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Subject: Re: About Face, Thank You Kind Sir!!

Author: Richard A. Fowell (fowell@netcom.com)

Date: 14:37:47 08/08/99

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On August 07, 1999 at 21:04:35, Zachariah Amela wrote:

>Thank you for your most enlightening post!  You have given me much to ponder and
>many places on the web to visit.  I saved your post to file so that I may use it
>as a reference in the future.
>
>I look forward to your posts in the future, as you seem to possess a fine grasp
>of graphical interfaces.
>
>As to the availablility of playing other human opponents, would a "pager" type
>system work via the web and/or network?

Definitely. I did a little research, and the "ICQ" internet pager/
instant messaging system folks have put a lot of effort in helping you
use ICQ as the way to link up two gamers with peer-peer programs. Over
66 programs have been set up, that way. You could be the one to add
"Chess" to that list!  Here's some links to get you started learning about
how that would work. Note the ICQ would be used to find a partner, and to
initite contact - after that, it is just your app, I expect.
==============
Overview of internet "paging"/Instant message services:

http://home.cnet.com/category/topic/0,10000,0-3781-7-278364,00.html?tag=st.cn.gp.rl888.cn

ICQ home page: http://www.icq.com/
What ICQ is: http://www.icq.com/products/whatisicq.html


The mechanics of attaching a peer-peer network game to ICQ:
http://www.icq.com/gamerequest/howto.html#launch

10 ways of locating those with common interests with ICQ:
 http://www.icq.com/icqtour/rendezvous.html

ICQ games interest groups, including Chess:
http://www.icq.com/networks/Games/

More on ICQ games:
http://www.icq.com/icqtour/games.html

ICQ game requests: http://www.icq.com/gamerequest/

66 games you can play over ICQ (but no chess):
http://cgi1.icq.com/cgi-bin/gamereq/request.pl5?actionID=5
=============================

>If persons had there own PIN number for
>example, one could page them and instantly start up a game.  There could be
>various registration boards for interested parties to exchange PIN numbers.

Yep. That's how ICQ works - you have an ICQ number, and lots of ways
(10 approaches listed at link above) to find other people who want to
play. With 34 million downloads of ICQ, 20 million currently active
ICQ members, and >1,000,000 ICQ downloads a week from Download.com, this
is a good way to start. (And, I'm happy to see, ICQ is available for:
Windows 3.1/CE/95/98/NT, Macintosh 68K/PowerMac, Palmpilot, Java, etc.)

In many ways, the "ICQ" number is an alias for your IP number.
But, since many people have "dynamic" IP addresses that change everytime
they log on, ICQ

Unfortunately, ICQ is not yet interoperable with the minority paging systems
( AOL Instant Messenger, Yahoo Pager, Microsoft Pager, etc., but any of them
could be used to exchange your current IP address, in one fashion or another,
to initiate peer-peer games, like your proposed chess interface).

>
>For me, I would be happy being able to play friends and family quickly and
>easily.  That is the idea behind this program.  Alas, I live in a remote area
>(and love it!), but I rarely play other people at chess.  Oh, of course my wife
>is considered human (generally), but one opponent can get tiring.
>
>Thank you again.

On the ChessWorks server, I saw a Frenchman yesterday, and played a Swede today.
Remoteness isn't a problem. The problem I see with the (Mac-only) ChessWorks
server is getting two people there at the same time. You either need to
make an appointment with a (known) person by email/phone/internet pager,
or leave ChessWorks logged into the server while you read/surf, and wait for
the "arrival" sound to tip you off that someone has entered the server.

Richard A. Fowell (fowell@netcom.com)



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