Web Surfers Become Radio Hosts

April 6 -- About two weeks ago, an Ohio boy using the moniker "Advice Man" began counseling strangers on his own talk show.

But Advice Man, a middle schooler whose first name is John, didn't need access to the airwaves. Instead, he sat at his home computer and broadcast his show on the Internet, taking calls from listeners all over the Web.

Using a service called Lycos Talk Radio offered by the Internet company Terra Lycos, Advice Man became an instant Internet talk show star, broadcasting a show nearly every evening and consistently ranking as one of the site's top 10 "talk jockeys."

"It's been fun," says Advice Man. "But I do have a lot of stupid people that call in. Most of the questions are stuff like, 'My girlfriend doesn't like me anymore, what should I do?'"

Host Controls Caller Access

Since its debut last week, the service has broadcast more than 5,000 shows, according to Maggie Battista, director of personal publishing at Terra Lycos, a company produced by the merger last year of Terra Networks and Lycos.

Battista says Lycos Talk Radio, created by the Seattle software company Wonderhorse, is the first service of its kind. Other voice chat technologies on the Web operate like telephone "party lines," where people speak together, but often end up talking over one another, she says. Talk Radio hosts can determine who is on "air" and for how long.

To become a broadcaster or listener, one downloads free software from the Lycos Web site, which takes a few minutes and only works on the Windows operating system. A listener can call in to a show by pressing the "Talk" button on a square browser window, if the listener has a microphone on his or her computer.

If the host chooses to take the call, the caller is put on the air. Hosts also have an array of sound effects at their disposal.

Making the Top 10

Mark Consuegra, CEO of Wonderhorse, a company started by Microsoft veterans that invented the Talk Radio technology and licenses it to Lycos, has grand expectations for the program.