The Cole Digest, May 17, 1995

Late last year I was hearing a lot about the World-Wide Web. We had published a number of articles about it in the newsletter and I was talking to a number of people in the newspaper industry who thought it was The Next Thing.

I had, of course, obtained a SLIP (Serial Line Internet Protocol) account with a local Internet provider, and I was exploring like mad. I was looking at newspapers, magazines and a lot of stuff put up on the net by chemistry Ph.D.s that had nothing to do with chemistry.

During a series of on-line messages between Chris Gulker (then of the San Francisco Examiner; now of Apple Computer), he mentioned that a guy at the University of Texas at Houston named Chuck Shotton had built a Web server for Macintosh. I got myself on the support mailing list for the shareware -- called MacHTTP -- and went exploring on the various Web pages associated with the product.

I found a wonderful community of Mac enthusiasts who were passionate about bringing Web servers to the masses. I downloaded the software, paid my fee and started experimenting.

What I once thought would be a two-week exercise has expanded into a five-month (and growing) learning experience. The MacHTTP software loaded in about three minutes; the rest of the time was expended in learning how to organize a site and how to convert Quark XPress documents into HTML (HyperText Markup Language -- the "typesetting" language of the Web). But it has now come to fruition.

Dubbed The Cole Pages, the Web server contains back issues of The Cole Papers (in both HTML and Adobe Acrobat formats), a complete listing of "Cole's Guide To Publishing Systems -- 1995," an archive of The Cole Digest (this very column) and the archive of a new Internet mailing list called Cole's Newswire.

Subscribers to The Cole Papers can register their subscription numbers and obtain free access to back issues of the newsletter. For reduced charges, subscribers also will be able to download information about individual companies as provided in Cole's Guide.

Access to the archives of The Cole Digest and Cole's Newswire will be free to all Internet users.

Cole's Newswire, which began transmitting last week, is a twice-monthly distribution of information about installations of technology at newspapers and magazines, and new products introduced by suppliers. Cole's Newswire is edited by Senior Editor Pete Wetmore.

To subscribe to Cole's Newswire, send e-mail with your name and the words subscribe newswire to: webmeister@colegroup.com.

In addition, Internet users can order a subscription to the newsletter or a copy of the book via a secure on-line purchasing system.

The Cole Pages, a full-time World-Wide Web server, runs in our San Francisco offices on a Macintosh IIcx with 20mb of RAM. It is connected to the Internet at 28.8 kbs.

The server software is now called Webstar, from StarNine Technologies Inc. of Berkeley, Calif.; MacHTTP has graduated from shareware to a commercial product in the time it's taken me to get the site up and running.

Credit card transactions are securely handled through the First Virtual Internet Payment System.

To see what we've done at The Cole Pages, point your browser to http://colegroup.com.

Onward.

\dmc

[THE COLE DIGEST is written by consultant David M. Cole, editor and publisher of the industry newsletter THE COLE PAPERS. The DIGEST is made available to PressLink subscribers every Wednesday at no extra charge. Send comments by e-mail to cole@plink.geis.com. The COLE DIGEST is the property of The Cole Group, a California sole proprietorship. Reproduction in whole or in part without the written permission of The Cole Group is prohibited. Copyright (C) 1995, The Cole Group. Opinions expressed are those of The Cole Group, unless otherwise noted.

[THE COLE PAPERS is a monthly newsletter devoting itself to technology, journalism and publishing. Subscriptions are $117 for 12 issues ($135 outside the U.S.). MasterCard, Visa and American Express cards are accepted. For more information, e-mail COLE, call (415) 673-2424, fax (415) 673-2449 or write The Cole Group, 2590 Greenwich St., Ste. 9, San Francisco USA 94123-3333.]