The Online World resources handbook

The Online World: What is it? http://home.eunet.no/~presno/bok/2.html
In May 1991, Kidlink arranged a full day chat between kids from all over the
world. Line, a 12 year old Norwegian girl, started the day talking with Japanese kids at
the Nishimachi and Kanto International School in Tokyo. When her computer was
switched off late that night, she was having an intense exchange with children in North
America.
The chats took place on various online services and networks, including Internet
Relay Chat (IRC), BITNET's Relay Chat, Cleveland Free Net (USA, now defunct),
TWICS in Tokyo, the global network Tymnet, and the Education Forum on
CompuServe.
The discussions had no moderator. This made the meetings chaotic. but the kids
enjoyed it! One line messages shot back and forth over the continents conveying intense
simultaneous conversations, occasionally disrupted by exclamations and requests for
technical help.
Speed is a problem when chatting. It takes a lot of time as most users are
slow typists.
If an individual message spans more than one line, there is always a risk that it will be
split up by lines coming from others. It takes practice to understand what goes on.
Users of SciLink (Canada) use a method they call 'semi sync chat'. The trick is to
use ordinary batch mode conferences for chatting. Instead of calling up, reading and
sending mail and then log out, they stay online waiting for new messages to arrive. This
approach allows the entry of multiple line messages without the risk of them being
broken up by other messages. The flow of the discussion is often better, and each
person's entries easier to understand.
File transfers
Millions of files are transferred to and from the online services each day: Books and
articles, technical reports, graphics pictures, files of digitized music, weather reports, and
much more. Retrieval of free or inexpensive software is a very popular service on the
Internet, and other free services.
In February 1994, users downloaded 105 megabytes' worth of public domain and
shareware programs from of my BBS, though it only one phone line and a 9,600 bits/s
modem. Add to this the megabytes being downloaded from hundreds of thousands of
other bulletin boards. The number is staggering.
If you want to download software, check out appendix 3 for additional
information.
Downloading is simple. Just connect to a service, order transfer of a given file, select a
file transfer protocol (like XMODEM), and the file comes to you through the phone line.
On the Internet, you may just locate the file with your browser, and then simply
click on the file name to transfer it. Often, files are also transferred using a command
called FTP (File Transfer Protocol), or by using special computer programs for file
transfers.
If you cannot receive files as explained above, check if you can have files
sent by email using a technique called UUENCODEing. Here, the file is
converted before transfer into a format that can be sent as ordinary mail
(into a seven bits, even character code).
When the file arrives in your mailbox, you 'read' it as an ordinary
message and store the codes in a work file on your disk. Finally, you
decode the file using a special utility program (often called UUDECODE).
Read more about this in Chapter 12.
Conferences and discussions
Online conferences have many things in common with traditional face to face
conferences and discussions. The main difference is that the participants do not
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