New media's Holy Grail in 1996 was "push technology." The death of the browser was imminent, and in its place would come a glorious world of information du jour delivered to your medium of choice. No more click and drag, just lean back and open the information floodgates.

The push era was ushered in by PointCast, a screensaver that also delivered news and advertising and which somehow managed to be even less useful than the World Wide Web. Lack of bandwidth was partly to blame, but ultimately push technology failed to supply content compelling enough to pull users away from their spreadsheets (yes, it's _that_ bad).

Soon pundits were lambasting push; instead of being the Web's divine light, it became the demon-tool of zealous advertisers who used the technology to "spush" unwanted commercials at the underwhelmed populace. Then in October PointCast deposed its founder in favor of a new, more experienced CEO who could navigate the company's perilous public stock offering.

Of course, push hasn't failed for everyone -- Microsoft's new browser uses the technology so well that the Justice Department took them to court for it.

 1. Push
 2. Windows CE
 3. 56K
 4. Cable Modem
 5. Web-TV
 6. Net Magazines
 7. Apple's Demise
 8. Mac Clones
 9. E-Cash
10. Comdex '96

 1. Dynamic HTML
 2. New Domains
 3. Metered Bandwidth
 4. Web-TV
 5. Rich Ads
 6. The Big Chill
 7. Middlemen
 8. Digital Detente
 9. Cybercommerce
10. Web standards