Jeffrey Dearth offered at least an interim answer. Teaming up with a small corporation with the grand name of the Internet Company, Dearth offered the Electronic Newsstand. Like the Pathfinder or _N & O_’s Net edition, the Newsstand was a godsend to browsers. You could wander through sample articles from _Business Week_; _Field & Stream_; _The Economist_; _The New Yorker_; _National Review_; _Maclean’s_, Canada’s largest newsweekly; or The _New Republic_, of which Dearth himself was publisher. The Time Warner experiment notwithstanding, most of the Names were far behind. Dearth offered them the equivalent of a catch-up course or at least some solid remedial instruction. They could test the waters of the Net to see how much interest their articles drew, before deciding whether to set up their own areas there. Via the Newsstand, magazines could accept subscription orders. But order taking was a long way from fancier “interactivity”—to use a pet term of media people—and this was where Time Warner’s Pathfinder area would shine. The area didn’t just recycle magazines on the Net, it also offered powerful tools to find old articles by typing in search words or the names of topics. From the start, the searching capability was among the more popular services. Soon Pathfinder would include hypertext links that let you go from an article on a certain topic to an ongoing discussion. Already Time Warner provided special services such as one for gardeners. They could type in their general wishes about flowers and supply their location and other odds and ends, and then Time would offer tips on what to grow. It also allowed inquirers find out how their congressman or senator had voted on certain key issues. And many more applications like this were on the way. What’s more, people could talk back to Time Warner writers and others by way of an advanced bulletin board system designed for the Web. It was _much_ easier to use than the _N & O_’s. Not everyone liked the Web area. One woman hated the “overstuffed” artwork—others said it gobbled up too much downloading time. She also chided _Time_ for putting out the online version of _Sunset_ magazine “for Northern Californians still living in their ’50s ranch houses.” I myself, however, enjoyed the kitsch and flashy, busy look of the Web area as a whole. That was the way the _real_ magazines came across; this was pop culture, not the _Kenyon Review_.