Net News, August/September 1996

"Information wants to be free": so states a famous maxim of information theory, in an assertion that the human instinct to interact and share knowledge is a more powerful force than law or the marketplace. But when free information is found on commercial Web sites, altruism usually defers to marketing savvy. One often finds a convergence of information vendors at a given Web site, offering free data as a loss leader and enticement to paid services.

Take InvestorsEdge. Created by California's Ethos Corporation, this site boasts more corporate logos than most race cars. Distinctions between contributors and advertisers are hazy here: the copyright notice lists Ethos, Nelson Publications, Data Broadcasting Corporation, and IPO OnLine as content providers. But DBC is also a charter advertiser, along with Microsoft and Hewlett-Packard; Nelson's company research summaries are limited to the site's paid premium service; the site's monthly summary of expected offerings plugs IPO Online's imminent subscription service.

The list of logos hardly stops there. NetStock Direct's name hyperlinks to enrollment forms for direct stock purchase from issuing companies, as does Silicon Valley Business' logo to the Silicon Valley 30 Index; the National Council of Individual Investors co-sponsors a Online Discount Brokerage Survey; even the San Francisco Chronicle sponsors its own Chronicle 100 index for Bay Area stocks.

At times, this networking marvel creates confusion. In the At-A-Glance corporate summaries, Standard & Poor's 52-week price charts sit side-by-side with similar Stockmaster charts. A special section of At-A-Glance, entitled Corporate Client Profiles, alphabetically acknowledges 47 companies as having "chosen the Internet as the best way to disseminate their investor relations information," though their relationship to the site remains unclear. But such strategic alliances are common on the Web today, and will likely continue as specialized firms address consumer demand for "full-service."

Two Web sites, one of which links to InvestorsEdge, offer a bounty of information for the risk manager, though the Risk and Insurance Management Society (RIMS), and RMIS-Web, The Internet Resource for Risk Management Information Systems, approach their field from very different angles.

The RIMS site, maintained by Information Inc. in Maryland, serves as free front-end for the society's proprietary, subscriber-based RIMSNET service. Some sections, such as Today's Risk Management News Headlines, offer more than background information, but RIMSNET - available here as an abbreviated, Web-based version of a larger dial-up service - provides the majority of timely resources.

Many sections of the paid service, from Insurance Stocks Daily (linked to InvestorsEdge At-A-Glance summaries) to Today's Legislative Briefing, are updated each weekday morning. The Daily News and Risk Management Database archives abstracts from over 400 periodicals, though other database resources, such as a public records search, are charged on a per-search basis and require a non-graphical Telnet connection.

The RMIS-Web site also includes some archived articles, but primarily acts as a Web host to several risk management firms. In fact, the articles posted on the site, along with the Columns by RMIS Industry Experts, are written by employees of RMIS clients - Claims and Business Insurance magazines, in particular. RMIS-Web recently began providing content for RiskINFO, another risk-related site created by the publishers of Practical Risk Management.

On the exchange front, London Metal Exchange and SIMEX both recently unveiled new Web sites. The LME site benefits from a beautiful design by Oyster Systems and Silicon Graphics, based on the exchange's "tradition of the ring." Along with the usual contract specifications, visitors can access detailed lists of delivery points, or download archived data in ASCII format for import into spreadsheets.

The SIMEX site's greatest strength lies in its Web host, AsiaOne: established by the Singapore Press Holdings, it also plays host to the Business Times, which in turn provides live SIMEX contract prices via a hyperlink from SIMEX's list of price vendor access codes. While informative, the site could stand to be refined: a long section on financial safeguards reads like a series of consecutive chapters, but does not provide a link from one section to the next.

Stop! Hammer time: the Options Industry Council, and their proverbial Options Tool, now have their own Web site. Previously presented through the Options Institute section of the CBOE's site, the OIC's new site is maintained by Investment News Online - who will soon host the Options Clearing Corporation as well. Worth a visit for its Resource Center alone, this page presents on-line versions of the council's brochures, and even references key sections of them with a hypertext Options Glossary.

Sean G. Thomas, Sean Thomas, Sean Garrett Thomas