Interactive television (ITV) is a new form of residential consumer video service that gives viewers far greater control over the contents of programs than is possible with conventional television. There are substantial technical challenges to offering a ITV service on a large scale, both in content creation and delivery. The paper discusses those challenges and presents a new system architecture for offering ITV, along with a broad range of other interactive video services, to consumers in their homes. A new suite of tools to simplify the creation of compelling interactive programming is also described.>

The AT&T Bell Laboratories Library Network is striving to fulfill its vision of providing all AT&T professional employees with an “electronic window” to meet their information needs. People must be able to access information quickly and easily without the fear of information overload. Taking these needs and requirements into account, the Library and computer researchers combined their interests and areas of expertise to create The RightPages™ Service. This service brings the library to users' desktop work-stations by incorporating ASCII text, bitmap images, and an alerting service, in a system that is comfortable and efficient to use. © 1993 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.