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list vendors\n\n\n7369 7-NOV-15:25: FLAgShip Archives\n SIG Shopping News\n From: DEB To: ALL MEMBERS (NR)\n\nFriends, I need your input on something for for the SIG. You've been hearing\nrumors and promises that a shopping area for online ordering would be ready\n\"Real Soon Now\" for the last several months. Well, guess what? We've been\ntesting it, and it looks to be ready! There will be some guidelines to those\nvendors using it, but more than anything else, I wanted everyone here to be\nable to add your ideas to the pot. Essentially, right now, here is what will\nbe happening:\n\n *> Vendors must prove to my satisfaction that they are a viable business,\n and will back up their products with reasonable warrantees.\n *> Vendors must provide me with their business address and telephone\n numbers.\n *> Vendors will be entering the inforration into the shopping database\n in the prescribed manner--so that products and key words will be easy for\n everyone to find.\n *> Vendors will be responsible for promptly answering orders, inquiries and\n for shipping all orders in a timely manner.\n *> Vendors will be approved\/rejected or cancelled by me. I will demand that\n all participating firms adhere to strict and proper business procedures.\n *> In the event of any complaints, the Vendor will be immediately removed\n from the shopping database until the issue has been satisfactorily resolved.\n\n\n We really are seeing the realization of things that we've only read\nabout in the past!!! Electronic shoppiip is certainly on the frontier of\nour small electronic community! The vendors who participate within this area\nwill be here as another service to all SIG members, not as an advertising\ndevice for either Delphi or the *FlagShip\/*StarShip*. You will be dealing\ndirectly with those involved at the firm, only in a little more convenient\nway than US Mail.\n\n As long as this addition to the SIG does not require oodles and oodles of\nmy time to administrate, these vendors will _not_ be charged advertising fees.\nI believe that because of this, we will all benefit by *bargains* from any\nonline ordering!\n\n Both the *FlagShip* and the *StarShip* will be able to share the exact\nsame shopping database, so there will be no need for either members or vendors\nto go running back and forth from SIG to SIG to see what is new. I thank\nDelphi for the ability to design this kind of flexibility!!!\n\n The shopping area will be divided into major categories. Each category\nwill have 3-10 specific searchable fields. The SEARCH capabilities for the\nShopping database are similar to those of our program databases, you will be\nable to specify the field upon which you want to search by keywords, and you\nwill be able to narrow or expand the search to include other parameters in any\nother field!\n\n I'd like anyone else's comments and suggestions--we're implementing much\nof this right now, and are inviting the first vendors to enter their products\nright now.\n\n deb!\n\n\nWS> list shopping\n\n\n2254 4-NOV-17:48: Shopping Online\n Shopping (again)\n From: DEB To: ALL\n\nOk, now that Shopping works again, we're going to start using it, I hope.\n\n I have a couple comments to make on the WAY it is used.\n\n *> The SEARCH function still seems confusing, perhaps it shoulld ask what\n FIELD you want to search in, or something like that?\n *> The READ command works differently in shopping than it does _anywhere_ else\n\n on Delphi. Why is this not consistent?\n and why must the members learn something differently??\n\n **\n\n2255 4-NOV-18:51: Shopping Online\n RE: Shopping (again) (Re: Msg 2254)\n From: PAN To: DEB (NR)\n\nRead command works the same as Announcements and Topics Available, doesn't\nit? The only Read command that it totally different from anything else\nis the Database, where you *must* specify READ ... rather than just a #\nor letter.\n\nMaybe I'm used to it, but SEARCH seems fine to me now ... I especially like\nhowtwo '?'s will scroll out all indexed keywords.\n\n<<<shrug>>>\n\n* P *\n\n2306 8-NOV-16:17: Shopping Online\n shopping enhancements\n From: CHIP To: ALL\n\nI have just installed a few enhancements to shopping. These are\ndesigned to make it a little easier to use and to work faster.\n\n1) I changed the format of the user's payment file. It is now\neasier for the user to change things within that file and the\nsystem gets information out of the file faster. Users who\nhave filled out the old version of the file will be required to\nfill out the new version again (don't worry, the system will prompt\nthem to do this if they try and order anything).\n\n2) I changed the format of the Vendor directory. I took it out of the\nIAMWHOIS format which caused much confusion. Instead, it is in a simple,\nstraightforward format that should be easy for the vendors to update, and\neasy for the users to browse through.\n\nThe old vendor file is still compatible with the system. So profiles posted\nby vendors will still function properly (if they did before). However, when\nthey get the chance, old vendors should repost their profiles.\n\nNote: VENDOR PROFILES need to be reposted, not PRODUCTS. The changes\nhave no affect on the product postings themselves. So if you have spent\nhours posting products, have no fear, I have not invalidated your efforts.\n\nManagers can change the vendor profiles from the Manager Menu now (there is\nno longer the confusing MAINT command in the advertiser directory). Instead\nthere is a menu item \"Vendor Listing\" in the Manager Menu that allows you\nto edit the vendor listing.\n\nFinally, you will notice that the Advertiser Profile in the Shopping Menu\nstill contains the old IAMWHOIS file and format. This is because I have\nto change those menus one at a time and I haven't got around to do that\nyet. If you want to see what it will eventually look like to the users,\ntake a look at the Advertiser Directory selection in the insiders shopping\nmenu.\n\nI believe the changes made will make the shopping areas faster and less\nconfusing. Let me know what you think.\n\nChip\n\n\nWS> ^Z\n<\/pre>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A summary for those that haven’t been keeping up with this series: I found a number of 5.25″ disks at a thrift store a number of years ago. I finally got around to acquiring a 5.25″ disk drive and extracting the contents a while back. Since then I have been posting the contents here. Based on the contents, at least some of these disks were apparently once owned by someone named Connie who used to run the \u201cClose Encounters\u201d Special Interest Group (SIG) on Delphi in the mid 1980s. A specific definition of this SIG was found in a document on one of the disks: “This SIG, known as ‘Close Encounters’, is a forum for the discussion of relationships that develop via computer services like the Source, CompuServe, and Delphi. Our primary emphasis is on the sexual aspects of those relationships.” This service was text based and was accessed via whatever terminal program you used on your computer to dial in to Delphi\u2019s servers. Many of these disks have forum messages, e-mails and chat session logs. All of this is pre-internet stuff and I don\u2019t know if there are any archives in existence today of what was on Delphi in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[2913,2042,2362,2914],"class_list":["post-26452","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-computer-arcana","tag-delphi","tag-digital-archaeology","tag-retrocomputing","tag-telecommunications"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.megalextoria.com\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26452","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.megalextoria.com\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.megalextoria.com\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.megalextoria.com\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.megalextoria.com\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=26452"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.megalextoria.com\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26452\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.megalextoria.com\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26452"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.megalextoria.com\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26452"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.megalextoria.com\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26452"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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