Subject: Practical Apps, Email Addresses, and VR Relationships

From: [email-masked] (chris)
Date: Sat, 24 Apr 1993 12:48:18 -0700

Howdy,

Greetings from Santa Cruz.
A couple of quick notes:
Wayne Gregori from sfnet is emailable finally, I asked him to send some
mail to the list to say hi.

There is a bay area meeting of community access folks set for May 15.
Send email to [email-masked] for more info. This is going to be
an all day event, it would be great if Carl and Wayne could make it
at least as representatives of existing systems. 

On Evelyn's subject of how are people using these things:

---------------------- concrete thing #1 --------------------------------

In SC County, about 50 large employers have formed a Transportation
Management Association. The goal is to increase the number of people
per vehicle from something like 1.2 to 1.35, i.e. lower the number
of cars on the road, hence, the number of parking spaces required 
by each of the TMA members, $$$, etc.

They have received a $15,000 grant from the county transportation
agency to set up a BBS for the purpose of facilitating policy and
info discussions amongst TMA members and info distribution out to
the public.

Through a variety of bizarre twists of fate, Cruzio has become involved,
and we're consulting on the BBS setup and getting it on the county
WAN. The implementation will look something like:

1. Unix on a 386 running the Unix flavor of Waffle.
2. uucp connection to our county hub, so the TMA BBS can become a member of
   the scruz network and participate in email and USENET news
3. possible fax gateway

The BBS will provide a dial in access for both non networked TMA
members and the general public. 

TMA member accounts would provide email and news access and all 
public access services.

Public access services would include:
	- online forms for rideshare matching (which are automatically
	  faxed to the rideshare agency)
	- transportation resources database
	  (local park and ride locations, van pool info, etc etc)
	- bus schedule database
	- minutes of all TMA meetings
	- bus route map GIFs for downloading
	- other transportation related materials

In addition, a periodic Transportation and TMA FAQ 
(frequently asked questions) would be posted to the local newsgroups,
along with postings about events (like Bike To Work Day) or other
information.

------------------- concrete thing #2 --------------------------------------

Through another series of bizarre happenstances we are also working on
a project to bring the local newspaper, the Santa Cruz Sentinel, on
the county network.

We are working on basically setting them up much like the TMA. They'll
be running a Waffle BBS under DOS, connecting via uucp to the scruz
network hub.

The Sentinel BBS will not initially provide dial in access. We'll use
Waffle as a "walk up" BBS for members of the Sentinel staff to read or
send mail and news out to the county network. 

Folks will be able to email letters to the editor and certain members
of the Sentinel editorial staff will publish their email addresses so
the public can stay in touch. Sentinel staff will also use local newsgroups 
for broadcasting articles like "I'm working on blah blah and am wondering if
there is anyone out there who can point me to such and such."

This will eventually evolve to certain portions of the newspaper being 
published online, classified databases, etc. There are mucho possibilities,
especially as we upgrade the county network to IP links through our
PPP hub.

(note: The San Jose Mercury News is published on Americal Online...)

---------------------- end of concrete things ---------------------------