Publisher Michael Goldstein describes the success of Gear Technology's new e-mail newsletter programs.

Let's face it. The Internet is still, to many of us, exciting, confusing, terrifying and frustrating by turns. The buzzwords change so fast that even the most high tech companies have a hard time keeping up. Cyberspace. Firewall, Java. E-commerce. The list goes on.

In July of 1996 we introduced the gear community to the Internet in these pages through the Gear Industry Home Page (GIHP). This electronic buyers guide for gear machine tools, tooling, accessories and services has proven to be more popular than we could have envisioned. In our first month, we had over 3,000 hits, and in our third month, we have over 4,500. By our fourth month, we topped the 7,000 mark, and we are on our way to 11,000 hits in November. As our advertisers develop their own home sites in order to offer layers of information about their companies, their products and services, we expect this activity will increase even more.