European Stars and Stripes (Newspaper) - June 14, 1994, Darmstadt, Hesse Page 10 the stars and stripes computers tuesday june 14,1s94 of Brien Leno celebrities talk to fans via on line networks new York up late night talk show Host Conan of Brien joined the growing number of celebrities who arc plugging into International computer networks to communicate with their fans. Of Brien spent an hour answering questions sent in via electronic mail from subscribers to the America online network. O Briens debut on the information superhighway launched Abc tvs new service Abc online. Every Friday night a different Abc Star will plug into America online Scenter stage bulletin Board to Field questions from the networks 700,000 subscribers. Many other celebrities Are reaching out to fans by holding similar Chat sessions in cyberspace. Entertainment and telecommunication Industry observers expect to see exponential growth in the marketing and promotional opportunities of such services during the next decade. Quot right now the emerging potential of celebrity online is a lot like How mtg was when it first debuted. The audience is still limited but the potential for growth is absolutely unlimited a said Michelle Moran communications assistant for Compuserve the nations oldest computer network. When the service began in 1979, the bulletin boards and sub networks within Compuserve were almost exclusively geared toward subscribers interested in science technology and business. Today the falling Price of computer equipment has changed the demographic profile of pc owners. The mass Appeal of entertainment news and information services is certain to broaden consumer interest in online services Moran said. Quot there a something about the interpersonal relationship with the person who a asking the question that puts people at ease a much More so than when they go on to and 25 million people Are watching a said Eliot Stein Host of Compuserve s Stein on line program. Stars such As Jay Leno Jerry Seinfeld and Dennis Miller have been featured on steins program. Those with computers dial into the network from their Homes while others have Stein relay the questions. All Compuserve subscribers get Advance electronic messages sent to their accounts telling them who will be on the show. The Prodigy network has a similar celebrity bulletin Board inspired by the overwhelming Success the network had when George Bush and Bill Clinton went online during the 1992 Campaign. Art of communicating a new fax software eases Transfer of information by Joe Fasbinder a tilted press International a is a word you hear a lot if you talk to hackers. It s the process of taking something that is simple and elegant and attaching to it increasingly baroque software structures so that in the end you wind up with something resembling not so much what you started with As something that nobody recognizes. Take for example communications. In the beginning were com programs that could and would operate under Microsoft a tiny Basic a such As contained on the old trs so machines at the Dawn of Home computing history. They did what they were told and shut up afterwards. They looked Good in Black and White. Later came pro comm which in its various incarnations provided a Way to flex our communications muscle to change Aud rates and to use different download protocols. The program itself at least in its shareware version occupied but a single 360 kilobyte disk. Communications had come a Long Way. Its come a lot further now. People who use words like Quot encrusted a in general conversation Are also the same kind of people who Are singing the praises these Days of Mode pro which just came out with a version for Wim Dows. This is not pro comm and unless you have five megabytes of disk space to devote to this communications program then you just can t use it. A but if you do Mode pro will do wonders. No wonder it has been accepted so readily by people who live and breathe computers. It does everything. For one thing it can emulate terminals that nobody Ever heard of something you might need if you dig around on the internet which is mostly vt100 and or you Deal with obsolete equipment. With Mode pro for windows you can make your powerful desktop computer pretend to be a wheezy Heath 19, the. Moral equivalent of turning a Ferrari into a Good copy of a Cushman Eagle but even if you care not at All for emulations and most people done to you probably do care for your faxes. With Mode pro you can throw away our old fax software. Mode pro will let you Send and receive faxes or data and you Only have to learn one set of commands. No More do you have to switch from one application to another to Send a fax or to talk to the local bus. A a aaaa4aaaaa a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a it a a a a a i 5 most people love their fax software because it lets them look at their faxes before slipping them or printing them out. With Mode pro you can do that and you can do it while the fax is coming in. You can even look at photographs our re downloading while you re Down loading them. The practical upside of this has to do with the fact that a lot of photographs Aren t Worth downloading. Now you can Stop the Transfer and possibly save yourself connect time while the image Transfer is in process. But if you do like what a coming in Mode pro allows you to clip Mark and copy portions of the picture to the windows clipboard. If you re a relatively Sawy windows user that Means you could conceivably download a picture and import it into a document you Are creating while you re inside an online session on a computer bulletin Board or in the internet. Mode pro for windows also supports rips rip something that a lot of people Haven to used but which a lot of people will probably be using in the near future. Rips rip allows you do dial into a computer bulletin Board and use your mouse to Click buttons just the Way you do in windows giving users a truly graphic interface All the Way from the time they Start the computer to the time they end their computing session. Not surprisingly rips rip is a key element in Wildcat bus software which like Mode pro is produced by Bakersfield Mustang software inc. Mode pro for windows is Good software. It works like the documentation says it will and the documentation is written in a non intimidating fashion. Mode pro for windows is also very intuitive. If you can install it chances Are you can make it work a first time and every time. And its full of Little things that let you know that Mode pro for windows was Well thought out. You can scroll backward to see what you have received even while new information is coming into Mode pro. You can use custom fonts within the body of the program so even people with poor eyesight can Sec what a coming in. And you can add your favorite pattern or wallpaper file directly to Mode pro to make the whole thing look custom made for your computer. Best yet since Mode pro for windows is truly a multitasking environment you can Start a download minimize the thing and go onto other tasks while the communications program works in the background and you work on something else. Mode pro for windows has a suggested retail Price of $139, but like most Good popular software you can find it at a discount if you look around. Work email top uses Survey shows new York a people with Home computers that have modems Are far More Likely to use them for work and electronic mail than to read the news play games or order a plane ticket a new Survey shows. The finding was one of several in a study of attitudes to technology that showed personal computers Are far from replacing the chief ways that people now obtain informal Ion or conduct transactions. The times Mirror Center for the people and the press conducted the study among nearly 4,000 people one of the broadest readings of How people use Bank machines Vars personal computers fax machines and television. Its chief findings were unsurprising. Young people Are More comfortable with technology than old people. More than half of All adults work with a pc and one third of All households own one. In behaviour and activities computer owners Don t fit the nerd stereotype. Less than 10 percent of All tvs Are just a to not hooked to a Cable system Var game machine or satellite dish. A in addition to confirming the wildly obvious the surveys results reinforced the idea that affluent highly educated people own and use technological devices More than the poor and less educated. Deeper Down its 107 questions produced some important findings for companies that Are trying to understand How people now use computers at Home. A an awful lot of companies Are launching on line services interactive to services multimedia services with very Little data a said Michael Lei hold vice president of technology at times Mirror corp., the newspaper and broadcast company that runs the research Center
