October, 1991 $3.95
BOARDWATCH
GUIDE TO THE WORLD OF ONLINE SERVICES MAGAZINE
BBS AND THE HANDICAPPED
Top Ten BBS Covering Handicapped and Physical Disability Issues
BBS FOR PROFIT
Getting a MC/VISA Merchant Account | - When the Bank Says NO.
NAPLPS GRAPHICS " Finally - a Clear Path to a Graphicggail™
Future for Bulletin a
=< onsets Toe ee ee
Sailing Into Specialized BBSs The SAILING IC BBS - Kent Island Maryland
REPORT ON FIDOCON9S1 408 BBS Operators Meet in Denver
© 1990 eSoft, incorporated
- Boardwatch Magazine -
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- Boardwatch Magazine -
*169 — 9,600 — 38,400 —bps
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e Incredible But True! e Technology Price Breakthrough e More Callers — Faster Service
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Although 9600 bps modems have been available for a number of years, only a few percent of the modems in use today operate at this high speed. Their cost is prohibitive to the average modem user. CompuCom has changed that. They are making high speed modems affordable to ALL, not just the few percent who could afford them.
The SpeedModem is compatible with all modems up through 2400 bps and MNP5. At 9600 bps or higher it is similar to other popular modems, it will communicate only with one of its own technology. However, at costs competitive with 2400 bps MNP modems it’s like buying a 2400 bps modem and getting 9600 bps FREE! Bob Mahoney of EXEC PC sums it up:
“The CompuCom SpeedModem provides all the utility of a high quality 2400 bps MNP5 modem, but it gives 9600 bps in the package. With that, it is priced below most modems that offer only the 2400 bps (MNP) speed. Instead of buying a modem like that for $169, why don’t they buy a
BBS Advantage
real 9600 bps that also does a good job at 2400 bps MNP5? The SpeedModem is such a modem.”
Sysops are beginning to realize that the SpeedModem is the only opportunity for most of their users to join the ranks of the high speed Top Guns. Thus they are adding it to their service. Although the SpeedModem has been in production only a short time, hundreds of BBSs are online including EXEC PC and Rusty n Edie’s.
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- Boardwatch Magazine -
Leader of the Pack
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Send us your existing commercial BBS software (origi- nal disk and manual) with a retail value of $100.00 or more, and we will give you 20% off any PCBoard package and a free PCBoard t-shirt. For complete details call 1-800-356-1686.
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MAGAZINE,
EDITORS’ CHOICE
September 10, 1991 PCBoard, Version 14.5
BOARDWATCH macazine
EDITOR'S NOTES - BBS a a1 INdUSETY ~ It'S THME.....s.ecsccorcccscecssnssesenserssnensenessonsecncenacssoatsensesorasesssoess 6 REE TATE SPO REED sce Bececbacs cou csaveee te ceeta sete Tet ote atte ond aes TELE DTC ORT ie cao Tees OTR ERR NE aE 8 TELEBITS ZIFFNEt ONLINE MOGEM GIVEAWAY. .......scccssroerscssccersncecsnscecansavsccoaccrsssrersecsscasssasscssssssseseronosareessnsarssoesse 12 FidoCon91 - 408 Attend Biggest BBS Bash EVEL ......s.sssscssevsssrsssssssscsescesssscecssesacsrorscssessoccncnssenscseeens 12 Hardware Reboot Device for BBSS 2. c1c.c:<.cesosencescsscoesoceessen tate sncossoenter ett TT aat come ee ea Tne neeees 16 NAPEPS= Al Graphic FULGreHORBBSSirr..ccsceccsec-caccstoncescometetees ate cette eee ee 17 Novell Files Suit Against Two California Bulletin BO&ardS ........cccccscssencccessersnnscrcrscesconccenesecsvarceccececcrers 20 Hayes Announces NeW OPTIMA 96 MOGI. ........ssscssccssessnorsersceorsrancececsensarscscsssscsvreccescesssccancoscserens 20 Cardinal Introduces Discount Program on 9600 V.42bIS MOdEM - $269 .....1..cscecceennnorsnsnavcreseroncnee 21 U.S. Robotics Goes Public - Initial StOCK OFFCLING ..........cccecrcsecnerescrseencssnsncesernonsscasronccenneseccasnacesenerese 22 Sysop Hysteria Over New York SaleS Tax ....ssccssscccsssscccsnsscssscecsenscaccesosncsessonscnsnenaccsenazccssasscassesarsecenes 22 Telecommunications Device for D@aff[MOGEM PACKAGe....1.sesecsesvcrssscacsssrsonscsssarceracercesersnsursseececsoes 23 New SEAmail - an Automated Dial-up E-Mail SYStOM.......c.cecsesccccssesccencecessansaccocecenencesconsecsssscecenesses 23 Mustang Software Acquires Offline Mail Reader for WildCat..............csssescssssrnsssrarcscserorsesarscecnsscers 26 Dvorak’s Guide to PC Connectivity u.ccccsiicccctstsssensses ncsuoesaocpsstatuves sep etastneseushs assis dave suceteet cee teee a teemees 27 New Communications Package in Works for PCBoard - POCBCOMM.....sssccscecccesccsceseseessrorescoreeesnseeee 29 10,000 Shareware Titles ON CD-POM.il.c.cciccccacscscescsccessecveceteseccaccotescoudecce toceeecececestonsosetarenetaTE nT TT Ta 33 A TALE OF TWO CITIES - Impressions of FidoCon91 and the VIA CONVENTION. .......0rcseserssensssrssenerenorees 33 BULLETIN BOARDS AS A BUSINESS - When the Bank Says No - How to Get a MC/Visa Accoumt .....35 LAW ONLINE - New Limits on Database Copyright Protection ...........:ssssssscccsrssenecscscersenncsenssanenonsssenone ae OF DIRECT DIAL Kakadu Konnection BBS in Darwin AUSTIAIIA......10cssccssccersnneesssvocescsssossracescecssssnsnoecesscesaracesseenenseosens 40 Pompeii BBS - Networking Internationally ........-c0ccssesserescncconrscsonsceresessooronssssensanacaccssecesnoncsscsneveoseseees 41 ECHO.- East Coast Hang Outs iicatectesssscsccrectersesestucrtccncsttestttversssssacstestrseterenteetee: cote ne nee 42 Penthouse Magazine BBS - Nude Pet GIFS for DOWNIOA..........-...ccsesecrcssosssnareccessrsssecasrasssonnarcsasens 43 Sailing Information Center BBS - Putting the CheSap@ake ONIN ...........-csessssssverrcsrecesessorevoscesese® 44 BBS FOR THE HANDICAPPED - Reviews of the Top 10 Plus &@ COMPreheNSive LISt..........ecrsseercssnasoveeere 47 Boardwatch List: of BBS LISUS «..csiicecsesccdeecbi seccoesotactess srectl esbencetashotcressesncccsscactentetastertstaaccuesrtacenstiatenentst atte 54 Boardwatch List of BBS Software Vendor Support BOard..............-.s.scsccccsrsssvscsssonnnnsscvcasenocssssecescasaces 28 Boardwatch National Select List Of BBS...0.......::ccccccssoscscecsssssssssscosscccesessessssesacavsseconscecncneneceersreccssesesesscesee 58
BOARDWATCH MAGAZINE - Copyright 1991 Jack Rickard - All Rights Reserved.
ISSN: 1054-2760. Volume V - Issue 10, October 1991. Boardwaich Magazine Is published 12 times per year at an annual subscription rate of $36 ($69 in Canada/Mexico, $99 overseas). Subscription orders only to 800-933-6038. Address corrections or editorial Inquiries may be made by voice telephone at (303)973-6038. The Boardwatch Online Information Service is available at
(303)973-4222 (V.32). Address U.S. Mail correspondence to Boardwatch Magazine, 5970 South Vivian Street, Littleton, CO 80127 GEnie:JACK.RICKARD. CompuServe:71177,2310. Fidonet: 104/555 MCI Mail: 418-7112 Internet jack.rickard@csn.org. FAX Telephone: (303)973-3731
EDITOR’S NOTES
BBS AS AN INDUSTRY - IT’S TIME
I started Boardwatch a little over 4 1/2 years ago. Opus CBBS was just displacing Fido BBS as the software of choice. The handful of BBSs that did request "donations" from callers were generally met with e-mail obscenities. And bulle- tin boards were not even widely considered a viable hobby - just strange people who let other peo- ple use their computers by tele- phone in the evenings. To many, this was viewed much the same as they would view a club of people who meet periodically to swap toothbrushes - strange, and proba- bly not healthy.
Thad a reasonably comfortable and embarrassingly overpaid position as a technical writer for a defense contractor - struggling to cram four hours of work into a single 40-hour work week. Actually, this was my third major corporation technical writing position in 10 years and each seemed almost identically mindless. Still, I was conscientious and on those days when] did arrive a bit late to work in the morning, I always tried to leave early in the afternoon to make up for it. It was the land of the brain dead.
The online world was still a bit rough - but captivating enough. The videotext end of the "industry" was a wasteland of failed experi- ments. Commercial online services such as CompuServe, GEnie, and The Source were as good as it got and whenever I was online bounc- ing somewhat frantically, if slowly, from menu to menu while the bill- ing clock whirred away relent- lessly, I always had the distinctly uncomfortable feeling that my pants had somehow fallen down around my ankles. I timed one movement from one CompuServe menu to another at 26 seconds - which they billed me for quite promptly as I recall - and pulled the plug.
~ Boardwatch Magazine -
Since then I’ve been privileged to observe newspapers, telephone companies, and hundreds of would be “information providers" flush millions of dollars down the RJ-11 jack without even a good show of thanks from the world at large.
Meanwhile, back at the ranch, the grandiose assortment of social maladjusts, tinkerers, HAM radio operators, and pizza aficionados kept on dialing - trading shareware software, beating up on their favorite shareware BBS au- thors for more features, and devel- oping a following among local cal- lers who paid nothing and dialed locally. And there was something magic in it. There was no money and no promotion. It required hun- dreds of hours of effort and the systems in those days normally "crashed" if the operator left the room. But still the callers came. And still more BBSs came online. In late 1987, it finally dawned on me what it was. A baby.
With a couple of toddlers of my own at the time, I knew what babies were. They are VERY much alive but they can’t do much but make noise and crap all over the place. They take up a good bit of time and attention and they really aren’t very useful in their native form. But they have a lot of potential. Just one of them can change the world in the interval between ar- riving in it and leaving it - and there are an awful lot of them.
Videotext looked to me a lot like alchemy - the age old quest to turn lead into gold. “We'll take money, mix it with technology, and it will turn into more money." That seemed to be the plan and I could detect no vision behind it for the future more complex than that. If it had WORKED I wouldn’t have cared, it would still be uninterest- ing. But of course it didn’t.
Bulletin boards were different. They grew in all sorts of directions without any money at all. Many things were tried and most failed. But the innovation continued. The guys who were trying to write the software became heroes. Little hope of ever making any money - some actually didn’t want to. And the others had nothing to encour- age them. But new programs ap-
6
peared weekly and existing pro- grams were in a constant state of update. One title would sweep the nation and then another. And with each an army of operators would follow with utilities, techniques, and surprising new things to put online. Many were rude, loud, and stupid. Others even then showed a captivating charm. BBSs were an infant industry.
And just like a baby, you can’t tell by looking down into the crib what it’ll do when it grows up, but it will grow up to do somethingh.
The corporate world, on the other hand, reeked of age. The walls of this social and economic paradigm were crumbling with decay and I seemed surrounded by fumbling men who had never been anywhere or done anything notable besides snuffle up to the public trough and spout endless advice about "the way things were" and "how the world worked." Finally, I handed them my badge (they all thought we were Marshals of some sort) and took a real long lunch.
Ive been playing with the "baby" ever since. Of course, I was hardly alone. Anumber of other individu- als had put down a token on "the BBS industry" as well and gener- ally the ongoing question - usually uttered with some frustration and no small level of impatience was "When will it walk? Is it an indus- try yet?"
And no matter how hard they wished it would be, and no matter how hard they worked to "make it so", the answer remained the same. "No - it’s a baby." About half the people involved with bulletin boards thought it never would grow up and the other half thought it already should have, but just like a baby, it worked on its own clock.
The good news is - the kid gained his feet in the late spring and early summer of 1991. The lurch out of infancy has begun. We can mea- sure this in a number of ways, BBS software sales, BBS calling activ- ity, pay BBS cash flow, modem unit sales, new callers, print media cov- erage, but it all comes up the same. The traditional summer activity lull didn’t happen this year. Every- thing increased through April,
May, June, July, and August. Since activity normally increases dra- matically each fall season in Sep- tember - December, I really don’t know what the numbers mean anymore except they are headed explosively up.
Perhaps nothing so pointedly shows the sea change in the online world as the FidoCon91. And a little behind the scenes view is probably in order here.
Peter Young, of the Interface Group, the people who put on the fall COMDEX computer show in Las Vegas each fall, called in April. He proposed we help sponsor a BBS Pavilion at COMDEX this year with BBS software vendors, modem manufacturers, and BBS operators all showing under one tent so to speak. A kind of "theme” section titled Boardwatch BBS Pa- vilion. I agreed the concept had some merit and it was time for the BBS industry to have a coming out party. Peter handed me over to gon Grecko to work out the de- tails.
I expressed my concerns regarding location to Grecko. What he pro- posed was anew "Networking Site" at the fabulous new Mirage Hotel. This was a little dicey as there hadn’t been any COMDEX activity at the Mirage previously. But the concept of a site dedicated to LANs, modems, connectivity, and of course BBSs, had an obvious al- lure. We agreed to back it. There were two provisos he noted. They had to Jand Novell as an "anchor" for the site and we had to come up with eight to ten vendors for the Pavilion.
We contacted a number of BBS players and were a little amazed to find that despite the considerable expense of displaying at COM- DEX, they were almost all quite ready to be part of a BBS Pavilion under the conditions we quite forthrightly described. I handed Grecko 14 virtually "done deals" and thought we were off and run- ning.
What followed was one of the slim- iest double crosses I’ve had the privilege of seeing done in day- light. Grecko called to tell me he had some "great" news. They had
- Boardwatch Magazine -
landed Novell ok as anchor for the networking site and they were moving the BBS Pavilion to the Riviera hotel - (the ghost city of COMDEX).
When I pointed out to Grecko that we had already told 14 vendors they were going to be in the Mirage at the networking site, he just laughed and told me they didn’t have anything in writing and not to worry about it. The Interface Group would give me FREE dis- play space, top billing, and some action on one of the session pro- grams to "go along with the pro- gram" (you can’t possibly turn THAT down Jack) and if I went, they would all go along so he wasn’t worried.
I guess this is the point where Boardwatch will always be a little magazine instead of a big one. I never do quite get it right. I told him that while I didn’t really mind him being a lying sack of s**t I didn’t particularly care for him try- ing to make me out to be one. De- spite some impressive backpedall- ing on his part, we pulled out ofthe pavilion concept in a pretty quick way anyway. I called the 14 ven- dors and told them we were out of the program and they would have to make their own individual ar- rangements with Interface Group for COMDEX. I understand two or three of them went ahead and took space. Grecko decided I was a lu- natic for walking away from it. I decided he didn’t exist. All in alla pretty clean finish for a rather messy affair. (Note for all you as- piring millionaires - this is NOT the way to do it.)
But as things are wont to do, they again turned out for the best. COMDEX is arguably the biggest computer show in the U.S. But it has gotten so big, and so expensive, that a lot of vendors are question- ing the wisdom of going. Rumor has it that Novell, the anchor for the networking site, may not show at all. They consider the NetWorld show much more effective and are apparently having trouble figuring out how to break down their dis- play at that show and get it to COMDEX in time to display.
An isolated instance? Maybe. But increasingly, the very size of COM- DEX is making it difficult to deal with. If you agree to meet someone somewhere to discuss anything business related, it becomes al- most impossible to make happen. With 120,000 people there, you can’t get a cab, you can’t get any- where. And it’s really NOT all in one place - more like nine places each a mile or two apart. The ven- dors are getting nickled and dimed to death such that it realistically costs $35,000 to put a small booth on the floor and they're not recov- ering halfthat amount in resulting followups. Largely because of the sprawl, the 120,000 results in ac- tual traffic of maybe 10,000in most locations and handing out two thousand pieces of literature is a good week for most.The net result is that many vendors are generat- ing MORE leads and more produc- tive results at smaller, more fo- cused specialty trade shows - like NetWorld.
Which brings us back to FidoC- on91. FidoCons had dwindled to meetings of 75-100 network gurus. They were tough on vendors. And if you went to one and weren’t one of the "inside clique" attending the many private not-so-secret secret meetings, you were usually left standing by the swimming pool talking to the six or eight other outsiders who had mistakenly come thinking it would be a good thing to attend.
About two weeks after telling COMDEX to go pound sand, I was approached by Terry Travis, a member of the FidoCon committee who was a little depressed. His band of merry men were tasked with holding the FidoCon here in Denver but he was having some trouble getting the word out and generating interest. He wanted to make it a big show, but had actu- ally gotten grief from people in FidoCon for "advertising" the show in Fido’s own echomail confer- ences.
Frankly, [ve had more people at backyard barbecues here at the house than I’ve seen at most Fido- Cons. But this guy REALLY wanted to pull this off well. And it was a little infectious. What if we COULD get a couple of hundred BBSers together in one place. It WOULD be fun.
Phil Becker of eSoft, Inc. is based across the valley in Aurora. He had attended every FidoCon for years. He agreed it would be a "good thing" to have a bigger one. We got together to talk over the concept of a show a little broader than Fido- Net. Travis nearly fainted with re- lief when we decided 150 was do- able. The more we talked, the more the number moved to 200-226. I finally admitted I would get all hot and wet if 300 showed up.
We contacted a few vendors. The response was almost shocking. There was some reticence about the FidoNet connection, but when we outlined our plans for a slightly wider show, the answer was not only YES, but more along the lines of "What took so long? Why hasn't someone done this before? It’s time." We made up a wish list of vendors who had never been to a FidoCon - thinking we might talk a couple of them into trying it. They ALL wanted to come - PCB- oard, Wildcat, Searchlight, Major BBS. Then, out of the blue PROD- IGY wanted to come. Suddenly the banquet, with seating for 150, was sold out. Then the vendor area sold out. The Sheraton Hotel sold out. The Double Tree hotel across the street sold out and the Roadway Inn down the street was filling fast, All at once, the thing was run- ning away from us.
- Boardwatch Magazine -
On August 16th, over 400 BBSers showed up in Denver for the big- gest BBS bash that has ever been. Representatives from CompuS- erve, BIX, Prodigy, and ZiffNet showed up. Dozens of people came from overseas. Phil Becker and I had agreed to do a couple of ses- sions on how to make your BBS make money and were stunned to look up and see most of the 400 attendees trying to cram intoatiny meeting room at the end of the hall where the session was scheduled.
The consensus by Sunday’s close was that it was the greatest thing to have happened to the BBS world ever. Most of the vendors were de- manding to know who to sign up with for the best floor spot at next year’s event. The baby was on its feet and crying somewhat demand- ingly to be fed.
By way of epilogue, we’ve formed a corporation to plan, organize, and promote another BBS show in Denver next year. The company is titled Online Network Exposi- tions, Inc. (ONE, Inc.) We're call- ing the show The Online Network- ing Exposition and BBS Confer- ence (The ONE BBSCON) and it will NOT be affiliated with FidoN- et or held under the auspices of the FidoCon. By taking a bit wider view yet to serving the BBS indus- try as a whole and more actively promoting it, we fully intend to put 1200-1500 BBSers in one spot to meet the movers and shakers in this infant industry and talk about their favorite sport. And rather than fork over megabucks to wade through the mess in Las Vegas, the BBS industry now has a specialty trade show of its own. Until we get ONE, Inc. up and running, you can contact us either at eSoft - (303)699-6565 or here at Boardwatch (303)973-6038 voice - (303)973-4222 data. See you there.
Oh, ‘and a final thanks to John Grecko of the Interface Group. You did NOT miss the birth of the most exciting new segment of the per- sonal computer industry - you gave it away.
Jack Rickard Editor/Publisher Boardwatch Magazine.
LETTERS
Address correspondence to Letters to the Editor, Boardwatch Maga- zine, 5970 South Vivian Street, Littleton, CO 80127.
Dear Jack:
What a great magazine you have. Not only is it useful, but it’s filled with great dirt. I actually read it cover to cover. Just one small cor- rection though.
The U.S. did not break the German ENIGMAcode. Alan M. Turing did, during WW2, in the British Secret Service. He did it using a paper- tape calculator he designed and built called the Bombe. he did a lot of very basic crypto work. He was a pioneer hacker; a mathematician who taught himself electronics in order to build the world’s first all- electronic computers (predating American computers by years.) He was the person who came up with an obscure concept called "stored program", whereby a machine can modify its own instructions, while working on a seminal problem in mathematics. His British Secret Service work was classified until the 70’s. He did other pioneering work in mathematics and biology.
He was also gay, and quite “out” in the British Secret Service, in the 40’s no less. I read about him first in A HISTORY OF COMPUTING IN THE 20TH CENTURY (1980, Academic Press). There’s an excel- lent, highly technical, biography of Turing called ALAN TURING: THE ENIGMA by Andrew Hodges (1983, Simon & Schuster). I recom- mend both books to anyone inter- ested in the history of what we're collectively doing here.
Imagine where we would be if he had been censured because of his sexuality. Simply put, we'd have no computers, but only overgrown possibly-programmable calcula- tors, which is where most of the world was heading at that time.
(From another gay programmer), Tom Jennings/Fido Soft- ware/World Power Systems, Box 77781, San Francisco, CA 94107.
Dear Tom:
You are ofcourse quite right and we stand corrected. In fact, I’m a afraid you are too kind in referring to our article on Pretty Good Pri- vacy (PGP10.ZIP). It’s a good pro- gram and we omitted the usual second pass on this article botching among other things the name as Pretty Good Protection vice the cor- rect Pretty Good Privacy title as well as the spelling of the authors name (correctly Phil Zimmer- mann). Actually I was aware that the British actually cracked ENIGMA making our obvious faux pas in claiming U.S. credit for it the more damning. Worse, this was an important story on an impor- tant issue that is being picked up all over the country - complete with our errors.
I’m not quite convinced we wouldn’t have had stored program computers without Turing. Such developments often happen nearly simultaneously in different parts of the world when their "time" has come. Pm having a little difficulty picturing a world where it failed to occur to anyone that they could "re- wire" their hardware in a stored numeric series.
But your point is well taken that there is a real danger of loss to society in disabusing individuals over matters not apropos to the sub- ject at hand. The only proper arena to discriminate on matters of sex is sex. And computers, mathematics, national security, employment, and achievement in research and academia, are all rather distinctly not in that arena. I didn’t know Turing was gay, and I’m going to guess it took a pretty strong intel- lect to function competently, much less brilliantly, as a known gay in that era. I would like to think he would have a clearer path today.
For our readers who may be won- dering, Tom Jennings authored the original FIDO BBS in 1984, started FidoNet which today sports more than 11,000 member BBS sys- tems world-wide, and was
- Boardwatch Magazine -
awarded the Andrew J. Fleugle- man award for technical excellence for same.
Jack Rickard Dear Mr. Rickard:
This letter has several purposes, first and foremost to thank you for a very enjoyable magazine, BOARDWATCH. I look forward to every month’s issue. I enjoy read- ing the latest and greatest in the on-line world. Certainly, I know of no other publication that caters so well to modemers, and includes many helpful items for BBS sys- tem operators.
In particular, I enjoy reading Alan Applegate’s technical column and your "Editor’s Notes." Now that we've met you and your two daugh- ters, perhaps a photo of Mrs. Rickard is in order in a future edi- tion.
Secondly, I would like to add my support of your publication’s ad- vertising policy. A buck is a buck, and while I don’t agree with some advertiser’s sexual preference, their dollars spend as well as anyone’s an keeps BOARDWATCH rolling off the presses. For thatI am very grateful to all of your advertisers.
a ~ * ads
— vr are —_
Lastly, it is indeed on a sorry note that I inform you that after 5 years of serving the Houston on-line community, HOUSTON INLINE is closing its doors on August 31, 1991. Ron Crowther, who has maintained our Houston BBS list for the last several years, will be going back East. Ron certainly de- serves a lot of credit for the success of all BBS systems in the Houston area.
Effective with the September Houston Area 713 BBS list, I will be taking over as list editor. The Houston Area 713 BBS List will be available from my BBS, THE ATOMIC CAFE BBS, at (713)530- 8875. I would appreciate it if you make the necessary changes to your "Boardwatch List of BBS Lists.”
Thank you Mr. Rickard David E. Wachenschwanz. Dear Mr. Wachenschwanz.
Thanks for the note on the change of guard in Houston. We'll be most happy to add your system to our List of Lists. I don’t share your sorrow that Ron has moved on. While tt may be a loss to Houston, Pm persuaded you can carry on in good style. And it’s been my obser- vation that list keepers never quit -
they just move to new cities that ALSO need BBS lists. Pm hoping we'll see a Ron Crowther BBS list from his new location.
Mr. Applegate has been on hiatus due to pressing career affairs, but we’re assured that he will be rejoin- ing us shortly with his regular col- umn,
Lastly, I actually have three daugh- ters. ’!'m mildly embarrassed to have apparently inadvertently con- verted Boardwatch into the Rickard Family Photo Album but let’s not do anything HALF way. On the previous page you'll find a photo of Fortunata Com- mendadore Almacen Rickard, my wife of sixteen years, and all three girls in order of tonnage: Jessica, Jennifer, and Jacquelyn. Ive been advised as of yesterday afternoon that we STILL don’t know what causes this and can’t find any way to stop it. Clearly, the mustard seed/honey/ dill paste painted on the front door didn’t cause the angel to pass us by. A fourth spawn of clan Rickard is due this coming April 18. [ve spent most of this afternoon taking my wife around the neighborhood introducing her to all the little boys in the area so she can see what they look like and hopefully figure out how to make one, but thus far she seems deter- mined to populate the planet with little femme fatals - which is actu- ally ok by me. She most commonly goes by "Nancy", an unfortunate Americanization of her family nickname of "Nating”. She hails from the small village of Catmon Bago on the island of Cebu in the central Philippine Islands.
Jack Rickard
Dear Jack,
Enjoyed your non-cryptic August column. Prompts me to pass along a thought of mine (& maybe others, but who knows?): As an answer to that political malaise of many, who feel they can’t have an impact on ye olde political process, wouldn’t it be interesting if ordinary citi- zens got the line-item vote? Never mind a line-item veto on the budget that presidents always seem to be seeking, but a citizen referendum, line-by-line, on the federal budget bill. This would all be done via a national voting BBS-like system,
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of course. Text of all legislation would be on-line, as would the Con- gressional Record, of course, etc. (Live coverage would be on C- Span.)
I suppose we could go all the way with such a system, and just have a citizen vote on every piece of leg- islation. It'd be technically possi- ble, no doubt, though where would we all get the time to figure out how we'd like to vote? And of course, there’d be a need for a Constitu- tional Amendment of significant impact to enable it all, never mind the technical aspects.
But it certainly would get folks directly involved again, and would lessen the impact of lobbyists, who then would have to lobby every citizen instead of just, what is it, 585 solons? all within easy com- muting distance at the Capitol? Another topic, the de-regulated phone system (it may be that this effort at de-regulation will, like the airline deregulation effort, yield a more painful monopoly that we ever had before under regulation, but that’s an aside): Seems to me I remember seeing something in a Hayes 1200 baud modem hand- book (can’t find it in the 2400 man- ual) showing a hookup from com- puter to modem to ham radio. Is it possible to do this? Is anyone doing a BBS by ham radio link? Here encryption would seem profoundly useful. Would also set you free from the phone system. Perhaps also make it cheaper to DX (is it?) around the globe via the Kennely Heavyside E-Layer, is it? (1 re- member but a tiny bit of this ham radio stuff from my high-school days). Just curious to know if you know of anything/anyone doing something like this.
Sincerely
Bill Wilt
Northeast Albuquerque New Mexico
Bill:
The concept of electronic democ- racy is indeed an enticing one. It brings up the rather long running debate over Jeffersonian vs. Ham- iltonian democracy the essence of which is do we select our wisest and best to decide for us or do we select minions to represent us. Avery real
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case can be made both ways - ac- counting for the length and persis- tence of the debate. My own per- sonal views tend somewhat away from the government by herd hys- teria format, but admittedly the wise and beneficent club of sage fathers theory has some serious flaws as well - particularly where it happens to strike reality a glanc- ing blow. Either way, I agree that there is certainly room for political activism, consensus building, and action via the uniquely participa- tory elements offered by the online world.
A line item vote by the technically modem equipped? Where do those NOT so equipped fall into this plan? Since our Congressmen, who’s full time job revolves around considering and voting on budget- ary and legislative matters, don’t actually all read all of what they’re voting on, what would inspire the online population to be knowledge- able on what THEY are voting on under such a plan? And might the media gain an enormous power be- yond what they already have under such group mob-ocracy? Would this upset a fairly robust current bal- ance between government, media, and people now status quo? The concept has been around since an early Heinlein story in the 1960s that I am familiar with and almost certainly predates that. It still has some technical and social problems 30 years later, but is nonetheless interesting.
As to PC to HAM radio, what you describe is widely known as packet radio. The Tucson Amateur Radio group was experimenting with packet radio as early as 1981. In 1985, they released their new TNC2 packet radio device. It has grown into a communications medium in its own right and the HAM’s are curiously unconcerned with local telephone installation fees, long distance rates, and telephone credit cards. The primary drawbacks are there are strict regulations prohib- iting any type of commercial mes- sage traffic and you need an Ama- teur Radio FCC license to partici- pate. The FCC just made this easier by introducing a technician class license that does not require Morse Code proficiency.
Hardware-wise you will need a de- vice termed a Terminal Nede Con- troller (TNC) to perform the packetization and addressing re- quired under the AX.25 packet radio recommendation. It also in- cludes an internal Audio Fre- quency Shift Keying (AFSK) modem. The TNC I was originally developed by the Tucson Amateur Packet Radio Corporation (TAPR)in 1982. They sold the unit in kit form and licensed it to man- ufacturers. The TNC 2 was devel- oped in August 1985 and provided operation up to 9600 bpsinamuch smaller package containing three circuit cards, components, and in- structions for assembly for $110. Contact Andy Freeborn NOCCZ, Tucson Amateur Packet Radio Cor- poration, 5222 Borrego Drive, Col- orado Springs, CO 80918:(719)598-8373.
If you are not interested in putting together kits, Gwyn Reedy of Tampa operates a small business titled PacComm that sells ready- made packet radio equipment. He sells a very simple little terminal node controller titled the TINY IT for avery reasonable $119.95. Con- tact Gwyn Reedy, PacComm, 3652 West Cypress St., Tampa, FL 33607; (813)874-2980 voice; He also operates a BBS with informa- tion on an entire line of packet radio equipment for both HAMs and commercial use at (813)874- 3078.
In the just interesting related BBS department, Dr. Jeff Wallach of Carrollton Texas operates an elec- tronic bulletin board system dedi- cated to Satellite Imaging and AMSAT activities at (214)394- 7438. Finally, Ohio is just a wasp nest of packet radio activity with about 300 stations on a radio Wide Area Network (picture BBSs with no wires). Gary Sanders runs a very informative HAM BBS that IS accessible by telephone titled N8EMR Ham BBS at (614)895- 2553 we found very useful.
There are some commercial efforts at radio connections including ATE&Ts Safari laptop with e-mail and IBM/ Motorola’s ARDIS proj- ect. Most seem directed at over the road trucking companies and both
the vision and pricing of these sys- tems is not only limited, but gener- ally silly.
Basically, I see Personal Commu- nications Network telephone tech- nology and cellular telephone mak- ing the concept largely moot - but you still wind up paying the tele- phone company. I’m still looking for a pocket cellular telephone with an RJ-11 jack in it for a modem. I¢ll happen.
Jack Rickard Dear Mr. Rickard
I write this letter in the wake of FidoCon 91 and it is an open letter to all who attended the conference. A constant theme throughout the conference was that the virtual community created by BBSes would be a great egalitarian tool, forming a universe that would be untainted by racism, classism, or discrimination of any type.
As the Black Female in attendance at the conference, let me inform you that you have a long way to the realization of that goal. I was ill treated by conference organizers who saw it fit to first register White attendees who were behind me in line. This slap in the face was suc- ceeded by two days of averted eyes and uncomfortable replies to my attempts to discuss conference proceedings with other partici- pants. I was relegated to the role of nonperson at this conference, by people who continually spouted how wonderful they are because they can chat by computer with persons who are confined at home. Even you, Mr. Rickard, put up a shield so that you could ignore my attempts to speak with you.
Shame on you! The attendees at FidoCon have left me with an ev- erlasting impression that they can deny their prejudices on the key- board but in practice have no qualms at being rude to persons who are different. Is the keyboard a haven for those who cannot be human and humane in the world at large? Or is it that the attendees (who never stopped congratulating themselves on their genius) place themselves on a plane too high to deal with people who use the tools that they create?
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I did meet a few notable people who provided some kindness during those horrible three days. Let me thank Gene and Katie Hamilton for their openness. I hope that the vast majority of the people who did not attend this convocation are similar to the Hamiltons, decent people who are unafraid to be open to those who are different.
The computer is a valuable tool for communication. A tool. Don’t fool yourselves; you may know how to manipulate this tool, but it will not erase the prejudices of the user. This is a small world. I challenge you to look up from your key- boards, abandon your virtual com- munity, and participate responsi- bly in the real community.
Sincerely,
Lisa M. Downing
Dear Ms. Downing:
You cover a lot of uncomfortable ground here, but let’s mark it offa yard at a time. In general, I can’t help much with averted eyes and uncomfortable replies. It is possible to mandate equality and agree that it is desirable, but we can’t force everyone to “be comfortable." I’m going to guess I have a problem with your characterization of your- self as treated as a “nonperson" at the conference. Whenever you bring in over 400 people from around the globe, the vast majority of whom have never met in person, and put them in the same place at the same time, the first day is a little awk- ward for everyone. It always is for me. They tend to clique up among those they DO know - at least at first and those who get the most out of such conventions work quite hard at breaking through the ice. If you want to get really conscious about it and ascribe lack of success in this to your blackness, and that works for you, have at it. Fat, cross-eyed, or stuttering would work about as well, but the polished, pretty, white, and genteel seemed a little uncom- fortable as well at the start.
In broad generalizations, I do find most of the online crowd more tol- erant and accepting than most. At the same time, many are attracted
to the relative anonymity of the vir- tual world through their keyboards precisely because they are some- what uncomfortable in real world social situations - let’s avoid the
terms socially graceless or malad- justed.
The reason the virtual online soci- ety will be largely classless and colorless is that there isn’t any means fo tell if the person you are dealing with is black, white, hand- icapped, isolated, etc. There is a marvelous equalizing effect wherein you are judged by your written word alone - because that’s all anyone has to go on. A confer- ence such as the one here in Denver, is a "real" world exercise. In a per- fect real world it shouldn’t make a difference, but it probably does - at least at some level. In the online world, it shouldn’t make a differ- ence, and it generally doesn’t.
I have no idea what sort of "shield" you think I put up at the show. If I did so it was not to avoid talking to you or anyone else. I talked with what seemed like hundreds of peo- ple from around the world. I cer- tainly didn’t intentionally shield anything and don’t recall avoiding a black woman. I apologize for any brusqueness on my part. In truth, I myself am a bit more comfortable with the written word than a public speaking role and was put in a position of speaking quite publicly. The intensity of this meeting was such that from my point of view everyone was constantly talking to everyone, and someone was want- ing a word for virtually the entire show. And I did quite desperately want to talk to allofthem, but there were three days and 408 people. Despite the fact that I slept less than 6 hours in four days, many of those I particularly wanted to speak to, including the Hamiltons, wound up being three minute con- versations in the lobby when I my- self would have much preferred 45 minutes over coffee. I am married interracially, cross-culturally, and bi-lingually and am really not at all uncomfortable with a very wide array of people one-on-one - much less a black American that speaks the same language. I am a tad un- comfortable with large crowds - but I did the best I could. Bottom line
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ts that I doubt you were as unique and out of place as you apparently delight in thinking you were.
The registration incident is a bit more concrete. The FidoCon com- mittee handled registration and I had nocontrol or even inputon that process. But while I do not condone even the possibility of what you de- scribe, ’!m having a little trouble picturing it actually happening. Every time I happened by the reg- istration area early in the confer- ence, there WAS no line - more like a mob scene with people in one enormous and thoroughly confused knot. While not precisely the way I would have handled it, I can’t re- ally picture how you determined that someone “behind you in line" got served ahead of you. I would have been encouraged to see some semblance ofa "line".
While anumber ofthings happened this year that I would have done differently, there wouldn’t have been much I could have done about it had I known. For this reason, among others, we’ve formed a com- pany (ONE, Inc.) specifically to put on the Online Networking Exposi- tion and BBS Conference (ONE BBSCON) here in Denver next year. It won’t actually be a FidoCon and we expect more on the order of 1200- 1500 people rather than the 408 attending this year. Some problems will get better and others probably worse. But I’m going to guess that I can state with some confidence that registration will be handled quite professionally. It is certainly my intention that it be so. I would certainly like to see you at next years event - leaving the "only black female" role at home and bringing an online enthusiast to the table. Lil not base my “everlasting im- pression" of you on one letter.
Jack Rickard
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TELEBITS
PC MAGAZINE ONLINE MODEM GIVEAWAY
PC Magazine has been pretty pro- gressive regarding online activity. For some time they’ve operated the PC MagNet service on the Compu- Serve network. The service has re- cently been expanded and re- named ZiffNet. The parent com- pany of PC Magazine is Ziff Com- munications. Ziff also publishes PC Week, PC Computing, PC Sources, Computer Shopper, Mac- WEEK, and MacUser magazines.
ZiffNet goes beyond another “me too" online service. It provides sev- eral databases we find useful in- cluding Computer Database Plus. This database provides the full text of articles appearing in some 45 computer related periodicals. It also provides article abstracts from a wider range of 125 publica- tions. Another database we find useful is Computer Directory. This little item contains profiles of some 69,000 computer products and 11,000 company profiles. The Ziff- Net Reviews Index catalogs some 8500 product reviews appearing in PC Magazine, PC Computing, and PC Week since 1987.
The service also provides all the little utility programs that ap- peared in PC Magazine over the past several years ready for download along with numerous shareware programs. Recently, they've begun offering Hayes Mi- crocomputer Products SMART COM-EZ terminal program for download.
To promote the revised online ser- vice, ZiffNet is giving away a free Hayes Ultra 9600 bps modem to one caller each day for 100 days running from August 7 through November 14. They actually pick a 10 minute time slot for each day and do a random drawing from everyone who's logged on during that time. The service is run by 15 system operators now under Rick Ayre. CompuServe subscribers can access ZiffNet by simply entering
GO ZNT: at any prompt. ZiffNet, One Park Avenue, New York, NY 10016. Interestingly, Ziff Davis just purchased Public Brand Soft- ware, a shareware vendor pre- viously owned by Bob Ostrander.
In the area of rumor, it would ap- pear that PC World wants to be online as well. The magazine seems to be planning a system that also uses primarily X.25 network connections although we’re not sure which network. The surprise may be that they are seriously con- sidering using COCONET soft- ware with the Unix operating sys- tem to do the deed. First reviewed in Boardwatch nearly two years ago, COCONET provides a very easy to use graphical interface but requires callers to use a specific proprietary terminal program to access the graphics.
FIDOCONS1 - 408 ATTEND BIGGEST BBS BASH EVER
The International Fido Network, or FidoNet, has grown from a handful of BBS in 1984 to over 11,000 systems today. Starting with a meeting in Ken Kaplan’s living room in 1985, an annual fact-to-face convention, the FidoC- on, has been held each year. The FidoCon86 meeting in Colorado Springs was probably the hey-day for this convention with some 135 attendees. In recent years,it has dwindled down to 75 or 80 of the faithful. Additionally, the conven- tion had developed a reputation as something of a tough crowd best avoided among most modem and commercial software vendors.
FidoCon91 represented a dramatic reversal in fortunes, proving that with a bit more promotion and more participation from industry vendors, the concept of an industry trade show for the online world was indeed viable. A total of 408 BBS operators attended this year’s event along with some 22 vendors presenting their wares. Many had no FidoNet affiliation at all but all seemed excited to see such an as- sembly of BBS people.
The show started off with a key- note speech by Phil Becker of eSoft Inc. and the presentation of a round dozen BBS software au-
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thors. In itself, this comprised the largest group of BBS software au- thors ever assembled anywhere. Fred Clark, author of PCBoard, and his entire crew were there along with Jim Harrer and the Mustang software team that pro- duces Wildcat! BBS. eSoft and their entire TBBS staff were on hand, Scott Brinker represented Galacticomm (Major BBS), and Frank LaRosa, author of Search- light software, was there as well. Wynn Wagner III, author of Opus BBS; Adam Hudson, author of QuickBBS; Steve Gabrilowitz and Richard Creighton, current own- ers of QuickBBS; Scott Dudley of Maximus were also introduced. Andrew Milner, author of Remote Access traveled from Perth Aus- tralia to attend the show.
Tom Jennings, who originally
wrote Fido BBS and started Fido- Net, arrived with Tim Pozar, au-
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Tom Jennings - Founder of the International FidoNet
thor of UFGATE, a popular FidoN- et/UUCP gateway program, in Tom’s propane-powered 1963 Rambler Classic. For many FidoN- et attendees, this was their first glimpse of the somewhat unusual man who started it all.
Other notables in attendance in- cluded Chuck Forsberg of ZMODEM; Ray Gwinn, author of X00 FOSSIL program; Vince Per- riello of BinkleyTerm; Thom Hen- derson, author of ARC and SEAdog (now SEAmail); Jeff Rush, inven- tor of echomail; Randy Bush, who did much of the early documenta- tion of FidoNet technical stan- dards; George Peace, FidoNet Zone Coordinator for North America; Tony Davis, Zone 1 Echomail Coor- dinator; and many others were on
hand.
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Fred Clark (left) and David Terry of PCBoard at FidoCon91
Beyond the dozens of notables, there were sysops - many celebri- ties in their own right. But at this convention, almost everyone there fell into that category in one sense or another.
Guests began registering Thurs- day evening and by Friday morn- ing at 9:00 AM, the party was in full swing. Sessions were held three abreast all day through Sun- day afternoon. Mitch Kapor, founder of Lotus Development, and John Perry Barlow, of the band Grateful Dead were there repre- senting the Electronic Frontier Foundation along with Steve Jack- son of Steve Jackson Games. Jack- son had his BBS seized by the Se- cret Service a year ago and is cur- rently bringing suit, with the help of the EFF, against the agency. They participated in a number of sessions revolving around issues of ethics, privacy, the media, and legal issues to the enthusiastic ap- proval of the attendees.
Almost all of the BBS software vendors held sessions demonstrat- ing the latest features of their new releases - and while there was some grumbling from the old guard FidoNet attendees about the com- mercialism, many who came in
search of the "right" software were delighted to be able to look, see, feel, and touch virtually all the major packages up close and side- by-side at the convention - as well as talk to the developers directly.
Several notable new products made their introduction at the show. SouthCoast engineering showed a small circuit card that monitors the number of rings com- ing into your modem. If your bul- letin board fails to answer the tele- phone within the set number of rings, the card assumes the com- puter is locked up or otherwise re- miss and does a hardware reset of the computer.
eSoft showed off the new TBBS version 2.2 (still coming Real Soon Now) while Mustang showed off their new 3.0 version of Wildcat!. CompuCom modems converted more than a few with their new V.32bis model available at $299 for system operators. They demon- strated the modem by connecting it to a US Robotics HST Dual Stan- dard, still the darling of the BBS community, and paasing files back and forth at full V.32bis 14,400 bps speeds. Index Systems showed an 8-line caller ID monitoring device for PCs and some fax switches
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along with Hayes modems. CDB systems demonstrated a door pro- gram for PCBoard systems that processed credit card orders auto- matically. John Friel of the Forbin Project was on hand with QMODEM. In all, some 22 vendors displayed their wares in a spa- cious, well-appointed vendor area. PCBoard really showed out with an eye-popping 380-foot long profes- sional booth display. By all ac- counts the setup of the vendor area went more smoothly than many of the vendors could ever recall expe- riencing at a trade show, and much of this was credited to the work of Chris Anderson, one of the FidoC- on91 committee volunteers.
One of the most popular sessions was about connecting your BBS to the Internet. Tim Pozar demon- strated UFGATE, a utility for gatewaying FidoNct messages to Unix UUCP hosts. Chris Ambler, a CalPoly graduate student wowed the group with a demonstration of FSUUCP - a suite of Unix mail utilities ported to the DOS envi- ronment. This effectively gives users UUCP/Internet mail capa- bilities on a laptop - a personal mailer for Internet. A $385 shareware program, you will see more of this.
In another session on the National Research Education Network (NREN), Randy Bush noted some concern over the eventual outcome of NREN and its effect on the Inter- net. He described a scenario of “dancing elephants" with Auto- mated Network Services (ANS) serving as a means for IBM and MCI to gain control of the Internet, market it to the Fortune 1000, and give the rest of the online world little notice. On the other side of the dance floor, CERFNet, PSI, and UUNET had joined forces to create CIX, and rumor has it that Sprint may be cozying up to them. Bush, long recognized as FidoNet’s ambassador to Internet, agreed to host three echomail conferences on
Internet concerns including INTERNET.TECH, INTER- NET.NREN, and INTER-
NET.FIDO - available on his Fido- Net system at 1:105/42. Bush’s Internet address is randy@psg.com.
Dave Hughes of Old Colorado City Communications was at his finest - dramatically introducing a NAPLPS editor and terminal pro- gram. NAPLPS (North American Presentation Level Protocol Syn- tax) is a public domain ANSI stan- dard for graphics and is used by Prodigy, in slightly modified form, to deliver impressive graphics screens online.
Apparently, Hughes had talked Microstar Software Ltd. president Peter Jordan into releasing their $1000 commercial graphics editor program as a $50 shareware pro- gram and made the announcement at the convention. Microstar actu- ally does much of the design work on Prodigy. Between the editor and the terminal program, Hughes in- troduction marked the first avail- ability of such tools to the BBS community and caused quite astir. Although Hughes has been cham- pioning the use of NAPLPS online for many years, until now, the tools just haven’t been widely available to the BBS community. With the availability of an editor and termi- nal program, we would look for an increased interest over the coming year.
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Mitch ‘ae Fy, the Electronic Frontier Foundation
Prodigy itself showed up in force - hosting a hospitality suite with beer, soda, and snacks and giving away Prodigy T-shirts. They were
ae ~ isanware Authors - All ina Row
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not the only commercial online ser- vice at the event. Steve Laliberte of BIX was all eyes at the event along with several representatives from CompuServe and ZiffNet (for- merly PC Magnet). They were also not the only hospitality suite in evidence with gatherings available in the Bit Bucket Software suite, eSoft Inc.’s suite, and our own Boardwatch rooms.
Tll somewhat immodestly report that “the Jack and Phil Show’, a couple of relatively informal ses- sions on how to promote your BBS and make it profitable, held by my- self and TBBS author Phil Becker, was quite well received. The con- cept for this session arose out of several conversations we had dur- ing the previous year. At Boardwatch, we talk with a lot of BBS operators each day and we noticed some common techniques used by the financially successful ones. Phil Becker, as author of one of the leading multiline BBS soft- ware packages, also talks to a lot of BBS operators in the course of a normal day. In comparing notes, we found the same elements
cropped up time after time and decided to do a little impromptu presentation.
We weren't prepared for the re- sponse. The session room was lit- erally packed wall to wall, there were reportedly a hundred people in the hall outside, and we had a few peeking in through the win- dows. The enthusiasm of those at- tending the session was just slightly overwhelming and clearly this is a topic of intense interest to BBS operators. We'll try to repeat this in some kind of larger meeting facility next year with more ses- sions on this type of topic.
The conference drew operators from around the world. At least five came from the Netherlands, a couple from Australia, several from Switzerland. Dmitry Klemenkov of Leningrad USSR, who had registered was unable to make it - this was the weekend of the coup. I found it somewhat in- teresting to meet Heikki Rensalow. Heikki was a farmer from Finland. He was quite interested in BBS and heard that the United States was where the action was so he came. Seemed to be having the time of his life. ve got a feeling life on a farm in Finland will never be the same.
The banquet on Saturday night was a relative let-down. It was sold out weeks in advance and should have been the highlight of the con- vention. But most of the show or- ganizers who spoke wound up breaking down in tears at the mi- crophone and one left the banquet ill after a few minutes. The presen- tation of door prizes was particu- larly gruesome in the amateurish manner in which they were tossed into the audience. At one point, a sysop was awarded a copy of Wild- cat! 3.0 but the organizers with- drew the prize after they learned he either already ran the package or ran a different one (we never did learn which). This was somewhat puzzling in that everyone in the room either ran Wildcat! or ran another package - they all were sysops. But Mitch Kapor, John Barlow, and Tom Jennings were all enthusiastically received and the food was excellent.
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Our participation in FidoCon91 was largely an experiment to see if the BBS world was ready for an industry trade show. I suppose at this point the votes are in and as I count em, there were 408 wildly enthusiastic ayes and no dissent- ing votes at all. As a result, Phil Becker and I have formed a third company titled ONE, Inc. (Online Networking Expositions) to host an annual BBS show. We plan a bit larger and perhaps wider presen- tation next August for 1200-1500 online enthusiasts. We're titling the show The Online Networking Exposition and BBS Conference (The ONE BBSCON) and it is tentatively scheduled for August 13-16, 1991. We’re forming an Ex- ecutive Advisory Board of industry leaders that already includes Jim Harrer of Mustang Software, Fred Clark of Clark Development, and Dave Hughes of Old Colorado Clty Communications. Jim Warren, founder of the West Coast Com- puter Fair has already been a big help as an informal kibitzer/men- tor and the concept appears to be off to a good start. More on this in coming issues of Boardwatch.
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John Perry Barlow - Electronic Frontier Foundation
HARDWARE REBOOT DEVICE FOR BBS
A common myth about running a bulletin board is that it will crash as soon as you walk out the door to take a weekend in the Mountains. Well, ok, so it’s not a myth. Many system operators tell us they train their kids to reset the computer by pressing the reset switch if they are going to be away for a day or two. We tried this with our three- year-old but found the solution less than ideal. She reset it about 60 times one afternoon "just for fun" and it did cause some complaints.
But BBSs, particularly complex BBSs using lots of external door programs, do seem to cough a bit occasionally. As long as someone is there to reset them, it’s not a big deal. But the result is that many BBS operators feel a little pinned to the house.
Jim Brandon of South Coast Engi- neering Services thinks he may have an answer. After looking it over a bit, we think he may be right. They make a small circuit card they call a BBS Remote Reset Device. It can reset the host BBS computer automatically if the sys- tem crashes.
Physically, the card is a small cir- cuit card with just a few compo- nents that will fit into any XT/AT 8-bit slot. You disconnect the wire that runs from your front panel reset switch to a two-pin block on the motherboard and connect it to a similar block on the circuit card. Then you connect a similar wire from another block on the circuit card to the motherboard. In this way, the card is wired in series between the reset switch and the motherboard. The front panel reset switch still works.
The card also features two RJ-11 connectors. You simply route one to the telephone wall jack and the other to the first modem on the BBS. The card is wired in series between the modem and the tele- phone jack.
In operation, the card is quite sim- ple. It’s not dependent on the CPU and it uses no memory. The only thing it gets from the computer slot is power. It simply counts the num- ber of rings coming in. If enough of them come, it resets the computer. The number of rings is selectable by a jumper on the card with a default ring count of 6. It can be set for 2-12 rings. So if the computer locks up for whatever reason, the next caller won't get a BBS but they will trigger a hardware reset of the system. Naturally, you want your system to include necessary AUTOEXEC.BAT commands to bring up the BBS on a reset.
About the only drawback we could find to the BBS Remote Reset De- vice was its propensity for reboot- ing the system when you may not want it to. Many BBS go down intentionally for a few minutes to run an external event - processing mail for example, scanning new uploads for viruses, or running a defragmentation utility on the hard drive once a week. If a caller dials the BBS during this period, and the modem doesn’t answer, the card will rather blindly reboot the system during the external pro- cess. This is likely NOT what you want to have happen.
The solution is quite simple. Sim- ply take the modem off-hook. Within a few minutes, the local telephone central office shuts down the line and no further in-
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coming rings will be detected.
en you put the modem back on-hook, the line clears - normally within 15 seconds. Callers get a busy signal. The trick of course is to do this automatically from a batch file so when your external event takes down your BBS, it will take the modem off-hook and sub- sequently put the modem back in the on-hook condition before bring- ing the BBS up. The only drawback to THIS solution is that if the com- puter hangs during one of these external processes, the card doesn’t do any good.
We found two shareware utilities that accomplish this reasonably admirably. Joseph Sheppard’s ATSEND11.ZIP program let's you send almost any Hayes AT com- mand set command to your modem from the DOS command line by simply entering ATSEND fol- lowed by the command. This also
works from a batch file. ATSENDI11 is available from Sheppard’s THE LEDGE
PCBOARD at (818)352-3620.
A bit smaller and more specific utility is Jem Miller’s MODEM.EXE Version 2.5, avail- able in the file MODEM25.ZIP. The command MODEM 1 OFF takes the modem on COM1 off- hook and MODEM 1 ON puts it back on-hook. MODEM25.ZIP is available from Jem Miller’s DIA COM system at (405)946-3675. Subscribers to the Boardwatch Online Information Service can of course download either utility from there as well at (303)973- 4222 and both are widely available on BBSs nationwide.
The card does feature the ability to ignore incoming rings during the boot cycle using a timeout feature between resets. This prevents sys- tems that take several minutes to boot up from constantly rebooting when calls are continuously com- ing in. The ring holdoff feature can be set for up to 3.5 minutes.
The reset function provided by this card is handy, but it’s not some- thing you would want to pay a lot of money for. Fortunately, you don’t have to. The best, feature of South Coast's BBS Ring Count/Remote Reset Device is the price. A single unit is $59.95 and quantity dis-
17
counts begin at three units. They plan to ship an external model as well this month. More information is available from NETWORK XXIII BBS at (805)962-0122 and you can order online there. South Coast Engineering Services, 3463 State Street, Suite 187, Santa Bar- bara, CA 93105; (805)681-7327 voice; (805)964-6343 fax.
NAPLPS - A GRAPHIC FUTURE FOR BBSs
The bulletin board world has needed an avenue for expansion into easier to use, more graphical interfaces. A couple of pretty sig- nificant problems block this ave- nue. Like most things online, they revolve around speed and stan- dardization.
Most BBS use either or both of ASCII (American Standard Code for Information Interchange) or ANSI (American National Stan- dards Institute) standards for transmitting information. Virtu- ally all terminal software supports both. ASCII is used by the plain text systems you see such as the WELL while ANSI, actually a shortened term referring to an ANSI standard for terminal com- munications, is used to produce the color graphics, blinking charac- ters, and animation you some- times see on local bulletin boards. To move beyond either one of these requires a real standard to emerge to handle more advanced graphics. Astandard that can be adopted by both terminal software developers and BBS software developers. Both ends of the communications link have to support the same com- munications technique to be work-
able.
The other issue is of course speed. ASCH is the fastest common com- munications medium online. ANSI, while more colorful, also in- curs the overhead of transmitting control characters to make all that stuff blink, squiggle, and change colors. To go beyond ANSI toward a more graphic interface, will un- doubtedly incur more overhead in the transmission.
The speed problem pretty much precludes the use of widely used bit-mapped graphic formats such
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as CompuServe’s GIF (Graphics Interchange Format) file format. No one wants to wait five or ten minutes while a menu paints on their screen - no matter how beau- tiful. The price for CCITT V.32 9600 bps modems is dropping pre- cipitously and so we can begin to talk about graphic interfaces for BBS that are bearable - but bit- mapped images still won’t happen for some time.
Dave Hughes, a somewhat senior retired army officer who operates Old Colorado City Communica- tions in Colorado Springs, has been singing the praises of a true public domain graphics standard termed NAPLPS for a number of years now. It hasn’t made a lot of sense in the past because the speed wasn't there, and the tools weren’t there, to effectively use it. Modem speeds are now to the point where NAPLPS graphics can be done with ease and in a fairly dramatic unveiling at FidoCon91 in Denver this past August, Hughes an- nounced the availability of acouple of key tools.
NAPLPS stands for the North American Presentation Level Pro- tocol Syntax. This can be thought of as a superset of ANSI graphics although that is not precisely cor- rect. It is adopted by the American National Standards Institute and the Canadian Standards Associa- tion as part of the Presentation Level of the Open Systems Inter- connect (OSD suite. This is further considered the North American implementation of the Interna- tional Standards Organization ISO 2022-1986 standard for ex- tended character sets. What all this means is that NAPLPS has impressive credentials as an inter- national standard for online graphics. It is not proprietary and anyone can design software to this published standard specification.
NAPLPS has a couple of real ad- vantages as a graphics standard. First, it generates relatively small files - a 20K NAPLPS file is consid- ered a whopper. Secondly, it is plat- form independent. A NAPLPS frame on a Macintosh, Atari, or IBM looks pretty much the same. Further, NAPLPS is extensible in a couple of ways. It uses Dynamic Redefinable Character Set
- Boardwatch Magazine -
(DRCS) tables to define up to 96 special characters any way you want. In this way, you can design a DRCS table to support chess characters, for example, or mathe- matical symbols including the in- tegration symbol used in calculus etc. In fact, Hughes is repeating last year’s online course in chaos mathematics, taught by MIT and ported to eight local high schools in Colorado and Montana. The pro- gram was successful last year. This year they are going to incorporate NAPLPS to do a more graphic run at the whole concept using DRCS tables for math functions. The nice thing about DRCS tables - you don’t have to have them to use them. They are typically 4K in size and you can easily transmit them as part of the first frame and the terminal program receiving it im- mediately has use of the new char- acter set.
19
Dave Hughes Discussing NAPLPS - With Anyone Who'll Listen
>.
Another extensible element of NAPLPS involves font sets. The ISO standards committee has al- ready defined entire font sets for Chinese, Korean, Japanese, and a dozen other languages. NAPLPS can accommodate these font sets almost effortlessly. In this way, basic NAPLPS can be easily ex- tended to handle 4000 Chinese characters.
Finally, NAPLPS has a built in ability to pass other data in a transparent mode. Conceivably, you could have a small GIF bit- mapped image in center screen, with much less data intensive NAPLPS graphics surrounding it.
NAPLPS has received a big boost in credibility by the success of Prodigy’s online service. Prodigy has been pretty successful in lur- ing an impressive number (1 mil- lion by some estimates) of people online that might otherwise never
have made the trip. NAPLPS had been used by other videotext ser- vices including Knight-Ridder’s defunct Viewtron, Canada’s ALEX, and NYNEX’s also defunct IN- FOLOOK. But Prodigy has been the success story and their graphic interface has become the mark to emulate in online graphics. At the 2400 bps speed offered by Prodigy, it is barely endurable. At the 9600 bps speeds we will see become com- mon over the next two years, it works just fine.
The problem with using NAPLPS on BBS is that no terminal pro- grams, other than the proprietary Prodigy package, have really been available for it and none at low cost. Further, to generate NAPLPS images requires some sort of draw- ing program - and there haven't been any inexpensively available to generate NAPLPS files. But Hughes has been proselytizing on the topic pretty persistently and has made his best headway among some innovative software develop- ers in Canada - most notably Microstar.
The next time you log onto Prodigy, look at the bottom of the welcome screen. Microstar is listed as the company making the Prodigy graphics possible. Prodigy has some proprietary magic in it, but broadly speaking, the Prodigy in- terface is done in NAPLPS.
Microstar makes an editor titled MGE - Microstar Graphics Editor. Hughes has preached the gospel of BBS/cottage online services to Peter Jordan, president of Microstar. Apparently, his vision caught because in August, Jordan agreed to release their $1000 com- mercial MGE program as a $50 shareware release. He also agreed to release their Personality Plus TI NAPLPS terminal program at $25. Essentially, this gives the onl- ine community two shareware tools to make a start at NAPLPS.
In September, Hughes traveled to Ottawa to help Microstar set up a FidoNet compatible BBS using Re- mote Access BBS software and the BinkleyTerm mail program. The system, titled Microstar Soft- ware Support, operates at (613)727-5752. The two programs are available for download there.
- Boardwatch Magazine -
The graphics editor is in the file SHARENAP.EXE while the Per- sonality Plus III terminal program is PP3PAC.EXE - both are self extracting compressed file sets. For Internet aficionados, these programs are also available by FTP. FTP CSN.ORG. Change di- rectory to OldColoCity.
Microstar’s graphics editor and terminal program are interesting, but not overpowering in elegance. They are actually demonstrations of Microstar’s main line of prod- ucts, the decoders and display drivers used to implement NAPLPS. The company sells a $1000 MVDI-T Developers Toolkit that allows anyone to in- corporate NAPLPS capability in their C language program with as little as 9 lines of code. They do want royalties on the resulting product but the royalty schedule is actually pretty modest.
So through Hughes’ efforts, the BBS community now has a couple of readily available shareware pro- grams to start to work on NAPLPS as a graphics solution, and a pretty quick path to incorporating NAPLPS with more mainline ter- minal programs in the future.
Currently, there is only one true
S we know of that uses NAPLPS today and that is not ac- tually for the BBS itself. Russell Country BBS of Hobson Montana runs on Remote Access BBS soft- ware at (406)423-5433. The inter- face is quite normal but the BBS is devoted to the display of native American Indian folk art online. All the art is in NAPLPS frame format and so you can dial this system and view NAPLPS frames online.
Dave Hughes, Old Colorado City Communications, 6 1/2 N 24th St., Colorado Springs, CO 80904; (719)636-2040 voice; (719)632- 2658 BBS; FidoNet 1:128/67. Internet: dave%oldcoloG@csn.org
Microstar Software Ltd., 100-34 Colonnade Road North, Nepean, Ontario Canada K2E-7J6; (800)267-9975 voice; (613)727- 5752 BBS.
20
NOVELL SUES TWO CALIFORNIA BULLETIN BOARDS FOR PIRACY
Novell Inc. has filed suit against two California bulletin boards for software piracy. Computer equip- ment, software, backups, and busi- ness records were seized from THE RED OCTOBER BBS (415)935- 4105, operated by Steven Marenkov, Custom Software Ser- vices, Inc. of Walnut Creek Califor- nia on August 7th as well as THE WISH LIST BBS, operated by Doug Luce, D&D Computing Inc. of Redondo Beach California on July 31. Neither system is now in operation.
Novell filed copyright and trade- mark infringement lawsuits in a federal district court and obtained the seizure orders. In their Sep- tember 4 announcement, Novell claims both systems sold and dis- tributed pirated NetWare operat- ing system software as well as hun- dreds of other commercial titles by other vendors.
HAYES ANNOUNCES NEW OPTIMA S6MODEM
Hayes Microcomputer Products announced on September 9th a new addition to the Smart Modem family and it is quite interesting. The new OPTIMA 96's most strik- ing feature is the lack of a sug- gested retail or list price. Designed to be a low cost alternative to the Hayes Ultra 96, the company is pricing it very aggressively into the distribution channel, appar- ently in a move to counter the av- alanche of very low cost V.32 mo- dems currently flooding the mar- ket. The company expects it could eventually retail for as little as $440. We found COMP*USA al- ready advertising the modem at $529 three days after the an- nouncement.
A number of modem companies offer a "low end" model with lim- ited features, a cheaper enclosure, etc. That role is actually filled by Hayes acquisition of the Practical Peripherals line. The attractive el- ement of the Hayes OPTIMA is that for the BBS world, it is for all practical purposes a top-end Hayes
Ultra 9600 without the baggage. The modem looks like an Ultra and acts like an Ultra when dialing BBSs or general online services. It still offers 9600 bps V.32 connec- tions, V.42/42bis error correction and compression, and MNP 5 with the same theoretical top data transfer speed of 38,400 bits per second (bps).
The features sacrificed with the OPTIMA model include support for the earlier V-Series 9600 pro- prietary modems, which never made much impact on the BBS world, the dial X.25 feature, MI/MIC &V.25bis Mini/Main- frame computer support, and net- work support. Most of these fea- tures were widely unknown and loudly unused in the BBS world - though some were quite popular in corporate installations. The dial X.25 (X.32) feature was interesting in that using Hayes Smartcom II software, you could hold up to four simultaneous online sessions on X.25 networks such as Sprintnet, Tymnet, CompuServe Network, etc. But without the special soft- ware, it added little to the dialing day of most BBS callers.
The result is a very handsome, quality modem at a street price for everyone that will undoubtedly fall below $500 within a few months. According to Hayes president Den- nis C. Hayes, "Our pricing of OP- TIMA 96 to distribution assures a competitive low price to computer users. By not establishing the esti- mated retail price, we have taken away one of our competitor's best weapons. We know that by doing this, our position as the main- stream PC modem market leader will be greatly enhanced."
The modem comes bundled with Smartcom EZ, a simple-to-use communications software pro- gram that can be upgraded to Smartcom Exec for an additional $35. It also includes a two year warranty, and coupons for MCI, AT&T, CompuServe, and GEnie. There are no current plans for a sysop discount program on the OP- TIMA 96. Hayes does operate an excellent toll-free product support bulletin board at 800-874-2937. Hayes Microcomputer Products, Inc., PO Box 105208, Atlanta, GA 30348; (404)840-9200 voice;
- Boardwatch Magazine -
Hayes Microcomputer Products’ New OPTIMA 96 Modem
CARDINAL INTRODUCES BBS DISCOUNT PRICE ON 9600 BPS MODEMS.
Cardinal Technologies Inc. has an- nounced a discount on their 9600 bps modems for BBS operators. The 9600V42 model is an external CCITT V.32 9600 bps modem with V.42 error correction and V.42 bis compression along with Microcom Networking Protocol level 5 (MNP5). The list price is $699 and BBS operators can obtain this modem for $269 each. The Model 9650V32 is an internal model with V.32, and MNP 5 but without V.42 with a list price of $599 and a BBS discount price of $247 each. Cardi- nal Technologies, Inc., 1827 Free- dom Road, Lancaster, PA 17601; (800)-233-0187 voice; (717)298- 3055 fax.
21
U.S. ROBOTICS, INC. GOES PUBLIC WITH INITIAL STOCK OFFERING
U.S. Robotics, Inc. announced a public stock offering August 30. With 9,337,532 shares of stock, the company is offering 2,200,000 shares to the public and existing shareowners are offering an addi- tional 1,400,000 shares. The ini- tial public offering price is ex- pected to be between $11.00 and $13.00 per share. Hambrecht & Quist Incorporated, Donaldson, Lufkin & Jenrette Securities Cor- poration, and Volpy, Welty & Com- pany will manage the offering. A copy of the preliminary prospectus can be obtained from Hambrecht & Quist Inc., One Bush Street, 15th Floor, San Francisco, CA 94104,
U.S. Robotics has been very suc- cessful in the BBS market with their Courier line of modems. The company recently acquired Touchbase Systems picking up the
- Boardwatch Magazine -
SYSOP MODEM DISCOUNT PROGRAMS V.32 AND V.32bis MODEMS
a EID Vendor Support BBS_ Sysop Price __List
ATI V.32
Cardinal 9600V42 CompuCom V.32bis CompuCom V.32
GVC SM-96 V.32
Hayes Ultra 144 V.32bis Hayes Ultra 96 V.32
Intel 9600EX V.32 Multi-Tech MT932EAB V.32 Practical Peripherals PM9600SA Twincom 9600 V.42
U.S. Robotics DS V.32bis Ven-Tel V.32
(416)756-4591 none
(408)738-4990 (408)738-4990 (201)579-2380 (800)874-2937 (800)874-2937 (503)645-6275 (612)785-9875 (818)706-2467 none
(708)982-5092 (408)922-0988
$350 $269 $329 $229 $379 $599 $499 $399 $449.50 $339 $279 $499 $499
$699 $699 $539 $339 $695 $1199 $999 $799 $899 $699 $299 $1295 $899
* All modems quoted in external models where available
Worldport line of portable pocket modems. U.S. Robotics, Inc., 8100 North McCormick Blvd., Skokie, IL 60076; (708)982-5010.
SYSOP HYSTERIA OVER NEW YORK SALES TAX
Like many states, New York has suffered in the budget area over the past few years. Basically, gov- ernment at all levels has developed an insatiable appetite for money - probably beyond the usual insatia- ble appetite for money govern- ments have historically had. And also like most states, New York’s solution is to find more money - through taxes.
A concerted effort was made in their last budgetary session to "close loopholes", a bureaucratic euphemism for the process of iden- tifying those not giving “enough” and redesigning the laws to try to get more of it from them. For ex- ample, as of September 1, if you file an auto insurance claim and re- ceive some money to pay for dam- ages to your car, the insurance company is now supposed to with- hold sales taxes on it.
One of the targets of their latest foray is software. Software is a funny thing. It’s a bit like a service, and a bit like a book, and there are some fine lines drawn regarding just exactly what it is. The consen-
sus that has emerged over the years is that software done as a custom process is a service - not subject to sales taxes, whereas software that is "pre-written," put in a box, and sold off the shelf is a product subject to sales tax. Appar- ently, a number of vendors, includ- ing Radio Shack, had been taking off-the-shelf software, installing it on hardware and selling the pack- age and claiming the software was then a "custom" installation and the software not subject to sales taxes. Since they did pay sales taxes on the hardware/software package sold, we don’t find this particularly evasive, but New York thought they were really taking a beating on this.
So as part of the state budget law passed in July 1991, they inserted one of the most gruesomely all en- compassing pieces of verbiage con- ceivable. It basically says if you are selling software, thinking of sell- ing software, transferring soft- ware of any kind, thinking of trans- ferring software of any kind, under any conceivable situation, includ- ing moving a diskette from your coat pocket to your shirt pocket, you owe the state of New York sales tax on the full retail price of the software, the diskette, both pock- ets, and any clothes the pockets may be attached to.
22
A number of bulletin boards oper- ating in New York are licensed as businesses and in fact do pay sales taxes on the paid subscriptions to their BBS. As part of the process of implementing the new rules on pre-written software, the state sent out a general New York Tax and Finance Notice N91-34 to all businesses classified as a"com- puter business”. As a result, sev- eral bulletin boards received these general notices and reading the in- credibly loose verbiage of the bill, understandably assumed the worst. As written, the bill implies that BBS operators must pay sales taxes on any shareware or public domain software downloaded from a BBS - as high as 8.25%.
A few bulletin board operators is- sued acall to arms and the riot was on. Early speculation concluded that the state wanted to collect sales taxes on the declared regis- tration fee on each shareware pro- gram callers downloaded from their systems. Worse, the reason- ing went, all hobby systems would now have to get a business license and the telephone company would then charge them commercial rates on their telephone lines. Ac- cording to Tony Mack, an Albany BBS operator, dozens of BBS were actually closing down their file sec- tions. The hysteria grew by the minute. Some said the tax author- ity was logging onto bulletin boards within 48 hours of the Sep- tember 1 effective date of the law. Marty Winter, operator of a part- time BBS posted numerous mes- sages in the IBMBBS forum on CompuServe. The topic also re- ceived a lot of attention in the EFF forum on the WELL.
But according to spokesmen from the New York State Department of Taxation, while bulletin boards are liable for sales taxes on actual sub- scriptions to the boards, no tax is due or contemplated on the trans- fer of shareware or public domain software by modem. And they were considerably confused by the 60 calls they received from panicked sysops on a single day in Septem- ber.
So, it would appear the great New York Sales Tax fiasco was a dud. But it does point up several issues regarding the interaction between
a high tech world on one hand, and a decidedly low-tech legislative structure on the other. Repeatedly, we see well intended laws drafted that appear to have a dramatic and sinister effect on our online envi- ronment. When the original fram- ers of the law are confronted, it becomes obvious they didn’t even contemplate the existence of such a thing, much less the impact such a law might have. The problem of course is that once a law is passed, whatever the intent and current enforcement policy, the words lay there like a bomb waiting to go off in the future. The wording on the New York law should not only be revised to deal with this situation, but we find it unconscionably vague in any event.
The other surprising thing we found about New York had little to do with software. Their tax law specifically levies a tax on printed matter and computer services but exempts all newspapers and peri- odical magazines from sales tax. The common theory here is that if you tax public communication, you are in effect taxing and regulating free speech, prohibited under the constitution. If newspapers and magazines are so protected and ex- empted, why then are BBS paying sales tax on THEIR subscriptions. We won't be so tedious as to once again make the case that a BBS is a publication - it’s been done to death. But, once again we must raise the question, why aren’t the same constitutional protections so clearly available for print media extended to the electronic arena? As we move into an ever more elec- tronic future, must we slowly and subtly forfeit our freedoms in a devils trade for technology?
System Operators in New York who desire authoritive rulings on specific tax matters can obtain them by contacting New York State Taxpayers Service Bureau, Corre- spondence Section, Building 8, Room 902, State Campus, Albany, NY 12227; (618)438-8581.
TELECOM DEVICE FOR DEAF/MODEM PACKAGE
Dillip Emmanuel has an unusual name, an unusual mission, and an unusual life. Born deaf in Sri
- Boardwatch Magazine -
Ordcomm™ Multiuser BBS Software Standard features include:
H@ 1 to 33 users without additional multitasker or LAN.
M@ Download the I-user Shareware from 619/346-1608 FREE!
@ 3-user Registered Shareware version is only $59.
@ Netmail, Echo Boards,
Network File Transfer. @ Public, Private, and EXCLUSIVE Internode Chat. @ Ctree ISAM General Purpose. Database for fast access. @ More features than any other BBS. @ All systems are complete. No expensive add-ons. Mi FREE Demo disk upon request. Write for additional information and pricing.
SURF COMPUTER SERVICES, INC. 71-540 Gardess Rd., Rancho Mirage, CA 92270
Voice: 619/346-9430
BBS: 619/346-1608
Dealer Inquiries Welcome
Lanka in 1953, his family moved to England in 1964. He was enrolled in the Maude Maxfield School for the Deaf in Sheffield England dur- ing a fairly unenlightened period. After going through a series of schools for the deaf, he was admit- ted, with some reluctance, by Shef- field University in 1976 as the first deaf student. He completed a Bachelors degree and helped de- velop a Teletext Decoder for the Deaf now used by British Televi- sion.
He came to the U.S. on the Winston Churchill scholarship and received a Masters Degree in Electronic En- gineering from the Rochester In- stitute. Subsequently, he wrote an electronic mail system used by
NASA. One of his current projects involves
a dissatisfaction with TDD devices for the deaf. He’s designed a com-
23
bination 300 baud modem/TDD de- vice with software on an internal circuit card - reportedly much eas- ier for non-technoid deaf users to install and use with a PC. In addi- tion to outgoing calls, it can also be used as an answering device, and conceivably as a means to offer a TDD line on a BBS. The MIC300i is priced at $349. Microflip, Inc. 11211 Petsworth Lane, Glenn Dale, MD 20769; (801)262-6020 voice; (301)262-4978 fax; (301)588-0965 TDD.
NEW SEAMAIL - AN AUTOMATED DIALUP MAIL SYSTEM
by Chris Anderson
In the world of automated elec- tronic mail transfers between com- puters, System Enhancement As-
sociates (SEA [tm]) has just made life a little easier for its PC customers.
Although originally introduced by the FidoNet computer hobbyist network, FidoNet-based electronic ‘mail technology has been increas- ingly popular for handling corpo- rate electronic mail as well. Such software offers unattended routing of messages to other locations, store and forward ability, and com- pletely automated transmission of mail and files between employees in one or many geographically sep- arated sites using the standard dialup telephone system. Since the advent of laptop computers, this has proven an especially useful technology to employees traveling with modems. An entire electronic mail system can be built from these relatively inexpensive software "mailer" packages.
Both the hobby and corporate user has much to look forward to in SEA’s latest offering, SEAmail 1.00. There are a great many fea- tures not offered in SEA’s earlier product, SEAdog. Of special im- portance to the hobby segment of the market, SEAmail offers WaZOO (Warp Zillion OPUS-to- OPUS) session support using the ZMODEM protocol in addition to its own SEAlink protocol. WaZOO originated with the OPUS CBCS bulletin board software authored by Wynn Wagner III and has be- come very commonly used in Fido- Net. This allows SEAmail to speak intelligently to many non-SEA mailers that are unable to take full advantage of SEA’s own protocol.
These "protocol session handlers" are now modules external to the core of the SEAmail software, making it possible to simply "plug in" any new protocols that the in- dustry may develop in the future.
In addition to WaZOO, SEAmail offers FAX and printer session handlers. Instead of dialing and linking with another mailer, this allows SEAmail to route or for- ward mail to remote FAX ma- chines and even local printers. The FAX option is very convenient, as text based mail from any source can be directed to companies and individuals that have only FAX ca-
- Boardwatch Magazine -
pabilities. (Note that this requires a FAX card or FAX modem be made available for SEAmail’s use).
The Printer session option allows messages to be automatically cop- ied to a printer, or sent to a printer for reading in lieu of supplying each user access to the mailer sys- tem itself to read their mail. An- other important feature for large users is SEAmail’s ability to func- tion on a LAN system. In this way, mail can be routed to the printer down the hall.
Perhaps one of the most dramatic changes from SEA’s previous phi- losophy is the full support of what is called "five dimensional ad- dressing" for itself and for other systems. Whereas it previously only properly supported zone:net/node style addressing, it now fully supports zone:net/node.point@domain addressing that has become s0 pop- ular in the hobbyist market in order to address mail between sep- arate mail networks. To accom- plish this, all system addresses are boiled down to phone numbers. This allows some new features to deal with the problem of systems that participate in multiple net- works and so use more than one address. SEAmail now automati- cally recognizes that mail destined to a common phone number can be sent in one call, regardless of the fact that multiple addresses exist for the outbound mail.
SEAmail’s user interface is a major step forward from their previous product. Pop-up menus replace the old text file method of system con- figuration, and the mail read/reply software also provides a much more user friendly environment. An impressive session and call sta- tus display is present at any time the mailer itself is running. Statis- tics are kept and displayed on a wide variety of system functions.
Caller I.D. is supported, and will use phone number matching and logging as an additional level to an already security minded package. This will eventually make call- back modem systems and call-back verification obsolete in many ap- plications where Caller I.D. is available from your local phone company.
For those that can’t do without EVERY last whistle and bell, SEA- mail even offers an audio user in- terface as well. Sound files identi- cal to those used on Macintosh sys- tems can be stored and triggered by various mailer events. If you'd like your system to scream (liter- ally) when a mail transfer fails, or hear the sound of the Enterprise’s transporter system come alive when a file is left on your system by another, SEAmail is only too willing to oblige. If you are familiar with the lawsuit between SEA and Phil Katz of PKZIP archiver fame, you'll be amused to discover that the system configuration is ini- tially set to scream whenever a ZIP file is received, although this can be modified to suit your taste in archiving software!
Shortcomings are few, but a few of them are worthy of mention.
First, as with any new package, a few bugs remain to be resolved. Although the routing of locally generated messages (using the VIA command) works as expected, the ability to forward messages from other systems to other desti- nations (the FORWARD com- mand) seems to work consistently only in a non-selective mode where it will from everyone to everyone. This is not often desirable.
Missing, but promised in a future release, is the ability to receive files into a separate "no password" directory from a system that does not offer a password. Although un- important to closed corporate sys- tems that always require pass- words, this is a most useful secu- rity feature in the hobbyist’s use of the package where the system is essentially open to the public. This feature was part of the previous package, SEAdog, and we are as- sured by the author that it will be returned.
The FidoNet EchoMail technology method of conferencing between users of different systems is not as well supported as the GroupMail method. The built-in packer/archiver is slow compared to the older ARCMAIL utilities provided by SEA, and cannot eas- ily be fooled into using alternative archiving software apart from
| Communications and Information Systems Specialists |'*
Are You Losing Time Setting Up Your Business On-Line Information System? ¥
Installing Commercial BBS Systems Is Our Only Business \
SYSTEM SUPPORT\ CUSTOM PROGRAMMING
GW Associates
’)
There's a lot available for the TBBS/TDBS System Operator, as well as for anyone interested in an Information System (BBS). If you want to learn more about TBBS/TDBS just call our system and look through Our Demonstration and Sales Area and register as a customer. GW Associates offers full support to all System Operators and we have several excellent programmers available to help with your applications and customization. Please call our system at (508) 429-1784 (N,8,1) and keep up with our new releases or call us on our voice line at (508) 429-6227 if we can help you in any way. Installing and remotely supporting commercial systems is our ONLY business!
TBBS/TDBS SYSTEM ENHANCEMENT SOFTWARE
©1991 GW Associates TRAS/TDBS/TIMS are trademarks of eSoft. [Incorporated
User Manager
The new User Manager for TDBS systems, the full registration and member tracking system that is a true member data base. It has keyword search, on-line user resumes to help users get to know each other, a notepad to let you keep notes on every user, etc. It will present SysOp defined text messages on pending expiration of membership and make the necessary access changes on expiration. Allows users to join as members or renew their membership using credit cards on-line. This program is priced at $69.95
Message Manager
The Message Manager for TDBS systems. Some of the highlights of this package are: Support for up to 10,000 message areas; SysOp configurable full screen editor; SysOp configurable reply quoting; the capability of editing messages after they are saved; users can change several read options at any time and save them to disk to make the changes permanent; users can subscribe to up to 60 areas and see al] the new messages in each area when they enter the message menu; complex search capability on any combination of FROM, TO, or SUBJECT fields; message text can be searched for strings; FidoNet format message import and export utilities are available. This program is priced at $179.00.
Sales Manager
The powerful and productive On-Line Sales Manager. This on-line catalog sales program is written by Jeff Johnson, another pioneer in TDBS software, and it easily shows the power and capabilities of TBBS and TDBS. The Sales Manager will display a catalog of items for sale under categories you specify, each item can have a full descriptive text file attached to it and the user can place an order at any time and continue to browse through the catalog. When done the user selects to order and is presented with each item and given the opportunity to indicate how many are to be shipped. Developed as a modular package this software will handle everything from a low level order entry system to a fully featured point-of-sale package and do all the things you would expect of a full sales package. Please come and work with it on-line. Prices start at $395.00.
On-Line Entertainment
The extremely popular game of StarQuest. This is the first multi-play, multi-user space game torun under TBBS/TDBS. You can create a universe of a size that is best for your system and its users and your users create and capture settlements and become active wheeler/dealers across your universe. Their settlements can be attacked and captured whether the user being attacked is on-line or off, and as the users gain in strength and worth the computer controlled pirates and the tax assessor will be there to lend a helping hand. This on-line multi user game has already proven itself to be popular with the users and it’s not only a lot of enjoyment for them, but it can quickly pay for itself on systems charging for access. This program is priced at $149.95.
GW Associate i Sales/Service/Support P.O.B ee 6 > Voice Phone (508) 429-6227 a a Holliston i A.01746 DataLine (508) 429-1784
25
= LL 6 5 o
ARC.EXE. EchoMail files once again require the "file attach mes- sage’ be created in order to move EchoMail files to other systems. The older but quicker ARCMAIL utilities are unable to generate the ! character that must begin any file name in the file attach message in order to have it deleted after suc- cessful transmission. This re- quires either use of the built-in archiving method, or some fancy batch file footwork using the new SEND program that accompanies SEAmail since it is capable of add- ing the! as required. It ain’t pretty, but it can be used as an effective work-around.
GET and SEND remain one of the most useful features of SEAmail for companies who don’t want to offer a graduate course on mail system use to employees. In addi- tion to the e-mail functions that are actually quite easy to use, GET and SEND allow non-technical users to send or fetch any file from the home system with little diffi- culty. From the standard DOS command line, SEND RE- PORT.TXT TO OFFICE NOW is
- Boardwatch Magazine -
A Picture Is Worth A Thousand Users.
With the COCONET® HOST software from Coconut Computing, you can run your own graphics-based on-line information service or BBS.
@ Have your users connect with an amazingly simple graphical popup-menu interface using the COCONET Access Program (PC-compatibles w/EGA/VGA/Herc); conventional ASCII text access also available. Access Programs for Mac® and NeXT® coming soon.
With the CocoTalk™ API Library, you can create your own graphical online advertisements and external ("door") programs (such as user-
friendly front-ends to databases, online catalogs, educational courseware, multi-user games, etc. Show maps, illustrations, scanned images, pie charts, bar graphs, multiple text fonts, and more.
Licenses, starting at $395, are available in 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64, and unlimited simultaneous user versions. The COCONET HOST requires SCO® UNIX® or XENIX® 386. CocoTalk available for $395.
See for yourself: call our Technical Support BBS at (619) 456-0815
(1200 or 2400 bps, 7/E/1), download the COCONET Access Program, and find out why COCONET is the BBS software of the future!
about all they need to know to send the REPORT.TXT file to the sys- tem titled OFFICE in their phone directory. Likewise, GET DAILY.TXT FROM OFFICE NOW would cause the system to dial out, retrieve the DAILY.TXT file from the office system, and dis- connect.
In all, the package is a vast im- provement in user interface and features. As soon as SEA has re- leased corrections for a few of the minor bugs and deficiencies, it will be somewhat easier to tame. SEA- mail retails for $195. System En- hancement Associates, 21 New Street, Wayne, NJ 07470; (201)478-5153 voice; (201)473- 1991 BBS.
MUSTANG SOFTWARE ACQUIRES MAIL READER FOR WILDCAT!
Mustang Software, riding high on the success of their new 3.0 release of WILDCAT! BBS (2500 copies shipped during the first WEEK of release), has begun an ambitious
26
"It’s quick, intuitive, and we think it is probably the best interface we've seen online anywhere." Boardwatch Magazine 12/89
7946 Ivanhoe Ave #303 La Jolla, CA 92037 (619)456-2002
COCONET i: a registered trademark and CocoTalk and Coconut are trademarks of Coconut Computing, Inc.
Copyright © 1990, Coconut Computing, Inc.
acquisitions program - buying up some VERY interesting software companies. While several deals are pending, we can talk about their purchase of Technique Computer Systems. Recall from last issue our enthusiasm for the WildPro Series 3 sysop utilities written by Greg Hewsgill. The product is turning into a BIG winner for Mustang. As a result, they've bought out Tech- nique Computer Systems to get Greg Hewgill and Scott Brynen as part of their R&D team. The acqui- sition also brings in house three other titles including Silly Little Mail Reader (SLMR), Tomcat, and T-Net.
T-Net allows Wildcat BBS opera- tors to form networks to share or echo message areas easily. Tomcat is a door program that allows cal- lers to download a mail packet con- taining mail in selected confer- ences for reading/reply off line. And SLMR is an off line mail reader.
Offline mail has become increas- ingly popular. Rather than read and reply to each of twenty or more
- Boardwatch Magazine -
3,999 999 Callers Can’t Be Wrong
cea i,
nd it's not just a number either. You
see, it’s each and every one of our callers that have helped us to design the most thorough and accessible BBS in the industry today. . .with over 250 dedicated phone lines available to you to access our more than 300,000 programs and files. . .day or night.
No HIDDEN COSTS $60 PER YEAR DOWNLOADS ON YOUR FIRST CALL
What's more, we don’t hang you up with typical BBS time constraints.
300,000 PROGRAMS AND FILES 250 DEDICATED LINES 150,000 MESSAGES
A
rer |
EXEC-PC’s unrestricted time use means more flexibility for you. . .so, take your time and peruse over 150,000 messages. EXEC-PC offers an end to ‘daily down- load panic." Find out for yourself. 3,999,999 callers can't be wrong. . .and they aren't. . .they even tell us so.
“I have just sent you a renewal. This is one of the best BBS’s in the world. Keep up all the hard work and thanks for your efforts.”
movem (414) 789-4210 PO. Box 57, Elm Grove, WI 53122 ® Voice (414) 789-4200
2 ee = ae ——
topical conference areas on a BBS, callers can select their "default" areas of interest and simply dial in and download a file containing ALL the new messages from each of those areas. Using offline mail readers such as QMail Deluxe, EZ- Reader, Silver Express, XRS, or Silly Little Mail Reader, callers can read and reply to mail confer- ences at their leisure offline with- out worrying about long distance charges or how much time they have left on the system. When they call next, they upload the resulting "reply" packet, and download any new messages.
In this way, BBS callers actually do most of their BBSing offline. Such programs have also become popular in the commercial online world with TAPCIS and AUTOSIG for CompuServe, ALLADIN for GEnie, and SWEEPER for the WELL.
The one drawback to most of the offline readers for bulletin boards has been installation. To get most of these readers up and running
has NOT been trivial and for many callers - just not feasible. One of the most appealing things about Silly Little Mail Reader is its sim- plicity. Installation typically takes about three minutes and it would take a concerted effort by a tal- ented mind to hose it up. While it lacks some of the more elegant flourishes of the new QMail Deluxe and EZ-Reader 2.0, it is more than capable for most applications and the easy installation and operation of this package may be more im- portant for most callers.
With Hewgill and Brynen online with Mustang Software, we expect to see some impressive develop- ments in the connection between BBS and caller as well as BBS to BBS for Wildcat! operators. Mus- tang Software Inc., PO Box 2364, Bakersfield, CA 93303; (805)393- 0228 voice; (805)395-0713 fax; (805)395-0650 BBS.
27
DVORAK’S GUIDE TO PC CONNECTIVITY
John C. Dvorak developed a theme a number of years ago that elec- tronic bulletin boards and modem communications were the unher- alded “fourth” major application for personal computers after word processing, database applications, and spreadsheets. We tend to share his view and his Dvorak’s Guide to PC Telecommunications book under the Osborne McG- raw/Hill emblem provided a very timely shot in the arm for the BBS world.
We recently had a chance to take a peek at another seminal work under the Dvorak auspices in Dvorak’s Guide to PC Connectiv- ity. We’ve seen a couple of "connec- tivity" releases this past year and most of them were (yawn) trivia and tips about living with local area networks. LANs are not like paint programs, comm programs, etc. You don’t play much with LANs. You’re completely im-
- Boardwatch Magazine -
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mersed in heaven or hell until the thing works and afterwards, it doesn’t do anything jazzy BUT work - or fail - on a regular basis. They do magnify the usability of PCs in a work group situation, but there is no screen pop and sizzle to them. You simply have more hard drives than you did previously and can "communicate" in a seriously unglamorous fashion with people in the same building.
Dvorak’s new book, actually writ- ten by Nick Anis Jr. and Werner Fibel, defines the term "connectiv- ity" in an entirely different, and we think more usable and interesting fashion. It grapples with the daily hurdles we all face in sharing in- formation across a much wider world than a Local Area Network. It does give LANs some attention, and modem communications frankly short shrift. But it handles a lot of the nagging details of file formats and the endlegs little hells we all go through in converting one word processor format to another, one graphics format to another and in general "connecting" the output of any one program to another.
The $49.95 book includes three diskettes of programs that we found comprise a delightfully eclectic collection of utilities, small and some NOT so small, to make life easier in PC-ville. Notables? A copy of HiJaak, undoubtedly the most popular graphics file manip- ulator/conversion program on the market and one we had paid $104 at discount to pick up ourselves not a week before. Another example: WORD FOR WORD, a superb util- ity to convert various word proces- sor file formats from one to another with ease. We use it regularly here at Boardwatch but the version in- cluded with this book is clearly a later release with a fantastic drop- down window, mouse-driven inter- face and virtually every word pro- cessor format on the planet.
For those who insist LANs are the way to connect, this book does not fall short. INCLUDED in the disk- ettes are LANtastic’s Z Lan - a software program that let’s you build a workable LAN via serial port, parallel port, or virtually any LAN card. It also includes LAN- tastic Z Net Manager, a very useful utility for dealing with a LAN.
- Boardwatch Magazine -
Between these three name prod- ucts, the Dvorak book provides nearly $400 worth of software in the very latest versions and would gain a recommendation on that alone. But the truth is, as usual we were wowed by something else en- tirely. The programs also include a wealth of tiny, obscure, and in some cases whimsical utilities, all married together with the best menu program we've ever seen. The heart of the awe is a program written by Keith Graham they call GMENU. GMENU is all assembly language and lets you create menus on your computer for appli- cation programs quite easily. It’s barely 13K in size and like most assembly language programs, makes the screen pop and sizzle when you snap a key. Ail the in- cluded programs come on the menu, and all the documentation is accessed via another menu that uses a version of Vern Buerg’s ex- cellent LIST utility to let you browse the docs with ease.
Some of the lesser utilities are the most delightful. A screen blanker that rotates a beam around your screen erasing what’s on it and paints a scene remarkably like the colored stars passing the view screen on the starship Enterprise. Even better, when you press a key to recall the work screen, it slides in from both sides in an impressive graphic display. An entirely whim- sical LAVALAMP program per- forms an on-screen kaleidoscope - but like nothing you’ve ever seen. It shows off VGA graphics capabil- ity colorfully and dramatically. A "boss" key allows you to popup the most realistic looking fake spreadsheet screen we've seen when the boss pops into your cubi- cle - you can even enter data in the cells. A version of CSHOW - a viewer for Graphics Interchange Format (CompuServe’s .GIF for- mat) allows you to display GIF im- ages.
The author of most of this light weight magic is Keith P. Graham. Keith writes small, tight utilities in assembly language and they are impressive. Among his other titles are OPTIK, a graphics package, and TXT2COM, a utility to turn any text file into a self displaying .COM program. Graham is also the
29
host of Inside Your Personal Computer, a technology show on Continental Cablevision. He actu- ally works for Lockheed Corpora- tion and has never received his due as a shareware author although he’s written well over a hundred delightful utilities. He does oper- ate a support BBS at (914)623- 0039 from his home in Nyack, New York.
Dvorak’s Guide to PC Connectivity is interesting because it addresses the real connectivity issues indi- viduals grapple with on a daily basis. It’s eclectic collection of soft- ware and varied approach to com- mon problems make this one of the most useful books to be published this year. Osborne McGraw-Hill turned it down and Bantaam-Dou- bleday-Dell is publishing it and we would project Osborne will not be happy over this state of affairs be- fore it’s all over. The book is pro- jected at 950 pages with availabil- ity at the end of October - $49.95 is what we were told. Bantaam, 666 5th Ave., New York, NY 10103; (800)223-6834.
NEW COMMUNICATIONS PACKAGE IN WORKS FOR PCBOARD - PCBCOMM
Clark Development, developers of the popular PCBoard BBS soft- ware, is developing a new compan- ion product for callers titled PCBC-
omm.
PCBComm, which went into alpha testing on August 30, will essen- tially act as a terminal program with a 100 entry dialing directory that can be used to call any BBS. But when coupled with a PCBoard BBS running version 14.6a or later, the program interacts with PCBoard software to make the onl- ine session much more automatic. The program offers a windowed interface with mouse support al- lowing callers to pick items off a menu. The program then transfers the necessary commands to the PCBoard system to make it hap- pen. All features of PCBoard are available through this new front end program. In this respect, it provides PCBoard BBS systems a user interface program much after the fashion of CompuServe’s CIM or GEnie’s Alladin.
~ Welcome Neighbor...
Multi-user chat Multi-player games
Public, Private and One-on-One! Join forces with players nationwide! Susan Naidoff, Cannon Beach, OR — “I've met some very Jack Shearer, Baton Rouge, LA — “I called because of nice people here. It's the ‘people-ness’ of your board...” your price, but it was the games that hooked me!”
Over 47,000 files Just $2.50 an hour
For IBM-PC, Mac, Amiga, Atari-ST, and C-64/128! Includes the call and PDN (no surcharges)!
Allen Jensen, Modesto, CA — “With the entire PC-SIG° Robert Warren, Fairfield, CT — “PDN sounded like a library online I haven't bought software in months!” comparable service to CompuServe®. I was pleasantly surprised to find it quite up to expectations.”
... 10 PDN’s Nationwide Neighborh
ALABAMA FENSACOLA 904/476-721$ BALTIMORE 101/281.9222 NASHUA 603/8824588 PENNSYLVANIA SAN MARCOS 512/392 3401 ; FORTCHARLONE 813/743.4602 CUMBERLAND 301/722.4005 PORTSMOUTH 603/433.8686 — gerHieHiem 215/974.9400 TEMPE 817/7700560 SUBUIN roan Nee SARASOTA 813/3657311 TYLER 903/592.4544 BRMINGHAM 205/9429391 MICHIGAN NEW JERSEY DANVILLE : 717/2750151 , TALLAHASSEE 904/3861628 waco 817/776-9533 INTSVi 7a ERIE sere. ane 814/454.4063 HUNTSVILLE 205/837.4050 1 ANN ARBOR 313/930.0456 ATLANTIC CITY 609/645.4866 MOBLE 205/660 0922 Me rer cera neevaeaas BATE CREEK 616/9696881 © CHERRYHIIL 609/273-1411 HARRISBURG ...... 717/340-0770 UTAH MONIGOMERY 20512690085 DETROIT 313/9640610 EDISON 908/417.9445 KING OF PRUSSIA 21576922796 LoGaN 801 /752.7865 TUSCALOOSA 205/7528968 GEORGIA Fiy VEGETAL TS 201/266-1560 LANCASTER 717/293.0882 — provo 801/375.6005 ALASKA AIBANY 912/439.1918 GRANDRAPIDS 614/361-9363 PHILLIPSBURG 908/4543459 PHILADELPHIA 215/8548121 saitLAKECITY 801/484.50)1 ATHENS 404/5486395 JACKSON 517/782.0523 SHREWSBURY 908/7741642 PITTSBURGH 412/241-7506 genase Coens ra AT ANTA 404/396-1167 KALAMAZOO 616/385-2032 RENTON 009/8828a35 READING »215/3742271 VERMONT ARKANSAS AUGUSTA 404/7249844 LANSING 517/487.0833 | WEST ORANGE 201/6498011 SCRANTON... 717/969-9760 BURLINGTON 802/658.2410 3 ; COLUMBUS AOVEEYVATAL Mises Be faa@eal STATE COUEGE 814/2342820 RUTLAND 802/775.5999 EATEN ED Ae 591/442-4854 NEW MEXICO WIKES BARRE . 717/823-1640 WHITE RIVER 603/643-6517 FORTSAUTH $01/7855544 MACON 912/781.6132 MIFLEASANT si7/7729447 NE Oe career hs Wa ene etee2i 1640 LITTLE ROCK 501/3720748 SAVANNAH 912/966 5775 POSEEGON ele /7anea48 MacCHUCeTy Eaeeaceaait one 7i7/aaasia1 VIRGINIA ARIZONA HAWAII , TRAVERSE CITY 616/9299873 SANTAFE 505/6625546 RHODE ISLAND PERANO RA Betty GLENDALE Ata ria ate 808/6397234 4 NNESOTA NEVADA KINGSTON 4 401/294.2415 — CHARLOTTESVILE 904/977-8818 PROFN ooieeess, IDAHO racer 218/7238005 LASVEGAS 702/8730414 PROVIDENCE ............... 401/732-6460 GALAX 703/2362930 d BOISE 208/3368540 ay 9 RENO 702/322-1200 HAMPTON 804/838.7119 CALIFORNIA SY 208/746-6046 MNNEAPOUS 612 /858.359 SOUTH CAROLINA HARRISONBURG 703/433-4868 ne ST ReCOS EE canter l ROCHESTER 507/2851686 NEW YORK CHARLESTON 803/797-8405 iyncHaurG 204/8474558 PAXERSSIE D gos/azroriz ILLINOIS ASN eg 284 AI AED Alban -$18/383.4435 CLEMSON 803/653.8702 NORFOLK 804/623-1480 re A1B/9999048 AURORA 708/8202005 MISSOURI BINGHAMTON 607/7242986 COLUMBIA 803/2524806 — RicumonD 804/9850871 RH 18/4441173 BiQOMNGTON 309/662-8045 CQiUMBIA 114/449.0729 BUFFALO... 716/838-1475 GREENVILE 803/2422474 ROANOKE 703/389-5084 El MONTE 818/ : ESCONDIDO 19/747.5803 CHAMPAIGN 217/398.1712 JEFFERSONCITY 314/694.4025 \HACA .... 607/277-1591 SPARTANBURG 003/583-1412 ESTEE FRESNO fee rece ais/zsazoa2 SANSASCITY Meg 1077592030 SOUTH DAKOTA BELINGHAM 206/733.421 INGLEWOOD 219/397-1187 rane 217/422.4012 RAPID CITY 605/3420680 CHENEY §09/235-6268 IRV.NE iapareexze DESRIRetre FLV ERE Orn " SIOUX FAIS 605/338-6088 = Giympia 206/357.7499 LANCASTER 172 C ll f 6:00 f IONG BEACH 213/4289149 © 1OUEY 815/722.8517 all after 6: pm Pacific Time TENNESSEE PULLMAN 509/334.4154 LOS ANGELES 213/4800734 © MOLINE 319/322.4949 CHATTANOOGA 615/6227823 SFA are aes KAN! MARY SViLLE 916/7424\14 PEORIA ISS CONCH d D f EE JOHNSON CIty 615/282-1104 MODESTO 209/5762451 ROCKFORD ane/ve $433 and tour P N or FR KNOXVILLE ..... 615/490.1957 TACOMA 206/572.4125 MONTEREY 40g/e99aR46 SPRINGFIELD 1522.15 MEMPHIS... vee 901/452-7111 WISCONSIN QAXLAND 415/2683782 INDIANA React arehiade nes APPLETON 414/7347186 OXNARD 805/4868899 = BLOOMINGION 812/330 0005 l , EAUCLAIRE 715/834-2576 PASADENA 816/584:1194 fost WAYNE 719/4849963 LOGON PROCEDURE TEXAS GREENBAY. 414/435-3523 POMONA 7iayerzizes ORY pierre 2708 1. Set f for 8 Bits, N AMARILO 806/3586277 MADISON CL PRV NER ae Lis INDIANAPOLIS 317/266-0962 et your software for its, No ‘AUSTIN ee §1274800947 MILWAUKEE 414/821-1643 SACEAMENTO. | Sle/le2ai0d tara diyvmasects i BEAM cn aOR/Ba ONE SAE ‘tareszoed SAN BERNARDINO 714/081.9385 Muncie 317/2890389 Parity, 1 Stop Bit. enna Bria sanaseq em vACsAU 715/842.5069 oN ee ateleaeases SOUTH BEND 219/2349938 es DALLAS 214/788-4651 WEST VIRGINIA SAN JOSE acayases7aa TERREMAUTE CIEE) Dial the number nearest you. ELPASO 915/788196 CHameston Seve NT AN 1U!S GBI 805/5441979 IOWA FORT WORTH 817/5480171 HUNTINGTON 104/529-9324 SANMMATIO - 418/377-1985 AMES $15/233.3460 At the “CONNECT” message slow] GALVESTON 409/998-0914 MORGANTOWN 104/296.0365 SANTA BARBARA 805/9667868 CEDAR RAFIDS 319/363 6965 y wie. GESLOEE tee abaroaaeed SANTA MARIA 80S/9288857 DES MOINES $15/2432803 Gi WHEEL SANTA MONICA 213/4586598 — DUBUGUE 319/550-8702 type four periods <RETURN> \OnG YEN boe/Jaasee) WYOMING SANTAROSA 707/5792642 1QWACIIY 319/354:1033 : “ ” A MIDLAND ....... 915/697-0462 CASPER 307/235 8611 pile. ale) poe eaa seats eS OURCIIY, Ape rke At the “SIGN ON prompt type: SAN ANGEIO 915/6551608 CHEYENNE .307/6350151 SUNNYVALE 408/748-1391 WATERLOO 319/232-4776 Nos See a Rae ptearey VANNUTE nore aao20 KANSAS PBLICNET <RETURN> ke WALNUTCREEK 415/2568050 LAWRENCE 913/749 S901 MANHATTAN 913/5398118 COLORADO TOPEKA 913/233-2884 COLORADO SPGS 719/3800022 WLHIA 316/2650727 SPRINGFIELD 417/8660122 NEW YORK pe leiesea zs 9600 BAUD LOCATIONS DENVER 303/7415012 pewricKy STIOSEFH B16/2936279 | OA ee ejadavatg PHOENIX, AZ..., 602/89346648 ST. LOUIS, MO 314/863.5120 OSE GUINe BUCS eats rare 606/269 3802 S!LOuIS SYATSOSEU Sean “ansya70saza INGLEWOOD, Ca 213/337-1833 © WESTORANGE, NJ... .. 201/669.5769 aoe Fersesaaty LOUSVILE 502/361.0896 MISSISSIPPI WEST POINT 914/4462950 SANFRANCISCO, CA ..... 415/986-5492 NEW YORK, NY aleriasTara ‘ 3 SANJOSE,CA ..408/3740311 SYRACUSE, NY .31$/422.161 a 4 ‘ BLOX... 601/436-6719 WHITE PLAINS 914/747-2892 f socworn Aeunoe aes Peceatret ae WASINGION 6E34/Ae9aGGH EmcRean ON... BI3/et 38 BRIDGEPORT 203/579-1122 AOU Eye orrey JACKSON o01/3727869 RES 3 ")305/827:1010 CLEVELAND. OH ._.........216/529.9608 DANQURY 203/748 2648 Oxtoap 601/236-1658 j A DK ...,. 405/324-5008 REENWICH 03/629 2070 LAFAYETTE 318/235878S cy 23,1043 ATHENS... sw vr 614/5929078 404/671-1282 OKLAHOMACITY. OK ...,. 405/324, ARFERGT 301/6500038 LAKE CHARLES 318/4360419 KONTANA polls BOWING GUEEN 419/353 2084 312/464G90) PHUADELPHIA. PA... 215/557406 NEW MAVEN 203/2342900 © MONROE 316/9256215 — BuiNGs 406/248.1338 CANTON... sssss 216/4537552 617/890-3140 PITTSBURGH, PA ae en NEW LONDON 203/4427245 NEW O2LEANS 494/2417269 gussouia 406/721.0453 CINCINNAT. $13/7614440 BOSTONCENTER,MA 617/482-8077 DALLAS, TX ......... -214/786-4 NORWALK 20178590179 — SHREVEPORT 3192215124 : CLEVELAND . .. 216/226-1776 SOUTHFIELD, MI .............13/3527277 HOUSTON, IX ......... 713/981-4116 witiiawic 28/4803 agsachuserts Cancun, Oe anna Usa Ana gna DELAWARE ANDOVER $08/686 8169 Aste : eee Honan ; AEE Seep es f die CHARLONE 704/3366 i 47. WIAMNGTON 302/a5a7a34 ECSTON . GI7/E90-4776 FavETTEVUE 919/864-6802 SPRINGFIELD .$13/325.6466 DIST. OF COLUMBIA BOSTON CENTER 61775422900 — GereNsBOrO 919/2724714 TOLEDO... w 419/255.9922 e D EROCKTON SCB/941 0110 GareNVidE 919/830-4931 WARREN. 2... 216/393-0111 Rafoetalen tented) UST/S6 NR AE 2 Henrie Pn RALEIGH 919/821-9022 YOUNGSTOWN... .. 216/7467200 MING HAM s6' WEMINGION 919/3430252 . BEORIDA rOwet $28/4521607 — WinsTONSALEM 919/996-0404 OKLAHOMA poCaIGH Se aaieens NEW BEDFOSD §08/99010G7 (alfaly VHT BARTLESVILLE... . 916/2360461 LEAR : NGRTHAMPION aiiseegees =} tAWICN 405/353-4091 DAYTONA BEACH 904/288-7007 sreiNGFELD 413/7393805 BISMARCK 701/2S8.3887 OKLAHOMACITY 405/3240187 | FORTLAUDLEDALE 395/753¢571 Wooes HOE £09/4200972 FARGO 701/2930443 — STULWATER 405/372-8856 etwo r ane ee S785 WORCESTER 5087979558 SE RRASKA TULSA. 918/463 2606 AOU ’ ; JACKSONVILLE 9aa/3ass4ioz MAINE UNCOLN 402/477.1830 OREGON LAKELAND @13/68S7155 pancca 207/9416344 OMAHA 402/345.1028 el lee soos MELBOURNE 297/637-4070 LEWISTON . 207/7831353 EUGENE 03/483 . : j AN 205/S$89124 PORTLAND 207/7739245 NEW HAMPSHIRE sosy2zeassg GPANTSPASS 503/4744662 Online nationwide NAPIES 813/2617227 3 CONCO2D KLAMATHFALLS $03/882.0169 * ° OCALA 9¢4/712$¢81 MARYLAND HANOVER 603/6436517 mEDEORD 503/776 4820 +. ata neighborhood price O®LANDO 457/298 820) ANISAPOUS | 301/426145) MANCHESTER 603/647-7310 porTLAND 503/297-2867 SALEM 503/371.4957
30
The program will run under Win- dows 3.0 or DOS, and should pro- vide a much slicker, smoother in- terface to a PCBoard BBS. Callers will be able to tag files with a mouse and download in a batch. Navigating message conferences will be much easier. The company does not plan on any offline mail functions. Pricing and release date have not been set. The com- pany showed a preliminary copy PCBComm at the FidoCon91 held in Denver in August. Clark Devel- opment Co., Inc., 3950 South 700 East, Suite 303, Murray, Utah 84107; (801)261-1686 voice; earn -8987 fax; (801)261-8976
10,000 SHAREWARE PROGRAMS ON CD-ROM - $159
Night Owl Computer Service is making quite a splash with a shareware CD-ROM collection many BBS operators are snapping up. The CD contains 10,700 IBM files occupying 507 MB of space and the files appear to be very cur- rent. The files are setup for use with PCBoard systems and the di- rectory text files are already in- cluded for 35 subdirectories. Best of all, you can sign up for four quarterly updates at a significant discount. Night Owl operates a PCBoard BBS at 716-881-5688 using the US Robotics HST Dual Standard modem. The CD-ROM is priced at $159 for end users and $120 for BBS system operators. Sysop Richard Graham has the CD-ROMs made himself. Night Owl Computer Service, 219 Poto- mac Ave., Buffalo, NY 14218; 716- 886-2726.
- Boardwatch Magazine -
A TALE OF TWO CITIES Impressions of FIDOCONS1 and the VIA Convention
by Stephen Laliberte
Over this past summer I had the good fortune to attend two of our industry's most important conven- tions. In June, attended the Videotext Industry Association (VIA) convention in Washington, DC and in August I went to FidoC- on 91 in Denver.
The ViA convention was a polished affair. Before my presentation, I was required to submit a resume, a handout, and prepare slides. All the attendees received a 100 page booklet with all the presentation handouts, notes and speaker’s pic- tures. All the titans were there ei- ther speaking, demonstrating or making deals over dinner. Compu- Serve, Prodigy, America On-Line, Delphi, US Videotel, all the Bell gateways and hundreds of hopeful participants. The average title on the attendees list was at least two or three lines long.
There was a new sense of reality at this year’s convention. Attendance was way down. Competition was way up. The big boys have been spending lots of money on ad cam- paigns and boosting their circula- tions up and up with Prodigy now boasting over one million pass- words and CIS over 800,000. It was clear that there was rapid growth in the industry and everyone seemed to agree that this industry had arrived.
There was a great deal of focus on technology. The main themes cen- tered on cheaper higher band con- nectivity and better user inter- faces. The focus was entirely on centralized computing delivered over massive nace networks. Ev- eryone was concerned about get- ting the masses on-line by offering
31
better user interfaces. Prodigy’s apparent success is fanning inter- est in NAPLPS.
Steve Case, President of Quantum, (America On-Line) reported that of the top five on-line services only Prodigy was losing money. Amer- ica On-Line reported second quar- ter sales of $4 million with profits over $1 million. CompuServe now reports annual revenues of $98 million up 22% over last year (IDP Aug. 16, 1991). There is no mention of the profit rate. It was clear that a host of programmers had switched to gray suits and were engaging in the task of becoming businessmen and building an in- dustry.
FidoCon91 was everything that the VIA was not. Attendance was way up - the largest Con ever. More people attended FidoCon than at- tended the VIA. There was excite- ment and enthusiasm everywhere. Instead of sipping scotch for $5.00 a glass, I enjoyed a Jolt cola from an ice filled bath tub at the eSoft hospitality room. I shed my pinstriped suit and wing-tip shoes and donned my jeans, T shirt and Nikes. The Con was disorganized, frantic and guarded by security men in full Scottish guard attire complete with kilt and sword.
The convention more resembled a revival meeting than a Con. The cat has gotten out of the bag - some people are making a lot of money running a local BBS. In his open- ing remarks, Phil Becker, Presi- dent of eSoft, reported a married couple running a 32 line BBS with profits of $1 million per year. My guess is that the cumulative prof- its from commercial BBSs may in fact exceed those of the big boys.
Even with this new realization that had many sysops thinking about going commercial, the bulk of the convention centered on tech- nology, specifically the BBS soft- ware and how modems work. It was great fun to meet all the gurus who built the likes of PC Board, Major BBS, Quick BBS and TBBS. They all had very much in com- mon, they caught the BBS bug and wanted to make it better.
“WILDCAT! 3.0...
Right From The Start
Information on your most important system-wide statistics, including users, files, messages, and node 1D number. System togeles are also displayed on screen.
‘Wildcat! vSl00 |
x ~~ WILDCAT! HQ BAS Rag. No.: &6-0001
= Database — Users = 3,942: $2 Files = 9,584 Maga = 8,125 Node = 22
System Total Calls = 266,187
Drive F © 325,616,384 Minutes Idle = 7
Next Event = Fri 12:00a/Flex
Quick statistics can be reset from the idle screen here, or from any of the 65 000 events available 24 hours a day. A daily reser; keeps the sysop informed.
Last caller Seott Hunter at 7:lip on 05/22/91 | Status | Waiting for calls at 8:37a |
Quick Stats since 05/22/91 12:39a
Calls = 190 Downloads = 423 Messages = 133 Uploads 213
Wildcat! BBS (c) 1987,91 Mustang Software, Inc. Bakersfield, CA (805-395-0223)
Local activity buttons for login as sysop or user.drive space display, node status for all lines with caller activity information. and access ta.a DOS shell and menu facility for running other programs. Console activity can be password locked.
Sysop Toggles
More Information including total calls, main drive space . how long since the last call and the next pending event.
F3-Printer OFF F5-Bell OFF F4-Page ON F2-Kybd ON
User Maintenance
—_ ee
Record number : 1463 Match: NONE . 5 { 1] Name : RICK HEMING (17) Sec level : STAFF Multiple access. This screen can be accessed from the sysop VER) BES ThE Gee ao) Bao dete CEVERVED ment (naturally), but also after reading every message to enable [ 3] Help level: Novice [19] User since: 04/01/87 PT wit , ; pee tae eAPd: - yy Cag ; q { 4] Password : PRIVATE Age: 41 [20] D.0.5. : 05/10/50 editing USCIS sending, recelving, 01 being discussed in a Pre ne tie etdnarsas-023 i ig ap ety ie message. Exiting user maintenance immediately returns to the [ 6] Phone {D] : é (22) # Calle: 1841 messaye you left. { 7] Last call : 05/22/91 8:31" [23] Page avail: NO 5 5 : { 83} Commant 1 : Hinson : [24] Color on YES ici . 5 ineluch Gaal sri 1 9] Comment 2 : [25] E-Prompt : YES Full demographic information including a second screen | ae” =— Beteat tac eee with an alias name and user-specific conference and file area [11] Address 1 :. 760, Box 2264 [27] File diap : Double line access overrides. (22] Address 2%; 915 - 17th Street [28] Editor : Full Sereen (13] City <* + Bakersfield (29] Pretocol : No default MoS ’ {14) Stute : CA (30] N-mail bal: 3326 Control by conference (1,000 of them) for co-sysop status, usifate tere E56) Aaa oo) a SE user title, log-on time and more.
={16) Country : USA
Edit Command [1..32], [FJind, [SJearch, [C]onference, {N]ext, [J]ump, [A]dd. (M]atch/Set, [P])rev., [H]elp, {D]elete, [E]xtra Info, [W]rite, [Q]uit?
Match by security or expiration date to view all who meet your criteria, then [W]rite them a message explaining the changes with immediate return to the user record.
\ 4 e e File Maintenance / . Record number : 1425 Match: AREA 25 Database security Only the files you specify in the B-Tree Pee nee ea Eeyore aeee ame eit Bee a indexed database can be downloaded, and you can catalogue up (3) Last access : 05/17/91 12:21a 117) on cD-RoM : NO 10 2 billion files from 1 000 file areas and 4,000 subdirectories. ( 4] Size : 23,612 [18] No charge TENG) { 5] Uploaded by : HUGH MITCHELL {19] Never OWrite : NO 6 Keywords provide fast indexed file searches. They can be on oe a ne ee a es entered by the caller. or generated from the description. { 8) Key 2 : FILES. BBS _@ 122) 0/L in progress: NO “0 2 ht 9) Key 3 : CONVERT wo > {23] Stored offline : NO Description text starts with a brief 65 character field and~*<-¥’ 09) Key & oe —lti“(ié‘i lm rs allows an extended description up to 15 lines of 80 characters. | 02) Neegee gi ap AIT TR at ea INS AEAY Thort Gane.” Converts joard’s files.bbs to wc2.55 for upgrade Name of uploader. # of downloads, date of last download, Eee uf 2 pea 2 Pa Ben a2 stored on CD ROM or off-line are all tracked for each file. [M]atch/Set, [Rlead, [Nlext, [Dlelete, [Jlusp, [V]iew, [X]fer, [Q]uit? X 4 Software, Inc. .O. Box 2264 Bakersfield, CA 93303 l 3 ; 4 Bie For Orders Only t’sa killer. WILDCAT! 3.0 has been completely re-written wi (800) 247-6385 and ready to make your BBS the best around. While it’s impossit For Office/Inquiries (805) 395-0223 feature-for-feature, no other BBS even comes close. Get your ha
For a BBS preview (805) 395-0650 32
a New Breed of Cat.’
The Big Picture
: SCOTT HUNTER (MSI Staff) ae : 838 of 911 To : GWEN te H 22/91 9:00a Subject : guats of Ra eerenca Read fb O54i5 373 eae ea (REPLIES) Private r] Conf ¢ 01 - WILDCAT! 3.0 Diacuassion - like the full aa amanted. 1 do hav fox , 7; Saf 3 5 Seg A Ay Ce TERE a> GRD: GEARS CEEOE 9 CORGCE: BO i oe lo have ogee Message quoting is available either automatically or ona
-> Am I forced to request quoted lines when X want to include them? line-by line basis on request.
you can get Aute-quote in ate user record to place the entire text of the eis nal Be CCh into your aie y, then you can simply delete the unwanted and unreferenced lines using Ctr.
Doorway mode ia fully supported aa well
-> Can I use any kind of off-line reader with WILDCAT! 3.0?
Sure, as long as its .QWK compatible. The main mail door for WILDCAT! is Tomcat!. epg ig cr Greates .QHK packets roadable by your choice of mail readera that interpret
If you have any more queationa jaut ask.
Full screen editor The visual editor includes support for cursor commands, full doorway control including Home, End. PeUp. PeDn. etc., and WordStar commands.
Net & Echomail messages can he tossed directly in and
Wigcnaed’ #3 30 a STi), Fhidese, iriorward, [sJelp, (K)411, (Jonatop out of any WILDCAT! conference with Binkleyterm, D’ Bridge or (Fl rint, Juit Rlaply! eaTyadp. [ENTER @ ext | ef 5
Front Door.
‘ Rustang gegtvace, the pe oF File attachments to a message result in an additional RiNER goon fait 2 no cage GC EE (eel ah a Ge command line option to [DJownload the attachment, with
immediate return to the message after completion.
VGA/EGA resolution for the sysop allows the local screen to use enhanced display modes to view a complete user record on screen with the active user display above.
: Bakeratiold, “Ga 93303 USA 3 aan
Commant 2 Naver Delete: YES Net Bal:§ 19200 WILDCAT! 3.0 Discussion
Time:
Conf:
Baud:
[17] MOGMAIL3.ZIP Sample Scripta for Wildcat automated mail transfer - Qmodem
(18] PCPPRO2.ZIP = Procomm Plus 2.0 PC-Purauit ASP Program Marking Files
(19) PRCM243.ZzIP Procomm 2.4.3 all files includad in zip
{20] CONV. zIP converts PCBoard’s files bbs to wc2.55 for upgrade to 3.6 (21] WILDMAIL1 ZIP Update to mail scanner/tosser/packer for WC3 & DB, FD & Bink (22] TOMCAT3.ZIP © TOMCAT! .QWK Mail Door for WILDCAT! 3.0, use with reader File listings can be formatted as single line . double line or Mark File C id « #-8),(A)11, [(E]di iew, [Hlelp): 7 E - * . >
Wd Oeste toemabae tee een tah (elec igee ae G Le Ps full file information display. Get full [I] nformation on any file Bree eye oe, WS ee including the extended 15 line description, [VJiew a compre ssed =e ge eke Po Si file, {Download or [M] ark files after each screen display. (1) BBSVALET. ZIP 9,154 00:00:06 { 2] BEWCONV.zIP $4,833 90: 00:09 Mark files by numbers such as 1-5.7.9 rather than typing the { 3] Br4BoYAN. ZIP 3,089 90:00:92 Ee, BR as - eee a, A ea RE 149, ae ae ae cryptic filenames. Continue fo view the listing until you have { 5] BoYaNéo2.21P 110,989 00:01:33 marked all desired files, then request a download and preview [6] CATCALI1.zIP 25,591 00:00:17 your marked list. € 7] csS.zrp 2,560 @0:00:01 > Rot sles les) Oueed se0/ Li byt as aag rat tne File Search hased on name. keyword, uploader or description
z Foes Ae oavo nese text also allows file marking of found files for later download.
Edit command: [R]amove item, {C)lear Liat, [A]dd file, [Q]uit edit? [Q]
e \ / File Transfer TiS hia en aes LaLa. LS. CSC : : f Batch downloads are supported using internal Ymodem,
{ 7] DSz0228.z2IP 87,017 00:07:33 & . . Download Active Ymodem-G, Zmodem, and Kermit, and a special batch emulation
for sending batches of previously marked files using Xmodem,
Xmodem-CRC and 1K-Xmodem. External protocols can be
Protecol : Zmadem (Cra32) File time lafr: 00:04:19
{D]ownlo| Throughput: 3650 CPS 1794 Hatch time left: 00:13:11 Z [E] dit AutaLogO£f: TES : Elapsed time : 00104137 added easily. Ymodem-G reaches 1750+cps! [A]dd beleeaam ee a | Batch uploads using all internal and external protocols is See fully supported with optional virus checking of each file. Command? 5 f " : e fending {commad.arz } , Wile aize ; 202962 Full status is displayed on screen including batch and file Please =| $ def ) [e8.2zIP } Bytes sent : aInua vrcentage scroll bars along with other statistics 4 Sof 2 (DrALéez.aiP } Bytes lert : «0570 PRUCEMOSE: St Mons, CNEL SIAL CS: {Z] Zmod # G6 ot 3 [O088-ANSZ. ZI} Block six : p24 . (e] vmodtets Bo oansaag cies ace Picea eee 308 99 files can be uploaded or downloaded per request using any Blocks left : 60 internal transfer protocol. Select ( Bleck errora: Sa | File errora: o : Ready to
“Presa <CTRL> PgDn to abort transfer
Sanding file(s), <CTRL> X to abort...
\
ver 75 new features and speed to spare. This cat is out of the bag 00 tell you everything new about WILDCAT! 3.0, we can say that z on the world’s fastest growing BBS system — that just got better. Sonia:
Software Etc stores nationwide!
33
- Boardwatch Magazine -
FALKEN 6.0 System Profile
System: The Doctor’s Baud Rate: 300/1200/2400/9600 Office BBS Protocol: 8-bits, no parily Sysop: “Doc’’ PCPursuit: DCWAS Location: Fairfax, Virginia Tymnel: 0476 Phone No: 703-425-3644 Hardware: 386 - 25MHz PC No/Lines: 16 Software: Falken 6.0
“A couple years ago I offered to try Falken BBS Software. To my surprise it wan like no other BBS software that I have ever nin and I have been a Sysop for over 11 years now.
‘Why Falken Software? Becausc it had alot of features that I already had minning a single line system and Teleconferencing. Yes! live chat among the users online not just with the sysop. Also, it has Doors, Message Bases, G-files, private E-mail and much, much more and it gets better all the time.
“There is real support at the other end of the line when I call, the author no less! and he listens! I can go on and on about Falken software, but I want to say that I have looked into other BBS software. The cost of the software was prohibitive to me let alone the hardware to run it. With Falken, I can run anything from a one line system to a 16 line system!!
“The Doctor’s Office BBS started out with Falken on 4 lines. Within months, the popularity of the system and the software was so great we immediately went to 8 lines and we did that running on an 8088 system! Well less than 8 months later we had to go to 16 lines!!
“And through all the changes and questions the support was still there. A voice call and the answer was at the other end. At times I called the Falken BBS Support System (also man by the author, Herb Rose) and when I asked a question in e-mail or message base the next day it was answered... The continuing changes and updates are also available for downloading and if they are major changes thal the sysops want made then when it is ready and tested a new set of disks are usually mailed}!
“Let me say that I am very impressed with the soflware and there is also available now other features like attaching files toe-mail .One more interesting, and fun item about Falken: the ability to link to other Falken systems and have all their users in teleconference at the same time and talk to each other!! Do you charge for your system? If so, then it also has the ability to automatically keep the time your users spend on your system!
“You want more? How about access levels, downloads/uploads, external protocols including Zmodem, Ymodem and Xmodem... Like I said, I can go on and on... The Doctors Office is available for you to look at if you wish... Give us a call and see what the system looks like...
"So, if you are looking for BBS software and don’t want all the hassles of having more than one computer running all your lines, I suggest Falken!!"
FALKEN 6.0 Prices
Q2-LING .....cccceeresseesene $99 B-Line ...........00.0006. $299 4-Lime .......-.000-.22.26 $199 16-Line ................. $399
aN
FALKEN 6.0 Features |
W@ Supports up to 16 lines plus a local login channel. @ Compatible with the FOSSIL standard for interfacing the serial ports.
@ Built-in multitasking environment breaks the 640K barricr. Falken uscs expanded memory so that il will even operate on XT-class PCs.
@ Doors which allow external applications to be developed.
M@ Link tcleconferences with other Falken systems to create SUPER teleconfetences.
@ Sysops can dial-out while Falken is on-line supporting other users.
@ Fully configurable menus to create the desired ‘look-and-feel’ of the system.
@ Customize your menus and screens for both ANSI and ASCII users.
B 1)OS Shell, written specifically to be used with FOSSIL drivers, can be used either locally or remotely. It can be used to copy, delete, rename, type, dump, list, or locate files.
@ Utilities included to automate maintenance, billing, monitoring and other functions.
@ E-Mail with distribution lists.
@ Attach File to E-Mail to be downloaded when the letter is read by the recipient,
M@ Message Base uses threaded responses. @ Full Screen Editor uses ANSI codes to manipulate text on the screen.
@ Global Commands include: who, user, userlist, time, logoff, send, .kill, extend (allows a sysop to give a user 10 extra minutcs on thcir session).
@ The Ymodem, Zmodem, and Xmodem protocols use the FOSSIL interface to the Y/O ports. Source code for all protocols is available.
Test Drive FALKEN
The 2-line version of Falken 5.9 is available as Shareware. To download Falken ot to sec the system in action, call our BBS at 703-803-8000 (USRAHST) or 703-803-8001 (Compucom), local access on PCPusuit node DCWAS or Tymncet nade 0476.
INFO*SHARE ¢ P.O. Box 1501 * Woodbridge VA 22193
Having experienced these two con- ventions, I was amazed that these two worlds seem like two cities that are very much alike but have little knowledge of one another. Both produce very similar prod- ucts; they offer electronic mail, boards-forums-conferences-roun dtables, and file libraries. Both seek to connect the world yet nei- ther one will even admit that the other exists. The big boys do not think the BBS community will ever be a threat because they are so disorganized. The BBS commu- nity knows the big boys are out to lunch and their pricey centralized technology will never survive.
My sense is that these two cities will eventually meet in a war. It will be a war for the hearts and minds of subscribers. Both cities believe that the implements of that war will be technology and they are both investing in new and better ways to deliver their services.
Iam excited and encouraged about the growth and the competition. Yes, we do have an industry here. I am concerned, maybe because most of us are programmers at heart, that we still do not fully understand what it is we are trying to do. In all the presentations from both conventions there was not one presentation on what the callers really want, why they use the ser- vices and what we can do to meet their need for information, files and community.
Coming from the publishing busi- ness, I can see many parallels in the development of the magazine and radio stations and LIFE mag- azine in the 40s. Others are focus- ing on tight niches or serve regions like the local radio affiliates and magazines like SAIL. We have large world-wide operations and local outfits with cheap transmit- ters.
Yes, it is the best of times and the worst of times. I can’t wait to see the next chapters.
(Stephen Laliberte is the Direc- tor ofthe BYTE Information Ex- change, an on-line service pub- lished by BYTE Magazine - Ed- itor]
- Boardwatch Magazine -
THE BBS AS A BUSINESS
WHAT TO DO WHEN THE BANK SAYS NO - HOW TO GET A MC/VISA MERCHANT ACCOUNT
by Jack Rickard
Last month we covered some of the elements involved in running a BBS as a sideline business for profit. You may recall that one of the most crucial elements dis- cussed in inducing callers to sup- port a small online service was con- venience. Essentially, at this point in the game the majority of callers are willing to support "pay" BBS financially, as long as it doesn’t require them to make a project of the process. And that inevitably brings us to the ability to accept subscriptions via credit card.
The two most common credit cards you will run into are Master Card and Visa. Master Card numbers are always 16 digits and always begin with the numeral 5. Visa numbers are either 13 or 16 digits and always begin with the nu- meral 4. Almost all merchant ac- counts accept either Master Card of Visa. Two other credit cards you may occasionally run into are DIS- COVER (Sears), and American Ex- press. In most cases, accepting these two cards involve additional charges and in the case of Ameri- can Express, significantly higher discount and transaction fees. While there is some demand for American Express, a merchant ac- count allowing just Master Card or Visa will accommodate 99% of your callers. For most operators, the ad- ditional coverage is not usually worth the additional fees. Pretend you’re the Olympics.
Accepting credit cards doesn’t come free. You almost always pay a discount fee - actually a cut of the action. The bank retains a percent- age of the charges you run. This varies usually between 2.25 and 4.00%. If you use electronic ticket capture to automate the process,
35
you decrease the bank's processing tasks and they will usually charge you the low end of this range.
The best way to process merchant accounts is through your own bank of course. They issue you a busi- ness checking account, a merchant account to accept credit cards, and help you get set up. You will have to sign a merchant agreement. The last time I looked at ours, I believe it gave the bank the legal right to size our money, home, children, pets, and a pound of flesh from each adult in the household. There may have been something about the right to shake down our friends and neighborhood pets for contri- butions as well.
You will normally be classified ei- ther as a mail order merchant or electronic ticket capture mer- chant. In either case, you will be required to obtain an authoriza- tion code for each credit card charge you accept if you do not have a signed form from the sub- scriber authorizing the charge. In accepting online subscriptions, you normally will NOT have alegal signature with each order.
The usual way of obtaining an au- thorization code is to dial into the network with a touch-tone tele- phone. You key in the digits of the credit card number, the expiration date of the card, and the amount of purchase using the telephone key- pad in response to an automated voice prompt. The voice then an- nounces a numeric authorization code which you write on the form. This can actually be a bit tedious for one or two charges and if you process fifteen of them in a batch, it can be grueling. Worse, the re- sult is a pile of batch tickets that must be taken to the bank and deposited much as you would checks.
The next level of automation is an electronic ticket capture device. We used a Verifone unit for a month or so. This is a small elec- tronic terminal about the size of a shoe box with the card slot, a nu- meric keypad, and an RJ-11 con- nector that connected to the tele- phone line. It allows you to just swipe the card through a slot to read the credit card number and expiration date and asmall keypad
- Boardwatch Magazine -
C335 OPENS
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F
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to enter the charge amount. Since you rarely actually have a physical card in the online world, you must also enter the credit card number and expiration date through the keypad.
The advantage to the Verifone is there is no voice prompt and the device would do all the dialing for you to clear the transaction - dis- playing the authorization code on a little LED readout. Further, at the end of the day you enter a special code to "close the batch" and the device dials in and signals the network that you're through for the day. Most importantly, the money is actually deposited in your business checking account - usu- ally the next day. You don’t have to go to the bank at all. But you still have to make out the charge slips by hand and keep them on file. The cost of a Verifone device is around $200 and most banks will lease you one for around $10 per month.
The Verifone device actually con- tains a 300 baud modem. It seems a little wasteful to pay $200 for such a specialized modem if you already have a roomful of much more capable modems. Fortu- nately, in most cases you can also run a software program. American Digital makes one of the best of these in a product called Soft*De- posit. Essentially, you enter the same information through your PC into a database that can hold up to 999 transactions. Your PC and modem emulate the Verifone in many ways but there are numer- ous advantages. For one thing, you can import text files generated by your BBS with the information into the database. You can also print out reports listing all the transactions, the authorization codes, etc. to keep on file. Soft*De- posit is priced at $289, but we understand from American Digital President Dave Carter that they will discount this to $99.95 for Boardwatch readers. American Digital Inc., 8585 S.W. Fir Lane Terrace, Portland, OR 97228; (503)293-3853.
The final level of automation is of course the BBS itself. In theory, it should be possible for callers to enter their credit card number, ex- piration date, and the amount and have the BBS dial out to clear the
- Boardwatch Magazine -
charges with the bank all automat- ically. We’re not quite there yet and the situation is complicated by the fact that there are numerous BBS software packages, and also nu- merous online networks that clear the credit card charges. Essen- tially, you don’t have many options on the latter. Whatever network your bank uses is the one you're more or less stuck with and there are a number of them in operation - each requiring different software. CDB Systems is currently develop- ing a door program for use with Ultra BBS and PCBoard systems to do this and they have it working now with at least one network. They’re pricing the door at $195 and will customize to your partic- ular network, if necessary, for $100. You can see this in action on their Pinecliff BBS at (303)642- 7463.
Automation can certainly make the process of clearing credit card charges easier, but the biggest problem facing many BBS opera- tors is obtaining the merchant ac- count and the ability to process credit card charges at all. With the increases in fraud, this is increas- ingly difficult as banks become more leery of mail order and elec- tronic operations in general. While most operators can eventually ob- tain one, many really are shut out. An alternative is a service com- pany that does this specifically for you - acting as a middleman be- tween the banking community and their customers.
We've looked around quite a bit and were discouraged by most of these service operations. Many just aren’t particularly trustwor- thy and most wanted a high (6%- 8%) discount fee. But we did finally find one that we're pretty comfort- able with. Peachtree Bancard op- erates a credit card charge clearing operation on a national basis and increasingly we're finding BBS op- erators, particularly in regions like California and New York where it’s very tough to get merchant status, turning to this organization. It’s large, stable, with a reasonable 3.5-4.0% discount fee. They do get you a little bit on the equipment rental, but clearly a service com- pany has to make a profit on some- thing and the equipment is actu- ally pretty impressive.
37
According to Michael Liberatore, a Peachtree representative in the Pittsburgh area, the company wel- comes BBS operators and he per- sonally intends to develop this market a bit more fully.
Peachtree doesn’t come free, but for operators looking for a solution, it’s probably a pretty good one. The trick is that the company leases a ZON Jr. XL electronic ticket cap- ture terminal to the client at $59- $69 monthly on a 48 month lease. At the end of the lease, you own the equipment. The equipment is actu- ally pretty deluxe with a receipt printer and so on, but is relatively expensive. According to Liberatore, the equipment allows them to tie a client into their elec- tronic network very quickly and they do deposit charges directly into the client’s business checking account - usually within two days. By using a known equipment set, installation issues are largely eliminated. He also mentions that they may allow a software solution in the future because he is seeing a lot of computer users interested
in their service. If they do, existing clients will be let out of their lease
to take advantage of the new tech-
nique.
In addition to the monthly lease, Peachtree quotes a discount rate of 3.57%. While this is on the high end of regular bank merchant ac- counts, it is virtually free com- pared to the 6%-8% that many ser- vice companies charge. Again ac- cording to Liberatore, the applica- tion process typically takes about 2 1/2 weeks from the time a client calls until they are on site install- ing the equipment. There is a $95 application fee plus two months of the lease in advance - refundable in the event the application is de- clined. When questioned on the percentage of applicants declined, Liberatore stated that essentially 99% of applicants are approved. "Realistically, you have to have some kind of fraud conviction or something like that to be declined. We've actually provided service to people with a bankruptcy record”, said Liberatore. Contact Michael Liberatore, Peachtree Bancard, 681 Anderson Drive, 4th floor, peal. PA 15220; 800-258- 7. i
LAW ONLINE
NEW LIMITS ON DATABASE COPYRIGHT PROTECTION
by Lance Rose
How is a bulletin board system different from a telephone book? The way this question is answered will determine how much copy- right protection is available for databases on BBS's, thanks to a recent decision by the U.S. Su- preme Court.
USE OF BBS’S TO MAINTAIN DATABASES
BBS's have uses far beyond their original functions of transmitting messages and files. One of their major new uses is to act as reposi- tories for various kinds of databases. Such use is increasing, as shown by the increased demand for database management capabil- ities in BBS software. Database capabilities can either be inte- grated in the software, or accessed
- Boardwatch Magazine -
through a "door" in the BBS soft- ware to a popular stand-alone database management package.
The kinds of databases maintained in BBS’s are as varied as the kinds of information found in the world. Demographic statistics, price lists, Usenet nodes, lists of suppliers of goods and services, and so on. The publisher of this very magazine runs a BBS, with extensive lists of phone numbers and other data re- garding other BBS’s around the country. Database uses of BBS’s are bound to increase in the future, as BBS’s are an ideal means for distributing information effi- ciently to geographically sepa- rated users.
The basic soundness of this ap- proach is amply demonstrated by the large, established companies that offer access to an array of data sources, such as Dialog, Mead Data Central (who provide Lexis and Nexis), Maxwell On-Line, and Dow Jones. BBS’s, being much smaller operations, would natu- rally fill a different niche, serving specialized hobbyists, technical in- terests, and commercial needs. For
instance, a BBS specializing in or- chids could provide a listing of sup- pliers nationally, lists of the types of orchids available from different suppliers, keep records of inci- dence of diseases among orchids, a list of flower shows around the country featuring orchids, and so on. Such a database could be effec- tively maintained by a small, ded- icated group of people, and made available to callers around the country on the BBS.
Derivative products are a natural outgrowth. A sysop can comple- ment his database BBS with a print or electronic magazine dis- tributed to users around the coun- try, thus "decentralizing" small parts of his data. He could also transfer substantial chunks of data on-line or through disk, either for money, or free of charge for the sole purpose of maximizing dis- semination of the data.
THE SUPREME COURT MONKEY WRENCH
A March 1991 Supreme Court copyright ruling will have a strong effect on the use of BBS’s to main-
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|__| _—_——— |
SS
- Boardwatch Magazine -
Having trouble choosing
the right BBS?
Whether you’re planning your own version of CompuServe or just starting a single-line BBS in your basement, you’ ll find everything you need at Telesaurus. Our knowledgeable sales staff will help you choose from the widest selection of BBS software and hardware in
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Telesaurus Corporation * 21832 Green Hill Rd * Farmington Hills, M! 48335 Orders: (800) 488-9831 « Info: (313) 477-0067 « BBS: (313) 477-7351
tain databases. In Feist Publica- tions v. Rural Telephone Service Co., __ U.S. __ (1991), the Court held that certain directories and other data compilations will re- ceive little or no protection under the copyright laws. Feist involved a claim of infringing a "white pages" phone directory, but the Court’s broad ruling will apply to fact databases in all media, includ- ing the electronically stored databases found on BBS’s.
Before Feist, some federal courts granted copyright protection to data compilations based on the compiler’s work in collecting the data, regardless of whether the compiler did anything new or orig- inal. The Supreme Court held that such work (sometimes referred to as "sweat of the brow") is not enough to qualify for copyright pro- tection. It is fundamental that copyright law can not be used to protect "facts", which must be available to all for public use and discussion. Merely collecting facts into a data "compilation" does not change this principle - if the indi-
vidual facts are not protected, they don’t gain any copyright protection by being bunched together.
All databases now must contain original "selection, coordina- tion or arrangement" of the data by the compiler to receive copy- right protection. Normal phone di- rectories are an example of databases that do not meet this standard, and are not copyright- able. They all use the same stan- dardized, unoriginal format - name, address and telephonenum- ber, arranged alphabetically by last name. In contrast, an original arrangement scheme that further organized this data in terms of the age of the owner of the house at each listed address might well qualify for copyright protection as an original arrangement.
The Court also held that even where a given data compilation is copyrighted, it might only receive "thin" copyright protection. This means copying data in the exact form presented by the compiler will infringe (such as photocopying
39
—_-*
not
TELESAURUS
pages of a print directory, or copy- ing the database file held in-the BBS), while taking the data and using it in a different form would not.
This reflects the rule that the compiler’s original presentation of facts can be copyrighted, but not the facts themselves.
The Feist decision affects all fac- tual compilations, such as directo- ries, bibliographies and various kinds of statistical data, and re- duces the copyright protection pre- viously thought to apply in many cases. It does not, however, reduce the copyright protection available for texts, music, computer pro- grams, or other non-compilation works. To illustrate the distinc- tion, consider a BBS that electron- ically publishes both a series of text newsletters and an index to those newsletters. The newsletters themselves will retain the full copyright protection they enjoyed previously, while the index will
now receive greatly reduced copy- mien protection, or perhaps none at all.
DATABASE PROTECTION STRATEGIES
With this new gap in database copyright protection, some BBS operators may need to develop new strategies to bolster their "owner- ship" of the data on their BBS’s.
(1) Explore legal theories of data ownership besides copyright. Some databases can be effectively protected under trade secret and confidentiality laws. This ap- proach can work well for private databases such as internal R&D data or internal company records on an in-house BBS, and privately distributed databases used by in- vestors or industrial researchers. Other databases depend on mass availability to be useful, and can- not sensibly be treated as secret. Such databases include informa- tion shared by scientific communi- ties, news, phone books, and travel and transportation directories.
There is also non-copyright legal protection for "hot news". BBS’s delivering up-to-the-minute infor- mation can prevent others from intercepting that information and redistributing it in competition with them. This protection is avail- able for wire and broadcast news services, and probably for real- time and slightly delayed market information services for investors, among others. There are serious questions about its availability for BBS’s that are not primarily "news" oriented, and how long a poacher has to wait before it can freely redistribute the data.
(2) Use practical measures to max- imize copyright protection under the "selection, coordination and ar- rangement" standard adopted by the Supreme Court. One way is to increase the amount of "editorial" work done in compiling and ar- ranging the data, and to document the ways in which the data com- piler imposes an original form on his database. The BBS may also deny access by outsiders to "raw data” in easily separable form. The sysop can integrate public domain data with textual or other material that he clearly owns, and claim
- Boardwatch Magazine -
ownership of the resulting compos- ite work. This greatly increases the amount of labor necessary for data users to free up and utilize the uncopyrightable factual data for other purposes.
(3) Finally, BBS’s can reduce ac- cess to their data by outsiders, making it more difficult for them to copy sizable chunks of the database. Public BBS’s can do this by raising connect-time fees, search fees, and download fees; re- ducing absolutely the amount of searching or downloading that can be performed by users within a hour or a day; and reducing the speed at which data can be downloaded. Of course, all these measures are limited by the reali- ties of how many limitations users will accept in order to gain access to the data in the BBS.
The Feist decision does not threaten to destroy the market for computerized databases, though it will strongly skew the course of its development. The important thing for BBS database purveyors is to become aware of the newly estab- lished limits on legal protection, and prepare and present their data products accordingly.
[Lance Rose is an attorney who works primarily in the fields of computer and high technology law and intellectual property. His clients include on-line pub- lishers, electronic funds trans- fer networks, data tranamis- sion services, individual system operators, and shareware au- thors and vendors. He ia cur- rently revising SYSLAW, The Sysop’s Legal Manual. Lance is a partner in the New York City firm of Greenspoon, Srager, Gaynin, Daichman & Marino, and can be reached by voice at (212)888-6880, on the Well as "elrose", by Internet as elrose@well.sf.ca.us, and on CompuServe at 72230,2044. Copy- right 1991 Lance Rose - Editor]
DIRECT DIAL
KAKADU KONNECTION - BBS IN DARWIN AUSTRALIA
Tom Koltai is a Unix consultant living in Darwin, Northwest Terri- tory, Australia. He sells and main- tains a fairly hi-powered system to 24 legal firms at about $360,000 each and as long as he can sell one a year, he makes a pretty good living. The rest of the time, he plays with bulletin board systems. A self-described patriot, he also does whatever and whenever he can to help promote tourism in the Northwest Territory.
Koltai operates a 5 line TBBS sys- tem he calls Kakadu Konnection at 61 89 480 700 (from the U.S., dial 011 before dialing this num- ber). Kakadu is an aboriginal term that literally translates to "Land where the snake vomited up the world". It seems that like most peo- ples of the earth, the native aborig- ines of the Northwest Territory have an opinion on how the dirty ball of water got started, and in their folk tales, a rainbow snake puked the planet. A large escarp- ment in the area looks to many like a gigantic coiled snake - probably the one that did the dirty deed.
Kakadu Connection was primarily designed as a file storage and for- warding service for Koltai’s legal clientele. But he’s expanded the system to include an impressive file collection, messages, chat, an assortment of online publications, and a tourism database listing Northwest Territory accommoda- tions, tourist spots, etc.
Among the publications online are several developed from within the Australian sysop community. The most popular is probably a publi- cation titled CRAP. CRAP is gen- erated by five or six system opera- tors and publishes every time they get around to it. There were four issues published thus far - well three actually made it online. They had encrypted the fourth issue with a public key encryption pro-
gram and somebody lost the key so they're not sure just what's actu- ally in it since no one can read it.
If it’s like the first three, it may be for the limited tastes of those en- amored of bathroom humor. In fact, the opening screen is a clever ASCII depiction of a man with his head in a toilet bow] which drains into a large character logo of CRAP. The magazine contains jokes, cru- dity, and basic online obscenity that in its own way is a bit capti- vating.
Another online publication is Leming’s Digest, which purports to be the most boring publication in the world, delving into the depths of boredom and only resurfacing to have another go at it.
Kakadu Connection offers an in- teresting twist for business callers. Koltai has lined up experts from the business community including a bank manager, collection agent, solicitor (Australian lawyer), real estate agent, tax accountant, and doctor. Each maintain their own area of the service and callers can pose questions regarding these specialties online. The result is a resource bank of business advice that has to be considered a trea- sure.
The system uses ANSI graphics to good effect and provides a bit dif- ferent interface than you may be accustomed to seeing - in a refresh- ing way. Almost all TBBS systems look different and this one cer- tainly does. But we found it usable and entertaining. The local infor- mation about the Northwest Terri- tory made this a particularly inter- esting call. Tom Koltai, GPO Box 1600, Darwin, NT Australia 0801
POMPEII BBS - NETWORKING INTERNATIONALLY
When most people think of BBS operators, the image of a 58 year- old Jewish grandmother somehow just doesn’t spring to mind. One that’s drop-dead gorgeous to boot would further confuse the situa- tion. But Zippy Manus is unique in many ways. Zippy started out as an entertainer. A ballet dancer in Israel, she debuted in Mid-Sum-
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mer Night’s Dream at age 10. Later she joined the Israeli army as a theatrical performer entertaining the troops. In 1954, she met Stan Manus, a pioneer in the U.S. com- puter industry who was lecturing in Israel at the time. They met at a sidewalk cafe and were married nine days later. There was a little problem. She didn’t speak English for the first year of their marriage. And Stan, who bears a striking resemblance to Albert Einstein, didn’t speak her language. Still, they moved to Los Angeles.
She became involved in the back- stage operations of the local musi- cal theater scene serving as a cast- ing director, producer, writer, and translator for a number of local theater productions over a long and widely acclaimed career. A bout with cancer forced her to a less public, more home-bound ex- istence and to get her out of the house mentally, her husband pre- sented her with a modem for Christmas 1986.
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It worked. She became active on several local systems, including Talk Channel LA- a multiline DLX system. One of the callers to Talk Channel was Martin Judkins, an Englishman living in Utrech Hol- land who was interested in using DLX as a multiline social system. Subsequently, they met in London as Zippy was traveling to Israel and Martin was attending a two week communications course in London. He described his plans to set up a BBS in Utrech titled POMPEII. He suggested she do the same in Los Angeles.
And so she did. The two became fast friends and worked out a method to link their systems to pass electronic mail. Currently, eleven U.S. and six European bul- letin boards participate in the IN- FOTRAN network, including Martin’s twelve line POMPEII EUROPE (81 3406 21400) and Zippys U.S. POMPEII (213-878- 2801). Messages pass in a number
of languages including French, German, Dutch, English, and a surprising amount of experimen- tation in Esperanto - designed as an international language some years ago.
All the INFOTRANS network sys- tems are designed primarily as so- cial chat/matchmaking services using Richard Gillman’s DLX soft- ware. Martin Judkins has done translations of the system into Dutch and German. But most of the INFOTRANS systems are not really sexually oriented. Zippy charges $100 per year, $60 for six months, or $40 for 3 months ac- cess. But she actually interviews each applicant to what she thinks of as a private club to keep the system pretty interesting and clean. She currently has slightly over 200 paying subscribers on her 24-line system. Oh, there is one kicker, she’s also doing a cookbook and in addition to the annual fee, you pretty much half to cough up a recipe to really get in her good graces. She spends a lot of time online as hostess.
Martin Judkins, INFOTRAN Sys- tems, POB 3109, Utrech, The Netherlands, 3502GC; 31 3406 22204 voice. Zippy Manus, U.S. Pompeii, 7600 Willow Glenn Road, Los Angeles, CA 90046.
ECHO - EAST COAST HANG OUT
by Lance Rose
"There is *another* New York," - the New York of Echo. Echo is a bulletin board based in Greenwich Village in the heart of New York City. It is devoted wholeheartedly to the many splendors of on-line conferencing.
That opening line is an official Echo slogan, and tells a lot about it. Echo has deep roots in the con- crete of Manhattan, but it creates a new kind of meeting place pre- viously unknown in this vast town.
The first words that leap to my mind when I think of Echo are “friendly" and “fun". Echo users are friendly to an extent I never before encountered on-line (what, friendly New Yorkers?). Echo
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users, known as "Echoids", include artists, scholars, students,, com- puter people, musicians, profes- sionals, writers, and the occasional stray construction worker.
Everyone is encouraged to intro- duce themselves when they join Echo. A series of "hello" messages will greet the "newbies" for many days afterwards - returning the greetings can become exhausting! But that is just the beginning...
There is a feeling of mutual trust on Echo allowing Echoids to get very comfortable sharing their thoughts and feelings with others. Echoids regularly share projects, dreams, and even such mundane details as taking showers and walking dogs. There are also those who choose to adopt new personas for their on-line lives. Other Echoids are ready to accommodate such activity, and even help con- struct and solidify these "virtual people". The warm, supportive side of Echo extends to conferences dedicated to male- only topics C'MOE" for Men on Echo), female- only topics ("‘WI'l" for Women in Telecommunications), and even "Group Therapy" and "Twelve Step" conferences.
Echo friendliness is so great that it regularly spills past the electronic limits of the system. Echoids so- cialize in person in all sorts of set- tings, referred to in Echo as"F2F'"s (for "face-to-face" meetings). Per- haps the main F2F is a biweekly Monday night get-together at the White Horse Tavern in Greenwich Village (mainly famed as Dylan Thomas’ last regular watering hole), known as the "Echo Clique" meeting. The name is a bit ofa joke, since everyone is invited to this get-together, so it turns out to be a clique that includes everyone!
Other F2F’s include boat rides, pic- nics, lunch meetings, breakfast meetings, "downtown cliques", "midtown cliques", meetings at concerts, meetings at Echoids’ homes, meetings at pool halls - the mind can boggle trying to keep track. Several Echoids in New York are always ready to put up travel- ers from out of town. At times, it seems New York City is just an extension of Echo and the Echo community.
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You might have suspected I forgot "fun", but that’s impossible in Echo. Echo users are devoted to play. "Play" occurs at many levels: word play (puns and rhymes both bad and fine can pop up at any time), concept play (as is often heard on Echo: "The Philosophy Conference is thataway ----"), run- ning jokes, snappy one-liners, monumental non-sequiturs, inde- scribable moans and grunts, and stuff that depends entirely on rhythm or screen location (or both). A couple of months ago, one of the more active Echoids burst forth with a strange labor of love: well-wrought limericks about many of the more vocal Echoids, sprinkled all over the Plain Wrap- per conference.
Uhh, Plain Wrapper? It’s known simply as just plain "Plain" to its habitues. This "anti-conference conference" is not a conference in the normal sense. It has over 400 different topics, but rarely will you find a discussion in any one that stays even remotely on topic for more than two or three messages. In fact, the more coherent discus- sions in Plain usually wander hap- hazardly from topic to topic with- out regard to the headings. Plain is necessarily a deep immersion experience. Newcomers often say things like, “you guys are nuts", but within a week or so you find them busily carving out their own odd niches in the cavern walls off Plain.
Plain is an enthralling exercise in minimal-structure conferencing. In the absence of externally im- posed structures, local myths form spontaneously in Plain. Chief is the cult of the mythical "P-Cup", which stands for the Parthenon Cup, the ubiquitous decorated cardboard take-out coffee cup used by many New York coffee shops. Some Echoids maintain P-Cup col- lections, and there is occasional earnest talk of an F2F pilgrimage to local P-Cup factories. Another related cult is centered on the Manhattan vice of drinking too much coffee, called "goffeee" by its idolaters. Other common themes include "mutants", "lutefisk" (don’t ask me), and "gross food".
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The Echo Crew on Sabbatical at the White Horse Tavem | in Graenwien Village
A word of slight caution: Plain is freewheeling and irreverent in its language. It is a bit coarse, bawdy, Chaucer plopped in a computer nestled among tall, peopled stone towers. And it’s a lot of fun.
There are many other conferences on Echo, perhaps slightly more structured, yet sharing in the feel- ing expressed in purest form in Plain. Without meaning to slight others, I'll mention some of my fa- vorites: Panscan, run by an Echoid named Panman, devoted to being art and about art; Central, the entry point conference, where Echoids who are so inclined share the details of their lives; New York, with a pretty self- explanatory name, and an obligatory topic on favorite pizza places; and Culture, where Echoids reveal themselves as craven mass media junk culture addicts.
Echo is the creation and ongoing project of Stacy Horn. She got her start in conferencing as a Mobil Corporation employee charged with creating an in-house corpo- rate BBS system. She eventually grew tired of the company’s limits on what she could do, so she struck out on her own with Echo.
"ECHO" stands for "East Coast Hang Out", and was initially con- ceived as the East Coast answer to San Francisco’s Whole Earth Lectronic Link (WELL). Indeed, the user interface is modeled after the Well’s, and can seem a bit sparse to those raised on other BBS user interfaces. However, the system comes to feel friendly and muscular very quickly with use. Stacy hastens the learning process and initiates newbies into the Echo community through "Echo School”, a teaching session she holds at Echo headquarters once or twice a month.
Echo is set up as a conferencing system, meaning it is primarily de- voted to public messages, e-mail, and some live chat. There is no credit for uploads, and little file transfer of any sort. In fact, there are no dedicated file transfer areas, though the capability is available for those who want to make use of it.
Okay, techies: here are the hard specs you've been waiting for! Echo uses a customized version of the Caucus computer conferencing software, running under SCO/Xenix. It currently operates on a8 single 80886 with 613 MB of storage and ten 2400 bps modems
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on a hunt group, with expansion plans imminent. Though Echo's physical component is smaller than some of the mega-systems out there, it creates the impression of a huge internal space by concen- trating on messaging and staying away from the file transfer busi- ness, which can sap hard disk space quickly.
Echo supports over 500 users, and can be reached in New York at (212)989-8411. Members outside New York access Echo via PC Pur- suit. (The PC Pursuit $30 registra- tion fee is waived for Echo users.) Billing is monthly at a flat rate ($18.95 or $9.95 for students and seniors), allowing dedicated users to support a habit that may occupy an hour or more each day.
So ifyou’re not from New York, and you'd like to see "another New York" very different from the mass media image of rude cab drivers and purse snatchers, give Echo a try. If you *are* a New Yorker, and you just want a break from all the rude cab drivers and purse snatch- ers, then Echo may be for you. It’s a real nice place.
PENTHOUSE MAGAZINE BBS - NUDE PET GRAPHICS FILE DOWNLOADS
Penthouse Magazine is one of sev- eral high class color glossy period- icals everyone reads for the edito- rial matter of course. But it does features some remarkably de- tailed photographs of young ladies in various poses of indiscretion. You get to see them unencumbered by the valiant efforts of the Gar- ment Workers of America union.
In the online world, CompuServe pioneered a bit-graphics format ti- tled Graphics Interface Format or GIF (pronounced, for no apparent reason, "jiff'). The format has be- come a standard in the BBS world and it is used primarily to carry pornographic photographs. Some are reasonably good, but most fea- ture strikingly plain women rather artlessly photographed by those whose higher calling is probably more aptly found in the building trades or automotive repair.
When we learned that Penthouse Magazine was operating their own online service and making the pro- fessional photographs of their "pets" available for download in the GIF format, we thought it might be interesting to "have a look" so to speak.
Well, we did look at the service (two of them actually). We never did get to see the photographs so it’s back to the fat chicks with donkeys on that score. But more importantly, we think we have found the WORST online service in the world using a startlingly backward com- bination of ridiculously high prices and absolutely horrible technol- ogy. You should spend the ridicu- lous amount this service costs just once s0 you will have a firm picture of just how badly it can be done.
The start of this horror show is a 900 number where you download a special terminal program. The number is 900-463-8300 and it costs $1 for the first minute and $0.50 for each minute thereafter. You access the plainest TBBS sys- tem in existence with four menu entries. One of them allows you to download a self extracting file ti- tled PETSOFT-EXE. This
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194,379 byte file takes about 15 minutes to download so you'll be out $8.00 there. We can ameliorate this somewhat by making the file available for download on the Boardwatch system for those who subscribe to it, but I wouldn’t bother downloading it there either frankly.
The program itself installs quite readily and requires no technical knowledge. It’s actually a terminal program for the Minitel service. Many onliners have some aware- ness of the Minitel service avail- able in France and it’s often quoted as a success story in the online world. It never has actually been anything of the sort. It does sport an awful lot of Frenchmen but that’s because the government took away their telephone books and gave them the terminals in their stead. The government also supports this monstrous loser with about $750 million dollars a year in tax funds. My personal opinion is that Minitel is not only techni- cally just barely above signalling each other by throwing rocks, but that it is a striking example of how to hose off 3/4 of a billion dollars each year on something stupid.
In any event, what you may not know is that Minitel is also avail- able in this country. Actually, it has been for years - we just didn’t think it was worth a story. And on a revisit, we were very correct the first time.
The PETSOFT program includes local access numbers, a very easy to use configuration program, and you will find it quite easy to con- nect to a local Minitel access num- ber. This is actually the whole Minitel service, not just Pent- house, and you must provide a credit card number and expiration date. Once you do so, you’re given a logon name and password imme- diately.
From the main menu, you can enter PET to go to the Penthouse "service" (in the bull/cow sense of the word). Each service on Minitel features a different rate that Minitel and the information pro- vider split up. In this case, it is $0.50 per minute ($30 hourly).
The Penthouse service provides sex chat areas and the downloads of Penthouse Pet GIFs we were seeking. The service is actually quite easy to use if you don’t mind it being terribly slow and using the gawky mosaic graphics Minitel has always used. We selected aGIF to download. The PET software dumped out to a download function and we prepared to wait out a 169K file download at 2400 bps. It never happened. The screen informed us we could abort the download any time by pressing a "lot" of CTRL-Xs and it proceeded to make the trans- fer - counting the number of good 1K blocks received as well as indi- cating the bad blocks that had to be retransmitted. We gave up when we had 12 good ones and 15 bad ones. But the CTRL-X had no effect. Neither did any of the other keys on the keyboard. We had a runaway file transfer that couldn't be shut off, and couldn’t possibly complete in one night, at $0.50 per minute. This with a Hayes Ultra modem. At 65 good blocks and over 90 bad ones, we finally pulled the plug on the modem and wrote the credit card company a letter in- structing them to tell these people to go pound sand.
We still don’t quite know why Jew- ish grandmothers, handicapped people with no money, and eight year old girls all seem to be able to run perfectly charming bulletin board systems while governments, corporations, telephone compa- nies, Minitel, and Penthouse Mag- azine so consistently and thor- oughly hose the concept up. But it is so. In any event, you can buy the mag for less than four bucks on the newsstand and it’s much higher resolution.
SAILING INFORMATION CENTER - PUTTING THE CHESAPEAKE ONLINE
Most of the large, multiline BBS operating today are general boards featuring massive shareware file libraries and several hundred net- worked mail areas. There are also several large Unix "conferencing systems" devoted to conversa- tional message traffic that do pretty well as gathering places. Multiline chat services that allow callers to type to each other on
screen in real time are also becom- ing quite popular - particularly in California where systems such as Odyssey, KBBS, and Baud Town do pretty well.
The very bottom of the economic food chain online is the specialized topic or theme bulletin board sys- tem. They are, quite frankly, our hot button here at Boardwatch for a couple of reasons. First, they make good stories of course. But more importantly, they represent a new cottage industry that we think will change our society’s en- tire relationship with information.
Our nation’s library systems are doing a marvelous job in going onl- ine. Massive card file indexes give callers a very broad, but relatively shallow, access to millions of titles of printed matter. Some of these, like the Colorado Alliance of Re- search Libraries (CARL) have databases containing millions of titles you can search by keyword, author, title, etc. But once you've completed your search, you wind up with little more than a refer- ence to a printed work. Eventually, we'll see full text online in many ways but the basic paradigm of libraries will be very broad searches resulting in relatively shallow information on topics that have been well published.
There is a certain type of personal- ity within our human family that quite naturally collects informa- tion. We call these people "native librarians". They don’t have any- thing to do with public libraries but you’ve seen them at work. They have extensive collections of both knowledge and hard goods relating to some particular topic of passion. Beer can collections. Motorcycles. Superman memorabilia. Barbed wire (there’s actually as associa- tion of barbed wire collectors and they have a trade show). There is no topic too narrow or specious for someone to not only collect infor- mation on it, but become an expert. The amount of information avail- able on these narrow topics is in- credible. And the degree of exper- tise individuals attain on this "trivia" is almost frightening. Some of these people can look at a photograph and tell you "that’s a 1952 Harley Davidson motorcycle, but it was built after July because
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of the problem they were having obtaining the handle bar grips. See here, this one’s got the new grips they got from the new supplier. There’s an interesting story about that if you have a few minutes.....”
The problem is, these people have their collections in their base- ments as a rule. They, and a few fellow enthusiasts, know about them and if you ever really dig into motorcycles, barbed wire, or what- ever, eventually someone will point you to the "guy" with the right stuff on the subject. BBS technology offers these people an unprecedented tool to share their knowledge with anyone who has a modem and the right ten digits to dial. They can profit from it, and the world can as well.
The interesting thing about this combination is that it draws other people of similar - if perhaps less rabid - interests. And as they slowly congregate around a spe-
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cialty BBS, they form a specialty group that associates based solely on this common interest - not ge- ography or time zone. At some point, as much information is com- ing IN to the BBS from the partic- ipants as flows out from the native librarian. And at that point, an element of information equity has developed that can’t be taken away by someone with bigger hard drives, more money, or more tele- phone lines. THE place to go for information on that topic is that system. ATT can’t duplicate it and neither can IBM - without expen- ditures the eventual profitability would not warrant. Inthe long run, special topic bulletin boards are almost invulnerable - and eventu- ally they will provide a modestly good living to the individuals and small cottage groups that operate them. And eventually, the library "umbrella" which is broad and shallow, will redirect inquiries to specialized information systems that form the "narrow and deep"
component. At some point, virtu- ally all information will be ration- alized in this matrix and from a desktop computer in your home, you will be able to access almost everything known on any topic within a few minutes - in a reason- ably rational fashion.
The power of these specialty sys- tems is not immediately evident right now for two primary reasons, First, it IS the bottom of the eco- nomic food chain online. They just aren’t profitable, or even plausible to run in any big way right now. Secondly, THE specialty topic onl- ine now revolves around the com- puter technology itself. Too few cockatiel enthusiasts have com- puters currently to really form up online very well. Woodworkers are working with wood - not silicon. As personal computers and online technology continues to penetrate deeper into everyday life and be- come easier to use, this will change.
The economic component that will also help this along is the increas- ing drive toward targeted market- ing. Mass