Re: PD CD update Question

[Simon Coles <simon@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi Henry,

>I wonder if the service should not be offered on floppy's also for all
>the people who do not have a CD rom drive. What do you think?? That
>would also be less costly for a low volume initially.
>Sincerely ,
>Henry Guttentag ( Hgutt@xxxxxxxxxxxxx)

My initial thought about this was "Wow, that would be painful" - imagine
copying all those disks. But I reckon the web sites will compress down onto
4 disks, which isn't too bad.

Four delivery strategies are possible:
        - CD ROM
        - 4 Mac or PC Floppies, probably only containing the web sites
          compressed, so you'll need to know how to unzip stuff.
        - Mac formatted ZIP cartridge (PC possible?)
        - Compressed archive files available on my web/FTP site. This would
          be useful for people who had Internet access but didn't want to
          spend the time reading on line. Also useful for people who had a
          free Internet connection at work :-)

The CD ROM will have the most on it because I can just put anything I get
hold of on it. There is an arguement for *only* distributing CDs to get the
volume up (and hence price down). But I don't think that applies in this
case - the idea is to get the information out as widely as possible.

At the moment finding a web browser is the biggest issue. But even if I did
manage to find one to "supply" on the CD ROM, I probably wouldn't be able
to offer it with the other methods.

Incidently, the info. will have a copyright along the lines of:

        "Copy electonically, pass it on to your friends etc., as much
         as you want, just don't change it or claim it as your own".

It'll be a little more fluent than that (!) and there may be exceptions
(need to talk to copyright holders in more detail), but the basic point is
to distribute the info. as widely as possible. We are after all working
against the same disease......

This means if you think of a better distribution strategy, go ahead and do
it. I'd do what I can to help make this easier for you, in terms of
supplying regular updates etc. You can also use this mechanism to pass on
the info. to your friends, which is probably more efficient than you all
ordering stuff from this side of the Atlantic.

What I bring to the party is:
        - the knowledge to get Web sites onto local disks (and still have
          them work!).
        - a leased line to the Internet which means I don't have to worry
          about the cost of downloading stuff.
        - various tools to help make all this easier.

Distributing physical stuff is not something I will ever be terribly good
at because that needs volume and geographical proximity. So any
alternatives are gratefully accepted! What would really make my day is for
some established organisation to offer to take on the commercial side of
the enterprise.



Simon

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 Simon J. Coles               |  "Far better it is to dare mighty things,
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