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

["Paul Grammens" <grammens@svn.net>]

Obsbedia2 <obsbedia2@aol.com> wrote
>
> 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

Those were the days... I accessed something like that on a local BBS. The
name slips my mind, but the circumstances were the same. One day it stopped
working, because a node dropped out. That was it, killed off by the WWW.  It
was great, though, I learned a lot about computers by reading the
conferences. There were some really smart people who were willing to share
what they knew with newbies. I'll have to raise a glass to the sysops...
-Paul