Tune In On Internet To Sci-Fi Home Page
A bleary-eyed reporter burned out from a few too many trips into cyberspace sat in the dim, religious light of the Sci-Fi Channel’s multimedia room and regarded the network’s Internet “home page.”
“We call ourselves The Dominion as opposed to the Sci-Fi Channel,” said Ellen Kaye, Sci-Fi’s poised, soft-spoken vice president for advertising and promotions, who devised and presides over the site.
HOLD EVERYTHING! Here’s a brief detour for those of you still looking for an on-ramp to the Information Superhighway:
A home page is a virtual “place” on the Internet funhouse known as the World Wide Web. It’s as real as the electrons hitting your TV screen, and just as hard to pin down.
It can have full-color pictures, text and stereo sound.
One home page shows a video still of somebody’s honest-to-gosh fish tank. Another robot camera looks out onto a college campus somewhere.
One passionate angler has a picture of a sea bass, sound effects and favorite places to fish.
Best of all, any home page - whether commercial, residential or otherwise - can be linked to anywhere else on the Web. So you just point and click on something that looks nifty, and zot! You’re there.
More and more broadcast and cable networks are venturing onto the Internet but, so far, most of their efforts have been pretty lame. The Dominion is cool.
To get to The Dominion, just log onto your local Internet provider and type out its address: http:/ /www.scifi.com - and remember, the colon, double slashes and the dots in between are VERY important.
Now, back to our story:
“What we’re trying to do on the web,” Kaye continued, “is to be the home base for everything that is science fiction on the Internet. We’re trying to make ourselves bigger than the Sci-Fi Channel.”
That’s why a profit-oriented cable entity like the Sci-Fi Channel would want to provide a free service for anybody, even people who don’t or can’t get the channel.
“It’s not seen as a purely self-promotional entity. It’s an entity in and of itself,” Kaye said. “We make it a very user-friendly place and give access to other areas of the Internet that would be of interest to science fiction fans.”
She pointed and clicked, and The Dominion’s colorful main menu melted into shape. “Of course,” she added, gesturing to the bottom of the screen, “there’s also something that tells you exactly what is on Sci-Fi channel at this very moment.”
There are eight well-traveled “zones” in The Dominion, and other neat things nest inside those zones like Chinese boxes.
One of the coolest zones is “Sci-Fi Originals.”
For the moment, it is dedicated to Patrick McGoohan’s classic TV series “The Prisoner,” which by no coincidence airs on the Sci-Fi Channel every Thursday night this summer. It features an interactive map of The Village, still photos from the series, “Prisoner” trivia, games, puzzles, and audio clips.