X*Press X*Change is an obsolete
computer
A computer is a machine that can be programmed to Execution (computing), carry out sequences of arithmetic or logical operations (computation) automatically. Modern digital electronic computers can perform generic sets of operations known as C ...
-based
news-ticker-style
news
News is information about current events. This may be provided through many different Media (communication), media: word of mouth, printing, Mail, postal systems, broadcasting, Telecommunications, electronic communication, or through the tes ...
feed service that existed during the late 1980s and much of the 1990s. The X*Press service debuted in late 1986 as a low cost, publicly available newswire service that used
personal computer
A personal computer (PC) is a multi-purpose microcomputer whose size, capabilities, and price make it feasible for individual use. Personal computers are intended to be operated directly by an end user, rather than by a computer expert or tec ...
s to read and process the real-time data. X*PRESS Information Services, Ltd. was a partnership between McGraw-Hill and former
cable television
Cable television is a system of delivering television programming to consumers via radio frequency (RF) signals transmitted through coaxial cables, or in more recent systems, light pulses through fibre-optic cables. This contrasts with broa ...
giant Tele-Communications, Inc. (purchased by
AT&T Corporation
AT&T Corporation, originally the American Telephone and Telegraph Company, is the subsidiary of AT&T Inc. that provides voice, video, data, and Internet telecommunications and professional services to businesses, consumers, and government agen ...
and later spun off). Data included delayed
stock
In finance, stock (also capital stock) consists of all the shares by which ownership of a corporation or company is divided.Longman Business English Dictionary: "stock - ''especially AmE'' one of the shares into which ownership of a company ...
ticker quotes and news headlines from the
Associated Press
The Associated Press (AP) is an American non-profit news agency headquartered in New York City. Founded in 1846, it operates as a cooperative, unincorporated association. It produces news reports that are distributed to its members, U.S. newspa ...
,
Agence France-Presse
Agence France-Presse (AFP) is a French international news agency headquartered in Paris, France. Founded in 1835 as Havas, it is the world's oldest news agency.
AFP has regional headquarters in Nicosia, Montevideo, Hong Kong and Washington, D.C ...
,
McGraw-Hill
McGraw Hill is an American educational publishing company and one of the "big three" educational publishers that publishes educational content, software, and services for pre-K through postgraduate education. The company also publishes referenc ...
,
Standard & Poor's
S&P Global Ratings (previously Standard & Poor's and informally known as S&P) is an American credit rating agency (CRA) and a division of S&P Global that publishes financial research and analysis on stocks, bonds, and commodities. S&P is con ...
,
Reuters
Reuters ( ) is a news agency owned by Thomson Reuters Corporation. It employs around 2,500 journalists and 600 photojournalists in about 200 locations worldwide. Reuters is one of the largest news agencies in the world.
The agency was estab ...
, and
UPI. News from outside the U.S. was contributed by
Kyodo
is a nonprofit cooperative news agency based in Minato, Tokyo. It was established in November 1945 and it distributes news to almost all newspapers, and radio and television networks in Japan. The newspapers using its news have about 50 million ...
,
ITAR-TASS and
Xinhua
Xinhua News Agency (English pronunciation: )J. C. Wells: Longman Pronunciation Dictionary, 3rd ed., for both British and American English, or New China News Agency, is the official state news agency of the People's Republic of China. Xinhua ...
.
The X*Press service was transmitted by way of
satellite
A satellite or artificial satellite is an object intentionally placed into orbit in outer space. Except for passive satellites, most satellites have an electricity generation system for equipment on board, such as solar panels or radioisotope ...
. Specifically, the system's data stream was carried on
C-Band satellite onboard
CNN
CNN (Cable News Network) is a multinational cable news channel headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia, U.S. Founded in 1980 by American media proprietor Ted Turner and Reese Schonfeld as a 24-hour cable news channel, and presently owned by the M ...
's (later
WGN's) transponder using
General Instrument (now part of
Motorola
Motorola, Inc. () was an American Multinational corporation, multinational telecommunications company based in Schaumburg, Illinois, United States. After having lost $4.3 billion from 2007 to 2009, the company split into two independent p ...
) InfoCipher 1500P
satmodem
A satellite modem or satmodem is a modem used to establish data transfers using a communications satellite as a relay. A satellite modem's main function is to transform an input bitstream to a radio signal and vice versa.
There are some devices t ...
technology. The InfoCipher modem was an add-on to VideoCipher II+/RS
TVRO receivers and received the data at 9600 bits per second.
Participating
cable companies could also send the data signal over their distribution systems to cable subscribers, who used a cable TV version of the InfoCipher
modem
A modulator-demodulator or modem is a computer hardware device that converts data from a digital format into a format suitable for an analog transmission medium such as telephone or radio. A modem transmits data by Modulation#Digital modulati ...
and software on a home computer to decode and display the information stream. The software — called ''X*Press X*Change'' and ''X*Press Executive'' — was available for the
Amiga
Amiga is a family of personal computers introduced by Commodore in 1985. The original model is one of a number of mid-1980s computers with 16- or 32-bit processors, 256 KB or more of RAM, mouse-based GUIs, and significantly improved graphi ...
,
Apple Macintosh
The Mac (known as Macintosh until 1999) is a family of personal computers designed and marketed by Apple Inc. Macs are known for their ease of use and minimalist designs, and are popular among students, creative professionals, and software en ...
,
Apple II
The Apple II (stylized as ) is an 8-bit home computer and one of the world's first highly successful mass-produced microcomputer products. It was designed primarily by Steve Wozniak; Jerry Manock developed the design of Apple II's foam-m ...
,
Atari ST
The Atari ST is a line of personal computers from Atari Corporation and the successor to the Atari 8-bit family. The initial model, the Atari 520ST, had limited release in April–June 1985 and was widely available in July. It was the first pers ...
, and
MS-DOS
MS-DOS ( ; acronym for Microsoft Disk Operating System, also known as Microsoft DOS) is an operating system for x86-based personal computers mostly developed by Microsoft. Collectively, MS-DOS, its rebranding as IBM PC DOS, and a few ope ...
platforms, although the Macintosh version was considered superior to the MS-DOS version. Sometime in the 1990s, the X*Press X*Change service was renamed InGenius, and faded into obscurity shortly afterward with the rise of the modern
Internet
The Internet (or internet) is the global system of interconnected computer networks that uses the Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP) to communicate between networks and devices. It is a '' network of networks'' that consists of private, pub ...
as well as improved cable television on-screen graphics technology. The X*Change/InGenius service was discontinued in 1997.
Data protocol and user-developed software
X*PRESS kept the data stream protocol secret, revealing the specifications to certain software developers only under
non-disclosure agreement
A non-disclosure agreement (NDA) is a legal contract or part of a contract between at least two parties that outlines confidential material, knowledge, or information that the parties wish to share with one another for certain purposes, but wish ...
s.
Several users, unhappy with the limited capabilities of the PC software provided by X*PRESS or using computer systems for which X*PRESS did not provide any software, attempted to
reverse-engineer
Reverse engineering (also known as backwards engineering or back engineering) is a process or method through which one attempts to understand through deductive reasoning how a previously made device, process, system, or piece of software accompl ...
the protocol of the data stream. This effort was helped by the fact that the Amiga version of ''X*Press X*Change'' was distributed on a floppy disk that had, by mistake, some random portions of the software source code on some of its unused blocks. The accidentally released source code provided some details and terminology used to describe the protocol, and other parts were purely reverse-engineered. It was never completely clear whether it was legal to publish or use the various forms of underground software that circulated among a small community of users.
References
External links
COMPUTE! - X* Press Information Service: The Cable TV And Personal Computer Connection(Issue 78, November 1986, p. 36)
Archives of the X-Press mailing list
{{DEFAULTSORT:Xpress XChange
Pre–World Wide Web online services