In 1996, Kara Swisher, then a reporter at The Washington Post, was granted unprecedented access to one of the hottest and most closely watched companies in the world, America Online, Inc. In aol.com, Swisher has written a book that captures the secrets of how AOL beat the competition and became the world's biggest online company. Swisher also reveals the company's behind-the-scenes dealings with Microsoft cofounders Bill Gates and Paul Allen, CompuServe, Prodigy, Netscape, and the Christian Right. Throughout its existence, AOL has repeatedly been written off by the media and the high-tech world. Bill Gates threatened to buy it or bury it. Deep-pocketed competitors such as CompuServe and Prodigy thought little of their smaller rival. And AOL made matters worse by committing a series of public-relations and technical blunders that became front page news and enraged its subscribers. But the company--a "cyber-cockroach"--refused to die. Now, with over eleven million subscribers, AOL is the undisputed leader in the online world, vitally positioned at the nexus of big business, high tech, advertising, and new media. In telling the story of AOL, Swisher also conveys the fascinating history of the online business, which has its origins in the dreams of an eccentric and little-known entrepreneur named Bill Von Meister, whose grand ideas and big spending spawned the fledgling company that would become AOL. But it fell to a young marketing executive named Steve Case to build AOL while fending off an onslaught of wealthier competitors and suitors. Ultimately, as Swisher vividly illustrates, AOL gained supremacy because Case possessed the best vision for his company, establishing AOL as avibrant virtual community rather than an online shopping center or business tool. Included in that community is an array of enthusiasts, activists, and deviants who at times clash in battles over freedom of expression and family values, a flash point best illustrated here by AOL's fight against the Communications Decency Act. Re-creating all of the major moments in AOL's frenzied history, aol.com is a fascinating and important inside story about the birth of a new medium, the enterprising innovators who are leading it, and the way it is changing our culture.

"Learn the basic features, services, and functions of America Online 4.0, including how to use, navigate, and explore the Internet from America Online. Bob Temple teaches each lesson in a humorous and easy-to-understand manner that makes learning fast and fun. Each chapter discusses tools needed to explore America Online's feature-rich service. After 24 hours you will be sending email, tooling around the Internet and World Wide Web, chatting with cyberfriends, or even creating your own Web page."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved

America Online For Dummies is recognized as the best-selling beginning reference on the market on AOL. This edition, updated for the latest AOL features, contains all the great info on using AOL that is the hallmark of the book, including guidance for getting on the service, navigating AOL channels, using AOL e-mail, browsing the Web via AOL, communicating with other Internet and AOL users, applying AOL to your job or hobby, and customizing the service to make it work best for you. This updated edition covers the latest enhancements to AOL including changes to the AOL e-mail, Web browsing, connectivity, and calendaring features.

The Fourth Circuit's 1997 ruling in Zeran v. America Online played a critical role in Section 230 jurisprudence and, by extension, the Internet's development. To better understand this seminal case, we compiled a variety of resources about the case, including (1) two dozen essays reflecting upon the decision's 20th anniversary, and (2) key opinions and filings from the litigation, some of which have never before been available in electronic format. This compilation should interest anyone researching the history of Internet Law or thinking about the implications of online speech policies and the ongoing policy debates about Section 230.

"I too am not a bit tamed—I too am untranslatable / I sound my barbaric yawp over the roofs of the world."—Walt Whitman, "Song of Myself," Leaves of Grass The American Yawp is a free, online, collaboratively built American history textbook. Over 300 historians joined together to create the book they wanted for their own students—an accessible, synthetic narrative that reflects the best of recent historical scholarship and provides a jumping-off point for discussions in the U.S. history classroom and beyond. Long before Whitman and long after, Americans have sung something collectively amid the deafening roar of their many individual voices. The Yawp highlights the dynamism and conflict inherent in the history of the United States, while also looking for the common threads that help us make sense of the past. Without losing sight of politics and power, The American Yawp incorporates transnational perspectives, integrates diverse voices, recovers narratives of resistance, and explores the complex process of cultural creation. It looks for America in crowded slave cabins, bustling markets, congested tenements, and marbled halls. It navigates between maternity wards, prisons, streets, bars, and boardrooms. The fully peer-reviewed edition of The American Yawp will be available in two print volumes designed for the U.S. history survey. Volume I begins with the indigenous people who called the Americas home before chronicling the collision of Native Americans, Europeans, and Africans.The American Yawp traces the development of colonial society in the context of the larger Atlantic World and investigates the origins and ruptures of slavery, the American Revolution, and the new nation's development and rebirth through the Civil War and Reconstruction. Rather than asserting a fixed narrative of American progress, The American Yawp gives students a starting point for asking their own questions about how the past informs the problems and opportunities that we confront today.