Monster Media 1993 #2

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Digital Publishing Association News Volume 2, Number 5 - May, 1993 Copyright (C) 1993 Ron Albright This, and all, issue of the "Digital Publishing Association News" is sponsored by the Digital Publishing Association and its member publications. "Digital News" features news, product developments, and other information of interest to authors, distributors, and readers of electronic publications. Items presented here serve to inform the public of the electronic publishing industry, that industry being the authorship and publication of reading materials in electronic format, rather than traditional, paper publishing. Back issues may be found on the Digital Publishing BBS at 205-854-1660. Membership Update... As you recall, last month we announced a membership fee structure for the Digital Publishing Association. The DPA has reached a point where fees were needed to continue to carry out public relations activities, fund the "Digital Quill" awards, and upgrade the BBS, among other plans. The latest list of members includes: President's Club - Mike White $100.00 Full Membership - Ted Husted $25.00 Del and David Freeman $25.00 Paul Peacock $25.00 Ed Brezezowski $25.00 Jan Moens $25.00 Ian Firla $25.00 Walter Gammons $25.00 Rod Willmot $25.00 Bret Fledderjohn $25.00 David Bealer $25.00 Harvey Forman $25.00 BBS Membership - Mike Carnell - The Book Board Association Membership - Byron Lanning $10.00 Leslie Stuphen $10.00 Margie Smith $10.00 To those who have already joined, we appreciate your support. For those of you still waiting in the wings, I encourage you to formally join the DPA and support our activities. We hope to make the DPA a strong voice in promoting electronic publishing in both the publishing and education industry and we need your help to continue our work. Membership dues cover - postage costs for sending out information packets to interested parties - press relations activities in sending out press release and brochures and disks to press contacts - certificates and other awards for the annual "Digital Quill" Awards for Excellence in Electronic Publishing competition - support and upgrade of the BBS (I just ordered the 3.6 upgrade to the Wildcat! BBS software - it greatly enhances the BBS capabilities including now supporting echoing FidoNet conferences) - and other related expenses Without member support of these activities, we will never rise to vision we all have for the electronic publishing industry. With your support and input, the DPA can, truly, become a meaningful voice in the publishing and computer industries. Thank you for your membership. A New Home on GEnie... On or about April 21, the "Digital Publishing" RoundTable (Page 1395) opened its electronic doors on GEnie, the second largest consumer electronic network in America. As you know, the DPA had adopted a section on the "Genie Lamp" Roundtable (Page 515) as our national home and enjoyed a wonderful working relationship with John Peters, Mike White, and Jim Flanagan, the Co-Sysops, there. Now, after convincing the "powers that be" at GEnie headquarters that electronic publishing has a bright future, GEnie has granted us our own RoundTable for digital publishing. The new area will be dedicated solely to electronic publishing. It contains a number of libraries for publications of various types, a message base, and capabilities for "real-time" conferencing. The DPA will be taking advantage of all these facilities in the coming months. There are already over 1000 publications - books, magazines, newsletters, and others - in the Digital Publishing libraries as well as message threads on major aspects of electronic publishing. The best news is that John Peters, head sysop of the "DIGIPUB" network has pledged to contribute 10% of all his revenues from system usage to the DPA. So, everytime you log onto the Digital Publishing RT, part of your time goes into the DPA coffers supporting our organizations libraries. A wonderful gesture from John and his co-workers, don't you think? So, if you haven't already become a GEnie subscriber, think about it. It's the best buy going for a pay-for-service network and is clearly behind the digital publishing industry. Thanks to John, Mike, and Jim for the hard work it took to get the Roundtable up and running and for their continued support of the DPA and its membership. More statistics on computer usage... For all you looking for more ammunition to convince the disbelievers about the viability of electronic publishing as a market, here's another survey for your barrels. Half of 2500 respondents to the California Research Tabulations survey of home computer usage (commissioned by Packard Bell) said they spent more than 10 hours per week at the computer, and increase from the 30 per cent reported in 1991. Users who are at their home computers more than 30 hours a week, termed "power users" by the survey, increased to nearly 10 per cent. Word processing remains the number one activity reported by 57 per cent of users, with personal finance and business applications making up the second spot at 28 per cent. Interestingly, the third most popular activity was "entertainment software," making up 27 per cent of time spent. There's where we have our niche! Another convert... Bill Machrone, former Editor of PC Magazine who still writes regularly in that publication, has joined the rest of us in "seeing the truth" about the future of electronic publishing. In his "Discontent with Content" editorial in the May 11, 1993 issue, he writes: "We're in danger of drowning under a deluge of information bases, online news services, electronic mail, bulletin board services, and publications. The information available to us greatly exceeds out ability to absorb it...Some solve it [the information overload problem] by prestructuring the data. A number of electronic books, aimed at both the PC and Mac markets, stand ready to enhance your reading experience with indexing, searching, graphics, annotations, glossaries, sound clips, animation, and bookmarks. As one who has pooh-poohed such efforts in the past, I can finally say that the products are tolerable, even desirable. Books on-disk are going to be big, and now that the software works, smaller, cheaper laptops will be the gating factor." We congratulate Mr. Machrone for admitting the error of his ways and professing, now, to see the light. We know, of course, that electronic books are, indeed, going to be big - both commercially and creatively. The software available right now - like DART, Orpheus, TXTBook/GRFBook, XL2000, HyperWriter, and the rest - is ready. The industry is already making the move to smaller, lighter, and brighter. It's already possible to get a beautiful palmtop with a decent display for around a $1000. We are getting there and the next 18 months are going to see the liftoff of this whole industry into the heavens. PDA Update... The "Personal Digital Assistant" marketplace continues to heat to a boiling point. The hottest news is that communications giant AT&T has followed through on their July, 1992 announcement to enter the PDA market. The AT&T Personal Communicator, yet to be formally named, will arrive on store shelves in June, 1993. It is already shipping in volume. AT&T is selling the devices through a 1-800 order line as well (1-800-458-0880). The AT&T PDA has a pen-based display and an operating system with fax, modem, phone and other functions. It runs the PenPoint operating system from Go Corp. While it's the first so-called "personal digital assistant" to ship, Apple's better-known Newton device is due to ship within a few months. The sale price ranges from $2,000 to $4,000, depending on options like an internal hard drive and cellular phone. Spokesmen admit that the company does not expect to have a mass-marketed product right away, but think it will happen with mass production lowering prices below $1000. New electronic magazine debuts... "Spilled Ink - The Northwest Writer's Connection" (on the DPA BBS as SI-0393.ZIP) has appeared out of the Great Northwest. Judy Tucker, the editor, has assembled a wonderful collection of writers and the first issue features sixteen wonderful pieces of fiction and humor. Here's the lineup: Familiar Magic ................................ Devon Monk The Story of Bitsie Eugene ................. Chris Goodwin One Day In Hell ................................ Pete Ross The Welcoming ............................. Judy L. Tucker I Have Asked ...................................... Thaben Redman ......................................... Pete Ross For Patric ................................. Bridget Riley Friends ................................... Judy L. Tucker Rain ....................................... Jane Paterson My Life Is A Cry ............................. Wally Haven Sololitude of the Sea .............................. Kobra Love me for me ............................ Arron Stirling Run Silent, Run Deep ...................... Andrew Esteban Dragon flying in the sky ...................... Devon Monk Midnight Vision ............................. Chris Childs Shades of Grey ............................ Mitch P. Jones Ted Husted and UserWare offers start-up disk... Ted Husted, UserWare and Iris/DART fame, is offering a two-disk, high-density set of authoring/reading software for the IBM and compatibles. The disk set will offer the following (and probably more since Ted mentions he still has 500 kilobytes free on the disks for more material): INSTALL EXE 24791 4-22-93 1:00a - setup utility ASC2COM EXE 234783 8-16-92 2:15p - ASCII to COM BDEXX EXE 303806 6-19-92 2:55p - BDEXX DART EXE 162140 3-01-93 2:01a - Dart DREAM EXE 106874 6-21-91 10:16p - Writer's Dream GRFBK EXE 77351 3-25-93 9:37p - Graphic Book HHV EXE 219542 8-06-91 11:20p - HyperHelper HYPERSEE EXE 26071 12-05-90 5:54p - HyperSee HYPSHELL EXE 211320 10-17-92 3:30p - HyperShell IRIS EXE 252820 9-10-90 2:09p - Iris LIST EXE 103884 9-13-91 7:06a - List LOOKBOOK EXE 255182 9-21-91 9:51a - LookBook OH EXE 318981 3-20-93 2:58p - Orpheus READ EXE 12335 2-26-91 8:05a - Read REXXCOM EXE 83660 2-24-93 7:00a - RexxCom PACKING LST 656 4-22-93 1:00a - A list of files It appears to be an excellent starter-kit for anyone interested in putting out an electronic publication on the DOS machine. To order, contact Ted at UserWare, 4 Falcon Lane East, Fairport, NY 14450- 3312 and get the pricing for the "DC Gold" publisher's package. DPA in Europe... Jan Moens, long-time DPA member, reports that he has established a DPA BBS to support the distribution of publications in Europe. The number for the BBS is +32.2.672 88 88. The BBS is a subsystem of a large, established 8 line BBS with more than 1000 registered users from all over and sporting modem speeds up to 14400 bits per second. Jan is a co-sysop there and will keep the system open for now, while he waits to establish his own "DPA Europe" BBS. If you want to make sure you get your publication into the European readership and don't want to negotiate transcontinental phone service, send a disk to Jan by post to: Jan Moens Generaalbosweg 22 3090 Overijse Belgium He will make sure it makes it onto the BBS. Jan has been appointed our European DPA Coordinator and is working actively to make the DPA a significant presence in Europe. The right tool for the right job... A recent discussion on a CompuServe conference on electronic publishing brought a question from one of the attendees about what is the best software to start an electronic publication. The general consensus was that you need to chose the right tool for the right job. That was the only thing universally agreed upon. Each person has their own personal choice. Thanks, again, to Ted Husted, the following list could be used to help you narrow down your choices for publishing software. This is Ted's list of suggested software. While it is not all- inclusive, it does offer an informed choice for choosing the right tool for the intended job. Comments and additions are welcomed. A novel or straight text. ASC2COM WRITERS DREAM TXTbook A hypertext reference. HYPERWRITER ORPHEUS A tutorial or game. IRIS Tutorial Writer An office procedure manual. DART HYPERWRITER ORPHEUS A magazine or newsletter. DART HYPERWRITER IRIS WRITERS DREAM Text and graphics. GRAPHIC BOOK (GRFBK) HYPERWRITER ORPHEUS Larger documents. DART HYPERWRITER IRIS ORPHEUS Statutes and regulations. ASC2COM DART BBS Upgrade... I recently upgraded the DPA BBS to Wildcat! version 3.6. The reason for the upgrade was mainly because the new version adds Fido Netmail support to the "TomCat" mail echo routines. There are, of course, some other wonderful additions to the superb Wildcat! BBS software but, for me, this was what prompted the upgrade. With this capability, we can hopefully network with FidoNet messages and carry them on the DPA BBS. Stay tuned for more as time progresses. I have also added a "members only" conference area (Conference #11) to the BBS. For those of you who have formally joined the DPA (i.e. paid dues), this area is now open to support matters of interest to the DPA membership. Be sure to check the conference each time you log onto the DPA BBS. Better Macintosh support... I recently went further in debt by buying one of the new Macintosh Performa 405 computers. Since we are getting more and more interest from the Apple/Macintosh community, it was high-time we were able to support them at the DPA. Thus, we now have access to a Mac to review Macintosh publications, Hypercard stacks, and the also start providing improved member support for Macintosh users. Speaking of Macintosh... After being titillated by John Gaudreault describing his "Waldo" hypertext utility, and hearing Robert Jordan discuss the beauty of the Voyager Expanded Books, it didn't take much to make me make the plunge to buy a Mac. What did the trick was hearing of Walter Gammons' "WonderDisk." WonderDisk is a Hypercard format stack that is a literary magazine. Wonderdisk is foremost a journal of very contemporary, original, previously unpublished science fiction, fantasy, and "tasteful" horror short stories. The stack features original illustrations and feature articles on related genre topics and science essays - with topics such as theoretical physics, astronomy, quantum and string theory, genetics and the like - namely, stuff to stir the imagination. A trial edition of Wonderdisk is available on GEnie and the DPA BBS. WonderDisk is accepting charter subscriptions at 28% off the regular, single-disk price. You can get a quarterly disk (4 issues per year) for only $21.00; a two-year subscription (8 issues) is just $36.00. More exciting news: Walter and Wonderdisk are looking for submissions. WonderDisk pays for material accepted for publication. You can contact them for details for submitting materials. You can contact Walter Gammons at WonderDisk, P.O. Box 58367, Louisville, KY 40268-0367. Now that I have a Mac, I can't wait to take a look! Closing thoughts... From the Washington Post, May 2, 1993 comes "Data Highways ...Complex Problems of Funding, Standards, Rules Remain Unresolved as Grids' Construction Begins...Can We Get There From Here?" by John Burgess. The article discusses the future of the national communications network and what problems are involved in establishing it what it could accomplish. "'The thousands of volumes that are contained today on the shelves of libraries could be transferred into digital form and ... be made available to any place in the country electronically,' says one of the concept's biggest promoters in Congress, Rep. Rick Boucher (D-Va.) a member of the House committee on science and technology. "Students could troll distant libraries for digitized film clips, recorded speeches and photographic images of original documents. Reading about the 1963 civil rights march on Washington is one thing; reading about it and viewing newsreels and listening to a recording of Martin Luther King's speech would be a much richer learning experience, many educators contend." The future is clearly bright for electronic publishing! Stay tuned, spread the word, and stay active!