BlueLight  

BlueLight is a free Internet Service Provider from Yahoo and K-mart. It competes with many other free ISPs, such as NetZero, that get you on the Internet for the tradeoff of having to look at ads while on-line. It requires that you download software that is used to dial onto the Internet. It does not require that you periodically click on any of the ads.  

Red Alert! July 2001. BlueLight will discontinue free Internet access on August 29,2001. Read an article by CNet from August 7, 2001 about the remaining free/cheap ISPs. 
Red Alert! December 2000. Spinway has died. They provided the free Internet access for BlueLight. See below.

April 14, 2000    First Experience

Someone I know had heard good things about BlueLight so I downloaded it from www.bluelight.com and installed it today on a pc running Windows 98 Second Edition. The version I installed was 1.1.2.4, dated April 5, 2000. 

It made a miserable first impression, the first time I logged on with it. It took major chunks of real estate in my web browser (IE5) window. At the top of the browser window, it installed the Yahoo companion, which is yet another toolbar. At the bottom of the browser window were the ads, but they took up almost twice the space of the NetZero ads. Next to the ad window was another window, the net effect being an entire stripe along the bottom of the screen. The leftover usable browser window was very small.  

The BlueLight home page brags about how many people at epinions.com love the service, so I checked it out. Sure enough, there were over 200 user comments and they all seemed very favorable. Of course epinions.com is designed such that most things look good. When you ask for all user opinions, they are presented on a single web page sorted with the best opinions at the top and the worst ones at the bottom. 

One of the user comments at epinions.com had said that the Yahoo companion could be docked elsewhere, including next to the menu bar. This was true and did free up some space in the browser window. However, the Yahoo companion is there all the time, even when you are not at the Yahoo web site. Its also there if you dial into another ISP. Fortunately, its easy to un-install (click on the Edit button) and it stayed un-installed, both with my regular paid ISP and with BlueLight. 

Many epinions.com comments mentioned that the ad window disappears when you are on the Yahoo or K-mart web sites. This was not my experience, at least at first. I checked the BlueLight software options and the option to do this was turned on, but it didn't work - at first. Through trial and error (no thanks to any documentation) I discovered that this only works if the ad window is not positioned at the top or bottom of the screen. When it is at the top or bottom, it expands to a full stripe. When its somewhere else on the screen, it shrinks to a window, roughly the same size as the NetZero ad window. The problem is that, in the middle of the screen, it covers up the active window of whatever application you are running. The best strategy seems to be to place it very close to the top or bottom of the screen, but not at the top or bottom.  

Everyone at epinions.com raved about how fast the connections were. Not for me, at least not at first. There are about 5 local access numbers in my area code and the modem being used was V90 (K56flex). The first number I dialed connected at 26,400bps. The second number at 28,000. On the same computer with the same modem and same phone line, I consistently connect to NetZero at 52,000. Finally, the third phone number I tried connected at 52,000. 

It turns out that the ad window/stripe effected the Windows 98 desktop. All the icons that were along the bottom got moved up by an inch or so, roughly the height of the ad window. NetZero never did this. 

The help says that the ad window will not cover up other applications. This is only half true. When its an ad window, it will cover up anything and everything. When its an ad stripe (due to being positioned at the top or bottom), it reserves its stripe space for itself. Other Windows applications can't use this space. Even Windows 98 can not use it for the desktop, which explains why my desktop icons got moved. So while they won't be covered up, their usable window size is shrunk. 

Installing the BlueLight software changed my web browser home page without asking or telling. Fortunately, I could change it back. 

The BlueLight software also added itself to the START button's pop-up menu. This too, can be remedied by easily deleting it (right click on the START button).  

April 15, 2000  

One of the FAQs on the BlueLight web site discusses a point I raised above and tries to put a good spin on it. The question was about moving the ad banner around on the screen. The answer was: 

"Dock" means expand from a window roughly half the width of the screen to a stripe that extends the full width of your display. As noted above, this stripe does indeed still interfere with "normal Windows operations", just in a different way.  

April 16, 2000  

The ad window is not always hidden when it should be. There were many times while I was on the bluelight.com web site that the ad window was displayed. There were also ads displayed while looking at help.yahoo.com. Interestingly, while at tv.yahoo.com ads were not displayed while looking at the TV schedule, but were displayed when looking at the details of a particular TV show. Ads were displayed while on the spinway.com web site, the company that actually provides the Internet access. You may be saying that ads on spinway.com are normal. There is no way to know. The policy is supposed to be that the ads do not display while on the web site of any BlueLight partners. Trouble is, there is no list of just who the partners are. I looked. 

April 20, 2000  The Signup Process

I signed up a new BlueLight user today on Windows 98 Second Edition computer that initially had no BlueLight software. 

Part of the signup procedure involves checking for available userids after having provided a first name and last name among other personal information. This process seemed to hang. The number of bytes downloaded to my machine while it was hanging was a mere trickle. The first time I used BlueLight, only a few days ago, I had linked it to an existing Yahoo userid so I hadn't gone through this process. After about five minutes I gave up and clicked on the CANCEL button. It didn't cancel. After about a minute I manually disconnected the Internet connection. This still did not cancel the checking for available IDs. There was still a window that said "canceling server access" that stayed visible for about two minutes. Eventually, I killed it via the Windows 98 task list (Ctl-Alt-Delete). 

The signup process asks you to chose a password. I wanted a nine character password, but the BlueLight software limits you to eight characters. Turns out this is not a real limitation. 

After the above problems I thought it better to sign up for a Yahoo userid without BlueLight and then later tell BlueLight to use this existing Yahoo account. I did this and lo and behold, Yahoo allows a nine character password. I then started the registration process with BlueLight all over again and it had no problem using this just created Yahoo account with the nine character password. 

My first try at downloading Yahoo email using a POP client (Netscape Messenger v4.72) resulted in an error: "Server not ready. Please try again after sometime". Soon thereafter, I got a network error trying to get my email. Fortunately, these errors were temporary.  

POP Email problems  

Free email from Yahoo is provided with BlueLight. For years before the advent of BlueLight, Yahoo provided web based email. Somewhere along the signup procedure trail, I read that Yahoo email can also be used with standard Internet email programs (technically, POP or POP3 clients) such as Messenger from Netscape or Outlook and Outlook Express from Microsoft. A long search through the BlueLight web site turned up no information at all about using Yahoo email with these standard Internet email programs. I emailed them (4/15/2000) a question and got a response in about an hour. They referred me to 
     http://www.bluelight.com/howto/email 
  http://help.yahoo.com/help/mail  

I followed the instructions at these web pages and, of course, nothing worked at all. I could neither send or receive email using Netscape Messenger v4.72 under Windows 98 Second Edition. The above web pages offer instructions on configuring your email program for use with Yahoo email. To receive email you have to set up the email program to use the pop.mail.yahoo.com server, to send email, you have to use smtp.mail.yahoo.com server. 

Some further digging turned up another requirement the above web pages omitted - to receive email using a POP3 mail program, you have to sign up for the Yahoo Delivers program, which means that you agree to get mail from Yahoo business partners. You do this by logging into the web based Yahoo email, selecting options, then Yahoo Delivers. The minimum amount of email you must agree to accept is one message a week, which seems like a fair tradeoff. I agreed to be a Yahoo Delivers member and could receive Yahoo email with Messenger immediately thereafter. Just as an FYI - you can get your POP3 Yahoo email even if you dial into another ISP. 

Sending email with Messenger was more of a problem, one that required sending email to Yahoo tech support. The exact error that I got when trying to send a message was: 

The first response from tech support came in one day and was a canned reply. It looked like an excerpt from a tech support FAQ and covered the most obvious points and errors people usually make in setting up Yahoo mail for POP access. None of it helped, so I emailed back to tech support again. They responded on 4/22/2000 with what looked like a canned reply (as was the first reply) with more technical knobs to tweak. 

The most interesting point is that they require you to get your messages before allowing you to send any. Below is what the tech support email message had to say about this: 

Why couldn't they mention this earlier? Unfortunately, doing this did not fix the problem. Neither did the other suggestions in their message fix the problem. 

While this was being resolved, I set up another computer with BlueLight and signed up for a new Yahoo userid. This second account had no problem sending email messages. It too was using Netscape Messenger 4.72 under Windows 98 SE, although on a different computer. This made me suspect that the problem had something to do with the first userid which had been set up over a year ago. I tried adding some more information to the user profile, but it did not help.  

Their next reply (4/23/2000) just repeated the same information from one of the earlier replies. I sent it back to them saying that despite checking all the things they said to check, it still does not work. 

At this point, I can see two ways to debug this problem. The easiest way is for me to give them my password and have them try and recreate the problem, which I suggested. The easiest thing for Yahoo tech support is to have me configure another email program for use with the account. Either technique should determine whether the problem is something about the userid or something about my computer and its configuration.  

They replied with the below on 4/24/00 which ignored the suggestion about re-creating the problem. This repeats their earlier suggestions. They say to check with my ISP, when I've told them that I am using BlueLight - their ISP. They don't assign case numbers or incident numbers, so you really can't have a running dialog about a specific problem. Instead each email message is a separate entity, which leads them to reply with the same suggestions multiple times. 

I solved the problem on April 24th on my own. Netscape Communicator supports multiple personalities, so I set up another personality for another Yahoo POP email user that was working on another computer. This other Yahoo user could send email on the computer that was having problems. Starting from a known good base, I went thru all the configuration settings for the working personality and compared them to the ones being used with the problem personality. This is what lead me to the problem, which I would attribute to bad documentation. Among the many responses that I got was the below:

Never mind that I could not confirm that Messenger was using Port 25 to save my life. The relevant section above is "Account Name/Login Name". The problem with this is that's a general concept and not directly tied to my version of Netscape Messenger. They had instructions for Netscape v4.5 but it did not address the area where my problem was. Never mind that these instructions have not been updated to reflect Netscape versions 4.6 and 4.7. 

When configuring Messenger, there is no place where you enter either "Account Name" or "Login Name". There are however, three places where your userid must be entered and had their documentation addressed each of these three places, my problem would have been obvious. You start with Edit -> Preferences -> Mail and Newsgroups. In the "Identity" section you have to fill in the "email address" field with your Yahoo email address with the "@yahoo.com" included, and I had done that. In the "Mail Servers" section you have to fill in the "Outgoing mail server user name" field with your Yahoo email address without the "@yahoo.com"  and I had done that too. In this window you also have to click on the EDIT.. button to configure parameters for the incoming mail server. This opens a "Mail Server Properties" window positioned at the General tab. Here you have to fill out the "user name" field with your email address without the "@yahoo.com". It was here that I had entered the userid with a capital letter. Oops.  
Whew! 

May 5, 2000 I tried to get my Yahoo POP email using Outlook Express v5. Using "Receive All" I twice got this error: 
Your server has unexpectedly terminated the connection. Possible causes for this include server problems, network problems, or a long period of inactivity. Account: 'Mike Mail', Server: 'pop.mail.yahoo.com', Protocol: POP3, Port: 110, Secure (SSL): No, Socket Error: 10053, Error Number: 0x800CCC0F
Then I did "Send and Receive All" and it worked. 

In all this testing and debugging, another question came to mind. Can I used Yahoo POP email with any ISP or does it only work with BlueLight? I was able to get my Yahoo POP email after logging in to my paid ISP, but could not send any, even after fixing the above problem. I was getting a different error however, not being able to establish a connection to the SMTP email server (smtp.mail.yahoo.com) at all. I asked about this on 4/24/2000. They responded but did not answer the question, instead, I got a pat response to a similar question, as if a poor AI program tried to guess the issue by reading the email message. The question they answered instead of mine was "Can I use other email programs, such as Netscape or Eudora or Outlook, to send and read my Yahoo! Mail"? To be continued ...

April 23, 2000

As part of documenting my gripes, I need to include the version of the software being used. The BlueLight dialer has no standard Windows Help->About that displays the software version. I checked the properties of the EXE file invoked by the desktop shortcut (spinwin.exe). In one place, the properties say its version 1,1,2,0. In another place, the properties say its version 1.0. After logging on with BlueLight you can get the software version, but its not at all obvious. Right click on the BlueLight icon in the system tray and select Preferences. Then click on the About tab. In my case, it showed that I am using version 1.1.2.4 from April 5, 2000. I assume this is more reliable than the properties of spinwin.exe. 

The Final Fatal Flaw 

After installing the BlueLight dialer (version 1.1.2.4 from April 5, 2000) on an old computer I noticed that using the Internet was very slow. The machine was a Pentium 166 with 32 meg of ram running Windows 98 Second Edition with a 33.6 modem. There is no way this machine will be zippy to begin with, but I had used it before with a paid ISP and response time online with BlueLight was much much worse. 

So I started the Windows 98 system monitor and saw that cpu usage was 100%. Trying to determine the cpu hog, I shut down the web browser which left no Internet applications running. No email, no instant messaging, no personal firewall, nothing. I checked the task list (Ctl-Alt-Delete) and there was nothing else running in the system except the BlueLight software. It alone was consuming 100% of the cpu. As soon as I shut down BlueLight, cpu usage went to about 2%. Then I logged on with a paid ISP. Cpu usage while logged on to the Internet and doing nothing was about 2%. 

My assumption was that BlueLight could not run on a low end system like this, but I did some more digging.  

Next I tried BlueLight on a computer with more horsepower. Specifically, a celeron running at 366MHz with 64 meg of RAM and a V90 modem. It still consumed 100% of the cpu with no Internet applications running. 

Then I expanded the system monitor to also show data from the dialup adapter, specifically the number of bytes received per second and the number of bytes transmitted per second. The bytes received per second was almost 6,000 which is about the full bandwidth when connected at 52,000bps. The bytes transmitted per second was a fairly constant trickle of about 100 per second. What was it downloading that consumed all the available bandwidth? Martha Stewart. 

Eventually the amount of received data fell to a trickle as did the cpu usage. I checked the BlueLight cache directory (C:\Program Files\Spinway\BlueLight\cache)  to see what files were created today. There was a movie clip (.mpg file) that is 1,857 kilobytes (1.8 megabytes). Double clicking on this file played at 31 second commercial about the topics covered during a week of Martha Stewart Living shows. I rebooted and repeated this test a couple times. Each time, as soon as the My Yahoo page finished displaying, I closed out of the browser and watched the System Monitor. The pattern was the same every time. Going back to the original computer, the same thing happened except that with only a 28.8 modem connection the number of bytes received per second hovered around 3,000. Waiting it out, the cpu usage drops to almost zero after the Martha Stewart video has been completely downloaded.  

Why does it constantly download the same movie? When you shut down the BlueLight software and disconnect from the Internet, it deletes the movie!  

I tried to fake it out, but to no avail. I copied the movie to a temporary directory after it had finished downloading. Then I logged off and copied the movie back into the BlueLight cache directory. Sometime during the process of logging on to the Internet, the BlueLight dialer, deleted the movie and when it connected, started downloading it yet again. 

Its not just the bandwidth cost of the movie download that is a problem, there is also a cpu cost. On the slower computer (Pentium 166), the cpu usage while downloading a large file from another web site was about 25%. This means that BlueLight consumes 75% of the cpu while the movie is being downloaded for some other processing. The combination of totally hogging both the cpu and the modem makes the computer all but unusable until Martha is downloaded.   

I also sent a note about this to feedback@bluelight.com on April 23, 2000. They responded quickly with what appeared to be an automated reply, though it didn't say so. As might be expected, my message "has been forwarded to the appropriate personnel within Bluelight.com who can best address your concerns". 

More importantly, I sent email about this to techsupport@bluelight.com on April 23, 2000. An automated response said that a technician would reply within 24 hours. The automated response suggested looking at www.spinway.com/support/bluelight in the mean time. I did, but it offered no help for this problem. True to their automated word, they responded very quickly with a personalize reply. 

The problem symptoms changed the next day (April 24, 2000). 

On the slow computer (Pentium 166) the downstream traffic (bytes received per second) is much much lower. At first it seemed as if they were not downloading any movie files. However, constant checking of the cache directory showed that, in fact, a movie file (ad288.mpg) was constantly increasing in size, but very slowly. While this might seem like good news, its not. The BlueLight client software is still a cpu hog and apparently it will remain a cpu hog until the entire movie has downloaded. I was logged on for 46 minutes at 28,800bps and the movie file had still not finished loading (it ended up at 1,190 KB). For the entire 46 minutes, my cpu usage was 100%. At least earlier, the movie file would have downloaded much faster, freeing up both my cpu and modem bandwidth. On the same machine, Netzero v2.2.2 with no Internet applications running, used generally 4% to 10% of the cpu. The number of bytes recieved per second was very low with NetZero, often zero with brief spikes around 2,000. While downloading a large file with NetZero the cpu usage was typically 10% to 20%.  

On the faster computer (celeron 366) connected to BlueLight at 50,000bps, again with no Internet applications running, the downstream traffic was extremely low. However, cpu usage was around 40% and stayed that way the entire time I was logged on. 

I got a reply from tech support (4/24/2000) with suggested tweaks that might fix this problem. Unfortunately it referred to files and directories that didn't exist on my machine. In later clarifications, the suggestion boiled to delete all the files from the cache folder except for the GIFs. 

On May 2, 2000 I tested this suggestion on the slow computer (Pentium 166). One effect was that the userid and password had to be re-entered into the dialer. Another was that the ad window returned to its default location, at the bottom the screen, expanded to a full stripe across the screen and causing some icons on the desktop to move. On the plus side, the ad window now is hidden when looking at the details of a TV show at the tv.yahoo.com web site. Using the Windows 98 System Monitor, I logged on to the Internet with BlueLight and monitored the cpu usage with no Internet applications active.

BlueLight cpu Usage
Before clearing cache	After clearing cache

Interestingly, cpu usage was lower than before, that is, its no longer a constant 100%. However, its still, too high (in my opinion) and clearing out the cache had little impact. BlueLight cpu usage remains much higher than NetZero on the same machine. Below is a System Monitor graph of NetZero cpu usage on the same machine. 

In my opinion, this excessive resource consumption renders BlueLight unusable. I was setting up two computers for people I know and BlueLight would have been my choice over NetZero because it does not require you to click on the ads, it offers both web based email and POP3 email and the ads sometimes disappear. However my friends are going to be NetZero users, despite my gripes with them. 

Software Upgrades 

One question raised by the above problems was how to tell when the bug is fixed? My first thinking was that they would release a new version of the BlueLight dialer/ad window software. I never got an answer about how knowing when the bug was fixed, which prompted much of the tests conducted above. This led to the question of ongoing upgrades for the BlueLight software. Specifically, 

• How can you tell if you are running the latest version of the BlueLight software?
• When it is determined that there is a new version, what is the software update procedure?  

My initial queries to tech support on this (around 4/26/00) yielded only the fact that the BlueLight software does not update itself. In contrast, the NetZero software does and I've been thru many NetZero upgrades and each has been automatic and painless. 

On May 3, 2000 I emailed techsupport@bluelight.com again about these questions. The response answered neither question. They said: 

I replied (May 5) and asked them to answer the questions this time. They replied the next day with:  

This is disgraceful. 

Spinway Dies 

December 4, 2000.  A reader of this web site wrote to say that BlueLight and Spinway went out of business. I went to the BlueLight web site and could find no mention of their having closed up shop. Turns out it was true however. Another reader wrote a couple days later and pointed me to story in the Detroit Free Press about it. 

December 4, 2000. BlueLight to snap up Spinway assets  from CNet. Besides Kmart, Spinway also provided free Internet access to Yahoo, Barnes and Noble, NBC Internet, Costco and Spiegel. In October, Hewlett-Packard began offering Spinway ISP services for free in some of its computers. BlueLight is the e-commerce subsidiary of Kmart. Spinway will no longer exist as a company. BlueLight said it is working with companies that offer Internet access through Spinway to determine if those services will continue through BlueLight. BlueLight has more than 5.2 million subscribers. 

December 5, 2000 BlueLight buys out ISP. Spinway demise could have shut Kmart's site REUTERS as reported in the Detroit Free Press. -- BlueLight.com, the online affiliate of Kmart Corp., said Monday it purchased the core assets of Spinway Inc., its defunct Internet service provider, to ensure that Kmart's online store stays open during the holiday shopping season. Spinway, which provided free Internet access to BlueLight and other online retailers, closed its doors Friday. 

December 6, 2000. AltaVista pulls plug; is BlueLight next? ASSOCIATED PRESS as reported in the Detroit Free Press. On  Sunday AltaVista will cut off some 3 million users from its free Internet access service. Kmart-owned BlueLight.com says it is considering dropping its free service after the holidays. Kmart-backed BlueLight.com took over assets of its failed provider, Spinway Inc., Monday in order to retain more than 5 million registered users through the peak shopping season. BlueLight spokesman Dave Karraker said the company will decide the fate of the service in January 2001. 

In a somewhat related story, CNet reported on December 5, 2000 AltaVista pulls plug on free Net access AltaVista is terminating its free Internet access service, making it the latest company to exit the market.  This is only somewhat related because the service was not provided by Spinway, but instead was provided by 1stUp which also went out of business. 

Gripes Getting Old

I was contacted by two people claiming to be Blue Light employees in mid-December 2000.  I have no way to verify their claims but my hunch is they were legitimate employees. They pointed out that my gripes above were with version 1 software and that as of mid-November 2000 they have upgraded their software to version 2. They said that the Blue Light software now self-updates and that "virtually all users are using version 2". Among the bugs fixed in the version 2 software are "a memory leak in the client code which caused it to freeze occasionally". I asked them (by email) how users can tell if they are running version 2 software, but never got a response.  

Other Opinions

• The ISP review web site run by Dawn McGatney rates many free ISPs at http://dogwolf.seagull.net/freeisp.html 
• Another site with reviews of free ISPs is http://www.shreve.net/~graff/freeisp.htm 
• Readers of a Windows Magazine newsletter voted for their favorite free ISP in May, 2000.
• HEREontheWEB has a Guide to Free ISPs that covers BlueLight and lets you add your own two cents. Bernard in Michigan had a disaster installing BlueLight under Windows 95. His documentation of the problems is a must read for anyone running Windows 95 and considering BlueLight. (added 8/4/00). 
• A BlueLight user forwarded me email between her and BlueLight tech support. She was having problems using the service with Netscape Navigator v4.6; the browser was crashing trying to load bluelight.yahoo.com. Tech support said they can not support Navigator. She also noted that Yahoo has more than occasional problems with its POP3 email.   (added 10/15/00).