The Online World Part 36

DataArkiv --------- Major Scandinavian online service based in Sweden. Contact: DataArkiv, Box 1502, 171 29 Solna, Sweden. Fax: +46 8 828 296.

Tel.: +46 8 705 13 11.

Data-Star --------- Formerly owned by Radio-Suisse in Switzerland, Data-Star is now owned by Knight-Ridder (U.S.A.). It offers over 200 databases within business, science and medicine.

SciSearch is a database with references to over nine million stories from 4500 newspapers and magazines.

Other databases: Current Patents Fast Alert, Flightline (with stories about air transport), The Turing Inst.i.tute Database on artificial intelligence, Information Access (international market data), parts of SovData, Who Owns Whom, etc..

Access through Internet: telnet to rserve.rs.ch [192.82.124.4]

and login as rserve , and follow standard login procedure.

Contact in North America: D-S Marketing, Inc., Suite 110, 485 Devon Park Drive, Wayne, PA 19087, Tel.: +1-215-687-6777.

Contact in Scandinavia: Data-Star marketing AB, Maessans gt. 18, Box 5278, S-402 25 Gothenburg, Sweden. Tel.: +46 31 83 59 75.

Delphi ------ has full access to Internet. Write to: General Videotex Corp., 1030 Ma.s.sachusetts Ave., Cambridge, MA 02138, USA.

Dialcom ------- is owned by British Telecom and is a network of data centers in many countries. Dialcom is selling its services through many agents (like EsiStreet for the music industry, and CGNet for agricultural research).

Some selected services: The Official Airline Guide, news (Financial Times Profile, Newsbytes, AP, UPI, and Reuters), mail (Dialcom400), fax services and several conference type offerings (like Campus 2000 for the education market).

Today, most Dialcom users are unable to exchange mail with the Internet (DASnet is a commercial alternative), but mail can be sent to users of SprintMail, IBM Mail, AT&Ts Easylink, MCI Mail, Compania Telefonica Nacional de Espana, and other X.400 systems.

Contact: Dialcom, 6120 Executive Blvd., Rockville, MD 20852, U.S.A. The British service Telecom-Gold is a subsidiary of Dialcom UK. In North America, contact BT North America at tel.: +1-408-922- 7543. In Europe, contact British Telecom.

CGNET can be reached through the Internet. Send a message to [email protected] for more information.

Dialog Information Services --------------------------- is owned by Knight Ridder and has more than 400 databases online.

They offer a long list of newspapers including the San Francisco Chronicle in full-text, Newsbytes, Information Access, the j.a.pan Technology database, most major global news wires, Trademarkscan, USA Today, Teikoku Databank from j.a.pan.

Knowledge Index offers evening and weekend reduced-rate access to more than 100 popular full-text and bibliographic databases and 50,000 journals (1993).

Dialog has gateways to other services, like CompuServe and iNet, making the databases available to a larger market. Many databases are also available on CD-ROM.

In Europe, contact DIALOG Europe, P O Box 188, Oxford OX1 5AX, England. You can telnet to DIALOG.COM (192.132.3.254, US$ 3/hour in 1992).

Down Jones News/Retrieval ------------------------- focuses on news for finance and business. DJN/R is the sole online distributor of The Wall Street Journal (with articles from the international editions), Barron's, Dow Jones and Telerate's newswires in full-text.

Further, it has PR Newswire, many other newspapers in full- text, clipping service, online charting for investors, and gateways to other services like Info Globe (Globe and Mail in Canada).

Address: P.O. Box 300, Princeton, N.J. 08543-9963. DJN/R is also accessible through a gateway from MCI Mail.

You can telnet to djnr.dowjones.com . At the WHAT SERVICE PLEASE prompt, enter DJNR and press Enter. An ENTER Pa.s.sWORD prompt will appear. Here, enter your normal DJNS account pa.s.sword.

ECHO ---- European Commission Host Organization is accessible via CONCISE.

Telnet either to concise.ixi.ch (130.59.2.16) or concise.funet.fi (128.214.6.181). Login: concise, pa.s.sword: concise. The NUA address is 0270448112. You can also telnet to echo.lu . Login as echotest or echo.

ECHO's I'M GUIDE is a free database providing information about online services within the European Common Market. It includes CD- ROMs, databases and databanks, database producers, gateways, host organizations, PTT contact points, and information brokers in Europe.

ECHO's other databases are cla.s.sified under the headings Research and development, Language industry, Industry and economy.

For information contact: ECHO Customer Service, BP 2373, L-1023 Luxembourg. Tel.: +352 34 98 1200. Fax: +352 34 98 1234.

Exec-PC Network BBS ------------------- is based in Milwaukee (Wisconsin, U.S.A.). In August 1991, it had 238 incoming phone lines, 9 gigabytes of disk capacity, more than 100 new programs/day, 300,000 programs available for downloading (including the complete selection from PC-SIG California) and more than 130,000 active messages in its conferences. More than 3,300 persons called EXEC-PC each day.

The service focuses on owners of IBM compatible computers (MS/PC-DOS, Windows, OS/2, Windows, Unix), Apple Macintosh, Amiga and Atari ST through over 200 conferences.

You can access EXEC-PC through i-Com's outdial service, Global Access, PC-Pursuit, Connect-USA, and by direct dialing. Annual subscription costs US$60.00. You can sign on while online.

Unregistered users get thirty minutes per day free.

FidoNet ------- was founded in 1984 for automatic transfers of files from one place to the other at night, when the telephone rates are low. FidoNet is one of the most widespread networks in the world. It consists mainly of personal computers (IBM/Amiga/Macintosh...).

FidoNet systems exchange doc.u.ments by using a modem and calling another FidoNet system. Communication can be either direct to the destination system (calling long distance) or by routing a message to a local system.

Each computer connected to FidoNet is called a node. There are nodes in around 70 countries. In June 1993, the net had 24,800 nodes throughout the world (source: FidoNet nodelist). The number of nodes is growing at about 40 percent per year.

Most nodes are operated by volunteers, and access is free.

FidoNet is believed to have over 1.56 million users (1992).

Conferences (called ECHOs or Echomail) are exchanged between interested nodes, and may thus have thousands of readers. A typical FidoNet Echomail conference gets 50 to 100 messages each day. Any connected BBS may carry 50, 100, or more echomail conferences.

Net Mail is the term for storing and delivering mail. FidoNet users can send and receive mail through the Internet.

The list of member bulletin boards is called the Nodelist. It can be retrieved from most boards. Each node has one line on this list, like in this example:

,10,Home_of_PCQ,Warszawa,Jan_Stozek,48-22-410374,9600,V32,MNP,XA

The commas are field separators. The first field (empty in this example) starts a zone, region, local net, Host, or denotes a private s.p.a.ce (with the keyword Pvt).

The second field (10) is the node number, and the third field (Home_of_PCQ) is the name for the node.

The fourth field (Warszawa) is a geographical notation, and the fifth field (Jan_Stozek) is the name of the owner. The sixth field is a telephone contact number, and the other fields contain various technical information used in making connections.

FidoNet has six major geographical zones: (1) North America, (2) Europe, etc., (3) Oceania, (4) America Latina, (5) Africa, (6) Asia.

For information, contact the International FidoNet a.s.sociation (IFNA), P.O. Box 41143, St. Louis, MO 63141, U.S.A. You can also write to [email protected] .

The FIDO subdirectory in the MSDOS directory on SIMTEL20 (on the Internet) contains extensive information, including explanation of FidoNet, guide for its nodes, gateways between FidoNet and Internet, and various programs and utilities. (See TRICKLE in Chapter 4 for more about how to get these files.)

Fog City Online Information Service ----------------------------------- is the world's largest bulletin board with AIDS information. Based in San Francisco (U.S.A.) it offers free and anonymous access for everybody.

Call +1-415-863-9697. Enter "AIDS" by the question "First name?" and "INFO" by the question "Last Name?".

FT Profile ---------- has full-text articles from Financial Times in London, from several European databases (like the Hoppenstedt database with more than 46,000 German companies), and the j.a.panese database Nikkei.

Profile is available through Telecom-Gold, and can also be accessed through other online services. Clipping service. CD-ROM.

Contact FT Information Services at tel.: +44-71-873-3000.

GEnie ----- General Electric Network for Information Exchange is GE's Consumer Information Service. GEnie gives access to many databases and other information services. It has around 350,000 users (1992).

The basic rate is US$4.95/month plus connect charges. The surcharge is US$18/hour between 08:00 and 18:00, and US$6.00/hour for some services, like email, downloading of software, "chat,"

conferences, and multi-user games. Access to Internet email is available as a surcharged add-on service. (Addressing format: [email protected]) For information call +1-301-340-4492. GE Information Services, 401 N. Washington St., Rockville, MD 20850, U.S.A.

GE Information Service Co. (GEIS) --------------------------------- Online service operated by General Electric. Available in over 32 countries. GEIS' QUIK-COMM service integrates multinational business communications for public and private mail systems. Its services include Telex Access; and QUIK-COMM to FAX, which allows users to send messages from their workstations to fax machines throughout the world. Contact: tel. +1-301-340-4485

GENIOS ------ German online service (tel.: +49 69 920 19 101). Offers information from Novosti (Moscow), data about companies in the former DDR, the Hoppenstedt business directories, and more.

GlasNet ------- is an international computer network that provides lowcost telecommunications to nonprofit, nongovernment organizations throughout the countries of the former Soviet Union. Email, fax, telex, public conferences.

For nonprofit, nongovernmental organizations, basic GlasNet service fees are 350 rubles/month after a one-time registration fee of 1000 rubles. This does not include faxes or telexes. (1992) Write to: GlasNet, Ulitsa Yaroslavskaya 8, Korpus 3 Room 111, 129164 Moscow, Russia. Phone: (095) 217-6182 (voice). Email: [email protected] .

Global Access ------------- is a North American outdial service (see Chapter 13) owned by G-A Technologies, Inc. It has an information BBS at +1-704-334-9030.

IASNET ------ The Inst.i.tute for Automated Systems Network was the first public switched network in the xUSSR. Its main goal is to provide a wide range of network services to the scientific community in the xUSSR, including access to online databases, a catalog of foreign databases, and conferencing (ADONIS).

IBM Information Network ----------------------- The IBM Information Network, based in Tampa, Florida, is IBM's commercial value-added data network offering the ability to send email and data worldwide. It is one of the largest networks in the world, with operator-owned nodes in over 36 countries.

To send mail from the Internet to a user of Advantis IBMmail (also called IMX or Mail Exchange), address to their userid at ibmmail.com. You need to know their userid (IEA in IBMmail terminology) in advance.

An IBMmail user can find how to address to Internet by sending mail to INFORM at IBMmail with /GET INET in the body of the text.

i-Com ----- offers outdial services to North America (ref. Chapter 13).

Contact: i-Com, 4 Rue de Geneve B33, 1140 Brussels, Belgium. Tel.: +32 2215 7130. Fax: +32 2215 8999. Modem: +32 2215 8785.

ILINK (Interlink) ----------------- is a network for exchange of conferences between bulletin boards in U.S.A., Canada, Scotland, England, Norway, France, Australia, New Zealand, Sweden, and other countries.

Infonet ------- is a privately owned vendor of packet data services with local operations in over 50 countries, and access from more than 135 countries. Contact: Infonet Services Corp., 2100 East Grand Ave., El Segundo, CA 90245, U.S.A.

INTERNET -------- started as ARPANET, but is now a large group of more than 6,000 interconnected networks all over the world supporting mail, news, remote login, file transfer, and many other services. All partic.i.p.ating hosts are using the protocol TCP/IP.

There are around 1.3 million host computers with IP addresses (March 1992. Ref. RFC1296 and RFC 1181). The number of users is estimated to more than ten million people. Some one million people are said to exchange email messages daily.

In addition, private enterprise networks have an estimated 1,000,000 hosts using TCP/IP (Source: Matrix News August 1993.) These offer mail exchange with the Internet, but not services such as Telnet or FTP to most parts of the Internet, and are estimated to have some 7.5 million users.

Some claim that these figures are low. They believe it is possible to reach around 50 million mailboxes by email through the Internet.

Several commercial companies offer full Internet services.

Among these are Alternet (operated by UUNET) and PCI (operated by Performance Systems, Inc.). The UK Internet Consortium offers similar services in Great Britain.

INTERNET gives users access to the ftp and telnet commands. Ftp gives them interactive access to remote computers for transferring files. Telnet gives access to a remote service for interactive dialog.