Nando (from "News and Observer") was an American internet news service and Internet service provider (ISP), founded in 1993 by the publishers of The News & Observer newspaper in Raleigh, North Carolina. Initially it relied on access via bulletin board technology. One of the first 24-hour news websites, the Nando Times, was launched in 1994, providing edited information from major news agencies that had not then developed their own websites. The parent corporation was sold in 1995 to the California-based McClatchy newspaper chain. The dial-up ISP business was closed down, and the Nando Times pages were discontinued in 2003. The editorial staff continued to process wire stories, which fed other McClatchy outlets. The Nando brand itself was abandoned in 2005 in favor of the name McClatchy Interactive. Inception Nando was produced by the New Media division of The News & Observer newspaper in Raleigh, North Carolina. In 1993 George Schlukbier, a news librarian from McClatchy Newspapers, became the first New Media Director; he was hired by Frank Daniels III, editor of the daily paper, to build this new division. In this effort to prove that the Internet was a better partner for newspapers than AOL or Prodigy, the core developers were Dave Livingston (nicknamed "Sleepy Squirrel"), Charles Hall, James Calloway, Alfred Filler, Fraser Van Asch, "Zonker" Harris, Mike Emmett and Schlukbier. This team built a GUI to the Internet using The Major BBS as a front end, extended to use traditional Internet applications such as Gopher, WAIS, Lynx and Telnet. With this ad-hoc system, Nando.net provided classified news and became a commercial ISP in North Carolina's Research Triangle area, which encompasses Raleigh, Durham, Cary and Chapel Hill. Technology Networking In 1993 networking standards were not as pervasive as they are now. The newspaper publishing tools were based on proprietary networking cards and terminals used with a Tandem mini-computer. AppleTalk over coax cable was the way Macintoshes communicated. Windows 3.1 did not even have a network layer installed by default. Into this mix came a Sun SPARC computer. Transferring data from the Tandem to the SPARC required a common interface, and that interface was X.25. X.25, although developed for satellite communication, was one of the few standards actually implemented by most hardware vendors. Bulletin board technology Before the Web, most people accessed remote computers via dumb terminal emulators running on their PCs. BBS systems came in two flavors: DOS based and