Word: videotext
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...Minitel, and ten days later the wine arrives." The Mayauxs are not alone. Today some 4.5 million French men and women are shopping, banking, reading and, yes, flirting via Minitel, the state-run experiment in computer-to-computer communications that has grown into the world's largest home videotext network. Begun with a flourish in 1981 when the French Postes Telephones Telecommunications seeded a village in Brittany with 1,500 free terminals, the operation today boasts a network of 2 million units. Minitel's success has been so astounding that the French government is attempting to export the system...
...Minitel terminal or rent one for $35 a month. For those subscribers who already own personal computers, Baseline will provide the necessary software for the IBM PC (free) and the Macintosh ($50). But more than a million of the PC owners already subscribe to successful American videotext operations like CompuServe and the Source, which offer a wide variety of services -- and in English...
Several U.S. corporate consortiums, including one jointly owned by AT&T, Chemical Bank, BankAmerica and Time Inc., are also exploring the videotext field. Two other efforts have ended in failure: last spring the Times Mirror and Knight-Ridder newspaper chains shut down a pair of failing videotext projects, for a combined loss of more than $80 million. "The odds are against Minitel," says James Holly, director of Times Mirror's electronic information services. "U.S. consumers are already overwhelmed by choices. Minitel would only add to the clutter." It appears that Americans are not about to join the Mayaux family anytime...
...heavy traffic is proving costly to manufacturers. Ashton-Tate, conceding that during peak hours its current staff cannot keep up with the calls, already spends $1.5 million a year on salaries, office expenses and training to provide software advice. Living Videotext in Mountain View, Calif., figures that the net cost of talking to a single user is between $30 and $40 an hour. "If I talk to them twice," says President David Winer, "I'm starting to pay them to use my product...
...opening salvo in the battle for the Falkland Islands? No. The commander was merely playing Obliterate, a video computer game designed by Mercury 332, an electronic publishing company based in Manchester, England, that offers the game as part of the information it supplies through Prestel, a videotext information and entertainment service in eight countries, including...
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