A total of 16670 people came to Olympia 2, London on 5-7 December - an increase of 35% on Online Information 94 and 72% on 1993's event. Including for the first time Internet World International Winter, the event attracted 346 exhibitors, compared with 300 in 1994 and 257 in 1993.

The meeting's organiser, Learned Information (publisher of IWR), suggests that these record figures reflect "the growing recognition of the importance of electronically available information for general business use". It anticipates an even larger 20th anniversary event, on 3-5 December 1996, at the same location.

IWR CDROM Product of the Year for 1995 was named as SuperHighway Access CyberSearch from Frontier Technologies, a disc which integrates the Lycos database of Internet resources with a Web browser. Users can search for sites offline, then logon and download multiple sources at once. The browser also incorporates graphics compression and other technology to speed and enhance online performance.

IWR Editor Richard Poynder said: "In a year that has seen the World Wide Web achieve mass appeal, and online and CDROM technologies begin to merge, we felt it appropriate that our award should go to a product which successfully exploited these two interesting developments." It was accepted in person by Sunadnini Ambegaonka, one of Frontier's US-based founders.

Other awards included those of the European Information Industry Association, whose Product of the Year was Olivetti's Envision. This is a new PC which integrates multiple information and communication facilities, and so, according to the EIIA, "can be a major vehicle for stimulating the achievement of a mass market for electronic information services in Europe".

The EIIA again rewarded promotional efforts at the exhibition based on votes cast by conference delegates. By a clear majority, Knight-Ridder's was named Best Stand for combining online demonstrations, CDROM demonstrations and a help-desk in a "friendly and open atmosphere". Fulcrum Technologies produced the Best Brochure: 'In a world racing towards information overload, isn't it time you got answers?'