StarText - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

StarText was an online ASCII

ASCII

The American Standard Code for Information Interchange is a character-encoding scheme based on the ordering of the English alphabet. ASCII codes represent text in computers, communications equipment, and other devices that use text...

-based computer service officially launched May 3, 1982 by the Fort Worth Star-Telegram
Fort Worth Star-Telegram
The Fort Worth Star-Telegram is a major U.S. daily newspaper serving Fort Worth and the western half of the North Texas area known as the Metroplex. Its area of domination is checked by its main rival, The Dallas Morning News, which is published from the eastern half of the Metroplex. It is owned...

and the Tandy Corporation

Tandy Corporation

Tandy Corporation was a family-owned leather goods company based in Fort Worth, Texas. Tandy was founded in 1919 as a leather supply store, and acquired RadioShack in 1963. The Tandy name was dropped in May 2000, when RadioShack Corporation was made the official name.-History:Tandy began in 1919...

. Its name was derived from Star (representing the newspaper which would provide the content) and Text (representing the computer company which would provide the technology).

StarText was marketed in the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex newspaper circulation area. It quickly evolved into an electronic magazine written by unpaid journalists who had paid to be subscribers of the service. Its eventual demise came with the growth of the Internet. In May 1996 an additional Internet service, StarText Net, was introduced, and the earlier service was rebranded as StarText Classic. The original service finally closed down on March 3, 1997, and in June 1998, StarText Net morphed into Star-Telegram Online Services, which eventually became a conventional online Internet service of the Knight-Ridder group.

StarText was an "information on demand" online computer service created by Joe Donth, offered for the first time in 1982 by the Fort Worth Star-Telegram to subscribers in the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex. On May 3, 1982, StarText officially started providing its news and all-text content online, updated from 5am to midnight. There were no graphics, pictures or colors. Subscribers were called StarTexans.

Initially, the service charged $5.00 a month to subscribers who received updated news each day from 5am until midnight daily. At first subscribers had to call StarText using a 300 baud modem and entered four requests out of a choice of 50. StarText then delivered the information without further interactivity. To receive more information the subscriber had to repeat the same process. The first StarText system was provided by a Tandy Model II.

Electronic magazine

StarText began as a means of simply delivering electronic newspaper content to subscribers, but it quickly evolved into a unique electronic magazine. Although the service only managed to attract about 2,000 subscribers, it created a loyal group of columnists who acted as unpaid columnists who had paid to be subscribers. Their columns were only in text and originally without color, but the content of the columns were original, varied and of a sufficiently reasonable standard to maintain their own readership. Because these columns were basically under the control of their creators the originality, scope and depth of the information presented was both unique and extensive.

StarText Ink

The StarText service also produced a tabloid, StarText Ink, published for subscribers. The tabloid carried logs of the subscriber columns, and it also featured its own articles written by the unpaid online columnists. In the 1990s, these columnists enjoyed meeting with each other at functions arranged by the StarText service of the Fort Worth Star-Telegram.

Virtual Texans

A website named The Virtual Texan was created by StarText enthusiast and Manager of Interactive Content at the Star-Telegram, Gerry Barker. Readers of that website were called Virtual Texans. The Virtual Texan won the 1998 Digital Edge Award for Outstanding Achievement: Best Feature Presentation.

Subscription history

Six months following start-up, the service only had 50 customers because many computers then on the market could not connect to StarText. Some of the early subscribers accessed the service using the Timex

Timex Group

Timex Group B.V., or Timex Group, is a Dutch holding company headquartered in Hoofddorp, the Netherlands, and the corporate parent of several watchmaking companies around the globe including Timex Group USA, Inc., TMX Philippines, Inc., and Timex Group India Ltd...

1000 with its 16k RAM and 300 baud modem. Following improvements in software. initial problems were overcome, and the business began to grow.

StarText Net and GEnie

Three years after the start of the original StarText service, General Electric

General Electric

General Electric Company , or GE, is an American multinational conglomerate corporation incorporated in Schenectady, New York and headquartered in Fairfield, Connecticut, United States...

's Information Services division launched its ASCII-based online service, GEnie

GEnie

GEnie was an online service created by a General Electric business - GEIS that ran from 1985 through the end of 1999. In 1994, GEnie claimed around 350,000 users. Peak simultaneous usage was around 10,000 users...

, in October 1985. The main difference between the original StarText and GEnie was that StarText offered online news from the newspaper that owned the service, plus the electronic magazine whose content was created by the subscriber-writers. GEnie was a collection of RoundTable forums, but it did not offer news or individual features written by subscriber-writers. However, the one advantage that GEnie had was its nationwide scope via its General Electric

General Electric

General Electric Company , or GE, is an American multinational conglomerate corporation incorporated in Schenectady, New York and headquartered in Fairfield, Connecticut, United States...

servers, in contrast to the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex coverage offered by the Tandy

Tandy

Tandy is the title of a short story by Sherwood Anderson.Tandy is also a name which can refer to:-Tandy Corporation:* Tandy Corporation - a leather supply company which subsequently became the RadioShack Corporation...

system.

Ten years after start-up, the nationwide appeal of GEnie became attractive to many StarText subscribers, and a word-of-mouth membership migration began to take place. In response to this competition and in an attempt to retain its own membership base, a decision was made by the owners of StarText to rebrand the original service as StarText Classic and to create the new StarText Net, offering access to the early Internet. In late 1995 StarText Net began its beta version. The service was offered to the public in May, 1996.

Death of StarText Classic

The demise of the original StarText service came with the growth of the Internet. StarText Classic service closed March 3, 1997 at 5:12pm CST with only three users still logged on.

Star-Telegram Online Services

In June 1998 the name StarText Net was changed to Star-Telegram Online Services. Because of competition from other Internet service providers, the original theme of original featured content that once made StarText into a unique home for Virtual Texans gradually withered away. When the newspaper was bought by the Knight-Ridder group, the online service was then transformed to mirror the more conventional services offered by other newspapers over the Internet, and all but a few scant references to StarText disappeared.

External links

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