The Hindu : Business : E-mail based epistolary novel

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Monday, May 10, 2004

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Business

E-mail based epistolary novel

A NEW form of novel authoring or story telling technique, which is mainly based on the e-mail technology, is breaking new grounds. This week NetSpeak takes a look at it.

E-mail technology is being deployed on various fronts that include sending/receiving personal/professional messages, creating/managing discussion lists or mailing lists and populating news groups content. Now this technology is being tried out to create a digital epistolary novel by some imaginative minds. An epistolary novel is a novel that is composed as a series of letters exchanged between its characters (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ Epistolary_novel).

DEN: A Digital Epistolary Novel

The digital epistolary novel (DEN), Intimacies, is created using various simulated Net technologies such as e-mail, instant messenger, web pages and pager messages. The hero of the novel gets an e-mail, which is not really meant for him. He replies to the `mis-sent' mail and this triggers a train of e-mail exchanges between him and the heroine, which ultimately results in romance, assault and such usual stuff.

The interesting part of this novel is that the whole story is presented to the reader through simulated e-mail exchanges, IM conversations, pager messages and web visits. DEN, which is available as an e-book, can be downloaded for free (http://www.greatamericannovel. com/den/).

The novel comes as an e-book package whose interface contains four windows. At the top-left window the simulated e-mail exchanges are displayed. At the bottom-left window the web pages visited by the characters during the course of their encounters are displayed.

Top-right window and bottom-right window are allocated for displaying IM messages and pager messages respectively. After installation of the e-book software, start reading the novel by clicking on the tab `Week one' and then selecting the option `Monday'.

The novel starts with a series of e-mails and at some stages the novelist displays the simulated text of IM sessions conducted by the characters, web pages visited by them and the pager messages exchanged by them. Unlike usual novels, here the author does not tell the story directly. The reader has to construct the story herself by combining the various information threads from those e-mails, instant messages and web pages mentioned above. More than the story thread, what is significant here is the story telling technique used.

Windows Explorer Add-ons

Though most of our computing tasks can be accomplished through clicking on various icons available with Windows programs' interfaces, quite often we come across situations in which we need to invoke commands from the DOS prompt. Obviously, our digital life will be smoother, if we can invoke the DOS prompt directly from Windows explorer. The small, free program, DOSdrop (http://www.terabyteunlimited.com/downloads/DOSDROP.ZIP), can be used for this purpose. After installation, whenever you want to move to the DOS command prompt, right click on a directory, and select the option `Drop to DOS'.

We enlist the service of an FTP client to upload files on to a web server. FileZilla is (http://filezilla.sourceforge.net/) a good example of a free FTP client. SendToFTP (http://www.pclightning.com/sndtoftp.html) is an FTP tool, which allows you to upload your files to an FTP server directly from Windows Explorer. After installing the program, invoke Windows Explorer, select the files to be uploaded, right-click, then choose `SendTo FTP' from the `Send To submenu' that pops up.

At this point, the `SendTo FTP' will present an input window, where you will have to enter the details of the server.

Discussion board search engine

A highlight of the Net world is that one can find innumerable people with enough knowledge/skills who are willing to answer any queries pertaining to their subject of expertise. One of the on-line tools that facilitate people post their queries/answers is the discussion forum, which is a web site with the necessary features that let a user post and read messages with ease. Here, anyone can post queries that can be read/answered by anyone else.

Generally you will get your query answered almost immediately. LinuxQuestions (http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/index. php) is an example of a discussion forum, where you can find ample threads related to various aspects of Linux.

In fact, tens of hundreds of discussion forums that deal with a wide array of subjects are in place on the Net. The challenge here is to spot the ones that ably meet your requirements.

The discussion forum search engine, Forumzilla (http://forumzilla.com/), will come handy while dealing with such situations. By just typing in your subject of choice in to the search box, you can get a list of links to the forums that host discussions related to it.

A free book on Online Learning

The widespread penetration of the Net and its indisputable capability to provide "timely and efficient access" to teaching materials hosted on the Web has made it one of the most preferred technologies for instruction delivery. Though nobody can belittle the potential of on-line learning, which allows anyone to access the teaching materials from anywhere/anytime, developing an on-line course without proper planning will certainly fail to take off or achieve the desired result.

If you want to gain an in depth knowledge on the various factors that are to be considered before venturing into an on-line teaching project, go through the book "Theory and Practice of Online Learning", which can be downloaded for free from: http://cde.athabascau.ca/online_book /. If you are a student of computer science you may check out this e-learning link: http://courses.cs. vt.edu/<108,SYM,126>csonline/index.html, which hosts several interactive/animation modules that deal with various computer science topics such as `Number Systems' `Algorithms', `Data Structures' and `Software Engineering'.

World of Quotes

Proverbs and quotations from great thinkers that let us gain wonderful insights through one or two simple sentences are always a source of inspiration.

Check out the site, `WorldOfQuotes' (http://www. worldofquotes.com/), which hosts more than 32,766 quotes organised in over 1398 topics. The site also hosts several historical documents (like the `Magna Carta') and famous proverbs.

J. Murali

Email the author at:

murali27@satyam.net.in

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