The Online World, Odd de Presno [simple ebook reader txt] 📗

group of readers, viewers or listeners with different interests in mind. Go online to discover the difference. The online news has an enormous width and depth. Besides "popular" news, you will find stories that few editors bother to print. This may give you better insight in current developments, and in as much details as you can take. Most commercial online services offer news. Most of their stories come from large news agencies and newspapers. You can also read and search articles from magazines, newsletters and other special publications. The online users' ability to search today and yesterday's news makes these offerings particularly useful. The cost of reading a given news item varies by online service. What will set you back 20 cents on one service, will cost you two dollars on another. It may be many times more expensive (or cheap) to read the same article from the same news provider on another online service. So, professional online users compare prices.

National news

In Norway, we have long been able to read local language news from print media like Aftenposten, Dagens Naeringsliv, Kapital, and news wires from NTB and other local sources. Similarly, local language news is available online in most countries.

The cost of reading local news on national online services tends to be more expensive than on major global online services. As competition among global news providers increases, however, this is bound to change.

International news

"The Global Village" is an old idea in the online world. News from most parts of the world has long been globally available.

A while ago, a well-known Norwegian industrialist visited my office. I showed off online searching in NewsNet newsletters and stumbled over a story about his company. "Incredible!" he said. "We haven't even told our Norwegian employees about this yet." Often, American online services give news from other countries earlier you can get it on online services from these countries. Besides, the stories will be in English.

| In 1991, the United States had 56 percent of the world's online |

| databases (Source: the research company IQ, September 1991). |

Sure, most Norwegians prefer to read news in Norwegian. The Japanese want news in their language, and the French in French. If they can get the news earlier than their competitors, however, most are willing to read English.

Few master many languages. Unless you live in a country where they talk Arabic, Chinese or French, chances are that you cannot read news in these languages. English, however, is a popular second choice in many countries, and it has become the unofficial language of the online world. Another thing is that reading local language news is risky. Translators often make mistakes. One reason is time pressure, another poor knowledge of the source language. The risk of inaccuracies increases when a story, for example initially translated from Spanish into English, then are being translated into a third language. Avoid news that has been translated more than once. If not, you may experience something like this: On September 19, 1991, Norwegian TV brought news from Moscow. They told that Russian president Boris Yeltsin had a heart attack. The online report from Associated Press, which arrived 7.5 hours earlier, talked about "a minor heart attack" with the following additional explanation: "In Russian, the phrase 'heart attack' has a broader meaning than in English. It is commonly used to refer to a range of ailments from chest pains to actual heart failure."

Your "personal online daily newspaper" will often give you the news faster and more correctly than traditional print media. Some news is only made available in electronic form.

Seven minutes in 1991

On September 19, I called CompuServe to read news and gather information about online news sources.

According to my log, I connected through Infonet in Oslo (see Chapter 13). The total cost for seven minutes was US$6.00, which included the cost of a long distance call to Oslo. I read some stories, while they scrolled over the screen. All was captured to a file on my hard disk for later study. The size of this file grew to 32.000 characters, or almost 15 single-spaced typewritten pages (A-4 size). If I had spent less time reviewing the lists of available stories, seven minutes would have given a larger file. When I had entered my user ID and password, a menu of stories came up on my screen. The headline read "News from CompuServe." The two first items caught my attention, and I requested the text. One had 20 lines about an easier method of finding files in the forum libraries. The other had ten lines about how to write addresses for international fax messages. The command GO APV brought me directly to Associated Press News Wires. You'll find such tricks by reading the online services' user manuals. This command produced the following menu: AP Online APV-1 1 Latest News-Updated Hourly 2 Weather 3 Sports 4 National 5 Washington 6 World 7 Political 8 Entertainment 9 Business News 10 Wall Street 11 Dow Jones Average 12 Feature News 13 Today in History

I entered "9" for business news, and got a new list of stories:

AP Online 1 Women, Minority Businesses Lag 2 Child World Accuses Toys R Us 3 UPI May Cancel Worker Benefits 4 Drilling Plan Worries Florida 5 UK Stocks Dip, Tokyo's Higher 6 Dollar Higher, Gold Up 7 Farm Exports Seen Declining 8 Supermarket Coupons Big Bucks 9 Cattlemen Tout Supply, Prices 0 Tokyo Stocks, Dollar Higher MORE !

The screen stopped scrolling by "MORE !". Pressing ENTER gave a new list. None of them were of any interest.

Pressing M (for previous menu) returned me to the APV-1 menu (the videotext page number is given in the upper right corner of each menu display). I selected "World" for global news, which gave me this list: AP Online 6 Two Killed In Nagorno Karabakh 7 Yugoslavia Fighting Rages On 8 Storm Kills Five In Japan 9 Afghan Rebels Going To Moscow? 0 19 Killed in Guatemala Quakes MORE !8

Oh, a storm in Japan! Interesting. I was due to leave for Japan in a couple of weeks, and entered 8 at the MORE ! prompt to read. A screenful of text was transferred in a few seconds.

"This is for later study," I said, pressed M to return to the menu, and then ENTER to get the next listing: AP Online 1 Bomblets Kill American Troops? 2 No Movement On Hostage Release 3 Baker Plans Return To Syria 4 Baker, King Hussein To Confer 5 Madame Chiang Leaving Taiwan? 6 Baker Leaves Syria for Jordan 7 Klaus Barbie Hospitalized 8 Iraq Denounces U.S. Threat 9 Yelstin Said Resting At Home 0 SS Auschwitz Guard Found Dead MORE !

Here, I used another trick from the user manual. Entering "5,6,9" gave three stories in one batch with no pauses between them. Five screens with text. If I had read the menu more carefully, I might probably also have selected story 0. It looked like an interesting item.

"This is enough of the Associated Press," I thought, and typed G NEWS. This gave me an overview of all available news sources ("G NEWS" is an abbreviation for "GO NEWS," or "GO to the main NEWS menu"): News/Weather/Sports NEWS 1 Executive News Service ($) 2 NewsGrid 3 Associated Press Online 4 Weather 5 Sports 6 The Business Wire 7 Newspaper Library 8 UK News/Sports 9 Entertainment News/Info 10 Online Today Daily Edition 11 Soviet Crisis

First, a quick glance at 6. The service presented itself in these words: "Throughout the day The Business Wire makes available press releases, news stories, and other information from the world of business. Information on hundreds of different companies is transmitted daily to The Business Wire's subscribers."

Then #7: "This database contains selected full-text stories from 48 newspapers from across the United States. Classified ads are NOT included in the full-text of each paper." The list of newspapers included Boston Globe, Chicago Tribune and San Francisco Chronicle (known for many interesting inside stories from Silicon Valley). Choice 8 gave news from England. There, I selected UK News Clips, which gave the following options:

U.K. News Clips

93 stories selected

1 RTw 09/19 0818 YUGOSLAV AIR FORCE HITS CROATIAN COMMUNICATIONS 2 RTw 09/19 0755 CROATIA BATTLES CONTINUE AS EC PONDERS PEACE FORCE 3 RTw 09/19 0753 ARAB PAPERS SAY MOSCOW WANTS MIDEAST PARLEY DELAYED 4 RTw 09/19 0749 DOLLAR STANDS STILL, SHARES DRIFT LOWER IN ... 5 RTw 09/19 0729 EARNINGS GLOOM REVERSES LONDON STOCKS' EARLY GAINS 6 RTw 09/19 0716 SOVIETS NEED 14.7 BILLION DOLLARS FOOD AID, EC SAYS 7 RTw 09/19 0707 IRA SAYS IT KILLED TIMBER YARD WORKER IN BELFAST DOCKS 8 RTw 09/19 0706 BRITISH CONSERVATIVE CHIEF PLAYS DOWN TALK OF ... 9 RTw 09/19 0630 FINANCE RATES 10 RTw 09/19 0603 REUTER WORLD NEWS SCHEDULE AT 1000 GMT THURSDAY ...

The numbers in column four are the release times of the stories. They flow in from the wires in a continuous stream.

Next stop was the UK Newspaper Library. Here, you can search in full-text stories from The Daily and Sunday Telegraph, Financial Times, The Guardian, UK News (with selected stories from The Daily & Sunday Telegraph, Financial Times, The Guardian, The Times/Sunday Times, Today, The Independent, Lloyd's List and The Observer). Searching the UK Newspaper Library costs US$6.00 for up to ten hits. You get a selection menu of the first ten stories found. A menu with an additional ten stories costs another $6.00, etc. You pay US$6.00 to read the full text of selected stories. These rates are added to CompuServe's normal access rates. The news service Soviet Crisis was my final destination. This was just a few weeks after the attempted coup in Moscow, and I was eager for reports. I found the following interesting story from OTC NewsAlert:

OTC 09/19 0750 FIRST ENGLISH LANGUAGE SOVDATA DAILINE IS LAUNCHED

This selection gave me three screens with information about a new online service. Briefly, this is what it said:

"The SovData DiaLine service includes an on-line library of more than 250 Soviet newspapers, business and economic periodicals, profiles of more than 2,500 Soviet firms and key executives that do business with the West, legislative reports and other information."

It also said that part of the database was available through Mead Data Central (Nexis/Lexis), and that it would be made available through like Data-Star, FT Profile, Reuters, Westlaw, and GBI. Undoubtedly, the name has changed by the time you read this.

Finally, a fresh story about the fate of KGB. I read another fifty lines, entered OFF (for "goodbye CompuServe"), and received the following verdict: Thank you for using CompuServe! Off at 09:03 EDT 19-Sep-91 Connect time = 0:07

Seven minutes. Fifteen typed pages of text. US$6.00. Not bad!

An overwhelming choice

I am confident that your "daily online newspaper" will contain other stories. If you're into computers, you may want to start with Online Today, CompuServe's daily newspaper. It brings short, informative news stories about the computer industry.

NewsBytes is another interesting source