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Instant SLATE.

By Michael KinsleyPosted Saturday, Oct. 5, 1996, at 3:30 AM ET

(585 words; posted Friday, Oct. 4)

Instant SLATE
Unless you're lucky enough to have a corporate LAN or some other fancy Internet connection, the most irritating thing about the Web is how long it takes for pages to download. Wouldn't it be swell if even those with 14.4 modems could click around SLATE without that agonizing delay? Well, now you can. Beginning this week, SLATE offers (free) a piece of software called FreeLoader, which sets up your computer to download SLATE automatically whenever you choose--in the middle of the night, for example. (This is the actual SLATE Web site itself, not our special print-out file.) Once SLATE is on your own computer, you can read it at your leisure, without those delays, and without running up online charges. FreeLoader can be customized in many ways, but as originally set up, it will download a selection of between three and four newer SLATE articles every day, plus a special SLATE FreeLoader contents page. Using a button on that page, you can easily schedule weekly downloads of the entire magazine. (You can also use FreeLoader to download other Web sites.) But a warning is appropriate: Not everything about FreeLoader is easy or simple. So read the instructions from SLATE, and from FreeLoader, a bit carefully. Click here to give FreeLoader a try.

Department of Departments
Yet another new department starts up this week. We're calling it "Dispatches & Dialogues." Our first set of dispatches, already in progress, is from Harry Shearer at the O.J. Simpson civil trial, conveniently taking place down the street from his house. Our first dialogue, also in progress, is between Andrew Sullivan and Stephen Chapman on the question of whether God exists. Unlike other features in SLATE, which are posted for a week--and unlike the "Committee" and the "Diary," which have new entries every day--dispatches and dialogues will proceed on no particular schedule and for no set length of time, just until they run out of steam. Like a good e-mail thread, they will be episodic. We hope to have half a dozen or so going at any one time. One of our editors happened to run into Bill Gates while shopping for sweatshirts at the company store, and Gates asked him why we had chosen God as the subject of our first dialogue. Our colleague replied, "We decided to start at the top." He recognized his mistake immediately, but it was too late. "Have him killed," Gates instructed an aide.

Fresher Than SLATE
This week's SLATE diarist, playwright Wendy Wasserstein, reports that she listed SLATE as one of her outlets when filling out a biographical-information form for one of the many theatrical boards she sits on. The bio came back to her announcing that she was a contributor to something called SLUT magazine. There is, naturally, a Web site at www.slut.com, but we maintain--in all humility--that the book reviews at www.slate.com are of a much higher caliber.

Talk Back to SLATE
And get paid for it. SLATE's vast business operation will be conducting focus groups in late October in New York; Washington, D.C.; Los Angeles; and San Francisco. We're looking for SLATE readers in those areas to tell us what they like and don't like about SLATE, and will pay participants $75 for their time. If you'd like to join in, please let us know. Call us (collect) at 206-703-7407. Or e-mail a-abaker@microsoft.com with "Slate Focus Group" in the header. Please include your name, city of residence, and telephone number in the message.