Albuquerque Journal from Albuquerque, New Mexico • Page 36

BUSINESS OUTLOOK WEEK OF MONDAY, AUGUST 20, 1990 Page 1 0 On-Line Services Provide Broad Range of Data vat I Wheat Belt, or the status of a flood in eastern Madhya Pradesh, it's all there, and all easy to get at. We particularly like the maps, which are simply beautiful in VGA color. Having gotten into the habit of calling up the daily map of lightning strikes in the United States, we can say without fear of contradiction that lightning does strike twice in the same place. Weather Brief is useful for farmers, commodity traders, pilots, boat owners and, of course, meteorologists. The program is cheap enough even for amateur weather buffs.

Weather Brief (Weather Bank 801-530-3131) costs $53 for a subscription and the software package; it's available at Egghead and some other stores. You also pay on-line charges, but the system is so well designed they are quite low. Before you call Weather Brief, you work up a menu of data you want. The computer then dials an 800 number, downloads all the data fast, and hangs up. You read the info off-line.

This all serves to minimize the connect charge. We've been able to pull down giant libraries of global weather information for about 70 cents a day. (c)T990, Washington Post Writers Group There's a boom in specialized on-line services. What's that mean? In essence, an on-line service is a telephone number you can call from your computer, using a modem. A message appears on the screen, saying "Welcome to the Corripu-Talk Service," or some such.

Then you have available all manner of information, conversation, electronic shopping, free software, etc. The "generalized" on-line services, like CompuServe and Prodigy, are engaged in broadcasting appealing to the broadest possible range of interests with an expansive menu of categories. But the up-and-coming wave in this electronic sea is the "specialized on-line service," which tries to fill one need extremely well. Such outfits are "narrowcasting" targeting carefully at doctors, lawyers, teachers or other niche of the population. This is the computerized version of cable TV.

This segment of the on-line business will be growing. IBM's decision to include a free built-in modem with each of its new PS1 computers will probably force other sellers of home computers to do the same. That means tens of millions of new potential customers for dial-up services. We'd be willing to bet that a lot of those home computers will be dialing "USA Today Sports Center," the ESPN of computer communications. This is a well-designed, easy-to-use service that's chock-a-block with news, stats and trivia on all sorts of sports.

The Sports Center runs its own rotisserie baseball, football and basketball leagues, so you can become an on-line coach or general manager. On Sports Center, you can also play chess or backgammon, carry on conversations with other sport freaks, or read general news headlines. But why waste on-line charges for that stuff? The strength of this service is sports news. You can get at sports news two ways. First, there is a fast, intuitive menu system.

Even better is the "News Ticker" that sends information, Times Square style, across the bottom of your screen. Sports Center lets you set up a personalized clipping service. You tell the system which pro and college teams in which sports you care about, and the ticker will display all current news on your choices whenever you dial in. SideKick notepad while using Sports Center, and one sentence we wrote therein tells you a lot about this service. It reads, "This is fun!" But it's not particularly cheap.

Sports Center (Gannett, 1-800-826-9688) costs $14.95 to sign up. On-line fees are $5 an hour for nights and weekends; $15 an hour on business days. That can add up faster than the score of an NBA game, particularly if your home includes a sports-crazed pre-teen or two. You can call Sports Center with any communications software (Mirror, ProComm, But the service sells an excellent dedicated program, SportsWare, for $25. We're also smitten with a somewhat different on-line speciality, "Weather Brief," a computerized form of cable's Weather Channel.

On the computer, you can steer directly to the information you need without waiting an hour for the announcer to get to it. Weather Brief has an enormous array of data. If you need to know the barometer reading in Waco, Texas, yesterday's statewide high in Ohio, the hours of sunshine expected tomorrow in Belize, the location of the North Asian monsoon, the 90-day forecast for the inlaw (ME We're New Mexico's equipment leasing specialists, providing local, personalized service. Select the equipment you need, then see us. We'll make the purchase and lease it to you.

Computers BRITT HUME AND T.R.REID If your only interest is the Princeton women's basketball team, the ticker won't be very evident. Ask about every major league team east of Chicago, and you'll have a steady flow of news. Sports Center knows schedules. If you're going to Cleveland next Tuesday, and you hope to see a baseball game, Sports Center will tell you whether or not the Indians are in town. Sports Center also has lots of data useful to bettors who's injured, how the Braves are hitting against southpaws.

Digging through nooks and crannies in the menu, we also found an on-line auto Blue Book, giving standard prices for used car models. We were taking notes on the A look rich quick scheme. 944 Convertible $598.66 60 Month Closed-End Lease Contrary to popular belief, you don't have to inherit a small fortune to drive a Porsche. Especially now that Chase Manhattan is offering special low lease rates on all new 1990 944 S2 Coupes and Cabriolets. This is a very limited time offer, so stop in for a test drive soon.

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