In This Month's Report:
*** It's A Girl
*** 1998 Best of The Net Round-Up
*** My Crystal Ball
*** Free is a Great Price

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Sites in this issue:
Hannah Rose Kleinman
Ask Jeeves
ProLaunch
Amazon.com
800.com
Reel.com
DVDExpress
Blue Mountain Arts
Broadcast.com
MyLook
My Simon
Killer App
TipWorld
MetaCrawler
Last Year's Predictions
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*** It's A Girl! ***
Before I begin my annual wrap up of the Best Sites of 1998, I wanted to announce the arrival of the newest Kleinman: Hannah Rose Kleinman. Hannah was born December 3 at 1:03pm in Beaverton, OR. As I'm sure you can understand, I've had my hands full with the new baby, so I've had to combine my Year End report with
my New Year's report... Like many proud Dads, I've been taking a lot of pictures. You can see some of them at: http://www.kleinman.com/hannah/  

*** 1998 Best of The Net Round-Up ***
Every year at this time I like to run down the best of the best - sites that I reported on in 1998 that deserve a permanent place on your bookmark list. So without further adieu, here's the best of 1998 countdown:   

#10  MetaCrawler: http://www.metacrawler.com - While all the search engines were focusing on becoming Portals, they forgot about why people use them - to search! As the year progressed I found myself getting poorer and poorer search results. MetaCrawler helps cut through all the Search/portal mess and gives you the best results from the top search engines. Give MetaCrawler a try and save some time the next time you do a search.

#9 TipWorld: http://www.tipworld.com - 1998 saw a boom for e-mail newsletters and at the forefront was TipWorld. With one of the Broadest selections of e-mail newsletters, Tip World has become the leader in delivering great information the old fashioned way (through e-mail). Choose from a dizzying array of topics from Windows 98 to Pregnancy and Baby Tips and discover why e-mail newsletters have become so popular.

#8 My Simon: http://www.mysimon.com &
Killer App: http://www.killerapp.com - With the explosion of online shopping in 1998, a new breed of sites became an essential tool - price search tools. Both My Simon and Killer App help you find the the site with the lowest price on what you're looking for. Both help save you a lot of time and money. In 1999, look for the big search engines to purchase companies like My Simon and Killer App.

#7 My Look: http://mylook.com - While all the big Internet players (Yahoo, Excite, Infoseek, Netscape and AOL ) chased the illusive dream of becoming THE portal, this little site did it best. One of the most comprehensive spots on the
'Net to keep tapped in, MyLook is one of the few sites that truly warrants a daily visit.

#6  Broadcast.com: http://www.broadcast.com - If it happened in 1998, you could find it streaming live from Broadcast.com. This year Broadcast.com (formerly AudioNet) found itself at the center of many explosive news stories, and was always able to keep up. Whether it was the Impeachment of the President, or UCLA's drive for an undefeated season, you could listen (and sometimes watch) it on Broadcast.com.

#5 Blue Mountain Arts: http://www.bluemountainarts.com - Attention Hallmark - buy this site!!! Blue Mountain Arts is THE site to use when you want to send someone an online card. With cute cards that will always get there on time (online), I found myself buying almost no paper greeting cards in 1998 and sending a lot more online cards for almost every occasion. I can guarantee that this site will get picked up by a big name in '99.

#4 800.com, Reel.com, and DVDExpress.com .
These three web sites share the #4 spot because they all helped thrust DVD's into the main stream. With deep discounts, great offers and ease of use, these Online Retailers have started a trend that should rocket one of these three into
Amazon's league in '99.

#3 Amazon.com: http://www.amazon.com - If you were on the Internet in 1998 (or even the stock market), you couldn't help but run into Amazon.com. Started as the biggest little book store in the world,  Amazon.com stepped up to the plate to help lead the incredible boom to online shopping. With the additions to the Amazon family of Internet jewels Internet Movie Database and Jango price shopper, Amazon.com is poised to morph into something much more than a book store over the next year. 

 #2 ProLaunch: http://www.prolaunch.com - There are simply too many sites on the Internet and it's getting more and more difficult to find new sites that meet your interests. ProLaunch brings back some  of the fun and adventure of
surfing with a never-ending stream of sites that match your interests and tops it off by rewarding you for your time. Of all the reward programs on the Internet, ProLaunch is the only one where I've actually earned something: I got a $10 gift certificate for Barnes and Noble in the mail this week. Great sites and great rewards add up to one of this year's best sites! 

#1 And the #1 site for 1998 is......... (drum roll please) Ask Jeeves: http://www.aj.com - This is really the story of the little engine that could. While all the big search players spent their time, money and efforts on becoming THE one stop shop on the 'Net, this little Internet start up focused on the real need - helping people easily find what they're looking for. With licencing deals with Altavista and Dell, Ask Jeeves has stepped up from relative obscurity into a position where they are poised to help redefine how we search on the Internet. 

*** My Crystal Ball ***
When I sat down to write this year's Crystal Ball section, I took a few moments and looked back at some of my predictions from 1998. How did I do? Pretty good, with on-target soothsaying about AOL, Netscape, Online Shopping, Instant
Messaging and more. Check out the 1998 predictions and tell me what you think: http://www.kleinman.com/kreport/121597.html   

So looking into my crystal ball for 1999, what things do I see for the last year of the Century?
Boom and Bust: 1999 will be a mixed year for the Internet with a combination of big booms and big busts. With a great deal of buzz over Y2K, look for even more media frenzy over the Net:

IPO: Look for a number of '98's BIG IPO's (like E-bay & Geocities) to feel the gravity of reality and the need to show real earnings and take a serious dive in '99. But never fear, the next great   opportunity will appear with other new companies riding the rollercoaster of IPO-dum and a few struggling companies (like 3dfx & General Magic) finding their stock on the raise. 

Yah-oops: 1999 will be a tough year for Yahoo as they work to continue to define themselves, but never fear, Yahoo will prevail and break through it's '99 growth spurt (and growing pains) to something even BIGGER and more significant than it is now.

E-mail: Going on strong for yet another year, e-mail will continue to grow as the premier way of communicating to people. Look for web sites to embrace e-pubs and newsletters even more. The
year's tough decisions will be which newsletters to subscribe to, as the choices become daunting. 

E-business: Want to open an online store? 1999 will be the year to do it. Look for a boom in sites making it easy for the everyman to run a business online. If 1998 was a boom for online shopping, 1999 will be a boom for online selling. Watch as more and more types of selling migrate online.

Microsoft: 1999's will a bad year for the big boys in Redmond. Justice department problems aside, Microsoft's got major challenges  to face in '99,
especially online. With the browser "war" at an end,  Microsoft is going to find few "enemies" to focus on and will sober  to the realization that their biggest enemy is really themselves. With a
"ho-hum" performance in the Portal space with Microsoft Start, "who-cares" market position with Web TV and an increased focus on the
fact that their products are pretty buggy, '99 won't be a rain making year for Microsoft. Also look for Hotmail to be Microsoft's  achilles' heel in '99, with service issues, customer complaints, and (I'm predicting) a legal battle over how they frame sites when you click on URL's in your Hotmail account.  Also look for Microsoft to unload some of their big purchases in '98.

That's a look into the crystal ball at the year ahead from Swami Kleinman.

*** Free is a Great Price***
I've been doing The Kleinman Report for over 3 years now (I started it back in 1995), and in it's 3 year history, I've never charged a penny or made a penny for the report; it has been and will continue to be 100% ad free! So if you like the report, get great value from it, and look forward to every issue, I'd like you donate whatever you think a yearly subscription price should be to Hospice of Contra Costa. They are a great organization that provides no cost support to
terminally ill people. When my dad was dying, they were like angels the way that they helped him. So whatever you'd ever consider paying me for the Kleinman Report, please donate to them:

Hospice of Contra Costa
2051 Harrison St.Concord,
CA. 94520

Please note on your donation "In Memory of Ira Kleinman/Kleinman Report".

Best Regards and Happy New Year,
Geoff Kleinman