AOL Rolls Out 5.0
AOL gears up for the future. I'm Fred Fishkin with Bootcamp, a report on computers and technology. Only a small percentage of people on the Internet at home today have high speed connections, either through cable modems or what is called DSL. But that will be changing. And soon. With it's brand new release of version 5.0, America Online plans to take advantage of that bigger pipeline, not just to make connections faster. AOL Senior VP Jonathan Sacks...
"What happens when we identify that you're coming to us over broadband is that we add something called a multimedia tower. And that tower is a device that allows us to give you additional programming."
For instance, movie trailers when you look up movie times. There are lots of other new features too in AOL 5.0...
"Number one, sixteen character screen names. We used to have only ten character screen names and some people were ending up with names like John47148. This enables people to put in their whole name. They'll find personalization features right on the front screen in a place called My Places. "
What else is new? Instead of 5 screen names per household, you can have seven. And 5.0 adds an online calendar feature that lets you store important dates and will add events automatically. The schedule of your favorite sports team for instance.