When Sal Maglie was the pitching coach for the woeful Seattle Pilots in the late 1960s, he'd go to the mound with some sage advice for a young pitcher facing a big-time slugger in the late innings. "Son, just put three fastballs low and hard on the outside corner and we'll both go in and pound the Bud."

It's a phrase that's got real attitude, true cockiness. Sort of like "we expect to be profitable in year three." Or, "by spending heavily on marketshare, we'll gather user loyalty." And "we've got so much capital behind us, we can't fail."

Of course, Sal Maglie's pitchers couldn't throw three fastballs low and hard on the outside corner and "The Barber" pounded more Buds after losses than wins. And many of today's Internet startups will probably come up empty as well. But does it really matter? As we stand on the cusp of a new year -- not 2000 but The Year Six on our calendar -- anything seems possible, as long as the money is there to fund it.

We have always been cynical optimists. Why else would we choose to stake our fortunes to the Internet, even while publicly doubting its commercial efficacy on a weekly basis? And basically, that hasn't changed. Here's the big prediction -- all is possible, but far less is probable.

Is the Internet business crazed with loopy entrepreneurs, goofball business plans, and silly money in risk capital? You bet it is. But is it also remaking our commercial landscape? Yep.

That's why our annual predictions cut both ways, with bad news and good news. The Internet changes everything. A mantra to some, annoying cliche to others. But what it certainly does change is the way in which we judge success in business. What will work in 2000? In some ways, it's a lame question -- because what works in 2000, and what is rewarded by the market, will almost certainly be forms of technology and media that are experimental, imperfect, prototypical. So on with the predictions!

Trend No. 1
Pressure on Money-Losing Stores

Spot of bother for the folks in the pure-play e-commerce business this week: Value America, the highly-touted online electronics and computing retailer will lay off nearly half of its work force, its two founders have resigned, and quarterly earnings will fall well below estimates. The Virginia-based company is looking for a buyer, and its stock has plunged from a high of $74 to around six bucks a share.

As we enter another year of the crazy explosion of ideas and wealth known loosely as Silicon Alley, we start out our annual look ahead with a stern note of caution. Clearly, Value America will not be alone. And if it's not, the leading story of 2000 in the Internet business may well be a retrenchment in online shopping, despite great holiday buying records in the fourth quarter. Doubt that it's possible? Listen up.

Sell some stuff cheaply and give away delivery. Get some capital and go public. Spend heavily on advertising. And wait to turn the corner. That's basically the plan of dozens of would-be retailing giants. And guess what? It's not working out. Putting a store on the Internet and turning a profit is actually harder than putting one in a mall and turning a profit. And this is the year this difficult model will start spitting out failures.

Look for several companies with small to mid-sized market caps and large cash burns to follow the path of Value America. There will be painful down-sizing (painful to capitalists anyway, as employees will immediately be snapped up), some frantic M&A activity, and new success by existing bricks and mortar retailers who already possess the most important back-end -- the wholesale and distribution channels.

Trend No. 2
Web Entertainment Crosses the Threshold

There are only two truths in the entertainment business. The first is: there's no one better than Aretha Franklin. The second is that consumers will not accept new entertainment technology until it is easy to use.

As the Web itself grows into a major consumer and business medium, the promise of Internet entertainment will finally be realized. The recent past is littered with the bones of failed Net soap operas, music plays, and video startups; the medium, and more importantly, the audience simply was not ready. But guess what, it is now. With vast investments in both bandwidth and content, Internet-based entertainment is poised to find an audience in 2000.

Why? Because the medium is becoming easier to use, and because media companies are becoming more savvy in how to use it. They've finally stopped trying to create TV for the Web, movies for the Web, radio for the Web, and magazines for the Web. Intead, the savviest startups are exploring the form itself, melding community and content with new technologies and aiming products at increasingly short attention spans.

Short films optimized for the Internet, game shows, real-time sports applets, user-created content, Web animation, digital music by unsigned bands, e-mail-based contests, and on-demand video archives -- these are some of the tools now being used wisely to link Internet entertainment with old media entertainment, or to build entirely new properties. But most important is the growing realization that information itself -- what the Web specializes in -- is entertainment.

Trend No. 3
Wireless Service is De Riguer

You've got a new age information company and you're serving business customers. What's your wireless strategy? You've got an Internet e-commerce company aimed at street-smart Gen Y types. What's your wireless strategy? You're building a news and entertainment portal for the masses. Repeat, what's your wireless strategy?

If 1999 was the year the Internet finally moved from wires to the airwaves, 2000 will be the year when wireless Internet content becomes ubiquitous. It's a relatively easy equation -- consumers want it, and there's big money behind it. The only real remaining questions are the untangling of the standards rat's nest, an under-powered wireless infrastructure in this country, and building inexpensive and easy-to-use appliances. Small hurdles? No -- but the demand is so strong for cheap, reliable wireless information, that the race is really on to provide it.

And no company serious about the Net can afford not to have a wireless strategy this year; conversely, broadband can wait a bit. While it's important to beging developing the interface for wide-pipe information and entertainment services, the roll-out of broadband will take a while. By contrast, wireless is here now, in the millions of cell phones and the growing number of enabled PDAs out there on subways, buses, planes and taxis.

Trend No. 4
Software as Service, New ASP Models for Content If the Internet is one giant client-server network, then everything you do on the Internet constitutes an application. But with the platform changing every time you blink, why pay for hard copy of a product that you need to load on every machine you own? Already applications service providers are exploding -- anything you can do on your desktop, you can do over the network with the software hosted elsewhere. In New York you've got companies like LivePerson, Javu Technologies, Flashbase, and others.

And the trend will continue to explode and expand into content itself. See, on the Net, content is like an application, and it can be hosted remotely and accessed by subscribers. Already musician Todd Rungren is selling monthly subscriptions to his music; new payment and access models for content hosted and served remotely will follow closely on the heels of software ASPs.

Trend No. 5
We All Become Venture Capitalists

If there's a single start-up out there that has revolution written all over it, it's MeVC.com. Draper-Fisher-Jurvetson's wild-eyed plan to allow anyone with $50K to join a high-flying venture fund is the equivalent of home movies spawned by the giants of Hollywood. Can a generation of would-be Internet millionaires be far behind? Think about it: venture capitalists are the new stars of high finance, the guys who paid for the digital revolution and realized fantastic fortunes. Of course, they do it with someone else's money -- at MeVC.com (and its future competitors), you'll be playing with house money, but it'll be your house.

Still, it's a brilliant, forward-thinking, and incredibly risky idea -- in absolutely perfect tune with our age.

These are heady days, to be sure. The turning of the calendar, the explosion of a new medium, the wild speculation of thousands of new investors. Anything can happen -- including phone calls like this one from a flack who shall remain nameless:

"So, like, are you doing anything this week on the millenium and the Internet?"

Uh, yeah.

Tom Watson and Jason Chervokas are founders and co-managing editors of AtNewYork.com. They plan to spend New Year's resting quietly, so as to be ready for the big news stories of '00.