The Online World resources handbook
Chapter 2:
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Structure and contents of the online world |
Services (contd.) |
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Around 1500 B.C., the world's first library was set up 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 first full-scale stored-program computer to be invented (The
EDSAC. Wilkes, Cambridge, England. 1949), and for people to express ideas
like what Nikola Tesla said in an interview with Collier's, January 30, 1926:
It is more than probable that the household's daily newspaper will be printed 'wirelessly' in the home during the night.
Tesla was a famous Serbian electrical engineer and inventor, who devised
among other things the alternating-current systems that underlie the modern
electrical power industry. He also did notable research on high-voltage
electricity and invented wireless communication.
Incredibly enough, hypertext
(used in World Wide Web documents) was proposed as early as 1945 (by Vannevar
Bush).
In 1954, the first online
search service was launched by the Naval Ordinance Test Station, in Michigan,
U.S.A. Six years later, MEDLARS, a full-text bibliographic database containing
references to medical literature was launched.
From now on, things started to roll faster:
1969: ARPANET (U.S.A.), the predecessor to the Internet, starts
research into computer networking.1972: Dialog (U.S.A.) opens their Educational Resources Information
Center and National Technical Information Service databases for
online searching. (Appendix 1 contains information about the
major online services referred to in this book.)1974: Dow Jones News/Retrieval (U.S.A.) launches a financial
information service for stock brokers. The design of a
Transmission Control Program, TCP as in TCP/IP, is specified
(U.S.A.). Usenet is set up (U.S.A.).1978: The first bulletin board opens in Chicago (U.S.A.) 1979: CompuServe (U.S.A.) launches a service for home users.
USENET set up.1981: Minitel (France) and BITNET (U.S.A.). 1982: The Internet is born as TCP/IP is adapted by ARPANET (U.S.A.). 1983: ARPANET (U.S.A.), the predecessor to the Internet, starts.
FidoNet (U.S.A.)1991: The World Wide Web is born (Switzerland). 1993: The number of countries reachable by electronic mail through
the Internet reaches 137. The World Wide Web explodes (annual
growth rate at 341,634%)!1994: Japanese prime minister comes online. 1995: The Vatican web site opens.
(For more about developments and milestones from 3500 BCE till present, see http://www.ciolek.com/PAPERS/milestones.html.)
Thus, 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
may still appear to be dominating, but they are no longer alone.
There are now millions of
public databases available from online systems ("host computers") all over
the world. With so many online services, and a large variety of access methods,
it is difficult to find our way through the maze of offerings. Telecommunications
has therefore often been presented as one of the more difficult things to
learn to do on a computer.
The good news is that it was
never all that terribly difficult and its getting easier all the time.
It may help to have a picture
in your mind of the various parts of this "online world" before we embark
on the applications. The book therefore starts with an analogy. Think of
it as a "map" of the online world.
The online world can be visualized as a cake with multiple layers. The
information sources are the bottom layer, and you, the user, the marzipan
figure on the top. The online world contains the following tiers:
If you are a novice, this may seem complex but none of these levels are difficult. It often helps to visualize what level you are dealing with at any given time. Therefore, let us consider them in more detail.
For years, I operated a free bulletin board system in Norway. It run on a
small personal computer, and offered shareware and public domain software.
Anybody could call this BBS and have programs transferred to their personal
computers by modem (see appendix 2 for how to achieve
this).
When you called it to "download"
(retrieve) a free program, you wouldn't find any made by me. I do not write
programs. All available programs were written by others.
When you connect to
Data-Star or
Individual.com to read news, you
may find some stories written by these companies. Most of their news, however,
has been written by others.
The Associated Press, an American
news agency, let online services like Dialog,
CompuServe, and Nexis 'resell' their news to their
users, and also provide news directly to end users through the Web.
Free Bulletin Board systems,
Data-Star, Dialog,
CompuServe, Nexis, and Brainwave for
NewsNet are online services. We call those
who have provided the news and information on these services for information
providers or database producers.
The information providers
sell the right to distribute news. What you pay to an online service to read
news may be imbedded in its standard access rates. Some services will ask
you to pay a surcharge when reading news.
CompuServe subscribers pay a monthly membership
fee for unlimited use of a variety of services like The Associate Press Online
News (Hourly News Summaries, Sports, Entertainment, Business, News, This
Day In History), UK News Clips, and Deutsche Presse-Agentur
Kurznachrichtendienst.
CompuServe pays Associated
Press part of what they earn whenever you read their news. There is no surcharge
for reading AP news on this service. Some services, like Brainwave for
NewsNet, charge per article found and viewed.
Information providers may
have subcontractors. Ziff-Davis' 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.
Some information providers
also distribute information through free bulletin boards. The
Newsbytes News Network,
Boardwatch Magazine, and the
USA Today newsletter services
(http://www.usatoday.com) are three
examples.
Rates for reading the same
article may differ considerably depending on what online service you are
using. If you are a regular reader, shop around for the best price. The cheapest
place is the World Wide Web. There, you can read tons of news for free.
The term "online services" refers to the services that are provided by computer
systems, large or small, to owners of personal computers with modems.
Their services may include
access to electronic mail, online shopping malls, discussion forums, hardware
and software vendor support, access to libraries of programs and data, games
and entertainment, financial data, stock market quotes, research capabilities,
or simply access to other service providers as with many Internet hosts.
You do not always need a phone
and modem to "log on." Some services can be accessed through leased phone
lines, amateur radio, the Internet, or other methods.
Appendix
1 contains a list of major services mentioned in this book, with addresses,
phone numbers, and a short description.
American
Online (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.
CompuServe, America Online,
and many for-pay BBSes offer such pricing options.
Other online services charge
for 'connect time'. They have a rate per hour or minute. Yet others, use
a "no cure, no pay." You only pay to send or read mail, or read items found
in a database. To check for unread letters in your mailbox is free.
There are all kinds of creative
pricing schemes. Some have different rates for access during the day, night
and weekends. Others charge users living far away less, while others again
charge the remote user more than ordinary subscribers.
Still, most online services
are free, and available through the Internet. This is also true for the over
hundred thousand bulletin board systems of 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.
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 in
chapter 13 and 15 about how to
keep your communications costs down.
CompuServe users select the Computer Database Plus
from a menu. This prompts CompuServe to dial another service provider and
lets you use this service, as if you were still using CompuServe. You hardly
notice the difference. You are using Computer Database Plus through a gateway.
When you search the IQuest
databases, you may get a welcome message like this:
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 located on services like BRS, MEDLINE and Brainwave for NewsNet.
While searching, you may get such 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
CompuServe and not other online services. Technically, you are going through
various gateways to reach the information libraries. You pay CompuServe for
the privilege. They, in turn, pay a fee to the others.
You can read The New York
Times on Down Jones News/Retrieval through gateways from MCI Mail and
GEnie. (You can also get to it through the Web
at http://www.nytimes.com.)
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 (California), Wonderland Board in Macau or the HighTech BBS in Sidney
(Australia).
Kidlink
is a global project for kids and youth through the secondary school level.
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-TOPICS. 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
controlled by a LISTSERV are called 'discussion lists' or 'mailing lists'.)
SciLink in Toronto is one
recipient. Messages forwarded from North Dakota are made available for users
there as entries in a 'local' conference called KIDCAFE-TOPICS. A user in
Toronto 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 another 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 exploder has
been set up by local administrators to reduce costs as the individual user
does not have to receive his own copies of messages all the way from North
Dakota. One Michigan recipient may be a local area network that further spreads
the messages.
This is how the online world
got started. Two systems were interconnected for exchange of electronic mail.
Then, another system was added, and another, until it developed into a large
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.
One day, 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 for exchange of email and other offerings.
Today, the online world is
a global web of networks. The world is 'cabled'. You, I, and all the other
modem users stand to benefit enormously.
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, and entertainment.
The online world has many
niches, things that people are interested in and have fun doing.
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 sending system automatically adds your name (that is, the sender's return
email address), the creation date, and forwards 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.
When the message gets to the
receiver's mail system, it is stored in her "mailbox" until she logs on and
chooses to read it. Besides reading the message, she can print it, save it
to a disk, forward it to someone else, or send a reply.
Depending on the mail system,
if the reply option is chosen, the address is automatically supplied from
the original mail piece and you have the option of including all or parts
of the original message.
Several email services offer
forwarding to fax, telex or ordinary postal service delivery. Some offer
forwarding to paging services. With these, when new mail arrives in your
mailbox, a message with text like 'MAIL from presno@eunet.no' will be displayed
on your beeper's small screen.
By the turn of the century,
it will probably be difficult to tell the difference between fax messages
and email. The services may automatically convert incoming faxes to
computer-readable text and pictures, so 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 where you can ask, "What is the address of
Nobuo Hasumi in Japan?", and have it supplied. This will be nice since email
addresses are more volatile than normal (snail mail) addresses. Now, since
they are spread over many different networks and systems, and the sharing
of email between systems is still fairly young, this has yet to be set up.
The Web brought Internet out of the closet. This global information service
lets you retrieve and view (and often listen to) multi-media documents from
computers all over the world.
The types of documents that
you retrieve include news articles with accompanying illustrations, moving
pictures (video), music and other sound files, forms that you can fill out
and return to start some action (for example, to buy something, or to search
a database), and more.
You may think of the Web as
a large, living online encyclopedia containing hundreds of millions of documents
(called Web pages).
Most people use the World
Wide Web with a computer program called a Web
browser. The browser is typically run in a Windows environment. To retrieve
a document, they submit an Internet address to the Web by clicking on a
highlighted word found on their screen, or on a reference found in a listing
of addresses. The addresses can also be entered manually. The following address
retrieves the author's home page:
http://home.eunet.no/~presno/presno.html
Usually, the retrieved document
is temporarily stored on your disk, and then displayed on your screen. The
effect is that you can more quickly go back to the previously viewed page
(by clicking a return icon) than if you had to reload the page from scratch.
Instead of menus, WWW uses
a hypertext interface with cross links between subjects. When you click on
highlighted words, you "jump off" onto another track. Documents can be, and
often are, linked to other documents by completely different authors -- much
like footnoting, but you can get the referenced document instantly.
For more background information
about the Web, see Appendix 6.
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 as it is entered
by your dialog partners. Other systems send entries line by line, 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
areas and conferences throughout the Internet, as well as on commercial services.
In May 1991,
Kidlink
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 that 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 (USA, now defunct),
TWICS in Tokyo, the global network Tymnet, and
the Education Forum on CompuServe.
The discussions had no moderator.
This made the meetings chaotic. but the kids enjoyed it! 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 as most users are slow typists.
If an individual message spans more than one line, there is always a risk
that it will be split up by lines coming from others. It takes practice 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 the entry of multiple-line messages without the risk of them
being broken up by other messages. The flow of the discussion is often better,
and each person's entries easier to understand.
Millions of files are transferred to and from the online services each day:
Books and articles, technical reports, graphics pictures, files of digitized
music, weather reports, and much more. Retrieval of free or inexpensive software
is a very popular service on the Internet, and other free services.
In February 1994, users downloaded
105 megabytes' worth of public domain and shareware programs from of my BBS,
though it only one phone line and a 9,600 bits/s modem. Add to this the megabytes
being downloaded from hundreds of thousands of other bulletin boards. The
number is staggering.
If you want to download software, check out appendix 3 for additional information.
Downloading is simple. Just connect to a service, order transfer of a given
file, select a file transfer protocol (like XMODEM), and the file comes to
you through the phone line.
On the Internet, you may just
locate the file with your browser, and then simply click on the file name
to transfer it. Often, files are also transferred using a command called
FTP (File Transfer Protocol), or by using special computer programs for file
transfers.
If you cannot receive files as explained above, check if you can have files sent 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).
Online conferences have many things in common with traditional face-to-face
conferences and discussions. The main difference is that the participants
do not physically meet in the same room. They 'arrive' by modem and discuss
using electronic messages.
There are conferences about
nearly every conceivable topic, from How to start your own company,
Brainstorming, Architectural design, Investments, The Future of Education,
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, web rings, 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 control the discussions, like LISTSERV,
PortaCom, News, Usenet, Caucus, or PARTIcipate.
Note that we in many of these conferences are still based on 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.
In most online conferences, all participants can talk and discuss SIMULTANEOUSLY.
It is almost impossible for one 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. 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.
Conferences are normally
structured by topic and 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'. Other
conferences go on for ever.
The content and the quality of the discussion are what separates one online conference from others.
How a conference develops, depends in part on the features of the software
used by the online service. However, this is much less important than the
kind of people you meet there, their willingness to contribute, and the features
of the software you're using. Still, let's take look at some differences
in features between offerings.
Messages in the PC 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's subscribers call
in from all over the place to join the forum. Some are there to show off
competence (read: to sell their expertise). Others visit to find solutions
to a problem, or simply to mingle or learn.
A conference with many users increases your chances of meeting others who are compatible and have relevant skills. As always, the quality of the people is the first requirement of a good conference.
On CompuServe, professional 'Sysops' (system operators) moderate the discussion.
They earn a percentage of what you pay CompuServe for using their forums.
To them, being a sysop is a profession. They spend considerable 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'. Messages posted
on Usenet, Internet and BITNET mailing lists, and most bulletin boards have
a similar structure.
A CompuServe 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
The problem is that this message may not interest you. Daily, thousands of
messages outside your areas of interest are being posted. You do
not want to read all these messages. The good news is that most services
that use the bulletin board model allow 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.
Now, let's look at The PARTIcipate
conferencing software as it functions diametrically opposite to CompuServe's
forum's bulletin board style. PARTI is used on
TWICS (Japan), and some other systems.
PARTI lets the user log on
using an alias. For example, she 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, with which they may not want to
have their names associated.
Anyone can start a conference.
The conference may 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.
To start a new conference,
simply enter 'write'. PARTI will prompt you with "Enter the text of your
note, then type .send or .open to transmit." You can enter the welcome text
for your new conference, like I did 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!"
The conference was presented to the other users of TWICS like this:
"MSDOS TIPS" by ODD DE PRESNO, Feb. 23, 1990
about GOOD PD AND SHAREWARE PROGRAMS (7 notes)
Few systems of the bulletin board model let users start new conferences at
will. New topics must be stored in a given structure. The administrators
(sysops) of the services manage the evolution of the 'conference room'.
Periodically, old messages may be deleted to make room for new.
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 the following (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). "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'll soon disappear.
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 model systems
and PARTIcipate are at two extremes of the spectrum of conference systems.
Toward the BBS model, there are systems like Usenet, FidoNet Echo, RBBS-PC,
and PortaCom. Toward the PARTI side, there are systems like Caucus. Mailing
lists are in the middle.
On Norwegian bulletin boards,
the primary language is Norwegian. In France, expect French. Local systems
usually depend on messages in the local language. Services catering to a
larger geographical area may have a different policy.
English used to be the most
common language for international discussions online. Spanish possibly number
two. This is changing as connectivity opportunities flourish in the non-English
speaking parts of the world. (See
http://babel.alis.com:8080/ for
more on languages.)
Most large news agencies have online counterparts. Often, you can 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:
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 or even on television.
Years ago, most databases were bibliographic. They only contained references to articles, books and other written or electronic sources of information. A 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 read a printed copy of the
article, though some services did let you order a copy online, to be sent
you by snail 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 (often without accompanying pictures and
tables, though). The search commands are also much simpler and more powerful.
Many online services focus on your leisure time. They offer reviews and news
about movies, video, music, and sports. There are forums for stamp and coin
collectors, travel maniacs, passionate cooks, wine tasters, and other special
interest groups. Besides, several services are entertaining in themselves.
Large, complex adventure games,
where hundreds of users can play simultaneously, are popular choices. Some
people sit glued to the computer screen for hours.
Others prefer 'Chat', a
keyboard-to-keyboard contact-phone type of simultaneous conversation between
from two and up to hundreds of persons. It works like a combination of a
social activity and a role- playing/strategy/fantasy/skill-improving game.
Shopping is the online equivalent
of the 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.
Part of the character of all online service providers is the way they interact
with the user. The term "user interface" refers to how the online service
is presented to you, in what form text, pictures and sound appear on your
computer.
Most online services offer
the first three of these four levels. Some offer more:
Colors, graphics and sound are highly desirable in some applications, like
online games and weather forecasts. Even where it is not important, there
will always be many wanting it. However, to the professional on a fact-gathering
mission, such features may slow down data transfers, and give other problems
for the users. Therefore, some prefer clean text with no extras for such
applications.
Sports cars are nice, but
for delivering furniture they're seldom any good. The same applies to user
interfaces. No one is best for all applications.
When the host computer for an online service is far away, the user often faces the challenges of:
There are many alternatives to direct long distance calling. Some offers
better quality data transfers and lower costs.
The Internet is a global network
offering a very large range of interesting services, such as the World Wide
Web, and cost-efficient mail exchange with private and public networks throughout
the world. Modem users typically dial up to a computer center in the vicinity
that functions as an Internet access provider. Once online, they can access
remote services in other countries to retrieve files, read texts, view pictures,
talk with others, and more.
Competitively priced alternatives
to using modem exist in many countries. (More about this in
Chapter 13.)
This is you, your computer and communications equipment. Turn the page to Chapter 3 and read about how to use the online services.
The Online World resources handbook's text on paper, disk and in any
other electronic form is © copyrighted 2000 by Odd
de Presno. |
Illustration by Anne-Tove Vestfossen