U.S. News & World Report (6/17) listed 31 useful 900 numbers, including: Tele-Lawyer, 776-7000, $3 per minute of counseling; Videofinders, sources for 70,000 video titles, 860-9301, $2 1st minute/$1 additional; and Telename, conversion of 74 million phone numbers to names, 884-1212 (8 am to 6 pm), $1.50/$.75. Other services offer weather, sports, stocks, movie reviews, concert schedules, flight times, prescription drug information, and used car prices.

101 OnLine (San Francisco, CA) plans to introduce French-style videotex service to Bay Area telephone customers. Minitel terminals will be provided for a refundable $50 set-up charge and $9.95 per month. (It is hoped that providing the terminals will succeed where PC-based services have not.) Options will include banking, shopping, email, weather, and other information services -- but not phone directories. [Jon Kennedy, High Technology Careers, 8-9/91.]

Performance Systems International, Inc. (PSI; Reston, VA) has announced After Dark Service (ADS): 300-9,600 baud evening and weekend access to the Internet through local dialups in major U.S. cities. (Many of the initial sites are in NY and NJ; others are Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Dallas, Hartford, Houston, Los Angeles, Mountain View, Philadelphia, Portland, Reston, Santa Clara, and Washington DC.) $35 to register, plus $35/month. John T. Eldredge (info@psi.com), (800) 827-7482. [Kimberly Brown (brown@uu.psi.com), comp.newprod, 8/6.] (Only a terminal and modem is required, so PSI must be providing CPU services. The company also runs PSINet and the Commercial Internet Exchange (CIX).)

LINGUIST@tamvm1.tamu.edu is a new Bitnet LISTSERV forum for linguistics and related fields. To join, send a "SUB LINGUIST " message to linguist-request@uniwa.uwa.oz.au. [The Finite String, 3/91.]

Contact Sam R. Thangiah (thangiah@plains.nodak.edu, thangiah@plains.bitnet) if you are interested in a Usenet mailing list for discussion of Operations Research and AI applied to routing and scheduling. [comp.ai, 8/3.]

The Istituto Tecnologie Didattiche (ITD) -- Institute of Educational Technology -- is a research institute of the Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche (National Research Council). In 1985, the Biblioteca del Software Didattico (BSD) -- Educational Software Library -- was set up as a national point of referral for educational software. The BSD collects, catalogues, and evaluates the best Italian and foreign software. For details on Bitnet/Videotel access to the collection, send a request to romano@icnucevm.bitnet. [Michela Ott (ott@ice.ge.cnr.it), IRList, 8/6.]

Need help with a patent search? You don't have to go to Washington if there's a Patent Information Clearinghouse in your area. California has four, but the one in Sunnyvale is raising its fees 30% this year to pay for government-mandated computerization. [The Business Journal, 6/17.]

Both the Lexis and Westlaw projects have ceased, according to Mary Brandt Jensen (mjensen@charlie.usd.edu). One reason was inability to keep up with the changing information base. [PACS-L, 8/8.]

Several major business schools offer MBA programs for telecommuters. Purdue's two-year program costs $25,500 and requires six two-week visits. It emphasizes quantitative fields such as finance. Pitt has a $28,500 program in general management that ends with two weeks touring European companies. Bowling Green State in Ohio also has a general-management program. Home studies take about 20 hours per week. [Business Week, 8/19.]

One doesn't always hear about projects that fail. Citicorp recently abandoned its grocery-shopping service. (Knight-Ridder lost $50M on Viewtron home shopping in the early 80s, but is now advertising information services for financial analysts. Times- Mirror Co. also lost money on mass-market information services.) Home banking has been a dramatic disappointment, with only 100K subscribers. Use of video-conferencing and email have also been less than hoped, no doubt due to expense, inconvenience, and complexity. The information age will necessarily be upon us soon, but 20% annual growth slowed to 9% in 1989, then 6% in 1990, and is now close to 0%. [Thomas McCarroll, Time, 8/12.] (Even 0% growth in a $500B industry leaves plenty of business for the entrepreneur -- you just have to take it away from someone else.)

Prodigy is test-marketing BillPay USA, a competitor to the Checkfree bill-paying service from Checkfree Corp. (Westerville, OH). Home-banking services also allow you to pay bills electronically, as well as check your balance and transfer funds between accounts, but you must have an account with Wells Fargo, Bank of America, Chemical Bank, or another service provider. BillPay and Checkfree can be used from any bank within the Federal Reserve System. Each charges $9.95/month for up to 20 transactions -- or about $.50 per check -- plus $3.50 for each additional 10 transactions. You also need the software, which is $30 for Checkfree unless you own Quicken or Managing Your Money. For BillPay, you have to pay Prodigy's signup and monthly charges. The only real advantage over paying checks by mail is that it may save you a bit of time and hassle each month. [Rory J. O'Connor, SJ Mercury, 8/11.] (Marketing hype will try to convince you how much your time is worth. In reality, your time is only worth the $$ that you can make with it. Small businesses must worry much more about cash flow than about efficient use of time.)

Do you download data and run it through a plotting program? Perhaps you could download the plots directly. Interactive fax, also known as fax back or fax on demand, gives you pictures over your phone line. You dial an 800 or 900 number, request a custom printout, and route it to your fax machine (or fax modem). Fax Interactive (Norcross, GA; (404) 416-9346) is a service bureau that will put anyone's files online for $1,500 to $2,000. One of their services give you real-time market information and [15-minute-delayed] stock portfolio valuation. Brooktrout Technologies (Needham, MA) developed the technology, but you can now buy the hardware from others. FaxPump Systems (Campbell, CA; (408) 370-6375), for instance, will sell you PC boards for $1295 that can handle up to a hundred selections.

What would you do with interactive fax? As a computer consultant, you could help others set up systems. Brock N. Meeks [MicroTimes, 7/8] suggests that nonprofits (government agencies, libraries, etc.) could put popular documents on line; bureaus could distribute weather and traffic maps; publications could supply article reprints; manufacturers could (and do) make repair information available 24 hours per day; and sales outlets could distribute product specs and maps to their stores. All at a profit, if desired. (It sounds pretty good, but I'd still rather talk to a human when I have a problem.)