When Joan Blades and her husband, Wes Boyd, became frustrated about Washington’s obsession with the Clinton impeachment last year, they had an inkling they just might be able to do something about it.

Drawing on their experience as Silicon Valley entrepreneurs, the political neophytes put up a Web site, MoveOn.org, to promote the idea that Congress should quickly censure the president and then move on. The work took them all of a few days and cost them only $89 in out-of-pocket expenses. But word about the site spread so far and wide that the site has raised $13 million in political contributions.

The astonishing success of MoveOn heralds the arrival of a new, interesting form of on-line community: the "flash community." While on-line communities, such as those organized by America Online and Yahoo!, have typically aimed at building permanent bonds, this new type of community behaves more like a flashbulb. It appears in an instant, grabs some attention, and then fades so participants can, well, move on.

Political races and issues-related campaigns, like MoveOn’s, lend themselves especially well to flash communities, but the phenomenon has spread well beyond politics. In the aftermath of the Columbine High School shooting last spring, dozens of Web sites were created to memorialize the victims and let people come together to talk about the tragedy.

The family of Robert Downey Jr. formed a flash community after the movie star was shipped off to a California state prison in August for repeatedly violating probation on drug charges. The family wanted Downey to do time at a drug-rehabilitation facility, not in prison. At www.freerobertdowneyjr.com, fans were urged to write letters to President Clinton and the governor of California. About three weeks after the site went up, Downey was transferred to a rehab clinic. Now, the site carries a simple message: "The system works! We are very grateful."

The phenomenon also has spread beyond the Web, to include communities that are hybrids of Web sites and e-mail groups. Egroups.com and eCircles.com have people sign up on-line for various discussion groups. Postings are e-mailed to all members of a group. Members can also view the whole discussion on the Web site.

Mixed in among the many permanent groups being formed are flash communities such as Friends of Bill Bradley (friendsofbillbradley@ egroups.com), which has become so active that some members find the traffic oppressive. One woman wrote: "Please discontinue sending me e-mails every day. I am getting far too many and cannot keep up."

Jonathan Prince, who organized the Bradley group, says he is considering splitting the group into subsections as the primaries near and interest grows.

The appearance of tools such as eGroups and eCircles, and the success of cause-related sites such as MoveOn, should keep driving people to set up flash communities. The real issue, of course, is how to get people to visit the sites in the first place. MoveOn’s organizers simply e-mailed 100 friends and associates, yet they received 500 supportive e-mails within a day. Within a week, 100,000 people were on board. Eventually, MoveOn says, the campaign generated more than 250,000 phone calls and a million e-mails to Congress from members of the public who opposed the impeachment of the president. When many representatives voted for impeachment anyway, the group launched a "We will remember" campaign aimed at defeating a number of incumbents. In the first 24 hours, it raised $5 million. So far, 500,000 people have contributed.

Other communities will no doubt find it far harder to organize, especially as the novelty of groups like MoveOn diminishes. The half-life of chat groups on AOL shows how quickly interest can fade, and how many communities are out there competing for people’s attention. And just because a group uses a new idea like flash communities to generate attention doesn’t mean its members have anything more profound to say on-line than they do at the water cooler. A member of an eGroup political discussion complained: "It would be incredibly refreshing if this forum could be utilized as an avenue to share ideas and knowledge on campaign issues. We can’t tell politicians to stop the B.S., if we don’t stop it ourselves."

Still, MoveOn’s organizers are convinced that flash communities like theirs will radically reduce the cost of communicating, allowing a group with no political ties to have the same impact as a well-financed, special-interest group. "We are forging a new way to use the Internet for participation," the site boasts. "After the Internet, democracy will never be the same."

THE GREAT LEAP BACKWARD

Probably because shoppers cannot reason with maddening computer menus, people reportedly bail out on two-thirds of their attempts to buy things on-line. Technologists have put their heads together to tackle this serious problem and have come up with a radical solution: human beings.

At the moment, when someone gets confused on a Web site and starts fumbling around, he typically can get help by calling an 800 number and waiting on hold, or by e-mailing a question and waiting days for a response.

Because of software from Acuity and FaceTime, among others, sites are starting to let visitors click on an icon and chat on-line with a sales rep through an exchange of real-time text messages. If this sounds a lot like old-fashioned personal service, that’s because it is. But there’s a high-tech twist.

With permission, the sales rep can take control of the customer’s browser and "push" a Web page onto the customer’s computer screen. If a shopper needs to go to another Web page to satisfy a quest, the rep can go with him. The reps can even fill out tedious sales forms for the customer.

While adding a bunch of sales reps to handle Web-based inquiries can obviously be expensive, Acuity says the cost is justified because it so greatly increases the percentage of browsers who turn into buyers. David Hsieh, FaceTime’s co-founder, also says the reps can gather crucial information from customers. "We can help companies find out why customers abandon their shopping carts, or if the companies should expand the universe of credit cards that they accept," Hsieh says.

The entry-level fee for companies buying Acuity’s software is $25,000 to $30,000, with the average deal totaling about $150,000. FaceTime charges on a subscription basis. The price starts at $1,500 a month, plus $250 a month per customer-service agent. For more information: www.acuity.com; www.facetime.net.

BZZZZT. AND KEEP THE CHANGE.

An all-too-familiar scene: You’re out to dinner with a group of friends when the bill arrives. Somebody asks: "Anybody got change for a twenty?" Or, "How about if I put the whole bill on my credit card? I need the cash." PayPal has an alternative scenario. Now, everybody can just whip out their Palm Organizers and beam payment to each other or the waiter.

Here’s how it works: First, both the payment’s sender and receiver have to have registered with PayPal’s Web site and downloaded free software. The person making the payment then types his password into his Palm Organizer and keys in the amount to be paid. He points his device at the one receiving payment, and encrypted money is transmitted via infrared signal from the sender’s credit card or PayPal account. Both devices record the transfer. The next time either device is synched up with a personal computer, the information is pulled out of the Palm Organizer and transmitted to PayPal. PayPal then handles the actual transfer of funds between the two users’ accounts. The receiver of funds provides a bank-account number so PayPal can deposit the funds, but he also has the option of leaving the funds in the escrow account for future transactions.

Soon, PayPal will be able to handle payments via a whole array of hand-held devices, such as cell phones and two-way pagers. In addition, it is possible to e-mail encrypted payments—a useful idea, though people doing this miss out on the Trekkie experience of beaming money to someone.

Luke Nosek, vice president of marketing for Confinity, which developed the PayPal software, says Confinity generates revenue from the float on money in PayPal escrow accounts. Eventually, Confinity will charge for financial services it plans to develop around PayPal.

For more information: www.paypal.com.

JUST SPELL THE NAME RIGHT

Ears burning? In the old days, you may have suspected that someone was talking about you. Now, you can know—or, at least, you can know whenever someone mentions you on the Web. You can know a lot more, too. Spyonit.com, an Internet service from Burning Door, lets you watch the Web for just about anything you care to track.

Let’s say you just have to know: the next time there’s news on ESPN about golfer Davis Love III; when The Sound of Music will be on TV next; or whether tonight’s episode of Frasier is a rerun. Perhaps you really do want to know when you’re mentioned on certain news sites, or when a competitor’s name crops up. Maybe you’re desperate to know when a Ferrari Mondial comes up for auction.

You specify your question and tell Spyonit where to watch—which newswires, which Web pages, which auction sites. As soon as the information you want pops up, Spyonit will notify you by everything except carrier pigeon. (Actually, you take your pick of e-mail, AOL Instant Messenger, ICQ, or your own My Spies Web page.)

Spyonit keeps track of your requests, as a list of spies on your My Spies page, so you can amend, delete, or add to them. “We spent a lot of time—about nine months—developing an open, flexible architecture to allow easy addition of new spies,” says Dick Costolo, a co-founder and principal of Burning Door.

While Spyonit is free, Costolo says Burning Door will produce revenue through sponsorships, co-branded Web pages, advertising, and licensing of its technology for use in corporate intranets.

For more information: www.spyonit.com.

A BIRDIE IN THE HAND-HELD IS WORTH...

Let’s see. About 150 yards over the water to the hole. Moderate wind from behind. Grass wet with dew. Whaddya say? Seven iron or eight?

Caddies used to lug bags and give advice. Now, the wonderful world of computers brings us software that, loaded on a hand-held device such as a Palm Pilot, may serve as the next generation of caddie. UltraCaddie, from 3Wedge, essentially lets you develop a sophisticated database on your golf game and gives you scientific advice for selecting clubs.

If you choose the seven iron for that 150-yard shot, you record the course conditions with ultraCaddie, hit your shot, and then note whether it was short, long, left, right, or on the green. After a bunch of seven irons, ultraCaddie has a very good sense of just how you hit the club. It keeps the same detailed record for each club, including the putter.

UltraCaddie adjusts for course conditions such as wind direction and strength and the ball’s lie. In other words, even if you normally hit a seven iron 150 yards, the software product might urge you to pull it out of your bag for a 165-yard shot if you have enough wind at your back.

UltraCaddie will keep score and track any number of other statistics—such as length of drive or number of balls hit into bunkers. UltraCaddie will also keep track of all your bets, perhaps making it a useful companion at the 19th hole. If you’re really serious, you can download the information into your personal computer later and use the Round Analyzer software to think about what might have been, if you’d just done a couple of things differently.

The only drawbacks are that ultraCaddie won’t pull your clubs out of your bag and hand them to you, or clean them when you’re done. On the other hand, it won’t expect a tip or roll its eyes when you miss a gimme putt.

UltraCaddie is, in fact, illegal under USGA rules. But so are a lot of other popular gadgets—such as golf carts that use the Global Positioning System to measure distance to the hole.

UltraCaddie is priced at $59.95.

For more information: www.ultracaddie.com.

PERMISSION GRANTED

The difference between spam and permission marketing is that, in the latter case, you asked for it. And a lot of people seem to be asking for it.

At least that’s the experience at YesMail, which has built a list of more than five million people who have given their permission to receive promotional e-mails targeted to their personal interests. YesMail gets the names by offering special promotions to visitors to its Web site, by lining up subscribers to its free WebPromote Weekly newsletter, and by drawing on lists that it and its partners own. The key is everyone “opted in,” choosing to get e-mails offering news or advice on hobbies, financial services, and favorite books or music.

YesMail says its approach actually benefits all three of its constituencies: consumers, list vendors, and marketers. Consumers benefit because they receive only highly targeted messages that relate to professed interests. List vendors benefit because they gain the opportunity to build or improve their lists through the YesMail network and generate revenue from the payments they receive every time one of their list members is sent information. Marketers, who buy YesMail’s names for 25 cents each, benefit because response rates are so much higher than with other lists.

YesMail, which began life four years ago as WebPromote, a broader marketing company, switched to permission e-mail marketing this year because response rates are five to 30 times higher than those of banner advertising or direct mail. “We average response rates of 10% to 15%, compared with 0.5% to 1% for banner ads and 1% to 2% for direct mail,” says Jim Carini, a spokesman for YesMail. He adds that YesMail reports to marketers in real time about the results of their promotions.

For more information: www.yesmail.com.

NEW GAME: MYSIMON SAYS

Penny-pinchers, rejoice! MySimon has introduced PocketSimon a hand-held gizmo that lets you wander the aisles of stores, comparing prices with retailers everywhere because of a wireless link to the Web.

Designed for use with personal digital assistants and linked in particular to the Palm VII, PocketSimon will “change the way people shop,” says Brian Rolfe, mySimon’s director of corporate communications. It marks “the day e-commerce walked off the Internet and into the physical world.”

The PocketSimon lets someone in, say, a Barnes & Noble store see what he’d pay for a book if he bought it on-line at Amazon.com. Someone in a Safeway grocery store could see what a box of cereal would cost if bought via Peapod on-line. The PocketSimon user just has to pick a product from a menu on his PDA, and the device will search the Web to find prices for the product.

So far, the device is limited to finding prices on just 500 products in 15 categories. But its capabilities should grow quickly because mySimon has already developed a Web site that handles price comparisons from more than 1,500 retailers in 170 product categories. The PocketSimon will also soon let users order products with it, if they find an on-line price that’s much lower than the one staring them in the face in a physical store.

By the way, mySimon had to change the name from Pocket Shopper because of a trademark problem. “I was thinking along the lines of a name that would suggest ‘buyer’s regret-avoidance service.’ But the acronym was a problem,” Rolfe says.

PocketSimon is available as a free download from the new Palm VII Web site and from mySimon.

For more information: www.mySimon.com.