About Dueling Modems

Greetings, gang, and welcome to Dueling Modems.

I'd like to take this opportunity to make a few observations about who we are, what the heck we're doing here, and what we expect to see happen:

Who We Are

Dueling Modems started out as a joint effort on the part of the staff of the old Genie Science Fiction RoundTables #1 and 4, with technical support provided by some highly skilled fellow-travelers. Over the course of development, we've been joined by a number of sysops from various other online services, each bringing their own interests and communities to the party.

Purpose

We originally established this service in response to changes on the old, text-based Genie. It rapidly evolved into a larger plan to provide a secondary home for the online communities that made their home in some of Genie's various RTs. Now, with the demise of the old Genie, Dueling Modems has evolved into a full-fledged online service on its own.

How We're Organized

The DM universe is organized into dozens of "Forums" or content areas, each one a virtual community corresponding to the traditional RoundTable or Forum.

DM's various Forums host bulletin board-style Discussion Groups based on non-propagated NNTP newsgroup hierarchies. "Non-propagated" newsgroups remain resident on DM's server only, and are not broadcast to the Usenet community. DM's Discussion Groups are a closed environment. Altogether, our Forums offer you hundreds of Discussion Groups to play in.

What We Offer - Membership Features

Your low monthly Dueling Modems membership provides you with the following services:

• Unlimited access to the Forum Discussion Groups

  You can read and post to DM's Discussion Groups using your web browser or using your internet newsreader (more information).

  Within each Forum, individual Discussion Groups handle topic-specific discussions. Each individual Group can contain an unlimited number of conversational threads.

  Also, members of professional associations or other qualifying organizations will have access to private areas within the service.

• Your own personal Discussion Group (newsgroup) in the dm.members.* area

  A "virtual living room" for use as you see fit, subject to the minimal restrictions listed in the DM Terms and Conditions Agreement.

• Access to the DM websites

  DM Forums also sponsor web pages, offering access to file libraries, displays of member's works, links to related web sites, and other information of interest to Forum members.

• A 3MB website of your own

  DM will assert minimal content-control over these pages, but will retain the right to request changes for legal reasons. What restrictions DM will require will be to protect DM, our members, and DM's Service Provider from legal action. Content restrictions are clearly spelled out in the DM Terms and Conditions Agreement.

• Access to DM's web graphics library

  DM provides resource libraries of web page icons, buttons, lines, and clip art for your use.

• Discount web page design consultation

  Our HTML Team can help you build your home page by working through specific problems and answering general questions in our dm.html.* Discussion Groups. We can also design, construct, and even maintain a web site for you at substantial discounts from our usual commercial design fees.

• Access to the DM IRC Chat server

  DM provides real-time Chat services via an Internet Relay Chat (IRC) server. Many Forums host regularly scheduled Chats, and the Chat staff hosts a variety of general-interest and special-interest Chats every week. Our staff is available to answer questions about your Chat software and help you get started in the dm.chat.* Discussion Groups. (More about Chat!)

• One POP3 Email account

  Each member gets one POP3 Email account, with an easy to remember email address (yourid@dm.net). These accounts can be set up to be purely local, meaning you'd need to log into the DM mail server to fetch the messages, or they can be set up to automatically forward your messages to another email address entirely. For instance, messages sent to yourid@dm.net can be forwarded to yourotherid@ix.netcom.com.

• Additional features as they're implemented

  Internet phone support, multimedia presentations, MPEG-based real-time video, etc.

So, that's who we are and what we're up to. We hope you join us and make Dueling Modems your home on the 'net.

Nic Grabien,
Dueling Modems