The term chat room, or chatroom, is primarily used to describe any form of synchronous conferencing, occasionally even asynchronous conferencing. The term can thus mean any technology ranging from real-time online chat and online interaction with strangers to fully immersive graphical social environments.
Online chat may refer to any kind of communication over the Internet that offers a real-time transmission of text messages from sender to receiver. Chat messages are generally short in order to enable other participants to respond quickly. Thereby, a feeling similar to a spoken conversation is created, which distinguishes chatting from other text-based online communication forms such as Internet forums and email. Online chat may address point-to-point communications as well as multicast communications from one sender to many receivers and voice and video chat, or may be a feature of a web conferencing service.
An online service provider can, for example, be an Internet service provider, an email provider, a news provider (press), an entertainment provider, a search engine, an e-commerce site, an online banking site, a health site, an official government site, social media, a wiki, or a Usenet newsgroup. In its original more limited definition, it referred only to a commercial computer communication service in which paid members could dial via a computer modem the service's private computer network and access various services and information resources such a bulletin boards, downloadable files and programs, news articles, chat rooms, and electronic mail services. The term "online service" was also used in references to these dial-up services. The traditional dial-up online service differed from the modern Internet service provider in that they provided a large degree of content that was only accessible by those who subscribed to the online service, while ISP mostly serves to provide access to the Internet and generally provides little if any exclusive content of its own. In the U.S., the Online Copyright Infringement Liability Limitation Act (OCILLA) portion of the U.S. Digital Millennium Copyright Act has expanded the legal definition of online service in two different ways for different portions of the law. It states in section 512(k)(1):
(A) As used in subsection (a), the term "service provider" means an entity offering the transmission, routing, or providing of connections for digital online communications, between or among points specified by a user, of material of the user’s choosing, without modification to the content of the material as sent or received.
(B) As used in this section, other than subsection (a), the term "service provider" means a provider of online services or network access, or the operator of facilities therefore, and includes an entity described in subparagraph (A).
CompuBox is the name of a computerized punches scoring system run by two operators. CompuBox is used in boxing matches across the world.
Cubby, Inc. v. CompuServe Inc., 776 F. Supp. 135 was a 1991 court decision in the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York which held that Internet service providers were subject to traditional defamation law for their hosted content. The case resolved a claim of libel against CompuServe, an Internet service provider that hosted allegedly defamatory content in one of its forums. The case established a precedent for Internet service provider liability by applying defamation law, originally intended for hard copies of written works, to the Internet medium. The court held that although CompuServe did host defamatory content on its forums, CompuServe was merely a distributor, rather than a publisher, of the content. As a distributor, CompuServe could only be held liable for defamation if it knew, or had reason to know, of the defamatory nature of the content. As CompuServe had made no effort to review the large volume of content on its forums, it could not be held liable for the defamatory content.
Wow! was an online service run by CompuServe in 1996 and early 1997. Started in March 1996, it was originally thought to be an improved version of CompuServe's software, but it was later announced that it would be a user-friendly stand-alone "family" online service and was widely advertised on TV as such. Wow! was the first Internet service to be offered with a monthly "unlimited" rate ($17.95) and stood out because of its brightly colored, seemingly hand-drawn pages.
OzWin was a client program which was used to connect to the CompuServe Information Service. It was a GUI program written in Delphi that ran on the Microsoft Windows operating system. It was published by Ozarks West Software Inc. and programmed by Steve Sneed.
CompuServe CB Simulator was the first dedicated online chat service that was widely available to the public. It was developed by a CompuServe executive, Alexander "Sandy" Trevor, and released by CompuServe on February 21, 1980, as the first public, commercial multi-user chat program.
NavCIS, originally known as ForCIS, is a client program which was used to automate connections to the CompuServe Information Service at a time when online use was priced by the minute. It operated largely in the fashion of an offline reader, downloading both email and new messages from selected forums, and then disconnecting. The user could then read and reply to these messages offline, and send all of their replies back in a similarly quick connection. Unlike most offline readers, NavCIS also allowed the user to select files for upload and download, and included a system for scripting the session.
The B protocol, or CIS B, is a file transfer protocol developed for the CompuServe Information Service, and implemented in 1981. The protocol was later expanded in the QuickB version and later the enhanced B Plus version. It was a fairly advanced protocol for its era, supporting efficient transfers of files, commands and other data as well, and could be used in both directions at the same time in certain modes. These advanced features were not widely used, but could be found in a small number of client-side packages.
Multi-User Dungeon, or MUD, is an early MUD and one of the oldest examples of a virtual world in existence.
Steve Wilhite is an American computer scientist who worked at CompuServe and was the primary creator of the GIF file format, which went on to become the de facto standard for 8-bit color images on the Internet until PNG became a viable alternative. He developed the GIF in 1987. By 2016, the format had found mainstream use in website design, social media posts, workflow documents and how-to guides.
Qmodem was an MS-DOS shareware telecommunications program and terminal emulator. Qmodem was widely used to access bulletin boards in the 1980s and was well respected in the Bulletin Board System community. Qmodem was also known as Qmodem SST and QmodemPro.
MegaWars III was a massively multiplayer empire building game written by Kesmai and run continuously on CompuServe between 1984 and 1999. It was one of CompuServe's most popular games throughout its lifetime with thousands of players joining the month-long game cycles. It was only shut down after CIS was purchased by AOL and moved to the web-based "CompuServe 2000" interface that would not cleanly support it. A modified version, Stellar Emperor ran for much of the same time period on GEnie, also ending in 1999 when that service shut down by General Electric. A new version of Stellar Emperor, sporting a new client-server GUI, was run for a short period on Kesmai's GameStorm.
Personal Knowbase is a freeform notes database application for MS Windows. Personal Knowbase was first released in 1998 on the CompuServe Information Service and is an example of a personal knowledge base.
TAPCIS was an automated MS-DOS-based software application that sped up access to, and management of, CompuServe email accounts and forum memberships for PC users from 1981 until 2004 when advances in CompuServe technology rendered it obsolete. Written in Borland's Turbo Pascal, TAPCIS was shareware and retailed at US$79.
CompuServe Inc. v. Cyber Promotions, Inc. was a ruling by the United States District Court for the Southern District of Ohio in 1997 that set an early precedent for granting online service providers the right to prevent commercial enterprises from sending unsolicited email advertising - also known as spam - to its subscribers. It was one of the first cases to apply United States tort law to restrict spamming on computer networks. The court held that Cyber Promotions' intentional use of CompuServe's proprietary servers to send unsolicited email was an actionable trespass to chattels and granted a preliminary injunction preventing the spammer from sending unsolicited advertisements to any email address maintained by CompuServe.
NAVCIS or Navcis can mean:
