Ian & Stuart's Australian Mac: Not for Sale/Another.not.for.sale (Australia).iso/hold me in your arms/Michael Ney's Cyberculture/Cyberculture/THE WELL - revisited !

Text File | 1994-09-02 | 14KB | 321 lines

Topic 408       THE WELL - revisited !
visionary       cyberculture zone       12:59 AM  Aug  6, 1994
(at peg.UUCP)

From: <peg!visionary>

From: WELL Guest Account <[e-mail]>
Subject: 010_The_WELL_Brochure_and_Rate_Information


 ***************************************************************************
 QUICK START:

 To register online, connect to The WELL:

 Dial our modems at 415-332-6106 (2400 baud or less),
                 or 415-332-8410 (9600 or 14400 baud),

                                          or telnet to:  well.com
                                          and log in as:  newuser

 The WELL costs $15/month, plus $2/hour.  These charges apply to all users,
 regardless of how they connect.  There is an additional $1/hr surcharge for
 high-speed access (9600 or 14400 baud -- call 415-332-8410), and access
 via the Compuserve Packet Network (CPN) carries a $4/hr surcharge for access
 from the 48 contiguous states.  For CPN rates from outside the 48 states,
 contact us at the office.

 If you register with a Visa or Mastercard, we will call you the next
 business day to activate your account. For more access and billing options,
 please see the WELL Brochure, below.

 If you have questions, call us at 415-332-4335 (voice)

 ***************************************************************************


                           The Whole Earth 'Lectronic Link:
                         Providing Access to People and Ideas


        "A rebirth of community"
                        - John Markoff, New York Times

        "The areas of expertise are astonishing in their diversity"
                        - Jon Carroll, San Francisco Chronicle

        "One of the liveliest outposts of the
         electronic underground"
                        - Mike Miller, Wall Street Journal


 The WELL is a conferencing system on the Internet.  You can connect to the
 WELL with your own computer from your home or office, or with your laptop
 and a phone line from almost anyplace you travel.  Once connected you can
 share information and ideas with interesting people.

 The WELL is divided into over 200 discussion areas called conferences, on
 subjects ranging from virtual reality to cooking, from health to business,
 from politics to science fiction.  Most conferences are lively public areas
 open to all; others are private meeting places for businesses or groups.
 The WELL also provides full Internet access, USENET newsgroups and
 electronic mail (email) to communicate with individuals around the world.

 More than anything, the WELL is a place to meet and interact with people.

 THE COMMUNITY

 The WELL is a meeting of minds, a confluence of diverse social and
 professional elements: writers, artists, educators, programmers, lawyers,
 entrepreneurs, hobbyists, parents, musicians, and many more.  Quickly you
 will see that there is a distinct sense of place to each conference, like a
 neighborhood pub, a seminar, a dinner table or a town meeting.

 The WELL was started in 1985 by the people who put out the Whole Earth
 Catalog.  The first users of the Whole Earth 'Lectronic Link were an
 eclectic mixture of writers, defenders of counter-culture and computer
 adventurers.  This articulate group of independent thinkers set the tone for
 a unique intellectual and social environment.

 Conversations on the WELL range from technical and specific to abstract and
 intellectual, casual and humorous, argumentative, even surreal.
 Professional and personal interactions often blend.

 More than anything else, the WELL is a place to meet and interact with
 people.  Over time, regular WELL users have developed a sense of community
 and shared history.

 CONFERENCING

 Conferencing is a unique form of discussion.  By adding written messages in
 turn, any number of people can converse without having to meet at the same
 time or place.

 Each WELL conference has many conversations in it, called "topics." In most
 conferences, anyone may start a topic.  Each topic consists of the opening
 statement made by the person who started it, followed by the responses,
 comments, questions, suggestions and quips of person after person.

 The most popular way to participate in the WELL is to choose your own list
 of conferences, and visit them each time you log on.  After reading the new
 material posted since your last visit to that conference, you have the option
 of adding your own comment.  Information is swapped in a conversational
 style, and the accumulated comments in a topic often read like transcripts of
 engaging spoken discussions.

 You may read online, or download topics to your own computer and take your
 time reading them.  Old material may be searched by keyword, and you can
 go back and read conversations that took place months or even years before.

 Some conferences deal with broad ranges of topics, as in the Politics and
 Music conferences; others deal with a specific issue, publication or
 organization, such as the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), Amnesty
 International or WIRED Magazine.

 There are technical conferences for Windows, Macintosh, UNIX, and other
 computers.  There are social and humanities conferences such as Parenting,
 Education, and Environment.  There are recreational conferences such as
 Gardening, Grateful Dead, and Generation X.  Each conference has one or more
 people who act as hosts.  Hosts stimulate new discussions, help orient
 newcomers, and take care of conference maintenance.

 ELECTRONIC MAIL

 Your account provides you with a personal Internet email address.  You can
 send email to an individual or to a group, to people on the WELL, and to
 people on other computer systems worldwide.

 Each time you log in, the WELL tells you if you have mail.  After reading
 and responding to your messages you can delete them or store them online for
 future reference.  There are also commands for real time dialogue with
 people connected to the WELL or other sites while you are online.

 FILE MANAGEMENT

 You can quickly transfer text and program files between your own computer
 and the WELL.  You can upload files for others to download, at their
 convenience, and you can download files others have placed on the WELL.
 Sharing files allows you to collaborate on projects with people anywhere
 around the globe.  Text documents can be swapped regardless of what kind of
 computers or software your collaborators are using.

 The WELL provides the major file transfer protocols:  ascii, xmodem, ymodem,
 zmodem, FTP.  Several WELL conferences have libraries of files you may
 download, or pointers to files you may retrieve from other Internet sites.

 CONNECT TO THE INTERNET -- A WORLDWIDE NETWORK

 As a member of the WELL you have full access to the Internet, an
 international communications network that connects hundreds of thousands of
 computer systems at universities, businesses, and research institutions.

 The WELL is both an entry point to this highway of communication, allowing
 WELL users to connect to other computer systems, and a popular destination
 for people who log in to the WELL via remote Internet sites.

 This means that with your WELL account you can connect to and exchange files
 with computer systems all over the world without incurring additional
 long-distance telephone costs.  Electronic mail between the WELL and other
 Internet sites usually arrives within minutes.

 There are many sites on the Internet that allow anyone to search databases
 for software, articles, and a variety of general-interest material.  The
 WELL's internet conference is the place where WELL users drop in to help
 each other use and explore the Internet, and share fascinating tips.

 The WELL also offers access to USENET, a worldwide system of discussion
 groups, to anyone willing to learn some extra commands.  Popular Internet
 commands and protocols such as telnet, rlogin, ftp, gopher, archie, wais,
 veronica and world-wide web are available, and more options become available
 as the technology changes.

 SUPPORT

 The WELL has a customer support staff on duty Monday through Friday.  We can
 be reached by telephone, fax and email to answer questions about using the
 WELL.

 You can also log in as  trouble   to send a message to the support staff.

       Telephone:  [phone] (6am-10pm Pacific time, Mon-Fri,
                   12pm-8pm, Sat-Sun)
       Fax:        [phone] (anytime)
       Email:      [e-mail]  (automated brochure and further information)
                   [e-mail]  (questions & help)

 HOW TO JOIN

 Use any computer with a modem and communications software to log in to the
 WELL.

 To open an account on the WELL, connect to our computer and register online.
 Have your computer call our modem lines at 415-332-6106.  Set your
 communications software for a terminal emulation of VT-100, and settings of
 8 databits, No parity and 1 stop bit.  2400 baud or less will work on this
 line.

 When you connect you will see the login banner.  It looks something like
 this:

     This is the WELL

     Type   newuser   to sign up.

     login:

 Type   newuser    and press the <return> or <enter> key to go through the
 self-explanatory online registration.  If you pay with your credit card, we
 activate your account when we reach you by phone, usually the next business
 day.  You will receive a printed guide in the mail.

 You can take an interactive guided tour of the WELL at any time, to learn the
 basic commands or to refresh your memory.

 You may be able to greatly reduce long-distance phone costs by reaching us
 through the CompuServe Packet Network (CPN).  Get the nearest CPN dial-up
 number by calling 800-848-8980 from within the contiguous 48 states, or call
 our office if you are outside the 48 states.  When you connect through CPN
 you will see:

      Host Name:

 Type: well
 and then hit the <return> or <enter> key and you will be connected, and see
 our login banner.

 If you already have local access to the Internet you can reach us without
 long-distance charges.  To connect to us through the Internet use
 rlogin or telnet to our Internet address:   well.com

 For additional access information, as well as samples from WELL conferences,
 connect to the WELL and log in as  guest  at no charge to look through the
 guest menu.


 THE WELL FOR GROUPS AND BUSINESS

 The WELL is a powerful tool for groups and businesses.

 PRIVATE CONFERENCES: Any group or business can have its own "members only"
 unlisted private conference.  You control the access list.  You can arrange
 for your conference to be the first thing members see when they log in to
 the WELL.

 Having one or more private conferences enables your people to keep in touch
 with each other and exchange important information regardless of one
 another's physical locations or differing schedules.  By using the WELL and
 a private conference your people can each report in whenever convenient,
 swap files and reports, and catch up on the latest information from one
 another.

 A STIMULATING ENVIRONMENT:

 By using the WELL as your organization's computer network you can develop
 informal networks of collegues who may be interested in your work, or have
 expertise to offer.  With access to the over 200 public conferences on the
 WELL your organization can benefit from contact with intelligent people from
 all over the world.

 CUSTOM BILLING:

 We can bill your group as individuals or as a single invoice through your
 central office.

 CUSTOMER SUPPORT:

 The WELL office has a customer support staff on duty Monday through Friday
 to help your group use the system.  Contact us by telephone, fax, or
 electronic mail, for individualized help at no extra charge.

 Telephone:    [phone] (voice)   415-332-4927 (fax)
 Email:        [e-mail]

 THE WELL IS INEXPENSIVE

 Just $15/month plus $2/hour, billed by the minute.  To help you get started
 learning the system, your first 5 hours (at $2/hour, exclusive of access
 surchages) are free  You also get up to 512K free file storage in your
 personal WELL directory.

 HIGH SPEED DIAL-UP ACCESS:

 You can access the WELL at 9600 to 14,400 baud at [phone] at a $1/hour
 surcharge.

 CPN ACCESS NUMBER SURCHARGES:

 Connecting to the WELL through the Compuserve Packet Network (CPN) may allow
 you to greatly reduce long-distance charges.  All CPN charges are billed by
 the minute.

 Reaching the WELL through CPN adds the following surcharges to the basic
 $2/hour rate of your WELL bill:

 -  From the 48 contiguous United States, add $4/hour.
 -  From Hawaii, Alaska and Canada, add $6/hour.
 -  From various locations in Europe, add $12 - $15/hour
 -  From Japan add $16/hour.
 Contact us for information on using CPN to reach the WELL from Asia, Africa,
 Austrailia and other locations.

 DISK STORAGE CHARGES:

 You receive 512K of free storage with your account.  You can store
 additional material at the rate of $20/1024K per month, pro-rated.

 INTERNET ACCESS:

 There is no extra charge to reach the WELL through the Internet regardless
 of your location - from Berkeley or New Zealand, the WELL charges are only
 $2/hour when you connect from another Internet site.

 BRING YOUR FRIENDS:

 Receive a $10 Credit for each new referral.  If you bring someone to the
 WELL, and they mention your name during online registration, you receive a
 credit of $10 towards your WELL bill.

 (Prices are current as of May, 1994.)