Hello Doug!

** On Monday 01.06.20 - 23:28, Doug Cooper wrote to August Abolins:

I'm about ready to go back to a land line as well.

Why?

....It's getting to the point where when people need to solve a
problem they email, or text. But dare ask them to pick up the phone
and they act afraid and or inconvenienced.

Some of my suppliers have a totally annoying customer-care process over
the phone. Too many sub menus to pick. Then, often the only option
provided is to leave a message. They migh call back, but then I might be occupied with something else in the store and can't really pick up.

Other suppliers just instruct the caller to file a grievance or concern
via email.

My wife, and I love my wife, don't get me wrong.. [[..]] Or If there
is a problem with an inaccurate charge to her account from a
retailer, she'll send a quick email, forget about it, and never get
it resolved.

Then that would tell me that the money is not significant or not
important. ;) BUT.. the email can be good paper-trail or proof of activity.

Or, my past clients, would ask "why do I have weeds?" Well .. that requires a lot of questions, a lot of explanation to type within
email. So I'd try to call -- they won't answer. So I used to spend
over an hour compiling an email explaining their situation, after reviewing their home, and it would go unread.

In my biz, it's easier to use email for describing book details and
prices. Your gardening/landscaping biz had many more elements to deal
with. I too could spend an hour or so doing research and compiling a message. But then, it serves as a fine copy and a record of my work. If
I did it just over the phone, the work is simply ephemeral and can
disappear into forgetfulness.

..I don't reply to texts from family or friends, other then BBS
friends. But not those that I've known for years. I don't reply to
their emails either. They wanna talk -- call.

My landline phone is only "on" between 7p-9p, and the answering machine is OFF. Sometimes I forget to disable the "Do Not Disturb" mode on the
phone! LOL

There is no substitute then hearing my dads voice, or seeing him face
to face. Not to mention that if not careful, people read tone into written communication, most of the time inaccurately.

That reminds me of an incident when my mom who was quite confident and proficient in using email entered into a 4-way conversation with her
sisters who were using their sons or daughters as proxy and the
conversation just went off the rails for no reason. The tone of a written phrase or two was misinterpreted. A conference call would have been a
good solution, but it was hard to coordinate everyone available at the
same time.

...So, while I'm joking about a land line .. albeit their dang cheap
right now ... I treat my cellpone as one while unemployeed.

Are you getting spam calls on the cell? I'm afraid to disclose my number
for fear that I would end up with a neverending stream of unsolicited
calls triggered by someone's compromised cell phone.

Oh, and younger generations want to do a job interview via
text too .. I never hired those that did.

I have never encountered that! I would discredit a person who inquired or applied for a job that way.

Now smart phones have their place. I love the instant access to
stocks, or weather, or my schedule, alarms, etc.... but not a
replacement for human interaction, nor a rude distraction to someone
who is genuinly trying to communicate with me.

It can be a real challenge to juggle a live customer who is standing right
in front of me and deal with the phone when it rings. I hate those incidents. But, most of the time I can pick up the phone and ask the
caller if I can call back or if they can wait until I finish a current
sale.

I'd also rather like to have a phone that I could cradle between my
shoulder and my head. Today's cordless phones are totally useless in an environment where I need to be on the phone while completing a cash
register transaction and taking notes!

But I found out that a Group account does allow S)earches. Maybe
have a group account for your dad.

See my FSXnet reply to the above, however a quick add .. I started a facebook group to do videos and text on all things turf care. I have
tons of videos to edit and upload. And they are much more user
friendly then the general news feed.

FB makes it pretty easy to build a page with content like that. Hope the result is satisfactory for you. Is it getting interest?

Took your advice -- the DAD echo. I'm starting a FidoNet All Pro Dad group... [[snip]] ..Next up August -- Lawn Care. But my HTML
online class has consumed my time to write the material in text for a
BBS format.

You are juggling a lot of things!

You, I'm sure very much rember, the day of each SysOp sending $5-$10
a month to the hub to make the long distance call out of state for networking?

Yes.. I remember something like that was suggested when I joined Fidonet
and a few other nets. But in my case the main hubs that were making the
LD calls had good paying jobs and did not mind doing it out of pocket.
The occassional meet-up was encouraged where people could buy a dinner or
a beer.

What if we did that for facebook, snap chat, or other ads?

That could be a nightmare to maintain. Who would do it? Fidonet has the site fidonet.org. It's not very modern or interesting though. It seems to
be under tight control and there is not much passion or interest to
leverage it to be something more exciting.

I've also noticed that a lot of BBS pages are set up as archive/ historical purposes, and/or are not clean and user friendly; beit in
UI or or in the nomenclature used to describe what a BBS is.

I see that too. However, there are a handful of sysops who have rather
fine web calling cards for their BBSes. I posted a modest list of the
ones I thought were rather cool - but that was over a year ago. I'll try
to revisit the ones I can remember and let you know.

While it's silly to think we can reinvent acronymns, when hitting a landing page, maybe using the word "Apps" instead of "Files," or
"Games" instead of "Doors," or "Blogs" instead of "Echos" would be examples of ways to modernize the URL facing marketing toward BBS's.

OR.. use BOTH terms side-by-side like this: Apps/Files, Games/Doors Blogs/Echos/Forums.

Only the latter one bothers me. I always wondered how the heck did the
term blog ever arise to represent an online list of posts. A blog sounds like something that one would pick out of their nose! LOL

A blog is generally a continuous list of posts by one person. The blog
system has "comments" that serve as feedback, but that's about it. An
echo is entirely different and encourages dialog.

In addition, to your point, there are grass roots marketing that is
simple and free, and could collect a few users. [[snip]] .. I think, totally unrelated words: COVID, TRUMP, etc... included within our
text can surely draw more clicks then "founded in 1989, My BBS was
..."

I'm not fond of trick words to steer traffic. Instead, I think just something like "alternative , efficient, no-ads.." would be better.

Being strategic in how URL's are created, with click tracking
tools can assist greatly.

Even my openxp.kolico.ca page could use better words so that google could hopefully list it in the first page of results.

Lastly, I know two guys that can redirect web traffic (albeit not
always for long) to their website as opposed to another ... I don't
like those dirty tactics. However, I think we have an excellent,
relevant, and very much alive format of "Social Media" that people
crave from the mainstream tech companies out there; without the flaws
.. however minus the photos ... which some just won't ever get or understand.

Your words "alternative, relevant, alive, social media" + "no ads, no tracking" would be fine terms to use to help highlight WHY echomail might
be exactly what many people might prefer. The trick is to get the word
out there!

Your "Breaking News" write-up at telentbbsguide.com is very good!

Thank you! Can't wait till you call! :)

OMG. Something has always seemed to pull me in another direction and I
would forget. About a year ago I was on a mission to find specific BBSes that offered Bluewave. From that, I settled with less than a hand full as regular destinations. Now, I'm even weeding off calling those BBSes directly; I prefer using my OpenXP system. ;)

Glad I finally got the rescan on this echo ... love these types of conversations!

This is a l-o-n-g multi-screen one! Maybe we need to break it up into separate topics?


../|ug

--- OpenXP 5.0.45
* Origin: (2:221/1.58)

On 01 Aug 2020, August Abolins said the following...

Only the latter one bothers me. I always wondered how the heck did the term blog ever arise to represent an online list of posts. A blog
sounds like something that one would pick out of their nose! LOL

It's short for Weblog, which was originally Web Log. Been around a lot longer than the software which is mostly used for them now (Wordpress). I hand coded mine originally, then moved to a php based software called Movabletype, then finally Wordpress.

-=>Richard Miles<=-
-=>Captain Obvious<=-
-=>bbs.shadowscope.com<=-

--- Mystic BBS v1.12 A46 2020/05/17 (Windows/32)
* Origin: Shadowscope BBS | bbs.shadowscope.com | Temple, GA (1:3634/24)

Hello Richard!

** On Sunday 02.08.20 - 17:36, Richard Miles wrote to August Abolins:

It's short for Weblog, which was originally Web Log. Been around a lot longer than the software which is mostly used for them now (Wordpress). I hand coded mine originally, then moved to a php based software called Movabletype, then finally Wordpress.

My first attempt to "blog" was this as an example:

http://kolico.ca/fidonet/echos/win95/

It was my personal extension of the WIN95 echo where I would elaborate
with images, further links and descriptions based on the topic at the
moment.

Same thing with:

http://kolico.ca/fidonet/echos/linux/

The idea was to have a separate page for each echo I was participating in. This was when I was still using dialup to access my ISP and long before I
had knowledge or experience with CMS programs like Wordpress.

It seemed very efficient and quick to just tack on a new "section" to the html code as my "post".

Before I settled with WordPress I loved building sites with shtml files.
It was super easy to design "sections" for a webpage (header, menu,
content, footer) and control everything with shtml versions for the pages. For example, you could build a row for the menu buttons for one page, and then use the same file (not a copy) for subsequent pages. You would only
need to edit that one file to affect all the other pages. It was like
working with a precursor to a CMS system.


--- OpenXP 5.0.45
* Origin: (2:221/1.58)