rural areas where, in some
places like Chad, that statistic becomes one phone for every 800 people.
Computers are almost nonexistent. A program director at the National
Research Council says: ''You find in Africa a total lack of computer
culture. There are no spare parts. There are no magazines. There's no PC
World you can subscribe to.'' And Larry Irving, head of the National
Telecommunications and Information Administration says: ''It's the same thing
as not having a port in the 1600s, or a railroad in the 1900s. So if your
economy isn't developing now, and you don't have access to the basic
infrastructure of the information highway, you won't grow.'' (San Jose
Mercury News Mercury Center 27 May 96)