FYI, with Bob's permission, here's the e-mail I received from him about Xephon. Bob also responded to a suggestion I had made about making all of the past issues available on their web site, "Your suggestion is excellent and we are starting to prepare the website today so that all Updates published will be available at no cost to anyone who is interested as of Monday, May 17. =============================== Date: Wed, 7 May 2008 17:16:05 -0500 From: "Bob Thomas" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: RE: XephonMark:I apologize for not responding to you sooner regarding your inquiry about the status of Xephon but we have been agonizing for some time about what to do with it. Very soon after we launched z/Journal little over five years ago, I was approached by the head of Xephon, Chris Bunyan. He wanted to retire after running Xephon for more than 25 years and after a period of discussion we agreed to take over Xephon and we set it up as a separate corporation and continued its operation, knowing full well that the subscriber base for the Xephon Update newsletters had been in a steady decline for several years. With the continued growth of the Internet and powerful search capabilities, the need for a technical newsletter series such as the Xephon Updates became less necessary and subscriptions continued to freefall. Xephon has been operating at a loss for more than two years. We attempted to turn things around by offering the Xephon Update newsletters in digital form to eliminate the heavy costs of printing and postage. That move did reduce costs significantly -- but the number of paid subscriptions continued to deteriorate.In a nutshell, we have made the decision that we (TCI) cannot afford to continue to prop up Xephon; so therefore Xephon has been discontinued.I will appreciate your understanding of this situation.Sincerely, Bob Thomas______________________________________________Bob Thomas | TCI Publications | [EMAIL PROTECTED] LBJ Freeway, Suite 800 | Dallas, TX 75243 | 214-340-2147
Mark T. Regan, K8MTR CTO1 USNR-Retired (1969-1991) ----- Original Message ---- From: "Mark T. Regan, K8MTR" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: IBM-MAIN@BAMA.UA.EDU Sent: Thursday, May 8, 2008 7:49:13 AM Subject: Fw: Xephon, are they still in business? To follow-up on my attempts to contact someone at Xephon, I finally got a response back from someone at TCI. According to them, the decision has been made to discontinue all of the Xephon publications. Thanks. Mark T. Regan, K8MTR CTO1 USNR-Retired (1969-1991) ----- Forwarded Message ---- From: "Mark T. Regan, K8MTR" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: IBM-MAIN Mailinglist <ibm-main@BAMA.UA.EDU> Sent: Monday, April 14, 2008 9:17:31 AM Subject: Xephon, are they still in business? Is Xephon still in business? I'm subscribed to their TCP/SNA quarterly, but I have not received the March 2008 issue yet. It's not posted to their web site either and so far I have not had any response from them when I asked about it via their contact page. Thanks Mark T. Regan, K8MTR CTO1 USNR-Retired (1969-1991) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the message: GET IBM-MAIN INFO Search the archives at http://bama.ua.edu/archives/ibm-main.html
