Bored with the Web? Try STIM; STIM launches May 16 at E3 in Los Angeles; New cyberculture webzine lives and breathes entirely on the Internet; Monthly zine available to anyone with a Web browser; Cool writings......keen fashion......battery licking!

LOS ANGELES--(BUSINESS WIRE)--May 16, 1996--Prodigy today announced the launch of STIM, the new cyberculture webzine available at http://www.stim.com to anyone with a Web browser and a yen for unusual fun.

STIM is a monthly online guide to pop culture, web culture, and the aforementioned unusual fun, focusing on technology as it relates to pleasure not business. What follows is a quick (yet useful) guide to the world of STIM.

WHAT STIM IS AND IS NOT

- STIM is a webzine and virtual community dedicated to deviant pop culture, broadly defined; this includes literature, reportage, commentary, fashion, video games, freaks, trends, and more.

- STIM was created by a crack team of new-media pioneers, including: executive editor Steve Raymond, formerly of MTV Online; editor-in-chief Mikki Halpin, producer of "A Hard Day's Night" and "Freak Show" CD-ROMs, a former editor of Ben is Dead magazine; senior technology director Will Kreth, a founder of Hotwired; and art director Georgia Rucker, formerly of Mondo 2000 and designer of the books The Happy Mutant Handbook and NetChick.

- The STIM team has pulled in contributors from all ranges of culture, from well-known authors Gareth Branwyn and Richard Kadrey, to such zine pioneers as Paul Lukas of Beer Frame and John Marr of Murder Can Be Fun. With a mission to create content with an edge, STIM is a zine that is not reactive but proactive, acting as a primary source by creating its own events, topics, and original content.

- STIM utilizes a mix of happy tricks - beefy editorial content, cool graphics, original animation, swanky sounds - to deliver a webzine guaranteed to remain fresh even after multiple visits. Such departments as Verbal (the written word), Trender (pop culture), Eyebot (graphics and animation), Automedia (broadcast delights), Phenom (exploring the unexplained), Sparky (electronic goodies), Regulars (columns, items, inflammatory rhetoric), and Features ("long and silky stories") converge to bring the reader a jam-packed issue each month.

- The first issue of STIM (active May 16) contains features on casting agents for freaks (one armed jugglers!), the underground market for natural-disaster videos, and the practice of battery licking - plus a gallery of "found photos," office-supply artwork, and an interview with writer William T. Vollman.

OTHER GOOD THINGS ABOUT STIM:

- For those who like their information dosed with interactivity, STIM has the Elektrik Frends Knetwurk. Sponsored by Quarterdeck(TM), creators of Global Chat and Global Stage Internet Relay Chat (IRC), the leading Internet chat software, the Elektrik Frends Knetwurk is an area where users may chat with celebrities, post to message boards. STIM also has a version of Time Warner's graphical chat application, Palace, enabling STIM readers to create animated "avatars" for themselves; Palace was customized for STIM by renowned graphical artist Kaz. For a chat experience even more animated than Palace, there's also a CU See-Me area, where users with video capabilities can engage in face-to-face conversation over the Internet.

- In addition to the chat applications, STIM features a number of Web-based technologies that make it more than a 2-dimensional magazine. Using such applications as Shockwave, RealAudio and VTV(TM), STIM boasts virtually more technology than any other zine currently on the Web. Rather than assume the user has all all these tools at his/her disposal, STIM offers links to helper apps and plug-ins, via the Strap-Ons section.

- STIM readers can also partake of a variety of exclusive features designed to enhance the STIM experience. Autosurf allows the user to see a randomly generated list of images and travel through the site in a non-linear, chaotic path. The Hose is a mischievous application that "sprays" the user's screen with random tidbits of information. The Fax Bomb allows users to send faxes to STIM headquarters, where they will be reviewed and put up on the Web for the STIM community to see.

- The world of STIM is populated by a cast of animated characters called the STIMples, created by artist extraordinaire Steve Speer. The STIMples are present throughout STIM in a number of variations, including the STIMples Singers, who (literally) sing the "bad news of the day" - the top negative news headlines - to the STIM reader. The STIMples saga, a comic-noir narrative, is presented in the groundbreaking VTV technology. Created by Warp Technology Ltd., VTV warps its images into a fully navigable virtual reality "bubble," with the user in the middle. STIM's STIMples saga marks the first use of VTV(TM) in a serialized graphic storytelling application on the World Wide Web.

STIM IS A PUBLISHING MODEL

- STIM will follow a true publishing model - complete with a full staff of writers, editors, and artists - with a new issue appearing on the 15th of every month. Like any consumer magazine, STIM will sell advertising space. However, all ads will be incorporated, interactively, into the look and feel of the zine, using STIM's unique graphical personality to keep the ads consistent with the rest of the site.

LIP SERVICE FOR STIM:

Said Louise Cooper, producer, STIM: "STIM is the realization of all those hollow promises made by zines on the Internet. People have learned not to expect much in the way of actual content or dependability from a webzine. STIM defies all expectation in that one actually is getting a new, jam-packed webzine every month -- more than that, it's a community in which you can interact fully with the features, with the personalities, and with the other readers."

Josh Grotstein, senior vice president, Prodigy Content, said, "STIM aptly shows where Prodigy is moving for 1996 and beyond. We could not have created STIM and then forced it to live solely within one online service. Prodigy feels a webzine such as STIM must have room to breath and grow, as well as to reach, astonish and perplex as many people as technologically possible. Prodigy has already led the way in online services creating content for the Web; STIM is the next logical progression."

With more than two million members, Prodigy offers hundreds of areas, including news; Learning Adventures(TM) for kids; The Night People(TM), a late-night chat show and Internet Web site; WiseAcres(TM), a comedy Internet Web site and show; and Chat Soup(TM), the premier Web site for celebrity chats on all online services. Prodigy members can create their own Internet e-mail addresses, personal Web pages, and hot lists with the Prodigy Web browser.

NOTE TO EDITORS: Prodigy press releases are available via the Internet. To subscribe to the listserv, send a message to [e-mail] with no subject line, and the message: JOIN press-release (your e-mail address) (leave out the parenthesis).

CONTACT: Prodigy

Matt Debenham, 914/448-7551

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