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

data, electronic mail, online shopping malls, discussion forums, hardware and software vendor support, games and entertainment, financial data, stock market quotes, and research capabilities. You do not always need a phone and a modem when "dialing up." Some services can be accessed through leased phone lines, amateur radio, or other methods. Check out appendix 1 for a list of major services mentioned in this book, with addresses, phone numbers, and a short description. CompuServe (U.S.A.), Twics (Japan), and Orbit (England) are commercial. They charge you for using their services. Some online services are priced like magazines and newspapers with a flat subscription rate for basic services. You can use this part of a service as much as you like within a given period. GEnie, CompuServe, BIX, America Online, and Delphi are among those offering such pricing options. Other online services charge for 'connect time'. They have a rate per hour or minute. MCI Mail uses "no cure, no pay." You only pay to send or read mail. To check for unread letters in your mailbox is free. There are all kinds of creative pricing schemes. Some services have different rates for access during the day, night and weekends. Others have different rates for users living far away. Sometimes the remote subscriber pays more, in other cases less than ordinary subscribers. Still, most online services are free. This is particularly true for the over hundred thousand bulletin board systems around the world. The owners of these services often regard them as a hobby, a public service, a necessary marketing expense, or do it for other reasons. The cost of setting up and operating a bulletin board system is low. Consequently, the BBS systems are as varied as the people who run them. Each BBS has its own character. My BBS is also free. I consider it an online appendix to this book and the articles I write. National Geographic BBS in Washington, D.C., U.S.A. (tel.: +1- 202-775-6738) is run by the magazine of the same name. This board is also free. They regard it as a part of their marketing strategy. It provides them with input to the editors, and it is an easy way of maintaining contacts with schools. Semaforum BBS in Norway is run by a company. Its purpose is customer support and to give information to prospective customers. The cost is a marketing expense. Some large, international online services on the Internet, BITNET, and UUCP are almost free. They address research and educational institutions and are financed by public funds. These services are now being made available to other users at very moderate rates. Some users fear that using online services will increase their telephone costs dramatically, and especially when using services in other countries. This is often unjustified. Read chapter 13 and 15 for tips about how to keep your communications costs down. Gateways and networks

CompuServe users select the Computer Database Plus from a menu. This prompts CompuServe to dial another online service and lets you use this, as if you were still using CompuServe. You hardly notice the difference. You are using Computer Database Plus through a gateway.

CompuServe users searching the IQuest databases get the following welcome message: One moment please... Connected to 19EASYN Welcome to IQuest (c) 1991 Telebase Systems, Inc. U.S. Patent No. 4,774,655

Through another gateway, CompuServe connects you to the online service Telebase Systems, Inc. Telebase lets you go through other gateways to search in databases on online services like BRS, MEDLINE and NewsNet.

While searching, you may get similar progress reports: Dialing BRS Connect BRS Scanning .... Please wait Dialing Medline Connect Medline Scanning .... Please wait

All the time, your modem is connected to CompuServe. You are mentally using IQuest and not other online services. Technically, you are going through various gateways to reach the information libraries. You pay CompuServe for the privilege. In turn, they pay a fee to Telebase, and others.

You can read The New York Times on Down Jones News/Retrieval through gateways from MCI Mail and GEnie. Accessing information through a gateway is often simpler than logging on to several online systems. Calling several systems often costs more, and it certainly takes time. Users of BBSes connected to RelayNet or FidoNet can join in global discussions. Participants in other countries also call their favorite local systems. To the individual user, it looks as if they all use the same bulletin board system. The networks that tie these boards together regularly send new discussion items to the other participating boards. Write "This is not correct!" in a distributed conference on a Norwegian FidoNet BBS, and others may soon read your line on San Bernardino BBS in Colton (Canada), Wonderland Board in Macau or the HighTech BBS in Sidney (Australia). SciLink (Canada) administers a network for distribution of conferences between systems using the Caucus software system. Participants in Tokyo, Toronto and San Francisco can discuss as if they were all logged on to the same online service. The main purpose may not be to make it simpler or cheaper for the user. One typical motive is to reduce an online service's own communications costs. KIDLINK is a global project for children between 10 - 15 years of age. It allows kids to discuss through a system of electronic mail. Part of the dialog takes place by the children sending email to a recipient called KIDCAFE. A message to 'the cafe' goes through the international networks to a host computer in North Dakota (U.S.A.). There, a computer program called LISTSERV distributes copies of the message to names on an electronic address list. (Conferences administered by a LISTSERV are called 'discussion lists'.) SciLink in Toronto is one recipient. Messages forwarded from North Dakota are made available for users as entries in a 'local' conference called KIDCAFE. A user in Tokyo can read a message, as if it had been entered locally. If she wants to reply, her answer is sent back to the LISTSERV for redistribution to the world. Western Michigan University (U.S.A.) is also a recipient. Here, another LISTSERV program is in charge of forwarding the mail to yet another list of (local) addresses. We call it a 'mail exploder'. This mailing list has been set up by local administrators to reduce costs. The individual user is not allowed to receive copies of messages all the way from North Dakota. One Michigan recipient may be a local area network. You will find many smart technical solutions in the online world. Actually, this is how the online world got started. Two systems were interconnected for exchange of electronic mail. Then, another system was added, and another. One day it was a global network of computer systems. Some network systems are connected by leased telephone lines. Other networks, like FidoNet, depend mainly on dial-up using regular voice-grade telephone service. Each BBS dial regularly to other computers in the network to send or receive mail and files. They may do it once per day, twice per day or whatever. Then someone got the idea of interconnecting networks. FidoNet was connected to the UUCP network, which was connected to the Internet, which in turn was connected to the Bergen By Byte BBS in Norway, CompuServe, SciLink, MCI Mail, and various local area networks. Today, the online world is a global web of networks. The world is 'cabled'. You, me and all the other modem users stand to benefit enormously. The services

The most popular online services are electronic mail, chat, file transfers, conferences and discussion forums, news, reading of online journals and grassroots publications, database searching, entertainment. The online world has an infinite number of niches, things that people are interested in and have fun doing.

Electronic mail

is not just like paper mail. Email is faster, easier to edit and use in other applications.

Your mail may be private, or public. It can be 'broadcasted' to many by a mailing list. The principle is the same on all systems. Typically, an email message is sent to your mailbox in the following form: To: Odd de Presno Subject: Happy Birthday Text: I wish you well on your birthday. -Ole

The mailbox systems automatically add your name (i.e., the sender's return email address), the creation date, and forward it to the recipient. If the recipient's mailbox is on another system, the message is routed through one or several networks to reach its destination.

Several email services offer forwarding to fax, telex or ordinary postal service delivery. Some offer forwarding to paging services. When new mail arrives in your mailbox, messages with text like 'MAIL from opresno@extern.uio.no' will be displayed on your beeper's small screen. Soon, you can send electronic mail to anyone. By the turn of the century, it probably will be difficult to tell the difference between fax messages and email. The services will automatically convert incoming faxes to computer-readable text and pictures, so that you can use them in word processing and other computer applications. Automatic language translation is another trend. You will soon be able to send a message in English, and have it automatically translated into Spanish for Spanish-reading recipients, or into other languages. Conference systems with automatic translation are already being used in Japan (English to/from Japanese). One day we may also have a global email address directory. "What is the address of Nobuo Hasumi in Japan." Press ENTER, and there it is. Today, the largest commercial players email vendors are MCI, Dialcom, Telemail, AT&T Mail and CompuServe. The fight for dominance goes on.

'Chat'

Email has one important disadvantage. It may take time for it to be picked up and read by the recipient. The alternative is real-time conferencing, a form of direct keyboard-to-keyboard dialog between users. We call it 'chat'.

Most large systems let you chat with many users simultaneously. Even small bulletin boards usually have a chat feature. Chat is set up in several ways. On some systems, you see each character on the screen once it is entered by your dialog partners. Other systems send entries line by line, that is, whenever you press ENTER or Return. Here, it may be difficult to know whether the other person is waiting for you to type, or if he is actively entering new words. You will find regular chat conferences in CompuServe's forums. Often, they invite a person to give a keynote speech before opening 'the floor' for questions and answers. John Sculley of Apple Computers and various politicians have been featured in such 'meetings'. In May 1991, the KIDLINK project arranged a full-day chat between kids from all over the world. Line, a 12-year old Norwegian girl, started the day talking with Japanese kids at the Nishimachi and Kanto International School in Tokyo. When her computer was switched off late at night, she was having an intense exchange with children in North America. The chats took place on various online services and networks, including Internet Relay Chat (IRC),