The Online World Part 33

It was time to test the new wonder. I entered

call semaforum.newscr.t

at the ZCOMM command line, hit the Enter key, and off it went.

ZCOMM called the BBS and repeated everything - at far higher speed than I had done it manually. It went on-hook as planned when done.

Limitations ----------- Auto-learn programs can create a script file that let you "drive the same route." For some applications this is enough. For others, it's just part of the way. You have to refine the script manually to get what you want.

Example: If you call my bulletin board with an auto-learned script made yesterday, chances are that everything works well. If you call twice on the same day, however, you're in for a surprise. The board greets you differently on your second visit. You will not get the menu of available bulletins. It will take you directly to the system's main menu. Your script must take this into account.

On most online services, many things can happen at each "junction of your road." At one point in one of my scripts, up to twenty things may happen. Each event needs its own "routing."

Twenty possible events are an extreme, but three to four possibilities at each system prompt is not unusual. All of them need to be handled by your script, if you want it to visit online services unattended while asleep.

It is quicker and simpler to use other people's scripts and programs, although this might force you to use a different program for each service.

Personally, I prefer offline readers on services where such are able to do the job. On other services, I usually depend on my own tailor-made scripts.

Chapter 17: Gazing into the future ==================================

Thoughts about things to come.

Newspaper of the future --------------------------- Some years ago, Nicholas Negroponte of Ma.s.sachusetts Inst.i.tute of Technology, said that today's newspapers are old-fashioned and soon to be replaced by electronic "ultra personal" newspapers.

"If the purpose is to sell news," he said, then it must be completely wrong to sell newspapers. Personally, I think that it is a dreadful way of receiving the news."

MIT's Media Laboratory had developed a new type of electronic newspaper. Daily, it delivered personalized news to each researcher.

The newspaper was "written" by a computer that searched through the news services' cables and other news sources according to each person's interest profile.

The system could present the stories on paper or on screen. It could convert them to speech, so that the "reader" could listen to the news in the car or the shower.

In a tailor-made electronic newspaper, personal news makes big headlines. If you are off for San Francisco tomorrow, the weather forecasts for this city is front page news. Email from your son will also get a prominent place.

"What counts in my newspaper is what I consider newsworthy,"

said Negroponte.

He claimed that the personal newspaper is a way of getting a grip on the information explosion. "We cannot do it the old way anymore. We need other agents that can do prereading for us. In this case, the computer happens to be our agent."

The technology is already here. Anyone can design similar papers using powerful communication programs with extensive script features. I have tried.

My test edition of The Saltrod Daily News did not convert news to sound. It did not look like a newspaper page on my screen. Not because it was impossible. I simply did not feel these 'extras'

worth the effort.

My personal interest profile was taken care of by my scripts.

If I wanted news, the "news processor" went to work and "printed"

a new edition. On Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Sat.u.r.days, I got an "extended edition."

This is a section from my first edition:

"Front page," Thursday, November 21.

Under the headline News From Tokyo, the following items:

TOSHIBA TO MARKET INEXPENSIVE PORTABLE WORD PROCESSOR TOHOKU UNIVERSITY CONSTRUCTING SEMICONDUCTOR RESEARCH LAB MEITEC, U.S. FIRM TO JOINTLY MARKET COMPUTER PRINTER INFO TOSHIBA TO SUPPLY OFFICE EQUIPMENT TO OLIVETTI NISSAN DEVELOPS PAINT INSPECTION ROBOT MADE-TO-ORDER POCKET COMPUTER FROM CASIO

These articles were captured from Kyoto News Service through Down Jones/News Retrieval.

The column with news from the United States had stories from NEWSBYTES newsletters:

* DAY ONE COMDEX.

* IBM'S PRE ANNOUNCEMENT OF "CLAMSh.e.l.l"

* AT&T TO JUMP IN SOONER WITH LAPTOP COMPUTER * COMMODORE THIRD CONSECUTIVE QUARTERLY LOSS * 2 ZENITH UNVEILS TOUCH-SCREEN * HP's EARNINGS DROP

Hot News From England came from several sources, including Financial Times, and Reuters (in CompuServe's UK News).

Headlines read:

* THE CHRISTMAS SELLING WAR * BIG MACS GOING CHEAP TO UNIVERSITY STUDENTS

"Page 2" was dedicated to technology intelligence. "Page 3"

had stories about telecommunications, mainly collected from NewsNet's newsletters. "Page 4" had stories about personal computer applications.

As the cost of communicating and using online services continues to decrease, many people will be able to do the same. This is where we are heading.

Some people say it is too difficult to read news on a computer screen. Maybe so, but pay attention to what is happening in notebook computers. This paragraph was written on a small PC by the fireplace in my living room. The computer is hardly any larger or heavier than a book.

(Sources for monitoring notebook trends: NEWSBYTES' IBM and Apple reports, CompuServe's Online Today, and IBM Hardware Forum.)

Electronic news by radio ------------------------ If costs were of no concern, then your applications of the online world would probably change considerably. Pay attention, as we are moving fast in that direction.

Radio is one of the supporting technologies. It is used to deliver Usenet newsgroup to bulletin boards (example: PageSat Inc.

of Palo Alto, U.S.A.) Also, consider this: Businesses need a constant flow of news to remain compet.i.tive.

Desktop Data Inc. (tel. +1-617-890-0042) markets a real-time news service called NewsEDGE in the United States and Europe. They call it "live news processing." Annual subscriptions start at US$20,000 for ten users (1993).

NewsEDGE continuously collects news from more than 100 news wires, including sources like PR Newswire, Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News, Dow Jones News Service, Dow Jones Professional Investor Report and Reuters Financial News.

The stories are "packaged" and immediately feed to customers'

personal computers and workstations by FM, satellite, or X.25 broadcast:

* All news stories are integrated in a live news stream all day long,

* The NewsEdge software manages the simultaneous receipt of news from multiple services, and alerts users to stories that match their individual interest profiles. It also maintains a full-text database of the most recent 250,000 stories on the user's server for quick searching.

Packet radio ------------ A global amateur radio network allows users to modem around the world, and even in outer s.p.a.ce. Its users never get a telephone bill.

There are over 700 packet radio based bulletin boards (PBBS).

They are interconnected by short wave radio, VHF, UHF, and satellite links. Technology aside, they look and feel just like standard bulletin boards.

Once you have the equipment, can afford the electricity to power it up, and the time it takes to get a radio amateur license, communication itself is free.

Packet radio equipment sells in the United States for less than US$ 750. This will give you a radio (VHR tranceiver), antenna, cable for connecting the antenna to the radio, and a controller (TNC - Terminal Node Controller).

Most PBBS systems are connected to a network of packet radio based boards. Many amateurs use 1200 bps, but speeds of up to 56,000 bps are being used on higher frequencies (the 420-450 MHz band in the United States).

Hams are working on real-time digitized voice communications, still-frame (and even moving) graphics, and live multiplayer games.

In some countries, there are also gateways available to terrestrial public and commercial networks, such as CompuServe, and Usenet.

Packet radio is demonstrated as a feasible technology for wireless extension of the Internet.

Radio and satellites are being used to help countries in the Third World. Volunteers in Technical a.s.sistance (VITA), a private, nonprofit organization, is one of those concerned with technology transfers in humanitarian a.s.sistance to these countries.

VITA's portable packet radio system was used for global email after a volcanic eruption in the Philippines in 1991. Today, the emphasis is on Africa.

VITA's "s.p.a.ce mailbox" pa.s.ses over each single point of the earth twice every 25 hours at an alt.i.tude of 800 kilometers. When the satellite is over a ground station, the station sends files and messages for storage in the satellite's computer memory and receives incoming mail. The cost of ground station operation is based on solar energy batteries, and therefore relatively cheap.

To learn more about VITA's projects, subscribe to their mailing list by email to [email protected] Use the command SUB DEVEL-L .

For more general information about packet radio, check out HamNet on CompuServe, and especially its library 9. Retrieve the file 'packet_radio' (Packet radio in earth and s.p.a.ce environments for relief and development) from GNET's archive (see chapter 7).

ILINK has an HAMRADIO conference. There is a packet radio mailing list at [email protected] (write PACKET- RADIO-REQUEST@@WSMR-SIMTEL20.ARMY.MIL to subscribe).

Usenet has rec.radio.amateur.packet (Discussion about packet radio setups), and various other rec.radio conferences. There is HAM_TECH on FidoNet, and Ham Radio under Science on EXEC-PC.

The American Radio Relay League (AARL) operates an Internet information service called the ARRL Information Server. To learn how to use it, send email to [email protected] with the word HELP in the body of the text.

Cable TV -------- Expect Cable TV networks to grow in importance as electronic high- ways, to offer gateways into the Internet and others, and to get interconnected not unlike the Internet itself.

Example: Continental Cablevision Inc. (U.S.A.) lets customers plug PCs and a special modem directly into its cable lines to link up with the Internet. The cable link bypa.s.ses local phone hookups and provide the capability to download whole books and other information at speeds up to 10 million bits per second.

Electronic mail on the move --------------------------- For some time, we have been witnessing a battle between giants. On one side, the national telephone companies have been pushing X.400 backed by CCITT, and software companies like Lotus, Novell, and Microsoft.

On the other side, CompuServe, Dialcom, MCI Mail, GEISCO, Sprint, and others have been fighting their wars.

n.o.body really thought much about the Internet, until suddenly, it was there for everybody. The incident has changed the global email scene fundamentally.

One thing seems reasonably certain: that the Internet will grow. In late 1992, the president of the Internet Society (Reston, Va., U.S.A.) made the following prediction: