MacTech Magazine Online

By Ken Gladstone, MacTech Magazine Technical Editor

We at MacTech Magazine have recently expanded our set of services to include online forums on AppleLink, CompuServe and America Online. These forums provide you with a wealth of information. On each forum, you will find the source code and supporting files for all the articles from the most recent issues of the magazine. You will find mail-order store and magazine subscription order forms [So that means you can renew more easily. So do it now! - Ed.]. You will find information for prospective authors and advertisers for the magazine, message posting areas, employment opportunities, and much more. Here is a brief summary on how to get to our area on each of the three services, and what you will find there:

America Online

The quickest way to get to us from America Online is to select “Keyword” from the “Go To” Menu (-K) and enter “MACTECHMAG”. You will also find us (at least for a while) in “New Services” off the Welcome screen. Our full path is “Departments: Computing & Software: Development: Company Support: MacTech Magazine”. Add us to your “Go To” menu with “Edit Go To Menu” for quickest access. Once in our area, you will see a file called “About MacTech Mag” that describes the magazine and the forum, and you will see three sub sections. The first section contains information such as product and contact information. The second area is a message board where you can post and read messages. The third area is the Library where source code files, information for authors, and information for advertisers are all available for downloading.

To sign up with America Online, call 800/827-6364. This will get you Customer Service and you can request a free copy of the AOL software.

CompuServe

Type “GO MACTECHMAG” and you will find yourself in the “Macintosh D Vendor+ Forum” that we share with several other companies. The long way to get to our forum is: “Forums: Hardware Forums: Macintosh Forums: Mac Vendor Forums: Mac D Vendor Forum+.” Once you are in the forum, you can select “Browse Libraries” and choose our library section. This is where we post source code files, along with information for authors and advertisers. You can also choose “Browse Messages” and select our section to post a public message on a new topic, or to add a message to an existing topic. Choose “Waiting Messages” to see your private messages. Choose our section in “Join Conference” to carry on a real-time conversation with anyone else in the conference area.

To sign up with CompuServe, call 800/524-3388 and ask for Representative 193. This will get you an “intropak” with a $15 usage credit.

AppleLink

You will find us in “Third Parties: Third Parties (H-O): MacTech Magazine.” Add us to your “Personal” menu for quickest access. In our area, you will find a “Welcome to MacTech Magazine(TM)” document describing the area. You will also see three folders. The “MacTech Magazine Information” folder contains information for authors, information for advertisers, our product order form, and information about our various products. The “MacTech Library” contains several folders containing everything from source code for our magazine articles to third party upgrade patches to tools that you may be using. The “Discussion Area” folder is where you get a chance to put in your two cents. It has a folder for submitting “Tips and Tidbits,” it has “Help Wanted” and “Help Available” folders for matching people with jobs, it has folder for news releases, and finally it has a “General Discussion & Questions” folder for the interchange of ideas. To sign up with AppleLink, call 408/974-3309.

Your magazine! Your online areas!

If you are currently a member of one or more of these services, try out our forums and explore. If you are not yet a member of any of these services, you now have yet another reason to join. We monitor all of these forums daily, and when we can, we will provide answers to appropriate questions that you post. Please give us feedback on how you like these services, and if there is anything we can do to improve them. We have always said that this is your magazine. Now you can add to that: These are your online areas!