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This is the part that I dread. Because I am responsible for holding everything up. Everyone waits for me to finish my column so this issue can go to bed. Well, as you can tell, I haven't finished my column yet. One of these days, I'll miss the deadline completely. And then what? No editorial. At least not from me. Oh, well. Worse things have happened.
Modem prices continue to drop. Internet continues to be hot. And MicroPhone still rules as the way to go for general purpose telecom. Not much has changed these days. However, graphical interfaces on commercial services are becoming more and more popular. Everyone wants to get into the act. First there was America Online. Then, CompuServe came out with a pretty decent GUI (graphical user interface) called CIM (CompuServe Information Manager). GEnie will probably follow suit. You can't blame them. In order to stay competitive, they need to add value to their services. After all, who likes staring at text all day when you can have fancy icons and multiple windows.
When all is said and done, you are still left with a majority of services and hosts that favor a general purpose communications program like MicroPhone. And since you can create graphical interfaces with MicroPhone's comprehensive script language, you end up with the best of both worlds. In the past issues of Open Mike, we've shown you how to create small yet fairly complicated interfaces that do specific things. In the issues to come, we'll be designing a new interface from the ground up. Keep your eyes open for it. That's all I can say for now...
Until then, enjoy this, the seventh issue of Open Mike!
