Dialing Up the Bulletin Board : Technology: Computerized information services are changing the way companies, governments do business.

Imagine you’re a real estate broker with a maddeningly picky customer. Your client wants a one-story building with 100,000 square feet of open space, parking for 150 cars, two loading docks, double-height ceilings and high-voltage power connections. And, oh yes, it must be close to a freeway.

Standard practice had been to flip pages in a loose-leaf binder, where properties were listed first by square footage. That might produce 100 sites, which would then have to be sorted through for the remaining criteria.

The Los Angeles-based American Industrial Real Estate Assn. set out some time ago to find a better way. The result is a simple computer database and search program that includes all property listings of member brokers, who tap into this wealth of information by computer and modem.

If markets once consisted of paper and brokers waving hands, these days they are more often the purview of silicon chips and disk drives. To get to them, companies and governments are increasingly making important information available on line--not only text, but pictures too--speeding these details in electronic form over phone lines 24 hours a day.

There are an estimated 53,000 public dial-up bulletin boards operating in North America today, according to Boardwatch magazine, a quirky journal of the trade. Once the province of low-rent nerds and budding electronic pornography vendors, computerized bulletin boards--BBS for short--are now well-established as a mainstream business tool.

They excel at making lots of information manageable and accessible from anywhere. Realtors, travel agents, conference planners, convention bureaus, flower growers, investors, manufacturers, advertising agencies, graphic artists, movie studios, newsletter services and government departments are practicing electronic commerce on bulletin boards or, more broadly, on-line communication services.

It can be cheap and easy.

“We call it the $100 technology,” says Troy Getty, a partner in Riverside-based Integrated Solutions Inc., which installs and services bulletin board systems and communication services. Knowledgeable do-it-yourselfers can do the job for even less. A fairly powerful BBS can be put together for less than $5,000, and a rudimentary one can be mounted on a secondhand PC for slightly less than $1,000.

For business, one big draw is convenience. The commercial real estate BBS, “is an incredible timesaver,” says James Gillespie, president of the American Industrial Real Estate Assn. and associate vice president at Los Angeles-based Daum Commercial Real Estate Services. Information is kept more current. And under the old system, Gillespie says, “after half an hour with the book you felt like it was 5 o’clock in the afternoon, even if it was 10 in the morning.”

Gillespie says he can weed out many unsuitable properties within five minutes by specifying up to several dozen criteria in an on-line computer search.

To access the system, a broker uses a personal computer to dial the service’s computer, where the information is loaded. The service’s computer searches the database for all properties matching the criteria specified and displays the requested information. (A redesign will soon offer pictures with text.)

Many other kinds of businesses are also turning to electronic bulletin boards. Advertising agencies are logging on to the Picture Exchange, which links stock houses (and their thousands of photographs) with people who use them, advertising agencies and graphic artists.

Eastman Kodak Co. initiated the system and acts as a middleman. “Searching for images is a frustrating business,” says Mike Harrigan, director of markets development at Kodak’s headquarters in Rochester, N.Y. In the decades-old traditional process, ad agencies would call a handful of photo stock houses, describe their needs and wait for the researchers to send samples by overnight mail.

The process could cost $400 or more per search, with sometimes agonizing delays. Furthermore, responsibility for the search shifted out of the hands of the designer to a stock house researcher.

In contrast, Kodak says a common search of the almost 20 stock houses on line would cost $52. With the new system, “you really get to play around,” says Laurel Katz, a production artist at J. Walter Thompson, a New York ad agency.

Ask for a photograph of a computer chip taken indoors at Christmas, with red and green dominating the image, and the computer will display thumbnail samples from its 100,000-picture database. It also accepts orders for overnight delivery and keeps track of the search time for each account. Users can even download a version of a picture by wire.

In June, Kodak will begin testing a similar service to bring data on potential filming locations to movie studios. The idea is to let location scouts search for, say, antebellum mansions without calling all over the South to find one.

Last spring, New York-based American Lawyer magazine launched what is now Lexis Counsel Connect, an on-line service for lawyers offering electronic mail, discussion forums and a place to share research. The service also offers a gateway to the Lexis legal database.

New Jersey entrepreneur Maben Smith, once frustrated in his search for a business to buy, created Business Opportunities Online Inc., a series of databases designed to match buyers and sellers of businesses, as well as investors with capital-hungry entrepreneurs and franchise seekers.

On-line services may be useful, but it’s still not easy to learn of them. Take the case of TravelFile, a Montana-based BBS that links travel suppliers and buyers with information on international travel, including ski reports, calendars of events, even a World Cup soccer timetable, as well as information about cruises, accommodations, tours and special discounts. Users can make bookings and send for information with a few keystrokes.

The service is free to travel agents through the Eaasy Sabre reservation system. Yet many agents don’t even know it exists.

Susan Mitchell, a travel agent at Coronado Travel Bureau in Coronado, Calif., is a convert. “We have access to many more bed-and-breakfast places. We can make printouts for our clients. We just love it,” she says.

Those who pay to be listed on TravelFile notice changes in the business they do. “We received more than a million inquiries when we were Destination of the Month,” says Monica Guinn, leader of the domestic tourism promotion division at the Las Vegas Convention Bureau. “You feel you get a lot of mileage for your money.”

Ben Tyson, partner in a family-owned Radio Shack in Half Moon Bay, Calif., learned about an electronic government procurement system known as GATEC from a customer who worked at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, coordinator of the pilot project. Tyson dials up GATEC and submits up to 30 bids daily to supply electronic components, computers and electronic equipment to the Defense Department. “It’s opened new markets for us,” he says.

In the world of glamour and fashion, Ford Models Inc. will soon introduce a bulletin board that will, in the words of president Joey Hunter, create “an instant audition.” Clients will dial in by computer to see a model moving and talking.

Ford has teamed with Bob Olejar, president of Instant Exposure in New York, and Durand Communications of Santa Barbara in a test of the system, which it hopes will attract casting and advertising agencies.

Even governments, sometimes stodgy and averse to public access, have jumped on the call-in computer service bandwagon.

Many government resources are available on the Internet, a global network of networks, but there is much available even for those lacking Internet access. The Small Business Administration started its first board 18 months ago and add a 900 number. The service lets users download or order SBA publications, files and lists of elected federal representatives. The 900 number also serves as a gateway to other government bulletin boards.

Authorities at FedWorld, a BBS owned and operated by the National Technical Information Service, have taken the trend toward digital even further. Starting this year, contractors who need wage information for bidding purposes can buy the data electronically for a fraction of the printed price.

The Federal Drug Administration’s Import Detention List, which allows suppliers to step in to fill market gaps created by federal agents seizing products at the border, will be delivered within 48 hours instead of three weeks.

“Our on-line services are going like crazy,” says Robert Bunge, business manager at FedWorld.

TECH TIPS (Setting Up Your Own BBS)

You can create your own BBS with off-the-shelf software from companies such as ESoft, Galacticom and Mustang. Companies such as Integrated Solutions in Riverside and Durand Communications in Santa Barbara will sell you a turnkey project. For those who prefer to leave the work to others, they and companies such as Business BBS in Los Angeles will maintain the system, send out bills and update data.