DIGITAL L.A. : WEB EXPERTS SAY PUNCHY, ATTRACTIVE PAGES WIN THE RACE.

Byline: David Bloom 

With millions of new pages added every year to the World Wide Web, there's plenty of cyberwriting going on these days. The problem is, a lot of it is bad.

Enter Sun Microsystems' Distinguished Engineer Jakob Nielsen, who outlined his Internet research at the Computer-Human Interface '98 conference, where 2,500 researchers from 39 countries gathered in Los Angeles recently to talk about how to make technology easier to use.

Nielsen's team created two Web sites, one with two lengthy scrolling pages; the other with the same basic information spread over seven short, linked pages.

The seven-page site was studded with such information-organizing devices as summaries, numbered lists, highlighted keywords, subheadings and more links to other sites.

As a result, even though the seven-page site had barely half as many words as the long, two-page site, readers not only liked it more, they rated it as more complete, Nielsen said. And because it used author bylines and less hyped language, they trusted the information more.

``What matters is how much information is penetrating the skull of the user,'' Nielsen said. ``The basic thing is to recognize this is a new medium. When you go to a new medium, you have new rules. It's not a surprise, but people aren't doing it.''

The shorter, punchier style is more appropriate to the Net, where readers subconsciously feel pressure to keep looking among the millions of pages of other information just a few mouse clicks away, Nielsen said.

Sun offers the basics on improving Web sites at www.useit.com/alertbox/9710a.html and details about the original research at www.useit.com/papers/webwriting/.

Internet TV 

There were lights and limos, piles of food and people, valets and starlets, just about everything in fact, that you'd want from a premiere.

But this was no ordinary Hollywood kickoff - and not just because it was held at a mammoth mansion in Encino. The show being unveiled was ``Chad's World,'' an Internet-based video soap opera about the travails of a teen boy coming to grips with being homosexual.

When it comes to writing and acting, ``Ellen'' this isn't. But the program does represent an important early step in the long-expected convergence between broadcast television and the Internet.

For one thing, the show is counting on the possibilities of narrowcasting, that is, appealing to a very narrow niche that has been underserved by broadcasting and other general-interest media.

The show's focus on gay teens is one of seven niche programs being produced by Digital Entertainment Network for a full schedule of Net programming in the fall, though the first six episodes of ``Chad's World'' will be available June 1, said DEN co-founder Mark Collins-Rector.

The company also cut a novel deal with the Screen Actors Guild, which is trying to figure out how to value actors work on the Net.

Allen Weingartner, who is SAG's senior administrator for industrial and interactive contracts, said the union purposely cut DEN a good deal because it was the first to actually get an original television show onto the Internet.

``The chances of making money as the first out of the blocks are slim,'' Weingartner said. ``The deal is for one year. If it works, then we'll probably go back and renegotiate it. We're trying to work with them and not undercut our (other) contracts.''

There is some skepticism about whether the show is viable. Not only is DEN targeting a narrow slice of the populace, its main delivery mode will require avid viewers to download massive 150-megabyte files, which will take around four hours.

By doing that, however, the viewer will see broadcast-quality, full-screen video, complete with commercial breaks, whenever and however often they want.

For those who can't deal with such marathon downloads, Collins-Rector said DEN also will offer versions of the show in streaming video, which sharply limits the video quality and screen size, as well as VHS video, DVD and CD-ROM versions.