AOL SURFS INTO TOWN : DAILY NEWS PARTNERSHIP LAUNCHED AS PART OF ROAD SHOW.

Byline: P.J. Huffstutter Daily News Staff Writer

America Online brought its ``On the Move'' tour to downtown Los Angeles on Wednesday, offering thousands of lunchtime visitors a chance to surf the Internet and check out the Daily News' site on AOL.

The event marked the launch of a partnership between the Daily News and AOL, the nation's largest on-line service provider.

The venture, Digital City Los Angeles, forms a local on-line community for 400,000 AOL subscribers throughout the Southland.

The AOL tour, a traveling road show stopping at 30 cities in 30 days, is designed to show off AOL's latest software and to attract new customers. L.A. was the half-way point, and the AOL caravan will spend Friday and Saturday in San Diego.

``We have 6.2 million users so far, but if you consider that only 10 to 12 percent of all Americans are on line, we have a long way to go,'' said David Gang, vice president of product marketing for AOL.

The company's caravan parked at the outdoor plaza at 444 Flower St. Throughout the afternoon, pedestrians stopped by one of the semitrailer trucks filled with computers, or browsed through the dozens or terminals in a nearby tent.

``My son, Jason, had to come to this thing. I had no choice,'' said AOL user Richard Robins of Palos Verdes Estates. ``We both have accounts, but he's the reason why we're spending about $300 a month on AOL. He's always on line, but I don't care. I'd much rather have him on line - reading and writing and typing - than staring blankly at TV reruns.''

Samuel Johnson, a software programmer who works downtown, spent a few minutes cruising Digital City L.A.

With a click of the mouse, he pulled up pictures of the Manhattan Beach coastline and browsed the surf report.

``This isn't really my kind of thing, but I could see how people would like it,'' Johnson said. ``If you're new to the whole on-line thing, I guess AOL is an easy way to start out.''

The city site is accessible via the AOL key word: Los Angeles. The Daily News' front page is found at the AOL keyword: Daily News.

An electronic extension of the newspaper, the site is a place for people to gather information about their neighborhoods and communities, and to interact with one another through on-line debates, ideas exchanges and events.

Though people must now subscribe to AOL to get into Digital City Los Angeles, the company has plans to make the information accessible through the World Wide Web.

Many AOL staffers spent Wednesday extolling the virtues of the service's updated software, version 3.0. Two of the new additions:

``Buddy lists,'' a window that pops up when the person signs on and tells whether any of the user's friends are also on-line.

Hyperlinks in e-mail, which allow a user to jump directly from their mail to a specific page on the Web or a particular spot in an AOL forum.

``I think people will like the look and feel of the new software,'' Gang said. ``We're trying to make things easier to use and more intuitive.''

In another AOL development Wednesday, the company began blocking all incoming messages from five Internet sites it said were clogging its members' electronic mailboxes.

David Phillips, associate general counsel, said the sites - three of which are associated with Cyber Promotions Inc. of Philadelphia - send as many as 700,000 unsolicited commercial messages each day.

``We are worried that the quality of the user experience is deteriorating as a result of these junk e-mailings,'' Phillips said.

Sanford Wallace, president of Cyber Promotions, accused America Online Wednesday of censorship and hypocrisy, citing America Online's practice of sending unsolicited commercial pitches to its own subscribers.

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Photo: (Color) Area residents check out the promotional gif ts Wednesday at the America Online road show in downtown Los Angeles.

Gus Ruelas/Daily News