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How often do you pick up your groceries? Some shoppers load up their carts with enough supplies to stockpile an underground bunker. Others make multiple trips to the store, picking up just enough for one day. Of course, there will be times when your usual store doesn't carry what you're looking for and you'll be forced to travel halfway across town in search of that exotic carambola.

This is a time-consuming chore that most of us could do without. Then along comes an enterprising problem-solver offering to do all the legwork for you. With a simple phone call and a grocery list, all of your supplies will be delivered straight to your door — and you won't even have to leave your house or change out of your pajamas.

With such convenience there's no way something like this can fail, right? So why am I still hoofing it to the grocery store every week?

What is Push?

Push technology is the process of automating the searching and delivery of content to a user's PC. Unlike traditional hunt-and-gather methods — using search engines like Google or AltaVista to actively seek out information on the Internet or an intranet — push is relatively passive, requiring little human interaction.

Users subscribe to content "channels" that correspond to various topics or categories such as current events, financial information, industry specific news, sports and entertainment, and updated stock quotes. The type of information and the frequency of delivery can be configured to suit an individual user's preference.

Push servers are designed to broadcast a user's chosen content and have it displayed on their PC. Although the methods of delivery may vary depending on the product or service, the most common come in the form of:

• a scrolling news ticker
• a pop-up window
• an interactive screen saver

Content that's pushed onto a client PC is usually brief and contains little more than a summarized blurb with links to the full articles.

Although software in this class is collectively referred to as "push," the term may be a bit of a misnomer. In certain cases, depending on the particular software or service, content is actually pulled down from the server by the client PC. But regardless of whether content is pushed or pulled, the difference is negligible in the eyes of the end user since it's all transparent to them.

What Was Supposed to Happen

In order to maintain a competitive edge in today's market, vital business decisions need to be based on the most current information. And this information must be delivered to those who need it as soon as it becomes available.

Unfortunately, with traditional hunt-and-gather techniques, employees may end up a few steps behind because they either don't have the time during the day to actively search for current news or it just doesn't occur to them that they should do so — and when they do, do they know where to look?

Gartner Group estimates that 20 percent (about eight hours per week) of a knowledge worker's time is spent performing manual content management tasks, and searching for information is certainly one of them. This is a considerable amount of time that could otherwise be better spent putting the information to use.

The advent of push technology sought to change all that by closing the gap between the time information is made available and the time a user retrieves it. As a result, information is delivered to key decision-makers in real-time, eliminating the need for active searches and reducing the amount of time wasted in manually digging for information.

And the content delivered to a user's workstation doesn't have to be limited to external information either. Third party push services can be combined with information on a company's intranet as well.

Push software packages such as Netpresenter and AtHoc (which will be discussed further in a future article) can be installed internally, within the corporate firewall, and allow content owners to create custom intranet channels with company specific information that's unavailable to the general public. They are also often used as a real-time internal communications tool, alerting employees of new policies or upcoming corporate events.

Push technology promised to revolutionize the way we gathered content and was to render the traditional Web search engine obsolete — so why hasn't it?

What Did Happen

Push was one of those technologies that never quite lived up to its hype; a classic example of theory versus practice, where the realities of the latter KO'd the ambitions of the former.

At the height of push technology's popularity, the bandwagon was being loaded up and Web browsers started incorporating push clients directly into their software; Microsoft integrated its Active Desktop with Windows and Internet Explorer, and Netscape bundled Netcaster into its Communicator suite.

While all this was happening, the emergence of broadband connections and better search engines made push less-and-less relevant. Among the half-dozen push products I implemented and tested on a control group of several hundred corporate clients back in the late 90s, none of these packages exist today.

The reasons push was never accepted as a primary information gathering tool are numerous. But the main issues stem from:

• Network payload
• Overly intrusive
• Information overload