EDITOR'S NOTE

Hello all!

I hope you've enjoyed your summer, we sure have. Teletimes took a long break after the May issue (as you may have noticed) to initiate a series of changes which are still under way. Some of our readers will notice that we are publishing Teletimes in a different format called "Replica." It is a software package like Adobe's Acrobat and Common Ground by No Hands Software. Replica allows us to create Teletimes in our favourite page layout program and export it into a format readable by Mac and Windows machines. Regardless of how your computer is setup and what fonts you have on the system, Teletimes will appear on your screen exactly as intended. This new format will also print out identically on all laser and inkjet printers. However, in order to be able to read Teletimes in this format, you need to have a Replica viewer. The Replica viewer is a free program that is packaged in a demo version of Replica available at Farallon's anonymous FTP site (ftp.farallon.com).

Just a reminder that we are still experimenting with this format, so any feedback/bug reports you might have will be greatly appreciated.

The Three Editions of Teletimes

International Teletimes is published in three different formats, each one serving a specific purpose. Our World Wide Web version is ment primarily for on-screen viewing and browsing of specific articles. Because of the hypertext abilities of the WWW edition, you can have more control over what parts of the magazine you choose to read and you may also partake in some of Teletimes' interactive features like automatic feedback to the authors. However, there are several drawbacks to reading Teletimes on the Web. Many readers have to pay for the amount of time they spend on the Internet and feel quite rushed (especially with the masses of information available) when browsing on the Web. Needless to say, this doesn't make for the best kind of reading atmosphere. Also, the layout, design and printing capabilities of the Web and its many browsers are limited and there isn't as much room for creativity and innovation as in DTP programs. Of course, this isn't saying that the WWW is a bad publishing medium. The Web is a wonderful publishing tool has its own specific uses.

Our new Replica format is an "off-line" version of the magazine, although it is still distributed on the net. This means that you must download Teletimes onto your hard drive and use a viewer program to read it. What is the purpose of the Replica version? Well, first of all, the layout of this version in much more appealing than the layout that is available on the WWW. From a design point of view, Replica is far superior. Another great feature is the printing capabilities. While we don't encourage readers to print out the magazine, those who do want to may choose to print out specific page numbers and the result is a high-quality printout which you can curl up on the sofa with! You can also read this version without any worries that your phone line is being occupied or that your Internet bill is slowly adding up. Finally, is you ever feel like passing Teletimes along to a friend (which we hope you do), the Replica version can easily be copied onto a floppy and carried around.

The third version of Teletimes is the ASCII text version, which is for people who have computers other than Macs of Windows machines. The text version has the portability advantages like the Replica version and is also the smallest version (in terms of storage space). However, ASCII means that there are no graphics and the whole magazine is very linear. Nonetheless, there are people who are very comfortable reading plain ASCII magazines.

I hope this gives you a better idea of the choices you have in how you read Teletimes. If you have any questions regarding what has been written here, please e-mail (click on my e-mail address at the end of this page).

Staff Positions Available

Teletimes has gone through incredible growth since it began in October 1992. Since Teletimes won the Best of the Net award in June, interest in the magazine has never been higher. Along with this new popularity and growth has come a lot of extra work. Unfortunately we do not have enough people to handle the extra workload, so I'd like to announce the following list of positions available. Please note that people will be hired on a volunteer basis initially, and then within a few months we may be in a position to negotiate some payment scheme.

Section Editors
People who are quite comfortable with the Internet and possibly have publishing experience and/or interest are needed as section editors. Section editors will be in charge of a defined section of Teletimes. Their tasks will involve finding and corresponding with potential writers, making sure that there is sufficient material in each section, rejecting articles which do not meet standards, and generally working directly with writers and correspondents for their area of the magazine. Sections which need editors are the Features section (monthly theme) and one or two editors to help out with running certain columns in the Departments section.

Illustrators
We need a couple of creative people to help out with illustrating articles and helping out with cover design. To get more information about what is involved, please e-mail our Art Director, Anand Mani (me@cyberstore.com).

Internet Guru
We need a person who is extremely knowledgeably about the Internet to help with technical questions/problems related to the magazine. This person might also help out with online marketing and distribution.

Writers
We need lots of writers, especially from outside of North America, to write for us. Monthly topics are provided as guidelines, but there are also some specialty columns which people may enjoy writing for. Female writers are extremely welcome as we'd like to try and even out the male-female ratio on our staff.

If you are interested in any of these positions, or think there is some other way you could help out with Teletimes, please e-mail us your résumé.

Ian Wojtowicz, Vancouver, Canada
editor@teletimes.com