Chapter 2 2

This chapter is about the structure and contents of the online world. You will read about Bulletin Board systems, discussion lists, conferencing systems, online data bases, packet data services, and network services like FidoNet, i-Com, Infonet, and the Internet.

From papyrus to bits and bytes --------------- Around 1500 B.C., the world's first library was established in Tell el Amaran, Egypt. Eight hundred years later, the first public library opened in Athens, Greece. It took another two thousand years for the computer to be invented. The first known mention of a possible future online information service was printed in the Atlantic Monthly magazine in 1945. Nine years later, the Naval Ordinance Test Station opened their online search service in California (U.S.A.) The first full-text database came six years later. MEDLARS was a bibliographic database containing references to medical literature. From now on, things started to roll at a faster pace:

* In 1972, DIALOG (U.S.A.) opened their Educational Resources

Information Center and National Technical Information Service

databases for online searching. (Appendix 1 contains infor-

mation about the major online services referred to in this

book.)

* In 1974, Dow Jones News/Retrieval (U.S.A.) launched a

financial information service for stock brokers.

* In 1978, the first bulletin board was put into operation in

Chicago (U.S.A.).

* CompuServe (U.S.A.) launched a service for home users in

1979.

The online world was born in the United States. Little happened in the rest of the world until the late 1980s. American companies and users still dominate, but they are no longer alone. Today, we can access over 5,000 public databases. They are available from more than 500,000 online systems ("host computers") all over the world. With so many online services, it is difficult to find our way through the maze of offerings. This book therefore starts with a map of the online world.

The structure and contents of the online world ----------------------- The online world can be described as a cake with multiple layers, where the information sources are the bottom layer. You - the user - are the marzipan figure on the top. The online world contains the following tiers:

(1) Database producers and information providers (2) Online service companies (3) Gateways and networks (4) The services (5) The user interface (6) The data transport services (7) The User.

1. Database producers and information providers. ------------------------ I have a bulletin board system in Norway (at +47 370 31378). My BBS is running on a small personal computer, and offers shareware and public domain software. Anybody can call my board to have programs transferred to their personal computers by modem (see appendix 2 for how to do this). When you call this BBS to "download" a free program for to your computer's hard disk, don't expect to find one made by me. I don't write programs. All available programs have been written by others. When you call Data-Star in Switzerland, or CompuServe in the U.S. to read news, you may find some stories authored by these companies. Most of their news, however, are written by others. InfoPro Technologies delivers Russian scientific and technical articles from "Referativnyi Zurnal" through online services like Orbit, Pergamon and BRS. InfoPro is not the originator. The text has been prepared by VINITI (the Institute for scientific and technical information of the xUSSR). My BBS (the "Saltrod Horror Show"), Data-Star, NIFTY-Serve, Orbit, Pergamon, BRS, and CompuServe are online services. We call those who have provided the news and information on these services for information providers or database producers. The American news agency Associated Press is an information provider. They write the news, and sell them to online services like Dialog, CompuServe, Nexis and NewsNet. These online services let you read the news by modem. The information providers sell the right to distribute their news. Your news reading charges may be imbedded in the online service's standard access rates. Some services will ask you to pay a surcharge when reading news. Most subscribers pay US$12.80 per hour (1993) to use CompuServe at 2400 bits per second (bps). At this speed, you typically receive around 240 characters of news per second. If you access at higher speeds, you will have to pay more. CompuServe pays Associated Press part of what they earn each time you read their news. There is no surcharge for reading AP news on this service. Others charge more. To read Mid-East Business Digest through NewsNet, you pay a surcharge of US$72.00 per hour at 2400 bps (1993). Scanning newsletter headlines and conducting keyword searches are cheaper. You pay the the basic connect charge, which is US$90.00 per hour at this speed. Thus, your total cost for reading Mid-East Business Digest amounts to US$2.70 per minute. CompuServe's database service IQuest lets you search NewsNet through a gateway to find and read the same articles. Here, reading will only set you back US$21.50/hour (provided the articles are among the first hits in your search). Many information providers also distribute information through grassroots bulletin boards. The Newsbytes News Network and the USA Today newsletter services (also in full text on Dialog and Nexis) are two examples. The rates for reading the same article may therefore differ considerably depending on what online service you are using. If you are a regular reader, shop around for the best price. Information providers may have subcontractors. The Ziff-Davis service Computer Database Plus, a database with full-text articles from magazines like Datamation and Wall Street Computer Review, depends on them. Datamation pays journalists to write the articles. Ziff-Davis pays Datamation for the right to distribute the articles to CompuServe's subscribers. CompuServe pays Ziff-Davis part of what you pay when reading the text.

2. Online services --------- The term "online services" refers to information services provided by computer systems, large or small, to owners of personal computers with modems. What is offered, differ by system. It may include access to libraries of programs and 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.

3. 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.

4. 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), BITNET's Relay Chat, Cleveland Free-Net (U.S.A.), TWICS in Tokyo, the global network Tymnet, and the Education Forum on CompuServe. The discussions had no moderator. This made the encounters chaotic at times. The kids enjoyed it, though! One-line messages shot back and forth over the continents conveying intense simultaneous conversations, occasionally disrupted by exclamations and requests for technical help. Speed is a problem when chatting. It takes a lot of time since most users are slow typists. If individual Messages span more than one line, there is always a risk that it will be split up by lines coming from others. It takes time to understand what goes on. Users of SciLink (Canada) use a method they call 'semi-sync chat'. The trick is to use ordinary batch-mode conferences for chatting. Instead of calling up, reading and sending mail and then log out, they stay online waiting for new messages to arrive. This approach allows you to enter multiple-line messages without risking that it to broken up by other messages. The flow of the discussion is often better, and each person's entries easier to understand.

File transfers ------- The availability of free software on bulletin boards brought the online world out of the closet. Today, you can also retrieve books and articles, technical reports, graphics pictures, files of digitized music, weather reports, and much more. Millions of files are transferred to and from the online services each day. File transfers typically represent over 75 percent of the bulletin boards' utilization time. Downloading free software is still the most popular service. In June 1991, users of my BBS (which has only one phone line) downloaded 86 megabytes' worth of public domain and shareware programs. (86MB equals around 86,000,000 bytes.) In May 1993, users downloaded 108 megabytes distributed over 1,446 files. Add to this the megabytes being downloaded from hundreds of thousands of other bulletin boards. The number is staggering.

If you want to download free software: read in appendix 3 about how to do it.

Downloading is simple. Just dial an online service, order transfer of a given file, select a file transfer protocol (like XMODEM), and the file comes crawling to you through the phone line. Services on the Internet offer file transfer through gateways using a command called FTP (File Transfer Protocol). It works like this:

Say you're logging on to the ULRIK service at the University of

Oslo in Norway. Your objective is to download free programs

from a large library in Oakland, U.S.A.

After having connected to Ulrik, you enter the command

'ftp OAK.Oakland.Edu' to connect to the computer in California.

A few seconds later, the remote host asks for your logon

id. You enter 'anonymous', and supply your email address as

password. This will give you access.

You use the cd command (change directory) to navigate to

the desired library catalog on the remote hard disk. You locate

the desired file, and use a GET command to transfer the file

to your file area on Ulrik.

When done, you logout from the remote computer to be

returned to Ulrik's services. Your final job is to transfer

the file from Ulrik to your personal computer using traditional

methods.

Being able to send Internet mail does not guarantee access to the ftp command. If ftp is unavailable, you may transfer the file by email using a technique called UUENCODEing. Here, the file is converted before transfer into a format that can be sent as ordinary mail (into a seven bits, even character code). When the file arrives in your mailbox, you 'read' it as an ordinary message and store the codes in a work file on your disk. Finally, you decode the file using a special utility program (often called UUDECODE). Read more about this in Chapter 12.

Conferences and discussions -------------- Online conferences have many things in common with traditional face- to-face conferences and discussions, except that participants don't physically meet in the same room. They 'come' by modem and discuss using electronic messages (sometimes also through "Chat"). There are discussions about any conceivable topic, from How to start your own company, Brainstorming, Architectural design, The Future of Education and Investments, to AIDS, The Baltic States, Psychology, and Cartoons. Instead of calling these discussions "online conferences," some services use terms like echos, discussion or mailing lists, clubs, newsgroups, round tables, SIGs (Special Interest Groups), and forums. They use other terms in an attempt to make their offerings more attractive and exclusive. Others refer to "conferences" by using the name of the software used to administer the discussions, like LISTSERV, PortaCom, News, Usenet, Caucus, or PARTIcipate. On the bottom line, we're still talking email. However, while private mail is usually read by one recipient only, 'conference mail' may be read by thousands of people from the whole world. All of them can talk and discuss SIMULTANEOUSLY. It is almost impossible for one single individual to dominate. The number of active participants can therefore be far larger than in 'face-to- face' conferences. The conferencing software automatically records all that is said. Every character. Each participant can decide what to read and when. He may even use the messages in other applications later on. Opinions and information can easily be selected and pasted into reports or new responses. Some conferences are public and open for anybody. Others are for a closed group (of registered) participants. They are normally structured by topic and the structure is influenced by the participants' behavior. If the topic is limited, like in "The football match between Mexico and Uruguay," it may start with an introduction followed by comments, questions, and answers like pearls on a thread. After some time the conference is 'finished'. Conferences called 'IBM PC' or 'MS-DOS' often contain so many different sub-topics that they seem chaotic to the outsider. The message subject headings typically have references to computer equipment (like in 'Wyse 050 or TVI 925'), requests for help (like in 'Need Xywrite help!'), experience reports, equipment for sale, news reports, etc. The sequence of messages are often illogical.

The contents and the quality of the discussion are what separates one online conference from others.

How a conference grows into something useful, depends in part on the features of the software used by the online service. But this is much less important than the kind of people you meet there and their willingness to contribute. Messages in the IBM Hardware Forum on CompuServe are divided into 11 sections. Section 2 is called Printers' utilities. If you have problems with an old Epson FX-80 printer, send requests for help to "All" (=to everybody) and store it in this section. CompuServe has over one million subscribers (1993). They call in from all over the place to join the IBM Hardware forum. Some are there to show off competence (read: to sell their expertise). Others visit to find solutions to a problem, or simply to learn. A conference with many users increases your chances of meeting others with relevant know-how. As always, the quality of the people is the first requirement of a good conference. Professional 'Sysops' moderate the discussion in IBMHW. They get up to 15 percent of what you pay CompuServe for using their forum. To them, being a sysop is a profession. They use a fair amount of time trying to make the forum a lively and interesting place. The Printers/utilities section is not just about Epson FX-80. Its members have hundreds of different printers, each with their own set of user problems. Let's use this to explain differences between some conferencing systems. Each message in CompuServe's forums contains the sender's name (his local email address), subject, date, and the text itself. We call this the 'bulletin board model'. Here, a message typically looks like this:

#: 24988 S10/Portable Desktops

22-Jul-91 10:05:38

Sb: #T5200 425meg HDD

Fm: Gordon Norman 72356,370

To: Menno Aartsen 72611,2066 (X)

Menno-

Can you share the HD specs on that 425'er...random access time, transfer rate, MTBF, etc.?

Gordon

This message may not be of interest to you. Each day, hundreds of messages OUTSIDE your area of interest are being posted. You do NOT want to read these messages. CompuServe allows selective reading of messages. You can select all messages containing a given word or text string in the subject title ('Sb:' above). You can read threads of messages from a given message number (replies, and replies to replies). You can read all messages to/from a given person, from a given message number, and from a given date. There are many options. The PARTIcipate conferencing software functions diametrically different from CompuServe's forum software. PARTI is used on TWICS (Japan), Unison (U.S.A.), NWI (U.S.A.), and The Point (can be accessed through a gateway from CompuServe). PARTI lets the user log on using an alias. For example, he can use the identity 'BATMAN'. You may never get to know the true name of the other person. On the other hand, this allows people to talk about controversial topics, which they would otherwise not want to have their names associated with. Anyone can start a conference. It can be public, private or a combination. Combination conferences allow public review of the messages in the conference, but restrict the number of people who can contribute to the discussion. Enter 'write', and PARTI will prompt you with "Enter the text of your note, then type .send or .open to transmit." Enter the welcome text for your new conference, like in this example:

"This conference is based on a series of articles about shareware and public domain programs for MSDOS computers, which I wrote for publication in England. Since the editor cheated me and they never reached the printing press, I've decided to make them available online instead of letting them rot on my hard disk. Join to read, discuss or (hopefully) enjoy! "

When done, I entered ".open odd de presno", added the name of the conference ("MSDOS TIPS") and a short description ("GOOD PD AND SHAREWARE PROGRAMS").

The conference was presented to the other PARTI users on TWICS like this:

"MSDOS TIPS" by ODD DE PRESNO, Feb. 23, 1990 at 11:57 about

GOOD PD AND SHAREWARE PROGRAMS (7 notes)

Few systems of the bulletin board model let users start their own conferences at will. All new topics must be stored in a given structure. The administrators (sysops) of the service manage the evolution of the 'conference room'. After a while, old messages may even be deleted to make room for new. In PARTI, conference messages are organized under a topic, or any sub-topics that can be derived from the main topic. Conferences are modeled after their counterparts in the face- to-face world. They start with an introduction followed by a discussion about a narrow topic, like here:

"SMART PEOPLE" by MACBETH on Jan. 4, 1992 at 12:27, about WHO ARE

THE BEST AND THE BRIGHTEST (504 characters and 17 notes).

In this example above, the welcome message is 504 characters long. Following that, there are 17 other messages (called notes). Notes are stored without individual subject headers and the name of a recipient. Everything is posted to 'the group'. If CompuServe message above had been posted on PARTI, then the first five lines might have been reduced to:

12 (of 12) SHABBY DOG Jul. 22, 1991 at 10:05 (119 characters)

On PARTI, all participants read all notes. Selective reading must be done in other ways (by searching conference contents). These two conferencing models seem to attract different types of discussions. PARTI has given birth to more discussions on topics like these (from PARTI on The Point, January 1992):

"HELLO BEEP" by THE SHADOW on Sept. 17, 1991 at 19:20, about

BEEP'S ADVENTURES IN JAPAN, AND THE LIKE (840 characters and 22

notes).

"MEMORIES" by LOU on Dec. 21, 1991 at 12:31, about .......I

REMEMBER WHEN...... (423 characters and 1 notes).

"AMENDMENT II 1991" by PASSIN THRU on Dec. 25, 1991 at 20:55,

about OUR RIGHTS TO OWN AND POSSESS FIREARMS, AND THE MYTH

REGARDING ASSAULT WEAPONS. (3036 characters and 38 notes).

"TV SHOWS" by THE SHADOW on Nov. 16, 1990 at 18:00, about

DISCUSSION OF TELEVISION SHOWS (105 characters and 37 notes).

"PHILOSOPHY FOR AMATEURS" by MACBETH on April 13, 1990 at 10:08,

about TALKING ABOUT THINKING (187 characters and 97 notes).

"HAPPY BIRTHDAY TOTO" by PONDER on Jan. 2, 1992 at 14:34, about

AND I BET HE THOUGHT I FORGOT. (86 characters and 15 notes).

"ONLINE LOTTERY" by DEEDUB on Jan. 3, 1992 at 07:40, about

MULTIPLYING OUR CHANCES TO WIN THE LOTTERY (1238 characters and

62 notes).

"WHO SHOT KENNEDY" by MATT on Jan. 3, 1992 at 22:29, about THE

ASSASINATION OF JOHN F. KENNEDY; THOUGHTS, COMMENTS, QUESTIONS

AND THEORIES! (529 characters and 83 notes).

"THE ECONOMY" by LOU on Jan. 5, 1992 at 16:40, about THE ECONOMY,

AS IT AFFECTS US ALL. (167 characters and 49 notes).

"PUERTO RICO" by PACKER on Jan. 18, 1992 at 20:47, about PARA

DISCUTIR ASUNTOS PUERTORIQUENA (166 characters and 9 notes).

Systems using the bulletin board model rarely have conferences like "MEMORIES." In PARTI, one-note conferences are allowed to stay. In the bulletin board environment, they soon disappear. You can probably still join MEMORIES on the Point to add your own feelings or point-of-views. In larger PARTI conferences, the notes can be read like a book. Often, side discussions appear like 'branches' on a 'tree'. Join and read them, if you want to. Or just pass. The bulletin board systems (including CompuServe's forums) and PARTIcipate are at two extremes of the spectrum of conference systems. Toward the BBS model, there are systems like FidoNet Echo, RBBS-PC, and PortaCom. Toward the PARTI side, there are systems like Caucus.

Many companies set up bulletin board systems to provide technical support to customers. McAfee Associates, Inc. in California is one example. They offer technical information, help, upgrade software, list of agents, technical bulletins with lists of products, and new products through agents' support BBSes all over the world. For example, when in Port of Spain, Trinidad & Tobago call the Opus Networx BBS at (819) 628-4023. Setting up a professional BBS is not very expensive. You can easily have 32 people online to the same conference simultaneously on a standard 80386-based PC, running Xenix and Caucus conferencing software. This is what the Washington Information Service Corp. in U.S.A. did. There's an abundance of software to choose from. Many companies rent private 'conference rooms' on commercial online services rather than doing it in-house. The advantage is easier access to an established multi-user system and user base. Microsoft, Toshiba, Quarterdeck, Digital Research, Tandy, Novell and hundreds of others rent public support forum space on CompuServe to keep in touch with customers all over the world. Others rent space on regional bulletin boards. Other corporate applications of such services include internal organizational development and communications, and coordination of projects. On Norwegian bulletin boards the main language is Norwegian. In France, expect French. Local systems usually depend on messages in the local language. Services catering to a larger geographical area often have a different policy. English is the most common language for international discussions. Spanish possibly number two. Example: TWICS in Japan is an English language system. Its Spanish language conference ESPANOL has participants from Japan, Mexico and Norway. On MetaNet (Arlington, U.S.A.) the conferences are divided into conference areas. One area was called The Salon. The welcome message said: 'All conferences and responses posted here may freely be ported to other conferencing systems'. MetaNet regularly 'ports' (exchanges) conference notes with systems in Europe, Asia and North America. Exchanging conferences have long traditions in the bulletin board world. To some, it is routine to call Thunderball Cave BBS in Oslo to discuss photography with people in California. New messages are exchanged daily across country boundaries. The global web of connections between computers enables us to discuss with people living in other parts of the world, as if they were living next door.

Things Take Time! --------- How long does it take a message to get from Hyougo in Japan to Saltrod in Norway? Or to Dominique Christian in Paris? Sometimes, mail travels from mailbox service to mailbox service in seconds. That is usually the case with messages from my mailbox in Norway to KIDLINK's LISTSERV in North Dakota, U.S.A. Messages that must go through many gateways may take more time. How long it takes, depends on the degree of automation in the mail systems involved, and how these systems have been connected to the global matrix of networks. Speed is high if the computers are interconnected with fixed, high-capacity lines. This is not so for mail from Oslo to Dominique in Paris. His mail is routed through a system in London and is forwarded once per day through a dial-up connection. It usually takes at least one day to reach the destination.

News -- Most large news agencies have online counterparts. You can often read their news online before it appears in print. This is the case with news from sources like NTB, Agence France-Presse, Associated Press, Kyodo News Report (Japan), Reuters, Xinhua English Language News Service (China) and TASS. Some news is only made available in electronic form. News may be read in several ways, depending on what online service you use: * From a list of headlines. Enter a story's number to receive its full text. The news may be split up into groups, like Sports, International news, Business, and Entertainment. * Some services let you hook directly into a news agency's 'feed line' to get news as it is being made available. At 11.02, 11.04, 11.15, etc. * News may be 'clipped' and stored in your mailbox twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. Clipping services search articles for occurrences of your personal keyword phrases while you're offline. In this way, you can monitor new products, companies, people, and countries, even when you're not online. NewsFlash is NewsNet's electronic clipping service, a powerful resource that lets you monitor NewsNet's newsletters for topics of interest. On the Executive News Service (CompuServe), you can search for words in story headlines. You can also search for first three lines of text from 8,000 stories/day from Washington Post, OTC NewsAlert, Associated Press, United Press International and Reuters Financial News Wire. Newspapers used to receive news through the wires before the online user. This built-in delay has now been removed on many services. Industry and professional news is usually available online long before it appears in print.

Databases ----- Some years ago, most databases just contained references to articles, books and other written or electronic sources of information. The typical search result looked like this:

0019201 02-88-68

TRIMETHOPRIM-SULFAMETHOXAZOLE in CYST Fluid from Autosomal

Dominant POLYCYSTIC KIDNEYS.

Elzinga L.W.; et al. W.M. Bennett, Dept. of Med., Oregon Hlth.

Sci. Univ., 3101 Southwest Sam Jackson Park Rd., Portland,

OR 97201.

Kid. Int. 32: 884-888. Dec. 1987

Subfile: Internal Medicine; Family Practice; Nephrology;

Infectious Disease; Clinical Pharmacology; Highlights of General

Medicine

You had to take the reference to a library to get a print copy of the article. Some services let you to order a copy while online, to be sent you by mail from a copying service. Full-text searching is now the rule. When you find an article of interest, you can have the full text displayed on your screen at once (normally without accompanying pictures and tables, though). The search commands are simpler and more powerful.

Just for fun ------ Many online services focus on your leisure time. They offer reviews and news about movies, video, music, and sport. There are forums for stamp and coin collectors, travel maniacs, passionate cooks, wine tasters, and other special interest groups. Besides, many services are entertaining in themselves. Large, complex adventure games, where hundreds of users can play simultaneously, are popular choices. People sit glued to the computer screen for hours. 'Chat', this keyboard-to-keyboard contact-phone type of simultaneous conversation between from two and up to hundreds of persons, is also popular. It works like a combination of a social activity and a role-playing/strategy/fantasy/skill-improving game. Shopping is the online equivalent of traditional mail order business. The difference is that you can buy while browsing. Some commercial services distribute colorful catalogues to users to support sales. Some distribute pictures of the merchandise by modem. You can buy anything from racer fitness equipment and diamonds to cars. Enter your credit card number and the Chevrolet is yours. The online mail order business is becoming increasingly global.

Level 5: The user interface -------------- This term describes how the online service is presented to you, that is, in what form text, pictures and sound appear on your personal communications computer. Most online services offer the first three of these four levels. Some offer more:

1. Menus for novices. The user can select (navigate) by

pressing a figure or a letter.

2. Short menus or lists of commands for the intermediate user.

The user knows some about how the service works, and just

wants a short reminder to help navigate.

3. A short prompt (often just a character, like a "!"), which

tells the expert user where he is in the system right now.

Those knowing the service inside out, don't need reminders

about what word or command to enter at this point.

4. Some services offer automatic access without any menus or

visible prompts at all. Everything happens in a two-way

stream of unintelligent data. The only menus that the user

sees, are those belonging to the program running on his

personal computer.

Some services emphasize colors, graphics and sound. They may require that users have certain hardware or special add-on cards in their communications computer. Often, a special communications program is also needed. Other services use methods for presenting colors and graphics already built into their users' computers (and programs). Colors, graphics and sound are highly desirable in some applications, like online games and weather forecasts. But even where it is not important, there will always be many wanting it. To the professional on a fact-gathering mission, these features may give slower data transfer and problems when saving text to disk for later use. Therefore, many prefer ASCII text with no extras. Sports cars are nice, but for delivering furniture they're seldom any good. The same applies to the user interfaces. No one is perfect for all applications.

Level 6: The data transporters --------------- When the online service's host computer is far away, the user often faces the challenges of:

1. Noise on the line, which may result in unreadable text or

errors in the received material.

2. Expensive long distance calls

There are many alternatives to direct long distance calling. Some offers better quality data transfers and lower costs. The regional packet data services used to be a popular option. In Scandinavia, the offerings of the local PTTs are called Datapak. Similar services are offered in most countries, often by a national telephone monopoly. Competitively priced alternatives are appearing in many countries as national telecom monopolies are brought to an end. For example, Infonet, TRI-P, and i-Com compete successfully with former monopolies for transport of data to and from North America. The Internet is a global network serving millions of mailboxes. It provides very cost-efficient mail exchange with private and public networks throughout the world. IXI is a packet data network operated by European Research centers. DASnet offers transport of mail between mail systems that have no direct connection with each others. (More about this in Chapter 13.)

Level 7: The user --------- This is you and me. Turn the page to the next chapter and read about how to use the online services.