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Northcoast Electronic Town Plugs into the Community



Author: Casey Meaden
Date: November, 1993
Keywords: NET BBS bulletin board system Humboldt Goldberg Savetz
Text: In May of this year two of our SMUG members, Larry Goldberg and Kevin Savetz, began work to develop a private, commercial BBS. The vision was to develop a high-speed online service which would link five counties in an inter-active online community. For the past six months Larry and Kevin have been diligently working... and now, with much water under the bridge, Sequoia Technical Services Company of Eureka is proud to announce the launching of the ''Northcoast Electronic Town'' online service. The Northcoast Electronic Town (NET) will link the citizens, businesses and government of five Northern California counties - Humboldt, Trinity, Lake, Del Norte and Mendocino. Using the same FirstClass* Client software as SMUGgler's BBS and four 14.4 modems, the system will offer nearly 2 gigabytes of information (including two CD ROM disks with Mac and Windows software) and a 24-hour help line for technical assistance to support the system. Users of both the SMUGgler's BBS & NET will have access to linked local conferences. Currently, private e-mail and two conferences are linked, ''Classified Ads'' & ''Fair Wages?''.
Northcoast Electronic Town users will be able to: * Send personal electronic mail - including mail to anyone on the Internet * Participate in nationwide conferences - on any of 70 OneNet conferences and the Internet's Usenet (coming soon.) * Shop online - find a bed & breakfast inn, shop for an automobile, order chocolates or learn how to press your own CD-ROM. * Send a fax right from the NET! Users will be able to shop online and have information about products or services sent automatically by fax if they don't want to download a file. * Get professional services online including legal, accounting, computer technical assistance, art pro-duction, printing, and so on. *Find reading mate-rial: 100 online books (from Alice in Won-derland to the Bible to the Wizard of Oz) and a dozen elec-tronic journals are online. * Stay posted on current events - from the Humboldt Overall Economic Development Plan to the Clinton Health Care Plan. * Download software files - choosing from over 1.2 gigabytes of Macintosh and IBM files. * Call in from anywhere in the state - using a local number or a toll-free ''1-800''number. The point-and-click graphical system runs on any Macintosh computer or PC-compatible with Microsoft Windows. Users with other machines can also access the system using a text interface. Basic NET service costs $10 a month for two hours online - additional time costs $5 an hour. Toll-free ''1-800'' service costs $13/hour with one hour minimum per month. In time, additional value-added services will be incorporated (such as a link with special user networks such as the Women's Information Referral and Exchange, The WELL or the Big Sky Telegraph in Montana). Current main conferences include City Hall, the Community Center, the Library, the Coffee House, the Shopping District, the Professional Building, the Post Office and Online News. The formal public release of NET will occur at the 2nd Annual Telecommunications and Computer Technology Exposition to be held at the Eureka Inn on Tuesday, November 16th. At the exposition you may purchase a special NET subscription for four hours online time, for $10, to ''try out'' the system (good thru Jan. 1st.) The system disk comes with a users manual. For more information, call (707) 44-E-TOWN (voice call.)

Copyright © november, 1993 by Casey Meaden


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