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Introduction<br />

Homeland: An Integrated Set of Tools to Support Regional<br />

Telecommunities<br />

Nicola FREGA<br />

GIUDA Lab.<br />

University of Calabria, ITALY<br />

nfrega@giuda.deis.unical.it<br />

Antonio VOLPENTESTA<br />

GIUDA Lab.<br />

University of Calabria, ITALY<br />

volpente@giuda.deis.unical.it<br />

Tommaso FASANO<br />

GIUDA Lab.<br />

University of Calabria, ITALY<br />

tfasano@barabba.deis.unical.it<br />

Antonio GRECO<br />

GIUDA Lab.<br />

University of Calabria, ITALY<br />

agreco@giuda.deis.unical.it<br />

Four years ago, at Giuda Lab., we've decided to develop a BBS for educational purpose. The system was<br />

<strong>in</strong>tended to support educational activities <strong>in</strong>side the campus of University of Calabria. Actually, dur<strong>in</strong>g last<br />

years, we've been observ<strong>in</strong>g a natural growth of user community spread all over Cosenza h<strong>in</strong>terland, not only<br />

<strong>in</strong>terested <strong>in</strong> educational issues.<br />

With the <strong>in</strong>creas<strong>in</strong>g number of users (at the time be<strong>in</strong>g more than thousand) new needs have arisen up. This<br />

has lead to extend BBS local boundaries towards a national and <strong>in</strong>ternational scenario. Homeland has been<br />

designed as technological solution to realize such an extension.<br />

Currently Homeland is used as a virtual square where people <strong>in</strong>terested <strong>in</strong> places, traditions and customs of<br />

Calabria may meet and exchange <strong>in</strong><strong>format</strong>ion. In addition to that it has allowed many calabrians, especially<br />

those who live <strong>in</strong> foreign countries, to get <strong>in</strong> touch and keep <strong>in</strong> contact with their relatives and friends.<br />

Architectural Issues<br />

Homeland is a system of tools that <strong>in</strong>tegrates Internet and conventional BBS technologies. In particular it<br />

essentially consists of some Internet modules, BBS modules and <strong>in</strong>terfaces between them.<br />

On the Internet side we've built-up:<br />

• Mail<strong>in</strong>g List : to broadcast e-mail messages among Internet Homeland subscribers;<br />

• News server : messages sent to Homeland are made available and classified as local newsgroups;<br />

• Web Board : to let users browse all messages and bullet<strong>in</strong>s from WWW;<br />

• MBBS (Multimedia BBS) & Postcard Service :after retriev<strong>in</strong>g an image from a local Pictorial Database<br />

(PDB) and add<strong>in</strong>g it text, users can post a multimedia message to a Public Web Board or to a private<br />

mailbox; images <strong>in</strong> PDB deal with Calabria and the retrieval software is based on many different<br />

techniques.<br />

On Giuda BBS side we have:<br />

• Netmail : personal mailboxes for BBS users;<br />

• File Areas : archives of b<strong>in</strong>ary files such as images, documents and programs;<br />

• Conferences : public thematic message areas.

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