www.childrenstory.com

I just created two realaudio files and stuck them in the /var/www/webdocs/childrenstor vy.com directory on www.spring.com

The files in /var/www/webdocs/childrenstory.com are: cinderella.ra and princess.ra I'm missing about a minute of the beginning of princess that I'll have to get Jonathon's friend to re-record.

The ra file I called cinderella should be renamed sleepbeaut.ra It's Sleeping Beauty. Amy, see if you can add a link to it.

Do we need a beta tester? Topic 43 of 113: 'New P&P2 Scenes' Response 43 of 43: AnneMarie (moonshine) Tue, Dec 31, 1996 (10:48) 7 lines (I am only 9 years old, so my mother is helping me here with spelling, etc.) ...continuing above ball scene...

Kaff, when I was driving home from my meeting tonight I was thinking about how lovely your story looks and had three thoughts related to that: 1. How will I ever make something as pretty? Maybe we should divide up our duties differently 2. It is so, pretty people will want to print it out 3. If it is printed out, maybe we should have the URL on at least the first or last page so people can get back to childrenstory.com (but the trade off is making the page not pretty by including such a pedestrian thing -- or maybe there is a pretty way of doing it) Amy

Thanks, Amy. :) I've tried to reply to your previous e-mail several times today, but it keeps getting bounced back (saying that bluemarble.net doesn't exist). I'll try again now. As to the URL on the pages - I only use Netscape, but when I print something for the web it automatically prints the URL at the top of each page. I wonder if Explorer does that as well? I'll have to check.

] automatically prints the URL at the top of each page. I wonder if Explorer does that as well? I'll have to check. __ No. MSIE only return the html document [title]

Amy has mail here at the Spring if she needs a backup. It can even be set up to hold and forward mail at the same time so she could get it both places.

] mail here at the Spring if she needs a backup __ Thanks Terry. I do not normally have problems. Bloomington is a college town like Austin. Maintenance tends to go on during university holidays. That's probably all it is.

Terry - I have finished one story and begun to renovate the homepage for the site. Given the amount being billed for this, I cannot really devote any more time to the homepage on this billing. Please take a look at http://www.spring.com/~kaffeine/index.html If they meet with your approval, I will move them over to childrenstory.com (or let me know if you would rather keep the existing homepage, and I will just move the story over there).

The page looks good. What do you think Amy? What it needs the most is a link to the Realaudio files.

A link to the existing RA files that you created? Have you fixed the one that had some stuff missing?

Not yet, but go ahead and put a reference to it as this is only a test site at this stage.

Terry - I just added a test link to princess.ra, but it doesn't look like the MIME types are set up - the browser tried to load it as text.

OK. I haven't set up mime types before, I'll see what this requires.

Terry - I'm sending you an invoice via e-mail. Let me know if you don't receive it.

Please ask around and try and find somone who can help us get realaudio working? Jonahton really wants to see this happen. I talked to him today and gave him a bill for the html work. I hope to get paid tomorrow but he's coming on pretty strong about the realaudio working. I added a mime types entry to the web server mime types file. This is really, really important to figure out and I have to work tomorrow. I can only get on the Internet about 15 minutes a day at work, but I do have my email forwarded there. Perhaps we should ask around in the conference and maybe in asome newsgroups. Matt could do it but he's too busy.

Terry, if you can't find someone who knows what she is doing, I can try to figure out the RealAudio server, but not until Thursday or Friday. Don't push me to do it earlier. I have a deadline for my only regular gig that I can't afford to blow. It will take me probably 9 times as long to work out as somebody who knows something, but maybe I can get a little help here and there. P.S. & BTW, your mail is bouncing again.

From: Chris Spurgeon To: terry@spring.com Subject: RealAudio help Saw your post in the web conference about needing realAudio help. I'll be happy to take a look, if you'd like. I installed Real Audio on my BSDI system (at http://whyy.org). Feel free to e-mail me or give me a call at 215-351-3315 (that's in Philadelphia). I'll be in the office starting this afternoon at about 1PM, Eastern time, but you can leave a message. Ignore this message if you've already solved the problem! Chris Spurgeon Kathleen and the unix group can you please co-ordinate this with Amy. I'm out of pocket at work today. See if we can get Chris involved ok? mailto://ces@well.com

Here's where our present realaudio server files reside: barton# cd usr/local barton# ls bin etc lib man realaudio barton# cd realaudio barton# ls permset.txt pnserver barton# ls -rlt total 2 drwxr-xr-x 6 terry realaudio 512 Apr 1 1996 pnserver -rw-r--r-- 1 root realaudio 134 Nov 3 10:03 permset.txt barton# cd prnserver prnserver: No such file or directory. barton# cd pnserver barton# ls -rlt total 7 drwxr-xr-x 4 terry realaudio 512 Mar 19 1996 rafiles drwxr-xr-x 5 terry realaudio 512 Apr 11 1996 bin drwxr-xr-x 2 terry realaudio 512 Apr 12 1996 doc -rw-r--r-- 1 terry realaudio 1247 Apr 26 1996 readme.txt -rw-r--r-- 1 terry realaudio 931 Nov 10 03:58 server.cfg drwxr-xr-x 2 terry realaudio 512 Nov 10 03:59 logs barton# pwd /usr/local/realaudio/pnserver barton#

And the ra files thems are on www.spring.com: total 3920 -rw-rw-r-- 1 terry bbs 1170148 Dec 30 00:37 cinderella.ra -rw-rw-r-- 1 terry bbs 812644 Dec 30 00:49 princess.ra bash$ pwd /var/www/webdocs/childrenstory.com/sounds bash$

Hi folks, this is Chris Spurgeon in Philadelia. The Real Audio server is up and running. Give me a yell (at ces@whyy.org) if you have any problems or questions. One thing though, I think there may be something wrong with the two files cinderella.ra and princess.ra. They don't play through the RA system (they HAVE been passed through a RealAudio encoder, haven't they?) The RA server plays the test files and one that I downloaded from my site just fine. And conversely, I uploaded a copy of princess.ra to my site and my RA server couldn't handle it either, so I think it must be a file problem. Chris

Chris - Thanks so much for your help on this! I know that Terry is experiencing a hugh sigh of relief!!

I sure am! I'll see about those ra files.

RA works! Only the princess.ra file is not Princess and the Pea. Sounds pretty good. Who fixed it? Terry, did you encode and move it?

No, did not have to move it to the dir Chris specified. Messed up -- skipping at the end -- though.

What is the princess.ra file then?

Amy - How did you play it? If I go to the link on childrenstory.com, I still just get text. I've gone over to the RA site, and can play their files without a problem, but not this one. BTW, Didn't you say in chat last night that you don't have sound?

Oh I have sound I am just a little afraid of the complexity of it and also of the danger of falling liking it too much. I don't know why or how it worked. I am not even quite sure how to describe what I did so that it will give you clues. I chose the "open" rather than "save" download option, if that makes any difference. Terry, the story Jonathan's friend read, I think, is Puss n Boots.

OK, is Puss n Boots complete? Are any excerpts of Jane Austen's writing suitable for this site?

What do we need to do to get this ra files to work. Perhaps we should enlist Chris again for this final phase. I'd really like to see these working by tonight so I could invoice Jonathon. He's hot for realaudio.

He invited us to mail him with any questions.

] OK, is Puss n Boots complete? No. The beginning is missing and it skips during the 2nd half ] Are any excerpts of Jane Austen's writing suitable for this site? No. It is pretty hard going. But material is not a problem. I will do more on my story today. Have someone in mind to record, but there's so little budget. I think you need to charge more for these services, Terry. Of course, we have to be able to deliver, too. Need to talk to you about Texaltel too. Talked to Sheri.

We can get additional budget for childrenstory if get realaudio working. Chris is going to take a look at our code in about an hour from now. I put up a temporary link to all the ra files on the front page. It seems that you have to reference to a text file called .ram that references to the .ra file. I'm a bit off in my referencing still. Take a look at the source code there and you'll see what I mean. www# ls -ralt total 3247 drwxrwsr-x 6 root bbs 1024 Jan 4 13:17 .. -rw-rw-r-- 1 terry bbs 1170148 Jan 11 15:16 cinderella.ra -rw-r--r-- 1 terry bbs 643060 Jan 11 15:21 cinderella2.ra -rw-rw-r-- 1 terry bbs 740408 Jan 11 16:14 princess.ra -rw-r--r-- 1 terry bbs 591076 Jan 12 13:24 sleeping.ra -rw-r--r-- 1 terry bbs 109540 Jan 12 13:26 welcome28.ra -rw-r--r-- 1 root bbs 49 Jan 12 13:54 cinderella.ram -rw-r--r-- 1 root bbs 50 Jan 12 13:54 cinderella2.ram -rw-r--r-- 1 root bbs 47 Jan 12 13:56 sleeping.ram -rw-r--r-- 1 root bbs 48 Jan 12 13:57 welcome28.ram drwxrwsr-x 2 terry bbs 512 Jan 12 13:57 . -rw-r--r-- 1 root bbs 35 Jan 12 14:01 princess.ram www# pwd /usr/var/www/webdocs/childrenstory.com/sounds www# cat cinderella.ram pnm://www.childrenstory.com/sounds/cinderella.ra www# cat cinderella2.ram pnm://www.childrenstory.com/sounds/cinderella2.ra www# cat sleeping.ram pnm://www.childrenstory.com/sounds/sleeping.ra www# cat princess.ram pnm://www.spring.com/princess.ra

Hi folks, it's Chris again. I think everything is hunky dory now (though I think there's something wrong with file called "sleeping.ra". I've e-mailed Terry with the details. Also hit him with a few paragraph primer on how this whole RealAudio thing works. For more info, check out the RA help pages at http://www.realaudio.com/help/library/ And let me re-iterate the standing invitation to email me with problems at ces@whyy.org PS> 12 degrees in Philadelphia right now. Austin sounds pretty nice today.

Yeah, about 30 right now. Check out the front page of http://www.childrenstory.com Chris. I'm getting an error code when I try to click on some of the files.

Terry - Since the other files didn't work, I removed the links to them. You can test them out by going directly into the http://www.childrenstory.com/sounds directory.

I'm ftping new versions as we speak. They're big files so it takes a while. I wonder how you stream real time audio into real audio. I'd like to be able to talk right into the website and broadcast live events.

I just gave our bbs group permission to write into the rafiles directory: www# pwd /usr/var/www/rafiles www# cat /etc/group wheel:*:0:root,matt,terry,thalerd,janc,kaylene,dbii,greg,paul,austen,bubbi,myretta,amy,kaffeine,mrobens,dutchman,ces daemon:*:1:daemon kmem:*:2:root sys:*:3:root tty:*:4:root operator:*:5:root uucp:*:6: bin:*:7: news:*:8: utmp:*:12: games:*:13: mail:*:14: bbs:*:15:paul,terry,pwalhus,matt,thalerd,janc,dbii,amy,mhc,jwinsor,mrobens,mich,kendall,kaffeine staff:*:20:root bsdi:*:30: realaudio:*:31:terry,matt,paul,jonathon,tvpc www:*:84:terry,paul,matt netrabbit:*:99: user:*:100: dialer:*:117: netdial:*:118:matt nogroup:*:32766: www# pwd /usr/var/www/rafiles www# chgrp -R bbs /usr/var/www/rafiles www# chmod -R g+w /usr/var/www/rafiles www# find /usr/var/www/rafiles -type d -print | xargs chmod g+ws www# pwd /usr/var/www/rafiles www# ls BOFA961220_144.ra cinderella2.ra princess2.ra welcome144.ra cinderella.ra princess.ra sleeping.ra welcome144.ram cinderella.ram princess.ram sleeping.ram www# cp sleeping.ra sleeping2.ra www#

More from Chris: I found a typo in one of the web server conf files (my fault!) and fixed it. To prove that the RA server works, I made a web page in www.childrenstory.com called "chris.html" with a couple of links to rafiles. One of the files is a "Best of Fresh Air" file that I copied from the WHYY server to your machine, and that plays OK. The other link is to your sleeping beauty story and that doesn't seem to work. I think you haven't done the RealAudio encoding properly, or didn't upload it to your site properly, or something. Do you still have the original audio file? IF so, try running it through your RealAudio encoder and see if the resulting file plays OK on your local PC, before you move it onto the net. There were/are a few other problems to be dealt with. Here they are (in no particular order)... 1) Right now, when you reboot www.spring.com, the RealAudio server won't automaticly start up. You have to restart it manually. It's easy to do. Just become root on the machine and type in these two commands... cd /usr/local/realaudio/pnserver bin/pnserver server.cfg And it'll start right up. (You can change things so the RAserver starts up automaticly whenever you reboot. I think all that you do is add a line in the /etc/rc file on your system, but my UNIX system configuration chops are, let us say, minimal, socheck with your local UNIX guru or the well UNIX conference first!) 2) Your webpage links point to what's called a "metafile". This is a simple text file with one line in it, a line that contains the URL of the actual Real Audio file that you want to play. The names of all of these metafiles should end in ".ram" (just like html files should end in ".htm" or ".html"). Those metafiles can be located anywhere on your server that a regular html file can reside. The line that each metafile contains looks like this... pnm://www.story.com/raFilenameGoesHere.ra If you look at the source for "chris.html" you'll see what I mean. 3) Remember ALL RealAudio files MUST end in ".ra" and they MUST be inside of the directory /usr/var/www/rafiles That's what's known at the document root for the RealAudio server. When you make a metafile that has a line like... pnm://www.spring.com/foobar.ra ...the RA server goes to /usr/var/www/rafiles and looks there for a file called "foobar.ra". It DOESN'T look in /usr/var/www/docs or /usr/var/www/webdocs. The RA server doesn't even know those directories exist. The RealAudio server comes with a couple of documents explaining all of this in more detail, and giving some tips for creating the best possible sound. They're in Adobe Acrobat (.pdf) format and they're on your machine in the /usr/local/realaudio/pnserver/doc directory. You should also check out the online manuals. They're at http://www.realaudio.com/help/library/ Chris, you're welcome to put up an ad pointing to your Realaudio file on childrenstory.com. Jonathon said that would be fine. Thanks for all your help!

We're still not home yet. I had 3 14.4 kbaud ra files up perfectly and couldn't get them to work before I left for work. I won't be able to be at a machine where I can do realaudio for a while, I'm pretty sure this is a path or permissions problem. Amy and Kaf, will you please look at the code and see what is going on. It may be something very minor. I tested the ra files and the 14.4 kbaud files will work on 28.8 but not vice versa. I'm hoping we can define the process of creating realaudio files so that this will not be such an ordeal in the future.

Terry - They are working. However, the sound quality of cinder14.ra is so bad as to be unusable. There are two files associated with RealAudio - *.ram and *.ra. The ram file is an ascii file containing one line: pnm://www.spring.com/filename.ra This is located in any directory you want and tells the RealAudio player where to find the actual sound file. For example, a link to a RealAudio clip on childrenstory.com would be http://www.childrenstory.com/sounds/filename.ram The .ra file is the actual sound file, and must be located in /usr/var/www/rafiles/filename.ra

I went to Circuit City today to check out childrenstory.com on WebTV. I learned a couple of interesting things. 1) Smaller is better. Right now just about all our text is too big. I'm going to reduce the text size on everything I've done. 2) RealAudio, which is a helper app in Netscape, is a plug-in on WebTV - so no program is launched, it just plays the audio immediately. It will be perfectly suited to my idea of stories where they can click on individual words to hear them pronounced. Overall, I was impressed with it. It is definately a viable option for people who want to play on the internet, but don't want or can't afford a computer. I'm going to check the WebTV website (I assume there is one), and see what other plug-ins come with it. It would be very nice if we could use Shockwave on the site. I did forget to check on how well it works in environments like spring or Pemberley. If you guys get a chance to check it out, I would appreciate any feedback on that.

Serendipidously, look what was in my inbox: This Week in Web Review: How to Design for WebTV, (And Whether You Should Bother.) http://webreview.com

More important than making any additions on this site is the following: 1. get realaudio tied to the pictures as opposed to text stories without pictures and pictures without stories. 2. pull cinderella pictures out of the images subdirectory stored on the site. Or find some better Cinderella images somewhere else that are royalty free or minimal royalty. 3. integrate advertising on the site. Use dummy ones or find someone who wants an ad. We could use the radio station stuff in the audio file. Make it look like the nice stuff you see on CNN or Disney. Advertising on every page. 4. When you go to childrenstory from tvpc the bar across the bottom dissappears and it should stay there. Does everyone have write access to tvpc? If not, we need to set permissions. 5. reformat the pages that don't fit (eg. Princes and the Pea-, there are only two of these.

The above are Jonathon's priorities. After these are complete, he wants us to start implementing some of the new ideas.

Okay, I am on it late tonight and tomorrow. Kaf or Terry, need to talk to you about encoding the CoolEdit files for RA.

If you have cooledit, go to their website and make sure you have the ra file add on. What specific questions do you have?

When you choose "Save As" in CoolEdit, there should be an option for RealAudio. If there isn't, you don't have the latest version.

I can work on your suggestions tonight and tomorrow. My friend is coming over tomorrow afternoon to record her stories. Before we do too much more, I wanted to talk to you about the directory structure on the site. I can't stand a messy web site!! (My home is another story...but we won't go into that) From our discussions, I think that we are looking at having 3 main areas to the site - 1) Fairy Tales 2) Nursury Rhymes (for pre-readers) 3) Interactive Stories So, I would like to propose that we create 3 new directories: tales rhymes stories Here's a visual representation of my proposal: So, "Snow White and Rose Red" would have a URL of: www.childrenstory.com/tales/rosered/index.html That way, when its time to rotate stock, instead of having all images or sounds in the same directory and having to figure out which files to delete, we can just delete (or archive) the entire directory structure for that particular story. Let me know if you have any objections to this directory structure.

Not at all. We need to add structure as the site grows. The main priority is to first address the four items I outlined above. Then move on to these new areas.

I'd like to get the directory structure set right away too. The more we get in there, the harder it will be to do. It shouldn't take too long. I've copied some ads from disney.com and will use those images temporarily until we get real advertising, so that we can show what it will look like. As to the bottom frame from TVPC - I have bad news. You can't use frames for WebTV - those tags are not allowed. So you will have to rethink that site. Also, according to the documentation at http://webtv.net they recommend that you avoid making users scroll down - their research has shown that TV viewers don't understand or like scrolling. So you have to keep the content on each individual page to a minimum. This means that our homepage should include ONLY the logo, the links, and one advertisment. Anything more will take up too much room and cause scrolling. If we have to include TVPC stuff at the bottom, we will have to lose something else.

These are good thoughts and I'll run them by Jonathon tonight. Let's get as many of the four fundamentals above done and the structure, then deliver a plan to Jonathon with a cost estimate of the next phase. Email regarding costs.

Web TV may recommend not having pages that scroll, but are all set-top box people going to look exclusively at made-for WebTV content? We should follow the guidelines so people can use our stuff, but I have a feeling all this will change and evolve just like everything else on the web. Why, it was less than a year ago that a actually had an argument with somebody on an HTML list who insisted graphics as links should have a link border "so people would know to click there." Imagine!

Kaf, how do you want to split up the 4 Jonathon points?

No, they will certainly look at other pages as well, but since this site is specifically aimed at WebTV viewers, I think that we should try to follow their recommendations for effective WebTV sites. As viewers get more sophisticated, we may need to rethink the strategy. Nothing is ever written in stone on the internet. For now, however, I think we should go by their guidelines.

Amy - Meet me in the office?

I'll be off the web all day. But email will reach me. If you post anything here please also send a copy by email. That's the only way you'll reach me till about 8 pm tonight when I'll be checking in tonight. Occasionally, I get to check in from a web browsing station from work, but generally they're hard to get to.

Jonathon's response: I forgot to leave the TV adapter out front, sorry! As for formating our sites simply to Web TV, ie without frames, I don't want to do that as Web TV will be upgrading it's browser to include frames. Secondly I don't mind if folks have to scroll downwards as they will have to do this on the majority of sites anyway. So lets not worry about that.

Okay, so let's review where we are with Jonathon's critical list: 1. get realaudio tied to the pictures as opposed to text stories without pictures and pictures without stories. Kaf's voice, Susan, will re-record the bad RA files -- Puss 'N' Boots and Cinderella -- plus Kaf's new story, Rose Red, this afternoon, 1/20 My voice, Laura, will record the other two existing stories -- P&Pea and UgDuck -- plus my new story, The Frog Prince some evening this week, ASAP depending on her availability. 2. pull cinderella pictures out of the images subdirectory stored on the site. Or find some better Cinderella images somewhere else that are royalty free or minimal royalty. Let me get clear on this. Actually don't we need more than this? Text and pictures for not just Cinderella, but for Puss 'N' Boots and Sleeping Beauty as well? I will format these stories, in just a simple way for now, 1 pagers, with just a couple of pictures -- Kaff can you send me the text? Or is is somewhere on the system? I can do it by Wednesday. 3. integrate advertising on the site. Use dummy ones or find someone who wants an ad. We could use the radio station stuff in the audio file. Make it look like the nice stuff you see on CNN or Disney. Advertising on every page. Kaf has done this for the front page. 4. When you go to childrenstory from tvpc the bar across the bottom dissappears and it should stay there. Does everyone have write access to tvpc? If not, we need to set permissions. We have not assigned this responsibility. But I suppose the task will fall to Kaf for she is ten times as prett-- frames conversant as I. 5. reformat the pages that don't fit (eg. Princes and the Pea-, there are only two of these. Done, Kaf did UgDuck, I did P&Pea last night. We are coming along. It will happen.

Once upon a time there was a beautiful girl called Cinderella and she had two ugly step sisters who were very unkind who made her do all the hard work. She had to sweep the floors, do all the dishes, while they dressed up in fine clothes and went to lots of parties. One day a special invitation arrived at Cinderella's house. It was from the royal palace. The king's only son was a truly handsome prince was going to have a grand ball. Three girls were invited to come. Cinderella knew she wouldn't be allowed to go to the ball. But the ugly sisters, ho ho ho, they were excited. They couldn't talk about anything else. When the day of the ball came, they made such a fuss. Poor Cinderella had to rush about upstairs and downstairs. She fixed their hair in fancy waves and curls. She helped them put on their expensive new dresses. And she arranged their jewels just so. As soon as they had gone, Cinderella sat down by the fire and she said. "Oh I do wish I could go to the ball". The next moment, staind beside her was a lovely old lady with a silver wand in here hand. "Cinderalla, she said " I am your fairy godmother and you shall go to the ball. But first you must go into the garden and pick a golden pumpkin, then bring me six mice from the mousetraps, a whiskered rat from the rat trap, and six lizards. You'll find the lizards behind the watering can. So Cinderella fetched a golden pumpkin, six grey mice, a whiskered rate, six lizards. The fairy godmother touched them with her wand and the pumpkin became a golden coach, the mice became six grey horses, the rat became a coachman with the most enormous moustache, and the lizards became six footmen dressed in green and yellow, then the fairy godmother touched Cinderella with the wand and her old dress became a golden dress sparkling with jewels while on her feet was the prettiest pair of glass slippers ever seen. Remember said the fairy godmother you must leave the ball before the clock strikes twelve because at midnight the magic ends. "Thank you fairy godmother" said Cinderella and she climbed into the coach. When Cinderella arrived at the ball she looked so beautiful that everyone wondered who she was! Even the ugly sisters. The Prince of course asked here to dance with him and they danced all evening. He would not dance with anyone else. Now Cinderella was enjoying the ball so much that she forgot her fairy godmothers warning until it was almost midnight and the clock began to strike. One. Two. Three. She hurried out of the ballroom. Four. Five. Six. As she ran down the palace steps one of her glass slippers fell off. Seven. Eight. Nine. She ran on toward the golden coach. Ten Eleven Twelve. Then there was Cinderella in her old dress. The golden pumpkin lay in her feet. And scampering down off down the road were six grey mice, a whiskered rat and six green lizards.. So Cinderella had to walk home and by the time the ugly sisters returned home was sitting quietly by the fire. Now when Cinderella ran from the palace, the prince tried to follow her and he found the glass slipper. He said, "I shall marry the beautiful girl whose foot fits this slipper and only her. IN the morning the prince went from house to house with the glass slipper and every young lady tried to squeeze her foot into it. But it didnt' fit any of them. At last the prince came to Cinderella's house. First one ugly sister tried to squash her foot into the slipper. But her foot was too wide and fat. Then the other ugly sister tried but her foot was too long and thin. Please said Cinderella, let me try. "The slipper won't fit you", said the ugly sisters. "You didn't go to the ball!" But Cinderella slipped her foot into the glass slipper and it fit perfectly. The next moment standing beside her was the fairy godmother. She touched Cinderella with the wand and there she was in a golden dress sparkling with jewels and on her feet was the prettiest pair of glass slippers ever seen. The ugly sisters were so surprised that, for once they coulnd't think of anything to say. But the Prince knew what to say. He asked Cinderella to marry him. And then there was a happy wedding. Everyone who had gone to the ball was invited, even the ugly sisters. There was wonderful food, lots of music and dancing. And the Prince of course danced every dance with Cinderella. He would not dance with anyone else.

The key question this weekend from JL: What's next? It's time to invoice him and get approval for what we're going to do next on the site.

Does he like it at all Terry?

We've got several fairy tales - I think the next phase should be nursury rhymes. Also, I went back to the store to check out the redesigned pages on WebTV and discovered that we have more room to play with. While the 640x480, 18pt font, gives you a fairly accurate idea of the width of the screen, you actually get quite a bit more space top to bottom than the PC monitor shows you. So we can put more on a page without it scrolling than I thought! And to echo Amy - Have you had any positive feedback from Jonathan on this?

Can we work up a concrete proposal with stages and costs associated with each stage this weekend? I'd like to present it to him Monday night and take him an invoice for the work done up to date. That way we'll know where we stand.

RE: real audio recording I tried CoolEdit last night to record P&theP(ea). 1. Terry or Kaf, do either of you have CoolEdit registered. Since we are using it for the same project, I don't see why we can't use the same registered copy. It would help to be able to use all the editing features at once. Anybody have a number? 2. I'm having trouble getting the level just right. Kaf, you and I have talked about maybe a cheap mic being a drawback. I have a little better mic than the one that comes with the computer, but I wonder if one made for MIDI might help with popping "P's" and hissing "S's" 3. There are ways to tone down those flaws, but I am a little lost in the world of amplitude and sampling and all. I am going to look for beginner's sound help on the web today. Meanwhile if you guys have some tips, I am in audio mode today.

A better mike would help. Make sure you use metal oxide tape. And make sure you use a smapling rate of 11 22 or 44 I believe it isl. You'll have to experiment with settings till you find the best combination. Try different settings. I'll see about getting us some registered copies.

Tape? Oh. I have been going direct to digital. Maybe that is the problem.

Well, I don't have the option of going to tape first - CD players galore, but no tape player here! As to registering Cool95: It has a major drawback - you cannot edit previously recorded RA files. It can save out to RA, but it can't read in RA. There is a product called Sound Forge http://www.sfoundry.com/pages/forge.htm that can do both, but it is expensive. Any other suggestions?

Yes, I would email the folks who put out Cooledit. Look it up on their website and tell them a. we would like a full version for an in depth review b. ask them for a link from their website to our discussion group (give them the read only url) c. ask them how to acheive the highest sound quality d. ask for references of some other users who know the product well, email them and ask them to join our conference. e. be sure to mention Stroud's links to our site, these are often the magic words in getting review product from vendors. I have had very good luck getting free full versions of products because of the service we are doing for them with our discussion groups linked to Stroud. If we need something more robust, let me know and get me download/ordering information and I'll get Jonathon to ok the expenditure.

From Jonathon: For some of the RA stories we don't have the text, I need to give yoy the book with the stories so you can scan them in. (Text only, not pictures), to go along with Puss In Boots, The sleeping Beauty etc. I made a mistake in suggesting we put "dummy" ad's on the site. Perhaps we'd be better off placing a generic one on the pages that say's "advertise here, call 512 302 1389 to find out more". Hopefully we can have all this completed by next Friday? The Connect Zone : Telnet to thezone.com

Okay, there seems to have been a misunderstanding about our roles. Either that or plans have changed. I guess Kaf and I will be doing no recording at all now? I will have to pay my voice for the one story she has done, whether I am paid for it or not. That is the way I work.

Well, even if I have wasted my time on the audio, I still want to learn how it works. I recorded in CoolEdit and saved as an .ra file. But the file still needs to be run through the encoder? When I try to do that, it tells me the file was done at the wrong sampling rate? Which rate did you guys use? When I went to the RA page for help on my error message #39, here, sadly, is all I learned: Error Messsage Not Defined This is an infrequently occuring error message, and therefore we have not provided a solution in this list. Please send e-mail to Technical Support using the Support Request and include the error message number as well as what you were doing just prior to the message appearing.

We need to go to a purchase order system to avoid any misunderstandings about what needs to be done. Here's the process we have to go through: 1. Submit a detailed account of what is to be done and how much it will cost. 2. I will submit it to Jonathon. 3. When it is approved, I will give you a PO Number for the work. 4. The POs will be numbered sequentially. PO Number 1 and 2 are for $200 each. 1 is for Childrenstory and 2 is for Texaltel as we discussed. PO 1 - to kaf for childrenstory $200 PO 2 - to amy for texaltel $200 Please submit two new purchase orders covering what you have done beyone the intial two purchase orders even though you may have already done some of this stuff, I will get Jonathon to ok these and then I will invoice him. If it we do it this way from now on, there will be no room for misunderstanding or vagueness about what we're doing and how much it will cost. I have to do it this way, because Jonathon and Texaltel are paying for these projects and I can't authorize any work without their approval. Does this sound like a good procedure to follow?

Basically, Jonathon wants us to take charge of this site and clean up the details. One detail he keeps mentioning is editing the one sound file that has two stories in one. Kath or Amy, are either of you set up for editing ra sound files. I don't have a setup with sound right now and I'm working super long hours at work or I would do it myself.

Sorry, Terry - I don't have the ability to do that (Cool96 will only save ra files, not read them in).

OK I'll find a set up locally and work on it.

Laura Lemay has a great web tv site: http://www.minds.com/cgi-bin/maslink.cgi/command?content+edg+web

Jonathon's current requests: I want the site cleaned up, this means: *) Ensure that there is text on the pages that used to have text but now only have RA. *) Add some examples of Nursery and Interactive, even if they are only simple ones. Quite honestly Paul, I have never designed a site before so I look to you as the experienced person here to make it look and run at an exceptable level, by that I mean very profesional, not like it was built as a hobby. Also I have Win95 running on a TVPC, I would like you to come over and configure it so it can log into TVPC.com without all the password screens as we discussed previously. I can't do it today, Sunday, but one night in the week. How about Monday or Wednesday?

Per our discussion last night: Terry is getting the missing text. Amy is formatting the text once Terry gets it. Kathleen is adding the ads to the fairy tales. After these tasks are completed we will discuss adding new material to the site.

In order to activate your new Easystart Server after downloading it, you will be required to enter a unique product installation number (below) for each copy which you are licensed to use. We strongly encourage you to print this page and save it for future reference. Easystart Audio License Key: CustomerName Spring 1000526 LicenseKey: 91000zad4080000240f818ba00003e0400600017a0000107100a7ca1204790000220e Billing Shipping Name: JR Langley JR Langley Company: Spring Spring Address: Rt 2 Box 56R Rt 2 Box 56R Cedar Creek, TX 78612 Cedar Creek, TX 78612 US US Phone: 512.303.4000 Email: terry@spring.com terry@spring.com Credit Card: AMEX #374588271401004 (Exp. 11/98) Quantity Item Unit Cost Cost 1 Easystart Server 295.00 295.00 1 Upgrades Only, no Technical Support 149.00 149.00 Sales Tax 0.00 Shipping 8.00 Total 452.00 For questions regarding this order, please contact us at (206) 674-2651. For technical support issues, contact us at (206) 674-2681. Your unique transaction number is: HDI01226302229706 Download Now Copyright � Progressive Networks, Inc., 1995-1997. All rights reserved. RealAudio is a registered trademark of Progressive Networks, Inc. RealVideo, RealPlayer, and the Real logo are trademarks of Progressive Networks, Inc.

I've emailed Chris Spurgeon to ask him to help with the final leg of getting our Realaudio server back up and running after the license expired. The above email from Progressive Networks has all the license information.

From Jonathon: Can we perleessee get text on Puss and Cinders! Why is it taking so long? I cannot use the site the way I want yet!!! I still do not have a finished product! My response: barton.spring.com is down right now, where the ra server is located, so I put the two ra files that I made in a directory called audio in /var/www/webdocs/childrenstory.com on www.spring.com So putting up these two ra files and putting text into Puss 'n Boots will make the site complete except for the two areas under construction. A while back I sent kaf the url for a site that has interactive stories, I wonder if we could get permission from these folks to republish a couple of these on our site just so we had some interactive content to satisfy Jonathon. I'm not sure where we can get some nursery rhymes, but I'll do some net searching on this today. Basically, we'll be complete with phase one and I can get paid if we: 1. install the two ra files I recorded (when the server comes back up) 2. put text in Puss 'n Boots 3. make sure the text is complete for Cinderella (I'm pretty sure it is but we need to check). 4. find some nusery rhyme content and put it up (get rid of "under construction") 5. find some interactive content and put it up (get rid of "under construction")

Terry, I have not been so involved with this site as Kaf has, so maybe it is none of my business, but, I think he is wild and out of line. He or his buddy is the one who found the text originally. He's the one who should supply it for formatting. Kaf spent a lot of time searching for texts that did not match. He is making us run around in circles.

I agree, but he's the customer and I'm trying to get this wrapped up. I need to find the url for the site with the interactive stories.