Affordable Access To An On-line Community
Prior to the widespread availability of Internet access, personal computers employed dialup access to servers, many of which were local bulletin boards.
Milwaukee Omnifest was one of the first dial-up Internet services available to the public via a local Milwaukee phone number. The modem pool was located at UW-Milwaukee, then later ExecPC made their excess modem pool capacity available during weekdays. Once logged into the modem pool, users could browse Omnifest text-only menus and bulletin boards maintained by volunteers. Members had E-mail and could subscribe to news groups. Omnifest hosted their own web site and members could browse the World Wide Web but were limited to using Lynx, a text-based web browser.
Subscribers were asked to pay a nominal access fee of $25.00 annually. Service was not limited to local users, Telnet could be utilized to access the Omnifest system from any computer connected to the Internet. Similarly, Omnifest members could telnet to other Freenet servers.
Though membership was small by comparison to commercially available dial-up services such as America-Online, Omnifest attracted a wide range of students, teachers, professionals, and computer enthusiasts who wanted to enjoy the benefits of the rapidly growing Internet. It also provided a venue for non-profit and community groups to provide local information.
Disabled people were another important group served. The text-based interface could be easily interpreted by screen reader software. Children could join Omnifest through their schools and explore in the supervised setting of their computer labs.
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