[The Net 'a la carte': virtual communities of users and integrated thematic telematic services]. / La Red 'a la carta': las comunidades virtuales de usuarios y los servicios telemáticos temáticos integrados.

INTRODUCTION: Internet and its society of information and communication should be considered to be a smaller society evolving--others would say is trapped--within our society. Therefore, it should be considered not only from a technical or technological point of view but also regarding its human, cultural, social and intellectual aspects. DEVELOPMENT: This article starts with a general view of the present situation on the Internet. We also define the concept of a Virtual Community of Users (VCU). In view of this concept, debate centers on the communities of scientific, professional and academic communities using the Internet, analyzing the present situation, its needs and problems. We continue with the concepts of Virtual Thematic Service (VTS) and Integrated Virtual Thematic Services (IVTS) introduced as a means to solve the needs and problems of VCU. Finally, we describe a real pilot study, based on the IVTS paradigm, known as UniNet.

[Direct communication on the Internet. Uninet: the university link for Integrate Telematic Services]. / 'La comunicación en directo en Internet.' UniNet: La RedUniversitaria de Servicios Telemáticos Integrados.

The importance of Internet as a communication medium is clear due to the amount of information it distributes and the high number of potential recipients it has. The appearance of virtual user communities (CMV) focuses to information classification within subjects of interest for certain groups of people in order to facilitate its search and use. The UniNet project of Integrated Telematic Services for CMV through, as well as other subprojects, the 'propuesta RedUni' encourages the creation of CMV by mean of integration of various computer and Internet resources, such as distribution mailing list, web pages, Internet Relay Chat (IRC), etc. The current state of IRC in such context is presented and the utilities of the known as Scientific-IRC as a professional real time communication tool are discussed.