What is push technology?
It's probably easiest to define push technology by first talking about the most common form of Internet pull technology: the Web browser. When you use a Web browser for accessing information on the Internet, you need to explicitly navigate to the Web site containing the information you want and then select the page that contains it. In effect, you're pulling the information you want from the Internet. For example, if you want to find out the latest news about your enterprise, you'll likely need to fire up a Web browser, navigate to your enterprise's Web site, and select its news page in order to see this information.

Push technology takes a very different approach to disseminating information. It asks: if you want to check on enterprise news every day, why should you have to manually pull it from the Internet? Why couldn't you just indicate an interest in subscribing to the information and have it automatically sent, or pushed, onto your computer, Palm handheld, or cell phone?

What is an example of Internet push technology?
The Internet push technology that most Palm handheld owners are probably familiar with is AvantGo (at http://www.avantgo.com). It's a classic push service: you subscribe to channels of information in which you're interested, and whenever you synchronize with the AvantGo service, these channels are automatically pushed onto your Palm handheld. What could be easier for obtaining information you regularly want to see? More information on AvantGo can be obtained in my article, "Be enterprising, use AvantGo for offline browsing" in the June 2001 issue of PalmPower's Enterprise Edition at http://www.palmpowerenterprise.com/issues/issue200106/internet0601001.html.

What are mailing lists?
The mailing list is a push technology that has been around since before the Internet even existed. It's built on top of existing email technology and provides a way of distributing information to groups of interested people. In spite of the old age of this technology, it's just as useful today as it was over 20 years ago.

The plain text email used by the mailing lists is arguably the most powerful publishing tool of the last few decades. That's because whether a single person creates it or a media conglomerate produces it, the results look the same. This puts the emphasis back on the content itself, rather than the style in which it's presented.