FREAKIN' COMPUTERS MAN!
by James Lehman
First of all, I'd like to say that if anyone out
there has any questions about computers or the
Internet, please feel free to ask. I'll do my best to
answer them in the very next issue, even if I have to
do a little research myself. Having said that, I hope
to hear from you soon! Now, on with my article.
I know I've written about it before, but I'd like
to get back to the subject of online chat. I just got
into a really cool software package called POWWOW. What
makes POWWOW so cool is all the extra features. You can
chat with as many as eight other people at a time. You
have the option of being totally anonymous or you can
associate your name, Email address, and home page URL,
and a brief personal profile with your POWWOW
communications connection. You can Even make your
picture viewable by anyone chatting with you!
How does it all work? Well you first have to get
the installation software for POWWOW. This can be found
at: [ http://www.tribal.com/powwow/ ]. Once you get it
and run it, POWWOW will be installed on your system.
When you run POWWOW, it will call up whatever Web
browser you are using, to show you all of the Web
related features of POWWOW. You can either go to
various lists of POWWOW users that are currently
available to chat with, or you can just wait until
someone requests a conversation with you. And don't
worry, someone will! POWWOW can sit open on your
desktop while you are doing other things, and it will
inform you if someone wants to chat with you. If you
want to chat with someone and not be interrupted with
other chat requests, you can set up your POWWOW
answering machine, that works much the same as a
telephone answering machine.
The coolest features about POWWOW are its audio
capabilities. Yes POWWOW can make all kinds of sounds!
If you have speakers and a microphone, you can have a
real voice conversation with another POWWOW user.
Although, that feature isn't without its flaws. It
takes an awful lot of bandwidth to transmit a real
voice conversation over the Internet. But even if you
don't want to use the voice phone feature, you can
still listen to the other people chatting with you. The
POWWOW program can actually read what they are typing
to you in computer simulated spoken English!
There are all gay POWWOW chat groups to get into.
Even if you are a relative newbie to the Net, you'll
find that if you log into a POWWOW chat server (just by
running the program) it won't be long before you are
absorbed into a conversation. And you'll get a lot of
good tips on how to use this and many other Internet
software tools.
I've only been using POWWOW for a few days now, and
I've already chatted with people from all over the US,
Canada, and Europe. I've even made some new friends
that I've managed to contact several times. Generally
people are very gracious in chat, and very honest and
personal too. That is what I like about it. Everyone
knows that if you don't like their line of conversation
you can just cut them off. I think chatting like this
will eventually influence general society because all
sorts of ideas can be exchanged in a completely safe
environment. People do it for the fun of it, but there
is no getting around the fact that everyone who does it
learns a little bit more about the whole world.
james@rainbow-akron.com
JL :o)
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