More detailed information on how to do all of this will follow.

kelly

      September 27, 1998

Accessing the Web Via E-Mail

      By MATT RICHTEL

     In a remote field hospital in the Congo, doctors rely heavily on
     medical data and international news published on the World Wide
     Web. There's just one catch: they don't actually have access to the
     technology that enables most users to browse the global network.

     They do have e-mail, though, and coupled with a special software
     program, that alone is sufficient to allow them to search, retrieve
     and read the text of Web pages.

     Indeed, tens of thousands of people worldwide who lack the
     technology to access the Web have discovered several programs,
     including one called GetWeb, that provide Web access via e-mail.
     The programs permit a user to send a request for a Web page and
     then receive, often within minutes, the text of the requested page
     in an e-mail message.

     The message does not include graphics or photos that might appear
     on the Web page -- and in some cases, the page's formatting doesn't
     translate well to e-mail -- but users say they are more than happy
     to have even limited access to news sources, medical information
     and stock quotes from remote locations around the world.

     "My brother-in-law is working in a village in the mountains of
     China where they don't even have a post office," said David Martin,
     a professor at Iowa State University. "This way, he actually is
     doing searches on Alta Vista."

     The GetWeb service is offered by an organization called SatelLife,
     a Boston-based nonprofit that uses technology to make up-to-date
     medical information available worldwide. Rolf Nelson, a former
     programmer at SatelLife and its global health information network,
     HealthNet, spent three months creating GetWeb, which is based on a
     freely accessible program called Agora. (While it has fewer
     functions than GetWeb, Agora permits the same type of Web access
     via e-mail.)

     According to Bob Rankin, author of a guide to "Accessing the Web
     via E-mail", there are a handful of sites that offer the Agora and
     GetWeb services for free. The commands for each differ slightly,
     but the idea is roughly the same: users simply send an e-mail
     message requesting the text of a particular Web page. For instance,
     a GetWeb user seeking information from the World Health
     Organization's home page would send an e-mail to one of the
     services with the command "Get http://www.who.org" in the body of
     the message.

     The GetWeb server retrieves the requested page, formats it as a
     text document, and sends it back in an e-mail message. What is
     returned is not only the text of the requested page, but also a
     list of links that appear on the page so that a user can dig deeper
     for more information. One drawback of the technology is that
     looking at multiple pages can be time-consuming, if not
     frustrating.

     "It's a bit like playing chess via e-mail; you can only make one
     move at a time," said Rankin. "It's somewhat painful to access the
     Web via e-mail," he added, "But if that's all you've got, it's
     great."

     Rankin points out there are also programs that permit access via
     e-mail to other Internet resources, such as the thousands of Usenet
     newsgroups, which are topic-based discussion groups.

     What makes these e-mail services so valuable is that in some parts
     of the world, access to e-mail is far more widespread than access
     to the World Wide Web. This is because accessing the Web requires
     more sophisticated technology, such as a service provider with a
     consistent Internet connection and enough bandwidth to carry
     graphics.

     There is a downside to the growing popularity of GetWeb. At
     SatelLife, use of the service grew 5,000 percent last year. The
     organization said it received 50,624 document requests from 77
     countries during the month of August on its GetWeb server, a simple
     Pentium 133 running the Linux operating system.

     The number of visits -- sometimes 4,000 a day -- has created a
     strain, said Edson Pereira, chief engineer for SatelLife. As a
     result, the organization recently started charging an annual fee of
     $75 for GetWeb users who are not in medical fields.

     "The substantial demand has taxed our computer system to the point
     that we need to institute a cost recovery program in order to keep
     the system operating," SatelLife wrote to users in June, explaining
     the $75 fee.

     Edson said that many requests come from medical professionals, such
     as the doctors in the Congo, but there are also thousands of
     requests for general news and information -- often from users
     within the United States and Canada.

     "The New York Times is very big, CNN, stock quotes, all sorts of
     news," Pereira said.

     Dr. Mahendra Nepal, a professor of psychiatry at the Tribhuvan
     University Teaching Hospital in Katmandu, said in an e-mail
     interview that his students prepare for their seminars and other
     work based on searches performed using GetWeb.

     "It has been proved to be a great boon for researchers, thesis
     writers, authors and editors of Nepali medical journals," Nepal
     said. "Not only from Katmandu, but GetWeb can be accessed from any
     remote corner of Nepal, even from the base camp of the Mount
     Everest."


   Copyright 1998 The New York Times Company