Re: FrEdmail is dead! Y2k killed it...

[obsbedia2@aol.com (Obsbedia2)]

	Y2K was what was claimed by Global School Net (GSN), the renamed FrEd (Free
Education) Mail system.

Now, if you want the truth...

	... I was using it until it's last day, I believe it was July or August 31,
1999, and it was working fine.  Y2K was just a convenient scapegoat.  We
offered to update it if it needed it, free of charge.  A fire had taken out
most of the trunk phone lines at the San Diego office a year before and GSN had
scrambled to get other sources to keep it going--and they did a fine job of it.
  

	FrEd Mail What killed FrEd Mail wasn't Y2K, it was WWW.  The GSN partronage
had shrunk to about 10% of what it was because of schools upgrading to new
computers and having realtime internet access.  They just didn't have the
subscribers to devote resources to such a small, and still shrinking, customer
base.  GSN went or was going WWW itself, to get those customers back and stay
up with the times.  They promised to place FrEd Mail in public domain, but
nothing ever happened.

	The equipment is still out there in schools in about 23 countries.  What FrEd
Mail was was the internet on a shoestring.  Any computer that had a modem
attached to it could use it and it was free to users.  Basically, it cost the
districts the price of a late night phone call once a day.   "Nodes" were set
up around the world, especially by school districts (since students and school
employees were the only ones allowed access to it).  From anywhere, you could
access a node (local calls were best on the wallet) and read your email, send
more, access selected newsgroups (everything from advanced LOGO, to Antarctica,
to Kid's Cafe, to ASCII Art, to KeyPals, to a support group for principals).  

	At night, when the phone rates were cheapest, the automated system at the node
would dial up the San Diego office and download and upload email and newsgroup
updates.  It was a beautiful system.  I used Point-to-Point and TimeOut
TeleComm (my favorite) to access it.  It was sweet, typing an email in
AppleWorks, spellchecking it, dialing up in TO.TeleComm and pasting the
AppleWorks document into the email, even attaching pictures and programs as
binary files.

	Jay Edwards