Todd L. Watson, assistant editor for SQ magazine and /AIXtra: IBM's Magazine for AIX Professionals, has been with IBM since 1991. He also serves as webmaster for SQ OnLine. He holds a bachelor's in English and a master's in mass media studies, both from the University of North Texas.
Many of your associates are using it, and some of your competitors may be advertising on it already.
Even though you might want to forget about it, it simply can't be ignored. And, while it may seem trendy or fadish, it's definitely not the hula-hoop of the 1990s.
It's the Internet, and it's here to stay.
You know the information superhighway...the Infobahn of bits and bytes...the digital turnpike...the cyberspace causeway.
Okay, maybe the jargon is full of cliches. But you do get the point, don't you?
You'd better. Because if 1994 was the year that everybody discovered the Internet, then 1995 promises to be the year that everybody gets access to it.
Forget for a moment all the media hype and the talk about "getting connected." Disregard the technical literati who seem to believe they have some special claim to the Internet, as if they had somehow cornered the rights to cyberspace.
Instead, lean back in your chair and prepare to shift gears, because it's not just about E-mail anymore. The Internet is open for business, and business is booming.
The passage of free trade pacts -- such as the North American Free Trade Agreement and the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade -- is expanding the trend toward globalization, as is the opening of markets in once-closed countries like China and Vietnam. As instant worldwide communication evolves from a luxury to a necessity, the Internet is primed to play a key role in the expanding global economy.
"In today's business community, the Internet is as important as the worldwide telephone system and the worldwide postal system," according to Harley Hahn, technology consultant and author of The Internet Complete Reference and The Internet Yellow Pages. "Companies of all types are creating a presence on the Net and many businesses find that a well-connected Internet address is as much a necessity as a fax machine or even a telephone. For such businesses, it's crucial that Internet tools be reliable, easy to use, and built into the system software."
The Internet Business Center (IBC), an information resource for companies doing business on the Internet, expects business domains will outnumber their educational counterparts (long the biggest players on the Internet) by this summer. IBC estimates that 30 percent of Internet subscribers use their connections specifically for business purposes -- as either a source of information or a market for their products.
But that's history -- yesterday's problems. The Internet of today, and tomorrow, is a brave new world, exploding with vast amounts of information and offering much simpler ways to find and use the specific information you need.
But even with easy-to-use tools such as Mosaic or Cello, there's still the matter of locating a convenient, cost-effective Internet provider; finding the right software and graphical user interface (GUI) for your particular operating system; and then making it all work together.
"Complex software configurations and the difficult search for appropriate connection services have kept the Internet out of reach for many," says Wally Casey, director of marketing, IBM Personal Software Products. "With OS/2 Warp, however, we've simplified the process and made it inexpensive, so that virtually anyone with a computer and modem can get on the information superhighway using our on-ramp."
With OS/2 Warp, Version 3 the quest for connectedness is a one-stop venture. The IBM Internet Connection for OS/2, included as part of Warp's several BonusPak applications, provides all the utilities needed for comprehensive netsurfing: gopher, FTP, telnet, Ultimail Lite, NewsReader/2, and the most recent addition to the family, the IBM WebExplorer -- all of which take advantage of the OS/2 Warp interface.
If you've never experienced the Internet, OS/2 Warp's Internet Connection can provide as graceful and painless an initiation as you're likely to find in this or any digital frontier. Using just a modem, a phone line, a mouse, and Warp, you'll be pointing and clicking your way through cyberspace in no time.
Once you've installed the Internet Connection and rebooted, the IBM Information Superhighway folder will appear on your Workplace Shell desktop. Double click on the folder to open the Internet Connection for OS/2 folder, which contains a variety of icons to help you start your voyage. For example, the Introduction to the Internet Connection provides an offline overview of the assorted tools and utilities the Internet Connection offers, as well as detailed advice and information about each of the Internet commands.
If you're eager to travel the InfoBahn, however, click on any one of the Internet utilities, or on the Registration icon located within the IBM Internet Customer Services folder, and you'll be prompted to register with the IBM Global Network, using a serial line Internet protocol (SLIP) phone connection. (Although the Internet Connection is preconfigured to use the IBM Global Network for single-click, dial-in Internet connectivity, you can also connect using a third-party Internet vendor. To do so, you must first obtain the vendor's particular configuration requirements and customize the connection by clicking on the Dial Other Internet Providers icon in the Internet Utilities folder.)
Congratulations. You're on the Net, ready to go to warp speed!
The Internet Connection, by exploiting Warp's true multitasking capabilities, allows you to conduct any number of Internet tasks simultaneously, using a standard modem. For instance, while the Internet Connection's WebExplorer is loading a World-Wide Web home page, you could be downloading a large graphics file using FTP-PM, performing a telnet session to another host computer in another window using TelnetPM, all while reading your favorite Usenet newsgroup with NewsReader/2. Better yet, these tasks can be carried out while other non-Internet applications are running in the background.
When IBM improves and updates the Internet Connection utilities, you'll have no worries about obtaining diskettes for software upgrades. Just double click on the Retrieve Software Updates icon, and the system will call the Internet Connection host and advise you which utilities to update. The system can then automatically download any software updates you select.
It's no different on the Internet. If you find yourself stranded in cyberspace without a roadmap, Gopher is a great way to travel. Originally developed at the University of Minnesota, Gopher's numerical, menu-driven structure allows you to move from one Gopher site to another by entering a number assigned to each menu item. Gopher "bookmarks" allow you to add interesting Internet sites discovered during your travels to customize your Gopher menu. Then, the next time you want to visit a particular site, simply enter the menu number for that location.
IBM Gopher takes Gopher travel one step further by allowing point-and-click burrowing, using the Presentation Manager (PM) interface. Click on the Gopher's head, or the title of the menu item, and off you go. To add an item to your Gopher bookmark menu, click on the Gopher title bar, and select Bookmark This Menu. To return to that particular Gopher site the next time you're surfing the net, just open the bookmark window, and your customized Gopher menu will appear.
Although performing an FTP is not nearly as difficult as some would have you think, for a novice it can be as forbidding as trying to decipher the Dead Sea Scrolls without knowing Aramaic. However, OS/2 Warp's Internet Connection includes a graphical PM interface FTP tool -- FTP-PM -- that provides a simple method for information transmission.
To connect to a particular FTP site, click on FTP-PM's Remote menu bar and select Logon, which brings up the Remote Logon window that includes boxes for entering Host, User, Password, and Account information. After filling in these boxes, click the OK button to connect to the host you want to reach. Once connected, FTP-PM's graphical interface allows you to transfer files using the point-and-click interface and menu commands.
TelnetPM, Warp's telnet utility, allows for VT220, VT100, ANSI, NVT, and HFT emulation and, as with other OS/2 Warp Internet Connection tools, takes advantage of the PM interface.
To start a telnet session, click on the TelnetPM icon; a telnet window will appear. On that window, select Open under the Session menu option to enter the address of the host computer you wish to reach. To make things easier, customize your host computer connections with a TelnetPM template that will create an icon specific to each host address. That way, you never need to remember all the host addresses of systems you frequently access.
UltiMail Lite in OS/2 Warp's Internet Connection livens up E-mail by providing the capability to include audio, video, and graphic images, as well as binary data (such as executable programs or word processing and spreadsheet files) within your E-mail messages.
That means no more "road warrior" scenarios -- such as being unable to send your boss the latest financial data from your hotel room because you can't connect remotely to the company LAN. Using Ultimail Lite, simply embed the data in an E-mail note, and send it off using the Internet.
That said, it also serves as a crucial medium for providing ground-breaking -- and sometimes intimidating -- messages. Consider Intel's Pentium chip crisis, which began harmlessly enough last year in the comp.sys.intel newsgroup, and then spread like wildfire. Or on a more positive note, the numerous IBM categories commonly monitored by IBM.
If you've never experienced trolling through Usenet firsthand, think of it as a gargantuan conference database that contains daily appends to every topic imaginable. If you've got a question -- whether it be technical, philosophical, or otherwise -- chances are, someone will respond to your post with an answer, and fast.
Traditional UNIX news-reader utilities such as nn and trn, while robust, are far from user friendly. Though such programs include thorough search capabilities, they demand that enigmatic commands be committed to "brain ROM," lest one be forced to call upon the utilities' inscrutable help facilities. With the Internet Connection NewsReader/2, wading through this massive conglomeration of facts and opinions is made easier by the PM, menu-driven interface, and point-and-click access to news groups.
Two clicks of the mouse and category alt.cows.moo.moo.moo is left mooing in your Warp dust.
Ease-of-use is an understatement when it comes to describing the simplicity of navigating this "docuverse" of information. Presented graphically on your computer screen, WWW documents may contain text, graphics, audio, and video, and can also be embedded with links to other Internet sites using gopher, telnet, wide-area information search (WAIS), and other Internet utilities.
On the Web, moving from one document on the Internet to another is as easy as clicking on "hypertext links" with your mouse. Embedded in these links are universal resource locators (URLs) that contain the address information needed to move from one WWW "server" to another. These transfers are transparent and automatic.
While Mosaic -- the National Center for Supercomputer Research's Web browser -- may have helped launch the recent shift in perception of the Internet, not to mention the phenomenal growth of the WWW, the WebExplorer feature of OS/2 Warp's Internet Connection is rapidly setting the standard for serious Internet exploration, both commercial and recreational.
The WebExplorer was designed from scratch in an amazingly short four months by four IBM programmers. They improved upon Mosaic's surfing capabilities by including some important navigational tools, including:
Whether you're a seasoned Internet aficionado or a frightened but curious netsurfing novice, OS/2 Warp's Internet Connection provides a friendly, graphical means of probing the outer reaches of the Internet. And there's no need to worry about speed traps; they don't have radar in cyberspace -- not yet, anyway.
See also:
The People Network
On the Outside Looking In