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By Jim Trageser
One of the more obnoxious aspects of the multimedia revolution is that the technology itself has no artistic taste. And so you can have Web sites with Muzak playing in the background and cheesy personalized greetings generated by a Java log-in.
It's really too bad that such is the first impression when visiting the Web site of the California College for Health Services. The rest of the site is well-designed, informative and visually pleasing. Based in National City, CCHS is a correspondence school for health-care professionals, and the site has all the relevant info for admissions, courses and books. It also has info on its faculty members, a history of the school, and e-mail addresses where you can get more information.
Just turn your sound off before you visit.
Possibilities BBS is one of the larger BBSs still on the scene, with multiple lines (10 total) and a variety of toll-free numbers for North County. It runs TBBS software and a bank of 14.4 kbps modems. This is a subscription board, although it offers a 20-hour trial period for new users. The board is fairly busy, with 15 callers ahead of me on a recent Tuesday morning, and the sysops host a weekly get-together – non-virtual, at a local restaurant.
The files area is well-stocked, with both hard-drive files and a half-dozen or so CD-ROMs (including three different Night Owl discs). There are also adult files for subscribers verified over the age of 18. While there are thousands upon thousands of DOS, Windows and OS/2 files, it's kind of hard to navigate the files area: you have to scroll through the file lists to get to the file subareas (the main files menu only lets you get to about eight main areas)
The online games are thinner than the files; there is Legends, a role-playing game. There is also live online trivia. The local message area is slow to dead, with eight local conversation subs that don't seem to be used. Subscribers get access to USENET newsgroups, but as a trial visitor, I didn't have access to that area to determine how many.
In addition to the full paid accounts, there is an Internet e-mail-only account for $1/month. The other rates are posted so you can check them out if you like what you see.