| I spoke with Harv Laser the former sysop of plink's amigazone.
Basically People/Link went under on 6/28/91. Some of the
'conferences' moved to Portal. Here is some information I captured
when I dialed into the Portal network...this is long and contains
pricing and subscription information. Hope this doesn't violate some
DIGITAL guideline, there are so many now days... I signed up and will
let you know what I find there later.
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Welcome to the PORTAL* Online Communications Service, Version 11.21
Copyright (c) 1986 - 1991 by Portal Communications Company
All rights reserved. Use: 8 bits, No parity, 1 stop bit
* PORTAL is a service mark of Portal Communications Company.
Welcome to the future!
You have just taken the first step toward entering an exciting
new online community -- the PORTAL online communications service.
This is the start of creating a new account for you on PORTAL.
Through the use of computer conferencing, electronic mail, "chat"
style online meetings, and many other services, PORTAL connects
you with tens of thousands of others fascinating people in the
Bay Area and beyond.
===> NOTE: If this is your first call to PORTAL and you are not
familiar with what we offer, we have an online description
of our service. If you want to read it, enter "yes."
Otherwise, enter anything else to continue.
yes
We can display this information a page at a time or dump it to
your computer continuously. A continuous display is useful if
you want to capture the text and read it later.
Do you want this information broken into pages? Enter "yes" for
yes, anything else for no.
PORTAL Online Communications Service
(PORTAL is a service mark of Portal Communications Company.)
Portal lets people communicate by using their computers or
terminals to exchange messages and files. Portal has several
general facilities of interest to all users and custom services
which allow you to use Portal as a private system for
applications such as online customer support and information
distribution. Low cost, modern design, and ease of use make
Portal your best choice if you need to use online communications.
_________________________________________________________________
General Facilities
The general facilities of Portal are available to all users.
Many of them can also be made available for use in private
applications. Here is a summary of the general facilities of
Portal:
[] Network Electronic Mail including UUCP, ARPA, and Bitnet
[] Usenet access
[] Conferencing
[] Public Domain Software Libraries and SIGs
[] Subscriptions - an aid to keeping track of your online
reading
[] Meetings - real-time conversations with many users
[] Matching - a new way to meet people
Network Electronic Mail
On Portal you can exchange electronic mail with other users of
Portal and with millions of users reachable through any of the
networks to which Portal provides email gateways. Present
gateways include UUCP, ARPA, and Bitnet. UUCP is used primarily
by people at companies in technical businesses and many
educational organizations. ARPA is used mainly by government and
research organizations doing work for the government. Bitnet is
used by colleges and universities. A distinction of Portal email
is that your messages are not automatically erased after a few
days, like they typically are on other networks. You may keep
your mail around as long as you like and organize it into
separate folders.
Usenet Access
The Usenet is an international, distributed conferencing network
spanning four continents, 30 countries, and tens of thousands of
users. Participants include people from companies, universities,
and government organizations. It is useful for a wide range of
purposes including learning about practically any computer
oriented subject, sharing experiences on many hobbies, job
hunting and advertising things to sell or buy. The Usenet and
the people on it are a unique source of information about many
topics, especially technical ones. Your access to the ``Net''
will allow you to reach and communicate with these people from
around the world.
Portal carries over 450 newsgroups including the top level
categories of:
comp (computers) misc (miscellaneous) news (net administration)
rec (recreation) sci (science) soc (social issues)
talk (opinions) ba (SF Bay Area) ca (California)
alt (alternatives) or (Oregon) bionet (bio research)
chi (Chicago) dc (Washington DC) la (Los Angeles)
mn (Minnesota) ne (New England) gnu (software)
If you have used Usenet before, you will appreciate the way
related articles are grouped into collections and the fact that
you can quickly find old articles. And on Portal, we keep
articles around longer, so you can find that one program,
article, or recipe you remembered.
Conferencing
Conferences let you exchange messages or files with other users.
You can carry on a discussion or you can create ``libraries'' of
information. Conferences can be public or private. Portal has
public conferences on topics spanning a wide range of subjects
with new ones started whenever requested by our users. Topics
range from poetry to personal computers and are started depending
on user interests. If you have a special interest and want to
moderate a public forum we can help. Private conferences can be
set up to accommodate the needs of a user group, customer base,
company or other organization. This is typically done as part of
an overall custom application.
Public Domain Software Libraries and SIGs
Portal has collections of public domain software and SIGs
(special interest groups) for many popular computers including
MS-DOS, Apple, Atari ST, Amiga, Macintosh, and Unix-based
computers. We have thousands of programs and files available
with more added constantly. Plus, we have the tools you need to
use the library: archiving programs, file transfer utilities,
format converters, and other important programs.
We also have extensive libraries of online publications from a
number of sources. For example, we have publications on the
IBM-PC, Macintosh, Sun Microsystems workstations (Sunspots),
graphics, and many more. We keep the back issues around for a
long time, so these can serve as a valuable source of
information.
Subscriptions
This powerful feature allows you to keep up to date on Portal
conferences efficiently and conveniently. The Portal
subscription facility allows you to selectively read only new
articles in just those conferences which interest you. Portal
receives thousands of articles a day in hundreds of conferences.
You can quickly choose which conferences you wish to read, and
weed out the rest, essentially creating a filter on information
oriented around your specific interests. Every time you log in,
you can read the new items in your subscription list. You can
change your subscriptions at any time.
Meetings - multiuser conversations
You converse in real-time with other people using Portal
meetings. When you are in a meeting, the messages you type are
displayed immediately to others in the same conversation. Portal
meetings let you start your own conversations at any time. You
can give your conversation a descriptive title to tell other
users something about what you are doing. Your name appears on
the conversation as the moderator and you can control who can
enter your conversation and whether they can listen or talk.
This personalized approach to online meetings is complemented by
a highly sophisticated and configurable user interface which lets
you control the look and feel of the system to meet your needs.
Portal meetings are most active in the evening. There are
typically regularly scheduled events such as trivia, bridge, and
fantasy games, as well as technical forums.
Matching - A new way to meet people
Matchers match people with similar interests. You start by
filling out a questionnaire. After you complete it, you can be
matched with other users at any time. You can ask Portal to show
you your matches at any time. Portal shows you the answers of
the other users, sorted so that the best matches are shown first.
The general purpose matcher contains about fifty questions that
cover things like hobbies, professional interests, and education.
Many people have completed their questionnaires, and have been
matched with others. So whether you are looking for someone with
a special skill or that someone special, the Portal matcher can
provide an introduction. Participating in a matcher makes you
available for anything from an online introduction to a job
offer. And as you change, you can also update your information.
_________________________________________________________________
Custom Services
You can have your own customized online service through Portal.
Any of the facilities of Portal can be used to create a
customized application to meet your specific needs. Here are
some of custom features we can provide along with examples of how
they can be used:
[] Private System Areas
[] Customer provided program integration
[] Special user interfaces
[] Access control
[] Surcharging and accounting
[] Customer-specific help
[] Preconfigured accounts
[] Master billing arrangements
_________________________________________________________________
General Characteristics
Regardless of how you use Portal, you will find that the system
has a number of unique characteristics. These include:
[] Friendly User Interface
[] Complete Online Documentation
[] Flexibility
[] Good Tools
[] Nationwide Local Access
[] Easy Administration
[] Low Rates
Friendly User Interface
Our full-screen oriented interface takes advantage of your
terminal or terminal emulator program to give you a more pleasant
and easy to use system. Portal supports over 350 different
terminals and emulators (if you don't have a fancy terminal, we
can support you too). Consistent screens throughout the system
make each part of the system easy to learn and easy to remember.
If you are using a ``smart'' terminal or emulator, Portal
increases the effectiveness of your modem by only sending those
characters that have changed. You don't waste your time watching
the same data being transmitted over and over. For the advanced
user, the Portal interface can be customized to meet practically
any taste or technical requirement. Some user settable
parameters include number of lines on the screen, screen width,
command prompt and brevity, presentation format, and handling of
echo.
Complete Online Documentation
Portal was designed to be used with no documentation. In fact,
most of our users sign up online and start using Portal
immediately! To help the first-time users, and refresh the
memories of the more experienced ones, Portal has extensive
online help. Every Portal form has a help command, so you can
quickly find out where you are and what to do. There is also
help for specific topics, help showing examples of how to do
various common functions and help for help itself. The help
screens succinctly present the most important information first,
then cover the features in more detail. Several levels of help
let you zero in on exactly what you need to know. There are also
short text descriptions scattered throughout the system. Like a
tour guide, these tell you where you are. Portal is a vast
territory for you to explore, and the description items and help
act as guideposts for your journey.
Flexible Network Architecture
Portal was designed from the beginning to be a highly flexible
system. Two major design factors provided this flexibility:
networking and standard interfaces.
Portal is not one machine but many. These machines are connected
via a high speed local network into a distributed computing
system. Each machine in the network runs a number of cooperating
programs, each devoted to a specific job. Each program
(sometimes called a server) communicates with the others through
the net.
We have servers for the user interface, mail, meetings,
accounting, and many other functions. The servers are connected
via a standard, well defined interfaces. New features can easily
be added at any time, as long as they conform to this interface.
This makes it easy to add new functionality quickly without
affecting existing capabilities. We are always adding new
features, making Portal a constantly increasing value for your
online dollar.
Our networked architecture gives us a number of advantages.
First, we can easily increase performance by adding new machines
to the network rather than having to move to a larger machine.
We can devote different machines to different jobs, or distribute
one function among several machines. The servers don't care
where they are on the network, so we can move them around at
will.
Second, networking increases our reliability. We can quickly
reconfigure the network to work around failures. In fact, much
of this reconfiguration is done automatically! The system
detects many types of failures and takes action immediately, with
no human intervention.
Third, we can quickly adopt new computing technology as it is
developed. Our networked architecture is built around accepted
industry standards, so we are not dependent on a particular
vendor for our hardware and software. We have the freedom to
integrate the most reliable, highest performing, least expensive
equipment on the market, without replacing our existing
facilities.
Finally, we can expand Portal to accommodate enormous numbers of
users and huge collections of data. Our provisions for redundant
data, multiple servers, and distributed processing combine to
insure that you will never outgrow Portal, regardless of the size
of your application.
Modular Construction
The lower levels of the system are also highly independent, with
well defined interfaces. The low level is essentially a toolkit
that can be used for producing a variety of communications
services. For example, the user interface is a separate system,
and can be adapted to changing requirements. We already support
two versions of the user interface, full screen and line
oriented, and can add new styles of interfaces, such as graphical
ones, as the need arises. Portal is similar to an erector set,
where a set of standard components can be combined with
customized parts to produce an almost unlimited range of
functionality.
The result of our architecture is a system with unmatched
performance and flexibility. We can quickly respond to changing
market needs and customer requirements, and take advantage of new
developments as they happen. Our system architecture is one of
our most important strengths.
Good Tools
We give you good tools for using Portal. For example, we support
several different file transfer protocols, with several different
options, for passing information to and from the system. The
file transfer feature is designed to handle the differences
between file transfer features found on different personal
computer programs. It also has options that allow you to
compensate for variations caused by different connection methods,
such as packet switched networks. Any time you are entering
information, you can use use transfer to upload a file. Any time
you are displaying information, you can use transfer to download
it. We support both ascii and binary transfers, so there is no
restriction on your information.
Other good examples are our text entry and editing features. The
Portal standard entry screens are versatile enough to handle most
common text entry and modification tasks without requiring you to
use an editor. All you have to do is type your message on the
screen as you would like it to appear. For users with cursor
addressable terminals who like to use full-featured text editors,
we support a full screen editor that lets you quickly enter or
change your text with immediate feedback. What you see is what
you get. This editor supports over 350 different terminals, so
we can handle almost any kind of equipment you have. We also
provide a line oriented editor for those users who cannot use
full screen features.
Nation-Wide Local Access
Portal can be reached through Telenet. This means you can
connect to Portal by making a local call from over 600 cities
around the country. In addition, we are connected to the Public
Data Networks of over 70 foreign countries. We take full
advantage of the X.25 standard to maximize your effectiveness and
minimize your cost during these long distance sessions.
Low Rates
Finally, Portal is inexpensive. We charge one low flat rate -
$13.95 per month. You can call as much as you like, at any time, at
any speed. The low cost of Portal means you don't have to worry
about racking up large online bills. You don't have to stay up
late waiting for the rates to go down, or worry about the extra
cost of a 2400 bps connection. The account startup cost is a one
time charge of only $19.95. We provide low cost connection to
Portal through Telenet for great savings compared to direct dial.
Telenet rates are given at the end of this document.
International Access
To connect to Portal from a foreign public data network (PDN),
you will need the Portal DTE address: 311040800264. You must
also get an NUI (network user identification) account with the
PDN provider of that country. Portal does not accept
international reversed charged calls. Note, Alaska and Hawaii
are both considered international calls even though they are in
fact part of the United States. Consult the PDN service provider
of your country for instructions on how to connect.
Prices
Portal has a unique pricing structure for individual user
accounts - $13.95 a month, all you can use! Please note that these
accounts are for use by a single person. There are other charges
for various account services and extra resources. They are
described below. All pricing for custom services is done by
quotation.
Standard Charges
Description Amount
Account Startup $19.95 (one time charge)
Monthly Use $13.95
Storage (disk) Charge $0.04/k/month*
International Mailing $10
Name Change $5
Lost Password Change $5
Returned Check or Charge $20
*Based on the daily average balance of storage over 100k used
each day of the month.
Telenet Charges
These are the rates Portal charges for access via Telenet at
either 300, 1200 or 2400 bps. They apply only if Telenet charges
are being billed to your account. Peak hours are 0700-1800 local
time, Monday through Friday. Off peak hours are all other times.
A, B and C access number types are defined by Telenet. You can
reach Telenet at 800/336-0437 for more details. A K segment
(kilo segment) is 1000 packets of up to 64 characters each. A
typical session uses about 2 K segments per hour.
Telenet Access Charges as of October-88
Type Peak* Off-Peak
A-type $5.50/hour $2.50/hour
B-type $10.00/hour $2.50/hour
K segments $2.00/Kseg no charge
* There is a 2 minute minimum peak connection charge.
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