FYI, 

About the BarPhone service, some people asked about rates, here's the
rundown:

Interactive voice service (call via TouchTone phone)

National Service : search from any city for info in any city
- provides access to locator service which allows you to scan for GLB
business, community groups and university groups by state, city, category
or university. Also allows access to current event info. 
  $1.25/min (1st minute FREE, so if you get no hits on a search you don't
             gey screwed)
Local Service : for local info - can only search home city or nearest area
- access to same services, limited by geography
  $0.50/min (average search time 2-3min.)
Frequent Callers : we give you a PIN which can use when calling from any
public, private or car phone. Billed monthly to VISA/MC. 
  $0.35/min (national and local searches)

Fax Services : to retrieve a 4-6 page packet with maps, community resource
directories, current event information and news, the cost will be $2.50
($3.50 if packet is especially long). [if you're looking for work, see the
section on INDEPENDENT WRITERS NETWORK]

Videotex Services : we will be porting the text side of our database into
a videotex format. Fax files in the form of TIFF-F files will likely be
available as well. We plan to provide a wide selection of services beyond
those provided by the voice and fax services. Electronic mail,
conferences, usenet feeds, and graphics libraries will be available. We
will charge connect fees, but no surcharges for using any online services.
Connect fees will range: $0.15 to $0.20/min depending on our LD carrier
rates.

Internet Videotex : we really want to provide the service to Internet
users through Telnet/FTP/Gopher. What we will do is one of the following:
a) provide access to a sample of services but not the whole show, b)
look into site licenses for institutions and provide total access.
For end users, there will be (can't be) fees associated with Internet
access.

Will we charge for mailing lists and databases? The answer is "it depends"
It depends on who the user is. A non-profit community group will be
treated differently than a business. Will we send our entire database
to anyone? No, that would be an invitation to disaster lest a
competitor snitch our hard-earned resource and offer it for a premium.
Would we freely provide access to the student organization database to
student organizations? Yup, we sure will. 

One last note, unlike the greedy phone sex operators, our strategy is
to charge only marginally more than our voice/data transport costs
and encourage high call volumes. While the profit per call is low, if
we all 28 of our inbound lines are swamped, we are doing well. 

COSTS TO INFORMATION PROVIDERS (anyone posting information to the 
service). Generally, these services are offered free of charge, and
when our 800 line (for info providers only) goes online, it will be
totally free. Our approach is to provide basic services free of charge
and to offer several value added services which are operated on a pay
per use basis, and are voluntary. The database listing, voice mailboxes
and access to these is free, and always will be. The following are
value added services:

Priority Event Notices - broadcast a 10 second message to every caller in
a given city, state or region. Callers, by pressing their * key are
transferred directly to your standard voice mailbox for more information.
Citywide notices are $5/week, statewide notices are $25/week and regional
notices (4 states) are $40/week. In other words, pretty damned cheap.

Travel Information Network - here we transfer callers, tollfree, to
your front desk. Once the transfer occurs, the call is free to the
caller, we bill you for call transfer, and a modest percentage for
billing and collection. (est. $0.35 to $0.40/min) Guest houses, for
example, could really use this service. It doesn't cost much more than
small business 800 service.

Custom surveys and market research - we have built into our system the
ability to randomly poll callers with questions (they are given free time
to answer questions), and build statistics from those responses. This
service will be offered on a subscription basis. We will not compromise
the privacy of callers.

THE INDEPENDENT WRITERS NETWORK - are you looking for part-time work?
If you like to write, and have desktop publishing equipment, you can write
a nationally accessible travel guide to your city with zero publishing
costs. You are an independent publication and keep all advertising
revenues. If you have a PC with a faxmodem and a hand scanner, then you
have the equipment needed to participate in the program. Look for a more
detailed message on the IWN program soon. 

Summary - this is a for-profit service, but it is a good for profit
service, meaning we are providing a useful service and are pricing the
service such that we only make small profits from individual calls, but
big bucks when multiplied over many, many callers as we think there will
be in a few months. 

Once again, if you have questions, feel free to write us at:
71460.1571@compuserve.com

Take care!
Brian