MacTechMag Online
Volume Number: 10
Issue Number: 9
Column Tag: Mactech Magazine Online
Mactech Magazine Online 
By Ken Gladstone, MacTech Magazine Technical Editor
We at MacTech Magazine have recently expanded our set of services to include
Internet in addition to our AppleLink, CompuServe and America Online support. These
support areas provide you with a wealth of information. In each forum, you will find
the source code and supporting files for all the articles from the most recent issues of
the magazine.
We post the Programmers’ Challenge every month online on the day that the
magazines are mailed. This gives online users a slight head start. The date that the
magazine ships varies from month to month.
You will find mail-order store and magazine subscription order forms [So that
means you can renew more easily. So do it now! - Ed. nst]. 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 four 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 (Cmd-K) and enter “MACTECHMAG”. 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 so you can request a free copy of the AOL software.
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.
To sign up with AppleLink, call 408/974-3309.
CompuServe
Type “GO MACTECHMAG” and you will find yourself in the “Macintosh Developer
Forum”. The long way to get to our forum is: “Forums: Science/Technology:
Newton/Macintosh Forums (MAUG): Mac Developers/Programmers 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.
Our current ftp site is on netcom. This could change in the future. If you ever
need information about our Internet support, write info@xplain.com with your
question. At our FTP site, you can find source code from these pages, press releases of
interest to developers and a few useful utilities, too. You can get there by FTPing to
ftp.netcom.com (192.100.81.100) and looking in the /pub/xplain directory. In
URLlingo, that’s: ftp://ftp.netcom.com/pub/xplain. The site contains information
about the magazine, source code files, and more.
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!