Services Provided
Micronet 800 pioneered many public online services, such as Multi User Games, long before the Internet was in widespread use.
- Chatlines: Users could post messages that other users could see and respond to. Celebrity Chatline was a weekly feature in which a prominent person was interviewed by Micronet users whose questions appeared onscreen, with Micronet personnel usually typing the answers (if the 'celebrity' couldn't type or format the text themselves). Early 'celebrities' included Sir Clive Sinclair, Feargal Sharkey, Fatima Whitbread and Lord Cardigan.
- Downloadable software: Micronet 800 implemented the CET specification that allowed 8 bit files to be transmitted over a 7 bit medium, with some basic error detection and error correction.
- Online games: The longest-running game on the system was StarNet, a Play-by-mail game, whereby the players would send in moves which would be executed once a day (a sort of very slow game of chess, where the aim was to become the emperor of the galaxy) run by Liverpudlian Mike Singleton by inputting the moves he was forwarded by email from Micronet into a Commodore PET computer. Micronet 800 also hosted SHADES, one of the first MUDs - a realtime, highly competitive hack-and-slash game that is still running today.
- E-mail: Each Prestel user had a unique number (usually the last nine digits of the subscriber's telephone number), and this could be used to send messages. Micronet users were reported to be particularly enthusiastic about the medium, sending twice as many 'mailbox' messages as regular Prestel users. On 1 July 1984 users could send a pre-formatted 'Happy Birthday' email to Princess Diana via Prince Philip, in whose name the Buckingham Palace press office telephone number had been registered as a Prestel user.
- Gallery: An area where users could post their own pages about anything they wished, subject to minor oversight for libel and obscenity.
- News and reviews: Micronet was frequently the first organisation worldwide to report on happenings in the UK computer industry.
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