http://www.modbee.com/technology/story/0,1161,121447,00.html

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Y2K bug bites BeeLine

BEE STAFF REPORTS (Published: Tuesday, December 14, 1999)

People who use The Modesto Bee's BeeLine telephone information service will have to make a beeline for the newspaper Online Web site, modbee.com, or read the newspaper.

BeeLine will be disconnected on Jan. 1, 2000. The software that runs BeeLine is not Y2K compliant, so The Bee will to move many of the services to its Web site.

"This was a hard decision for us, but we feel the combination of our newspaper and Web site will serve our customers well," said Leslie Streeter, The Bee's business marketing manager.

BeeLine, which began in 1992, attracts about 100,000 calls a month. The top five topics are horoscopes, stock prices, sports headlines, the "SchoolLine" program and soap opera updates.

All will remain available in some form.

Soap opera updates will be found in The Bee's weekly TV Week magazine. Horoscopes run each day on the games page in the Classified section.

Stock quotes are in the newspaper every day and will appear on modbee.com, as will horoscopes and soap opera updates.

Eleven schools participate in the SchoolLine program, which allows teachers to record the day's homework on a voice mailbox. Parents and students call in to see what they've missed or just to stay on top of assignments.

The new SchoolLine program will give teachers their own Web pages (which can be edited from any computer with Internet access). Parents and students can then access each teacher's page and can even sign up to get special e-mail reminders from the teacher and notices when the teacher has updated the page.

For more information about BeeLine, call 238-4511 or send e-mail to beeline@modbee.com.

-- Homer Beanfang (Bats@inbellfry.com), December 14, 1999