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Web Notes -- net.radio, Amish Paradise, SubmitAll, wURLd Presence, International Union of Gospel Missions, Asian Internet Marketing, FindLaw
Update on Metasites -- Village Group, ArchitectsOnline, Canadian Real Estate Association, The HomeScout Guide
Educational Resources -- African Literature, Live from the Hubble Space Telescope, Monster Exchange Project, Web66, Latitude28 Schoolhouse, H-net (Humanities and Social Sciences), Vietnam: Yesterday and Today, The Biology Place
Curious Technology -- Netcharger, VDOPhone, DialWeb, A-Mail
FEATURES:
This is becoming an incredible treasure trove of less well-known 19th century American and English literature. Yes, it's great that you can find the classics here -- but classics are easy to come by in print and in libraries. Now you can get in electronic form interesting, valuable, and largely forgotten works, which have long been out of print. This is like digging through boxes of books buried in your grandparents' or great-grandparents' attic and uncovering one gem after another. But while the attic books would be fragile, and might even be on the brink of crumbling to dust, these books are far more durable and portable, and very easy to copy. It's amazing actually. Up until now, with every passing year a bit more of the past crumbled, randomly, into oblivion. And now, if just one copy of a book survives and is scanned and made available onthe Internet, it suddenly can take on new life. We're seeing the rebirth of nineteenth century literature. We're being given a chance to see the classics of that time of the context of other contemporary works, and the little known works of the same authors. We're being given a chance to develop a much sharper image of what it was like to live in that time, and how much the world has changed, and how much it has really stayed the same since then. Download, read, and enjoy; and be sure to return many times to Gutenberg -- they are adding over 30 new books per month.
The latest version of the best guide to the Internet on the Internet -- version 3.16, Dec. 4, 1995. Also translations of this guide book are available in Hungarian, Italian, Japanese (Kanji), Polish, and Russian.
This book documents the 30-year history of the development of the Internet and reflects on the impact the Internet is having on society today. The full text is available online in various formats.
Version 2.1 is now on-line. The author is frequently updating this document to take into account changes in Internet usage.
An electronic self-publishing project, with interesting info and chatter related to such an undertaking.
This is the new address for the list of print books available directly from authors (started by sci-fi author Vonda McIntyre). These books are mostly fiction, with emphasis on sci-fi, fantasy, and children's books.
"Interactive Graphics Novel" -- actually, a comic-book, short story. I like the pictures, but there's just a sentence a page (it takes quite a while to get through it all) and few choices. A good start. (I'd love to see the day when hundreds or thousands of commercial sites include works of fiction to attract audience.)
For those who do not have the capability or the time to retrieve electronic texts from the Internet, many are available at a nominal price from PLEASE COPY THIS DISK, a project of The Samizdat Express. We just added over 100 new disks, (the average disk contains two books.)
For further information, send email to seltzer@samizdat.com or check our Web site http://www.samizdat.com/
24-hour live Internet-only radio network, using RealAudio software. They say they will also soon to have a 24-hour live Internet-only video network, using VDOlive.
The file is large (over 3 Mbytes) and the playing time is short (30 seconds), but it's well worth the effort to download this one. (Thanks to Steve Fink for pointing me to it.)
Similar to Submit-It, but perhaps more comprehensive. This free service helps you let directories and search engines know about your Web pages.
Another free service that provides one-stop forms-based registration of Web pages with popular search engines and directories.
An association of over 250 rescue missions and Christian agencies that help the homeless, etc.
This is the home site for a listserv for people in Asia who are trying to figure out how to best use the Internet for marketing. (To join the list, "subscribe aim" on first line of an email to majordomo@apic.net).
Free services intended for both lawyers and the general public, including a law index, law review search, and a Web crawler dedicated to searching for legal related matters on the World Wide Web.
Often the companies served by such a site each have their own Web sites as well, and this "meta-site" links some of that pre-existing information in useful ways and serves as the glue to create a business-to-business community.
The first instance I saw of this concept was "To:Boston," a site that went on-line (in beta mode) last fall, created by The Village Group (http://www.village.com) in Medford, Mass. That site linked corporate meeting planners with the hotels and other meeting-related resources in Boston. It was originally developed for the Greater Boston Convention and Visitors Bureau, and is now an independent project (http://www.toboston.com/)
Such sites are of interest not just because of their content, but also as models for new Internet-based businesses.
"A Boston-based resource for and about architects, interior designers, and landscape architects."
This multiple listing service presents information on real estate throughout Canada. The maps look helpful; and deep down, they do have lots of listings. But you have to go through many screens before you finally arrive at descriptions of particular houses.
214,000 homes from 88 different real-estate Web sites, all accessible from one simple form on the first screen.
For future issues, please send me examples of other "meta-sites," particularly ones that "glue" together their communities in interesting ways. seltzer@samizdat.com
Afrlit is a listserv to promote discussion of works of literature by African authors, including both past and contemporary writers and works in all genres. Afrlit conducts an on-line reading group of a work selected by the members. Currently, the group is discussing The Joys of Motherhood by BuchiEmecheta. The next two works discussed will be The Famished Road (Ben Okri) and Anthills of the Savannah (Chinua Achebe). For more information on afrlit, contact Eugene Baer, Afrlit Listowner, at baer@post.its.mcw.edu, or connect to their Web site noted above.
A behind-the-scenes look at NASA and scientists at work. An on-line Teacher's Guide and voluminous background material is available at the site, in support of a series of television shows broadcast over PBS in the US.
Student groups drawing and describing monsters as a cooperative on-line learning project. Interesting educational use of graphics, frames, even Java.
The Internet's oldest and most comprehensive list of K-12 School Web Sites. If you are looking for a school, look here. If you have a site and want others to find it, register here.
A useful assortment of K-12 educational resources and pointers to other such places.
Michigan State University hosts 75 electronic discussion lists that deal with a wide variety of topics related to study in the Humanities and Social Sciences. This Web site has home pages for each of those, as well as other related resources.
A war chronology, a list of ways Vietnam differed from other wars, bibliographies of Vietnam War fiction non-fiction, films, and books presenting Vietnamese and women's points of views on the conflict in addition to links to war sites and those relating to Vietnam today.
Web-based student activities, research updates, and links to sites useful for introductory biology at high school and college levels.
This software purportedly lets you include voice call-back applications in your Web pages. For example, a customer could place an order by filing out an on-line form and, instead of including credit card information, provide a phone number. The Web server prompts the voice response system, which dials the customer back using a standard voice line, and prompts the customer through a series of questions to validate the credit card. (This sounds very promising; but when I tried the on-line demo, I didn't get a call-back.)
One step up from an Internet telephone, VDOPhone purportedly lets you place a call to or receive a call from any other Internet user with this same software and transmit two-way color video and audio or audio only, over modem connections (14.4 and up). You can download the beta version to try it out, but you need a video-capture card and camera to use it.
These applications (based on RealAudio software) link the telephone and the Internet in very useful ways. A-mail purportedly lets you phone, FAX, page, or email to as many people as you like with a single phone call. DialWeb purportedly lets you change audio files on your Web site using your telephone. You dial their automated system and follow the voice prompts.
Netscape's few download sites are in heavy demand, and the "standard" file for 3.0 is enormous -- more than 6 Mbytes. Hence even at 3 AM EDT, downloads timeout, crashing my system.
Netscape has done an excellent job of marketing. I salivate when reading the descriptions of what you can do with 3.0 -- including LiveAudio, LiveVideo, interactive 3D worlds, chat, Internet telephone, white board, and ability to run Java applets. I'd be willing to pay for such capabilities. But I can't figure out any way to get the file either free or for a price.
The opening Netscape screen (http://www.netscape.com/) indicates "Purchasers of Netscape Software Subscriptions get fast access to upgrades on our private Sofware Subscription download site." So after crashing a couple dozen times trying to download the free beta version from several different sites, I tried to find a way to pay and hence get access to this special subscription site. However, it turns out that, as of now, they only sell the "released versions" -- 1.x and 2.x. You can't get the beta 3.0 by paying money.
So I'm forced to play a game of roulette -- repeatedly trying to do a free download from one or another of their sites at various times of the day in hopes that by chance eventually I'll be able to download a complete copy of this "free" software; and hoping that I don't do permanent damage to my computer by crashing so many times.
It turns out that I'm reasonably well equipped -- with a 28.8 modem, Windows 95, a 75 MHz notebook PC, and 16 Megs of RAM. But in two dozen tries, the most I've succeeded in downloading is 2 Mbytes, and anything less than the full 6+ Mbytes is useless.
Given these circumstances and considering the fact that with each release the Netscape Navigator gets larger and hence more difficult to download with an ordinary modem, Netscape would be well-advised to partition their files you can retrieve them separately. Today you have no choice but to download a single humongous self-extracting file. When you run that file, it creates a set of separate files and automatically installs itself. Instead, they should let you download a series of a dozen or more files of 500K or less. then your chances of getting something useful would be greatly increased, and the patient could be rewarded.
In addition, they should consider charging a fee for access to special download servers that are particularly fast and not too crowded. I'd be more than happy to pay.
Returning now to the night of January 21 and my last successful download of the Netscape Navigator...
I was struck by how sophisticated the registration process had become. I found myself on an extended commercial tour through the Netscape Web site, which gives enormous visibility to their software partners. I was intrigued by the concept of "plug-ins" and downloaded Shockwave from Macromedia (http://www.macromedia.com). (This was one of the few plug-ins that would work with a 486 and Windows 3.1 -- most require Pentium and Windows 95. My once glorious multimedia desktop PC has very quickly become obsolete).
Then, once I had loaded the software, despite the approaching dawn, I couldn't help but try out some of the Shockwave examples. A file of the order of magnitude of 100K would download to my system. But instead of this being just multimedia content to then be played by software residing on my system, this seemed to be plug-in software plus content.
What I saw as a result was polished professional, dynamic content (lots of movement) in synch with good quality sound -- a couple minutes worth, which then automatically replayed, until I clicked to go to another URL.
With RealAudio (http://www.realaudio.com), sound streams in, like receiving a broadcast, and it could go on and on and on, and could be either pre-packaged or live. With Shockwave the content is limited/packaged, somewhat like Quicktime, and it is "played", not just received. While there's a delay to download, the files are significantly smaller than with Quicktime. And the sound, unlike RealAudio, is music quality (at least to my tin ear).
The first example I picked was like an animated MTV clip -- a single song presented in very eye-catching fashion.
Next I took a glimpse at a couple of videogames (both from the same source). These were very primitive -- a variation of Tetris and a clone of Asteroids (from Atari 2600 days). The viewing area was small, but the game play was fine and you could do it over and over again (with scores and sound effects in the Asteroids one). But the files were about 30K and 70k and all the game action was there -- and running locally on my machine, until I clicked to go back to the previous URL or moved on to another Web site. Then both the graphics and the software vanished. I never had the option to save it -- this is a one-time experience. Unlike Quicktime, I can't download it and play it locally whenever I like. I have to connect to the Website again and download the one-time plug-in software and content to play it again. This looks like it has great potential as an audience grabber and holder for Web sites.
Last I checked out some advertising material -- active banners where the words didn't just appear on the screeen, but rather they danced and flashed and scrolled left to right and right to left. This was like electric signs where words and images move across a panel/screen to catch your eye. There also was a fast-paced, well-done animation with MTV style music. The dynamism and the images reminded me of some of the best current TV commercials. And while it would take 10-30 Megabytes to capture such a TV ad in Quicktime or as an AVI file, with Shockwave this rich graphic and audio content can be conveyed in a file of the order of magnitude of 100K.
So what is this stuff? -- Shockwave and plug-ins in general? How do they work? To my untutored mind, it resembles what people have been saying Java would do. Are Java applets and plug-ins second cousins, subsets of the same basic approach to delivering software plus content on a one-time basis?
I'd really like to know what it takes in terms of equipment, software, time, and training to produce multimedia content of this kind. How expensive is this? Will the little guys have a chance on this new playing field? While the quality of what I saw was very high, the work seemed to have been done by small shops, creatively taking advantage of a new medium. But is this work that you can do yourself (in your basement), or do you need to pay a well-equipped design firm to do it for you?
If you have technical insight into this or other plug-ins and what it takes to produce multi-media content of this kind, please send me email.
Date: Fri, 16 Feb 1996 00:06:43 -0500
I just read your posting/musings regarding Shockwave and the Netscape plug-ins in general. By now, based on the visibility your site gets, I'm sure you've been inundated with enthusiastic multimedia 101 tutorials.
You must love email. Anyway, here's my two cents...
The basic difference that I see between Java and plug-ins such as Shockwave is external access to data. The plug-ins are essentially self-contained documents or applications which tap into a run-time player on the client PC. Kind of like having someone send you a Powerpoint presentation along with the projector application. Shockwave is probably the most compelling of the initial plug-ins, because it utilizes Macromedia's Director, the heavyweight of multimedia authoring tools (and the primary tool used to create "Myst"). The great thing about the Director plug-in, as you discovered with the arcade games, is the interactivity that's available.
Java is more like having someone send or install on your PC a compiled, stand-alone program. It's like having a Basic program on your PC. The primary difference that I see is that Java is a language, rather than an application, and one of the biggest benefits is that it can access external data. This feature is the benefit most widely promoted with the stock-quote ticker-tape effects being demonstrated across the 'net.
Back to the plug-ins, which I think have the greatest relevance to the great unwashed non-C programmers we pride ourselves in being...a recent addition to the plug-in announcement list is Astound by Gold Disk. If you don't already know, Astound is essentially Powerpoint with native multimedia capabilities (sound, animation, video, etc.) built right in. If you can create a presentation in Powerpoint, Harvard Graphics, etc., you to can create exciting multimedia Web content. Assuming, of course, you can create exciting presentations.
Which means, finally, that the large mega-media companies do NOT have a stranglehold on delivery of multimedia content. Just the opposite. One of the largest challenges facing small multimedia developers (apart from finding new sources of caffeine-type stimulation) is distribution of their work. Plug-ins bring home the dream of the Internet as being the ultimate delivery vehicle. Think the record companies are scared?
If this is not part of a mass of e-response, I hope it has been helpful. I'm somewhat privileged to even be attempting to provide useful information to someone who has achieved the kind of 'Net success you have. I have tremendous admiration for your success at bundling an enormous amount of scintillating 'content' into a 10MB site with no graphics. Keep it up!
Date: Sat, 06 Apr 96 00:53:15 -0800
http://www.tiac.net/users/act2/
I just read, re-read actually, your draft article where you talk about what is happening with multimedia on the Web. I'm still exploring the technical parts of this but it doesn't look like it's going to be all that bad.
Quick Time and QuickTime VR doesn't look to expensive for example. $600 to $1000 (real money but not outragious) for camera and additional software and you're pretty much there. We have high hopes of trying it in the high school I teach at next year. We're already getting kids to build multimedia games (though not yet Internet versions) with Hyperstudio and a $100 camera attached to a Mac Quadra.
Colleges are talking about Java being the next big language in CS programs. I think we'll be seeing great stuff from them over the next year or so.
I think we'll be seeing great things from small as well as large colleges. The college I attended, which is small, is doing CS stuff at the undergraduate level that most students don't get to do until grad school. Why? Not because of having lots of money but by being limited to only having undergrads. They find grant money because the faculty wants to learn and try and grow. Having only undergrads is something of an advantage, IMHO, because undergrads are less afraid to fail and so try more. Grad students in big schools have to impress faculty so they can get their next degree or get that big job in industry. Undergrads are still in that "invulnerable" stage of their lives. :-) Not only that, but expectations are lower so they are constantly impressing themselves and others. They do more with less then anyone expects. Besides, remember the price of admission (hardware costs) are at rock bottom.
The explosion of kids on the net generating content is amazing. I've already had mail from junior high kids, with their own home pages, who are planning on attending my high school next year. The team I have working on the schools web pages are mostly freshmen. Web technology is so easy to use that kids are rushing to use it. We have multimedia classes that are overflowing. Kids want to use sound and pictures and new tools make this easy. Do you remember ADVENTURE and ZORK? These were/are games where one travels around some sort of cave picking up things, meeting strange creatures, and on and on. Well, we have high school students, some of whom really couldn't program out of a paper bag, creating such games. And not text only by any means. Audio and video are standard. That's what they are used to and that's what they create.
I believe that the big multi media companies will have something of an edge. They can buy the best cameras and hired professional actors and graphic artists. But students and hobbiests will be able to do some serious work. I think. I hope.
Date: Fri, 2 Feb 1996 23:12:25 -0800
My name is Vijay Mukhi and I come from Bombay, India. I came across your page while surfing the net today.
You must be acquainted with the latest technologies like Java and Netscape plug-ins which are all set to change the way we perceive the Internet and the way we live. For the wide-eyed newbies, I have put up a tutorial on these two technologies at http://www.neca.com/~vmis
Content providers typically would like the same kind of control that is available with a printed page -- selection of typeface and size of type, and placement and size of graphics -- the total layout. They value the visual context in which content is presented, and they are used to paying graphic artists to provide them with just the look they want, and building their brand identity around a particular look.
But the screen of a computer monitor is not the same as printed paper.
Identical images can be printed on millions of pieces of paper; but computer users have monitors of different sizes and shapes, with different abilities to display color. So it is only natural that users want to adjust the presentation of the content to suit the capabilities of their screen display. And even better, they like to be able to search, save, cut-and-paste, and manipulate the material -- making full advantage of the intelligence of their computers, providing capabilities that were impossible with plain dumb paper.
Plain vanilla HTML, with the design goal of accommodating a wide range of desktop systems, put much of the look and feel in the hands of the user. Now extensions to .HTML, particularly those advanced by Netscape, are putting much more control in the hands of the content provider. For example, features like "frames" allow the content provider to insert advertising material in ways that keep it visible on the screen even as you scroll forward. But many users will find that approach offensive and will want to regain control of what they see on their screen. That immediately opens an opportunity for others to write code to disable frames and other such advertising-oriented features and sell that capability to users as an add-on to their browser software.
Hence we see a creative tension in Internet software development projects -- a gentle tug-of-war, in which each development opens opportunities for new developments.
Consider, for example, Acrobat, which some content providers already use as an alternative to .HTML, which gives them considerable control of the layout and puts handcuffs on users, preventing changes. If Acrobat or any other presentation-oriented format becomes more widely used I would expect growing market demand for counter-measures -- for software that enables users manipulate those files that were intended to be inalterable.
Another aspect of the same tug-of-war appears in the design of Web sites. While plain vanilla .HTML put much of the look and feel of the individual page in the hands of the user, the content provider could control the user's experience at the Web site through the site structure and the use of hyperlinks. And software developers seized that opportunity, providing tools to help content providers to that easily and well. Now Digital's search service, AltaVista, provides full-text search of the whole Web and newsgroups, with powerful tools to narrow your searches in valuable ways. And this new capability allows the user to bypass a Web-site's carefully crafted structure -- not going through the front door, not following the hyperlink paths, but rather going straight to the sought-after information. Users love this new freedom and control. And software developers will find that it opens new business opportunities for them to provide more control, once again, to the content providers.
For example, the AltaVista capability should increase demand for software that lets a Web site provide individualized experiences for users, such as personalized pages created on the fly based on user profiles. Sites that use that approach will provide users with reasons for once again coming in through the "front door" rather than just drilling in anywhere, looking for a single nugget of content. By creating an environment that gives the user added value, the content provider regains control of the context -- temporarily, until the next pull in the user's direction.
So what comes next? I'd expect users to pay for the software and/or services that will give them personal agents, which can provide them with the personalized content they want in a context they define for themselves.
So Internet software development advances, providing ever more capability, but with this gentle rocking tug-of-war, back and forth between providers and users of content, an ever-growing series of opportunities.
Date: 26-JAN-1996 18:26:12.75
Many years ago I was lucky enough to take a course through the University of Santa Cruz called "Design of Online Information Systems". The course pre-dated the Web, but was very valuable to me and greatly influenced my thinking about Web site design.
The course stressed that there are two types of information or two types of documents:
There is absolutely no value in the layout or presentation of the SPD.
The annual report on the other hand is largely presentation oriented.
There is very little real content in the annual report. Instead, focus is placed on the layout, look'n'feel and tone of the report. Is it confident? Is it approachable? Etc. These two example are extremes and a lot of information falls somewhere in between -- structure/content is important, but layout and presentation can/does add value. But still, the interesting question is "Does the value of the information stand on it's own without the presentation?"
HTML was originally oriented toward the structure of the information.
Acrobat was oriented toward the presentation of information. Many people (most notably Netscape) have focused on adding non-standard presentation control into HTML. That has, in my opinion, further blurred and confused the issue. There is a significant effort underway in the Web community to introduce style sheets to HTML documents.
The goal of this effort is to, once again, separate the structure of the document from the presentation of the document. Style sheets are the only thing left that will hold together the disintegrating HTML standard and allow the Web to evolve in a healthy way. As my friend Erik Goetze reminds me... "What we do to the Web, we do to ourselves." Chief Seattle
Email: paciello@yuri.org PH/FAX: (603) 598-9544
WebAble! http://www.yuri.org/webable/
New developments and cutting edge technology are nothing new to the World Wide Web and it's community of users. So it should come as no surprise that similar developments are taking place within the realm of web accessibility for people with disabilities. This very topic, was featured as a workshop at the Fourth International World Wide Web Conference, held in Boston, Massachusetts, December 11, 1996. The following article provides an overview of that workshop.
The workshop theme, "Designing the Web for People with Disabilities" was selected in order to attract world leaders in the area web accessibility. Sixteen persons attended the workshop, twelve well-known experts in the assistive technology circles.
On a sad note, one of the attending experts was the President of SoftQuad, Yuri Rubinsky. Yuri died tragically this past January 21st. Ironically, just hours before his death, Yuri and I were talking about building access protocol into SoftQuad's new WWW/SGML browser, Panorama. Yuri was technical director of the International Committee for Accessible Document Design (ICADD) and was instrumental for authoring the current SGML and HTML code that makes it easier for people with print disabilities to read electronic information. He will forever be remembered as a person who cared about the needs of people with disabilities.
Following is a list of several advancements announced at the workshop:
A realtime speech interface relieves the typical burden of building an offscreen model for normal screen readers for the blind. Bill Barry of Oregon State University provided an excellent demonstration of the EMACSPEAK application.
Jon's presentation at the workshop resulted in the following recommendations:
A clear need, particularly for the blind, is the ability to read math, science, and computational notation via the Web. Because of it's graphical nature, rendering and/or transforming math to Braille or synthetic speech is challenging. To date, no one in the SGML or HTML community has developed a solution.
Date: Tue, 16 Jan 96 12:18:26 EST
I have been a member of your mailing list for some time now. I have found it consistently informative and useful. Thank you.
Recently (this morning, actually), I discovered your home page. It, also, is useful. In the area of Author Home Pages, I may be able to contribute.
Following is a list of URLs which may be of use to you. The renown of the authors listed varies. Feel free to pick and choose.
The Rossetti Archive http://jefferson.village.virginia.edu/rossetti/rossetti.html
Burroughs, William S. http://www.peg.apc.org/~firehorse/wsb/wsb.html
Dante, Renaissance; in Print http://tuna.uchicago.edu/Dante/Dante_Ex1.html
Donovan K. Loucks' H.P. Lovecraft Page http://www.primenet.com/~dloucks/hplpage.html
Guy Gavriel Kay http://www.e-commerce.com/Shift/pulp/kay.html
King, Stephen http://www.freenet.ufl.edu/~afn01115
McCullers, Carson http://cathouse.org/Literature/CarsonMcCullers/
Michael Crichton http://tam2000.tamu.edu:80/~cmc0112/crichton.html
Seamus Heaney, Nobel Poet http://sunsite.unc.edu/dykki/poetry/heaney/heaney-cov.html
Tolkien FAQ http://www.daimi.aau.dk/~bouvin/tolkienfaq.html
Tolkien Homepage http://descartes.uwaterloo.ca/h0/mathsoc/.csc/.www/.rclippert/tolkien/rootpage
R.L. Stine http://scholastic.com:2005/public/Stine-Home.html
William Faulkner http://www.mcsr.olemiss.edu/~egjbp/faulkner/faulkner.html
REPLY -- Thanks. I've now added those and a few others, as well, to the list of "Author Pages."
Date: Fri, 19 Jan 1996 20:36:18 -0600 (CST)
Thanks for including the info. on scripts in your latest newsletter issue. I am blind and my 12-year-old son is involved in acting. I run lines with him so finding scripts via the internet, then printing onto a Braille printer is certainly ideal for what we do. Have you seen many plays, specifically Grease anywhere?? I have used the net lots for work but haven't taken the time to develop how it can benifit me and my family in other ways.
REPLY -- I haven't specifically looked for plays. If you have access to the Web, I suggest that you use Alta Vista to search for it http://www.altavista.digital.com/ The best source for movie scripts that I've seen is Scripts-O-Rama. http://pobox.com/~drew/scripts.htm
Date: Sat, 20 Jan 1996 21:24:26 -0500
In the last few weeks we have had a dramatic increase in participation in our online HTML tutorial. The results of a survey indicated that several of the participants read Internet-On-A-Disk which I understand you edit. So we subscribed.
What can I tell you . . . as an online training service we've discovered that a large percentage (8.5%) of our paying students (as opposed to the hundreds who used our HTML tutorial without charge) are "home bound", temporarily or permanently disabled. An additional 3% indicated a preference for our online type of professional development because of hearing impairment. Needless to say the articles in the first issue we received "MAKING THE WEB ACCESSIBLE FOR THE DEAF, HEARING AND MOBILITY IMPAIRED" and "ARE PARTICIPANTS BORN OR MADE? THE POTENTIAL OF WEB-BASED DISCUSSION FOR DISTANCE EDUCATION" were bull's eyes by us! You might find the interview with our founder and General manager, published on our primary web site http://www.LearnSkills.com of interest.
In light of the above I felt it might be appropriate to bring our modest contribution to your attention. Perhaps Internet-On-A-Disk's readership might find it of interest. If you are interested in additional articles on the subject of our business like the articles I alluded to above, let me know. I'm certain our staff, after reading your ezine (I've forwarded it to absolutely everybody!) will be interested in contributing.
Date: Sun, 21 Jan 96 21:39 EST
I agree with you about just enough quality. My motto actually is "Half Fast Is Usually Plenty Fast Enuff."
I never could have made my software perfect, even if I had had full time full $$$ backing. Actually, I looked at a lot of commercial products, and decided that I was already better than that! So I released it as shareware, telling people that it was worth exactly what they paid for it, $0.00
This fits the product perfectly. It is a way to survey land, getting 98% of the information for 2% of the expense and effort.
I'll admit to creeping featuritis, tho most features are things that I wanted for my own use. And users have found bugs (none that I considered serious), and offered improvements (many of which I have added).
The biggest advantage is that I do not spend my entire income on advertising. Back in the dark ages when I sold this information on the macerated bodies of our fellow Dendro-Americans for $150 a shot, I netted less money. And it was a lot less fun.
As for the much ballyhooed Web, I have found it LESS useful than plain text FTP, usually done thru an e-mail server. Part of the problem is that WWW forces me to read on a color monitor. For me, this is a CRT, which is much harder on my eyes than a mono LCD screen. I would quit if I had to look at that color monitor all day. So here, 1/2 fast is better than the real thing. Plus WWW chops up the information, fills the time with gratuitous images, and seems more like some insanely mutated video game than a research tool.
So, for all those who think that they cannot match bugs/features with the big boys, my advice is to not even consider trying.
Maybe I'm being a jackass about today's software industry, but that is just how it is.
Date: Tue, 23 Jan 1996 10:33:05 +0000
Richard, another afterthought:
>> I'm looking forward to the day (which should be soon) when everyone
can be a broadcaster (as well as a publisher).
Tower of Babel?
>> Right now it's a bit like ham radio. But it's very intelligible and very usable as a social medium and even for business.
Did I mention this URL? file://uiarchive.cso.uiuc.edu/pub/etext/gutenberg/etext93/
-rw-rw-r-- 1 ftpadmin ftpadmin 193398 May 31 1993 radio10.txt
-rw-rw-r-- 1 ftpadmin ftpadmin 82040 May 31 1993 radio10.zip
-rw-rw-r-- 1 ftpadmin ftpadmin 199497 Jan 18 1995 radio10a.txt
-rw-rw-r-- 1 ftpadmin ftpadmin 84625 Jan 30 1994 radio10a.zip
The title of this text is "The Dawn of Amateur Radio in the UK and Greece" by Norman F. Joly (who is my father - I own the copyright; he transferred it to me and I sent the text to Project Gutenberg).
Date: Sat, 06 Apr 96 11:56:07 -0800
An excellent example of search robots, run amok - my site is for authors to publicise themselves and their books, mostly mass-market genre fiction. One author's page, from about her second week, was getting far more hits than other, much better known, authors. She had the most popular page on the site for no discernible reason - no rave reviews, no publisher links, no NYT best-seller mention, no home page, and getting 25-40 hits a day.
This continued for some time, then I got an e-mail from the manager of an adults-only site. Their robot had fetched back the title of this author's romance novel based in 1880s Colorado - "The Bride Wore Spurs" - their database had her specific URL listed in with the other pages involving spurs, whips, chains, etc., and their visitors would get the link from their search engine. Finally one of the users asked the adults-only site why the link to a romance novel was there and a human checked. They apologized for the misdirected traffic, deleted her URL from their database, and no longer send their robot to my domain for titles. Her traffic immediately fell to the typical mid-list authors'.
I occasionally take a log file, sort by requesting domain, and trace where people go. Most of them are heading to a specific genre or page rather than starting at the "front door". One enterprising visitor (the same IP address, usually the same time of night) seems to have figured out how to grab all the novel excerpts without touching the higher links. This user comes through about once a month, leaving a string of rapid-fire hits on just the new excerpts. They are only linked form the author's page, and I don't see a hit to that page - just the new excerpt.
Others will notice the naming convention, and check from their command line ... seeing dickensc.htm and austenj.htm they try flemingi.htm to see if he's there.
My way of herding them is with lures ... keep the genre "front doors" up to date, and use them as the "what's new" page for that genre. I have essentially created several overlapping sites with a front door for each.
Thanks to the search engines, using robots.txt and the META tags is more important than having a whizzy front page.
Date: Sat, 06 Apr 96 01:16:19 -0800
http://www.tiac.net/users/act2/
The Web is too short on content. Now I'm sure you are going to tell me there is lots of content. And to some extent that's true. It's probably true in raw terms. But as I look around the web the thing I see most often is pointers. Pointers to pointers are more common then pointers to actual information. This is one of the big problems with using web search engines BTW. Do a search and you are likely to get several pointers to pointers for every pointer to real content. Or so it seems.
Pointers are what makes the web a web. But look at a spider web sometime. It's mostly empty space. So is the WWW. It's a web that is still catching content.
What I think will happen is that that will change. Right now there are too many people wanting a "presence" on the net but with no real idea of `how to make a real contribution. My homepage is an example.
My son's is yet a better one. The content of my son's page is a picture and some brief information about him. The rest of the page is pointers to sites (which do have content) that he is interested in. My own page has more information about me, a large list of pointers, and some essays.
Now I could argue that this is content. And I do wish that more people had web pages so I could learn about them but that's not serious content. Other than sociologists there is little value to other than curious people in such a site. Even my essays are more editorial then strictly factual. An ego thing as much as anything.
Commercial sites do have serious content. That is likely to be the fastest growing part of content. My hope though is that educational sites start growing content faster. Commercial and government content is too self serving. The web will (is) starting to fill up but I'd rather see it fill up with books then with billboards.
From: Toby Levy
Date: Fri, 02 Feb 1996 10:02:47 est
I have been surfing through your wonderful website and having a wonderful time.
As a 30 year Pynchon fan, I couldn't help noticing your approval of Gravity's Rainbow and your comment of "Awful" for Vineland. I read Vineland as soon as it was published and was not impressed, although I didn't think it was awful.
This summer I took it with me on my vacation and re-read it. I don't know if it was the familiarity or the lowered expectations, but the book seemed incredibly beautiful the second time through. I wonder if you ever gave it a second chance. He supposedly has a new book coming out this year.
A college buddy of mine, Cliff Mead (who wrote a bibliography of Pynchon) called me to tell me he is reading an advanced copy of The Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace and that Wallace is the "next Pynchon." I took Wallace's first book out of the library and am reading it. It's ok, but nothing more. The reason I mention this is that the last time Cliff called me about the Next Pynchon, was right after he finished The Goldbug Variations, which you praised on your website. I enjoyed the Goldbug Variatons, but I was much more impressed by Power's next book about the doctor (cant remember the exact title, something like Wandering Soul), and have his new book on my list of books to read.
I certainly wish I had your organization skills to keep track of all the books I've read. About the closest thing to that for me is that I collect Modern Library books and read them in as close to the order they were published as I can (I'm up to 1928 now). Since I started reading them 15 years ago I have read over 150 of them and have a record of my ratings for them (excellent, good, fair, poor). But I have read far more books than that.
I really enjoyed your web site. Keep up the great work.
Date: Thu, 1 Feb 1996 08:19:09 -0500 (GMT-0500)
http://wwwchem.uwimona.edu.jm:1104/uwichem.html
I just found your very useful site and thought I should drop a line to say thanks for your efforts.
I run a site at the Chem Dept in Jamaica and am continually amazed at what can be done with little resources but yet have such an incredible impact.I wrote a Windows program to display a range of spectroscopic data and have made it available from the site. To illustrate how it can be used in teaching I collected up some different samples from local material like coffee and spices etc.
Although you do not use graphics you will appreciate that for chemistry teaching, pictures of molecules are often important. A free program is available from Scotland such that if 3d coordinates are given for a molecule it is possible to link a picture of a molecule to its structure and a simple click downloads the data file to the remote machine and the molecue can then be rotated and viewed from any direction. No need for static displays, give the data and they can do what they like with it.
In much the same way, I can link from a picture of the molecule to its spectroscopic data. Download the text data file, spawn the external viewer and you now have live data to expand, plot etc.
If only I had a few extra pair of hands or more hours per day the scope is enormous. I have just got a small grant to start to make CD's since I hope to be able to produce not only examples of different spectra but include video clips of each of the instruments used to record the data with a simple overview of how the sample was prepared, where it sits in the machine and how the machine is operated.
I've not had so much fun for years and I can convince people that I'm working for a living.
Check out some of my 150+ web pages.
In particular look for http://wwwchem.uwimona.edu.jm:1104/lectures/pimento.html
The best part is, this is all running in less than 40 MB on a second hand junked 100MB hard disk and all I'm dependent on is the local power company and SPRINT keeping me online!!!
Date: Sun, 28 Jan 1996 16:09:16 +0900 (JST)
Shareware, the 'try-before-you-buy' software, and freeware is reaching more and more users worldwide through WWW and the Internet. Sometimes a shareware program written to run on an American operating system won't work on a system from another language area. Or at the very least, the documentation and on-screen information is not in the user's own language.
As a volunteer translator of an electronic e-zine, I am in contact with more and more programmers who would like to have their work translated and/or localized for other language areas. I know that there are some individuals working in this service, but I wonder if there is any network of such people. My personal philosophy is that
Having a central database of people working as free-lancers as well as those willing to volunteer some time might streamline the search on both sides.
I would welcome feedback, suggestions, information, thoughts about all this. Many thanks. irene bensinger lirene@tcp-ip.or.jp
Date: Sun, 21 Jan 1996 22:01:26 +0100
>I've received hundreds of requests for Internet-on-a Disk from Italy in the last few days. Has there been some mention of our activities in the Italian press?
It was mentioned in an Italian news letter about the internet called ByTheWIRE. Here it is the mention:
Net Mining
[INTERNET-ON-A-DISK] -- NetGuide lo ha incluso nell'elenco dei 50 siti Web piu' interessanti, Internet World lo ha scelto come migliore Home Page personale del 1995. Considerato il disinteresse che i colleghi della carta stampata dimostrano, con qualche rara eccezione, nei confronti di ByTheWIRE, siamo davvero un po' invidiosi del trattamento riservato al sito Web di Internet-on-a-Disk, una newsletter che si occupa di aggiornare periodicamente i suoi 7000 abbonati relativamente alla disponibilita' di nuovi testi elettronici di pubblico dominio. Come ByTheWIRE, Internet-on-a-Disk e' disponibile sia in formato HTML che ASCII. Per ricevere regolarmente la versione ASCII della newsletter occorre scrivere a samizdat@samizdat.com. - http://www.samizdat.com/
if you want futher info on By the wire contact: Carmelo Saraceno, ByTheWIRE editor, mel@audipress.it
Date: Sun, 21 Jan 1996 18:21:04 -0800
>"Does anyone know of a PC company that uses interactive Web-based discussion software to provide effective support?"
If you get some interesting answers to this question, I'd like to know about it.
My first book (World Wide Web Marketing - John Wiley & Sons) just hit the bookstores.
My next one (just getting underway) is focused on customer service.
I think automated communications is going to change what buyers expect from trading partners, so it's time to offer up a little theory and point to a handful of examples.
If you find a good source of PC support, it would make a great example!
Date: 26-JAN-1996
http://journals.ecs.soton.ac.uk/
In 'Who controls the context? - search engines and the fate of carefully constructed web sites' you said
> Not only can users move smoothly from one site to another without
aids and context; in the near future they will be able to go from pages
deep inside one site to pages deep inside another, without the help of
hard-coded hyperlinks.
> Search engines, agents, and other tools that enable users to drill
straight to what they want when they want it -- bypassing the carefully
constructed contexts of sites like Virtual Vineyards -- will soon make
that business model obsolete.
Large-scale connectivity without hardcoded hyperlinks is one aspect of our approach, which uses something called the Distributed Link Service.
We are in the process of developing a demonstrator application in the Open Journal project. The DLS is itself an offshoot of a newly commercialised hypermedia development package, Microcosm.
The whole approach is based on something we refer to as 'open' linking. As you say elsewhere, it is the culture the technology enables rather than the technology itself that is important. In this respect the implications of open linking are potentially far-reaching. One similar approach we are aware of is Hyper-G, an Austrian link system. This is like a Microsoft all-in-one solution to our more customisable approach.
The point is this is just one approach, and there may be other quite different routes to the desired 'cultures', which is why the evidence that led you to your hypothesis, although 'limited', may be important.
From: Peter Sylvan <psylvan@world.std.com>
Date: Thu, 1 Feb 1996 09:39:56 +0001 (EST)
I like your poem "The Way of the Web" which, as good poetry should, inspires more. Here are some of the lines that immediately came to mind:
To act, but not to be limited by one's own ability,
to build on the works and lessons of others,
and to inspire others do likewise --
this is called the Way of the Web.
The best is like water.
Water dissolves barriers
and nourishes all things,
Water, the mother of life,
reaches out and covers the earth -
and from these new shores so shall they come
to build great ships to sail this sea
the source of all our dreams to be.
Date: Wed, 17 Jan 1996 16:35:21
My compliments for internet on a disk. I am personally involved in the training of future business consultants in Mozambique, focusing on investment and restructuring of the small and medium private sector business. A major problem in the country I live in is, that books about macro-economics, management, data bases, the internet and other sciences are hardly available. We do not have www facilities, search engines and the sophisticated software you are writing about. May be you have an idea how the internet can be practical to students with an average annual income of eighty US$, using an old-fashioned 80X486 PC, 40-80 MB hard disks and 14.400 baud modems, simple internet connection (SNUUPM) to get into contact with the really useful educational information, that is available in databases all over the world. We would be happy, if you could give us some advice on the transfer of know how from the highly industrialized countries in the north to the highly underdeveloped countries in the south.
REPLY FROM A COLLEAGUE AT DIGITAL EQUIPMENT
From: Paul Keresey, Internet Business Group, keresey@ljo.dec.com
I think this note points up a dilemma faced by many people including many in developing counties, that is, very limited resources to connect and use the Web. The problems associated with limited computing power on the desktop, very slow and often unreliable dialup connects, the very high cost of connections to the Internet all combine to keep these users from joining the Internet "community."
One way to minimize some of the problems of having very limited resources is to use a Proxy Server or the Proxy capability of a Web Server. Proxy Servers are normally associated with providing access through a corporate firewall, but they also have the ability to "cache" web pages and keep them available on their local disks.
This caching feature can be used to set up a local "copy" of information (web pages) that the users can access, without the need to connect directly to the Internet. This could provide the following benefits:
1. the proxy server could be connected to the Internet over a high speed connection, while the local users are only connected to the proxy. An administrator could load either a predefined set of pages, most popular, etc., or have a subscription service and load them as requested.
2. most of the current proxy servers are designed to flush the cached information, either on command or with an aging process. This needs to be worked around, by maximizing the amount of time the proxy keeps the information.
3. browsers must point to this proxy, to take advantage of this. Navigator v2.0 has a new feature, Automatic Proxy Configuration, where you can have scripts pre-setup to use certain proxy servers for certain URLs or hosts.
This type of setup could reduce the amount of traffic that has to go from the individual's system to the Internet. Therefore a slow system would not tie up the connection while it loads a web page, and the connections to the local system, proxy, can often be optimized fairly cheaply!
REPLY TO THE REPLY
From: Guenter F. Wiedenhoefer, guenter <guenter@whoefer.uem.mz>
Date: Wed, 28 Feb 1996 09:59:52
Basically any proposal that helps to solve problems in underdeveloped countries is welcome. The solution however must have a clear objective. That means what is the need of the Mozambican small business owner. For instance, what own resources in terms of finance, human capital, telephone, fax and computers does he have?
Our database contains about 4500 enterprises in all regions and sectors of the Mozambican economy. However only part of them can be reached by phone (67%) and only part by fax (32%).
The need is to link up the scattered economic sectors. An example. A remote farmer wants to sell his tomatoes. He knows about farming but has rarely ideas of how to transport, store and market his products.
At present he is loading all on the truck and driving it to the next best wholesaler, who pays him in the highly inflation local currency.
If the same farmer then wants to improve his production, buy tractors, pumps, pipes, etc., he needs to import that equipment for hard currency. So how to receive hard currency? Only export, i.e. the link of local producers and foreign potential customers establishes such solutions. What we would therefore need, is a quotation system which enables such farmers to offer their products to say South African wholesalers or supermarkets. So the guy needs to know, whom to offer something to and by which means to do it. My vision is to establish on a provincial level centralized Internet access equipment which enables any farmer in that region to get into contact with a hard currency paying customer.
The dilemma is, that the average annual income is $80 (US) in this part of the world. So about $3 is what such a farmer could contribute to such a market to market connection system.
That example is only one of many more possible. The local economy has more than 48 different sectors and pretty much all of the small business owners face the problem of finding local or foreign business partners. It would be great, if more people could help our team to help this private sector people develop.
From: Martha Niehoff <martha@homescout.com>
Your Alta Vista article was very interesting. I'm making sure that everyone in my company on the development side takes a look at it.
We've all been playing with Alta Vista for days and thinking it great, but probably hadn't given much thought to its potential drawbacks from a site design perspective.
REPLY -- I wouldn't call it a "drawback." It's more a wakeup call. The Internet has been headed in this direction -- enabling people to get to what they want when then want it, rather than having to follow a pre-set path from a well-constructed home page. AltaVista just does it so well, and so completely that the process is speeded up.
What to expect next? Perhaps the personalized experience, the Web page created on the fly based on a user profile, etc. If you set up your site that way, then the user has a value-added reason for coming to your site through the "front door" rather than taking the AltaVista route straight to the bargain basement.
REPLY TO REPLY
From: martha@nia.com (Martha Niehoff)
Date: Thu, 25 Jan 1996 13:36:08 -0500 (EST)
A note on your "further thoughts". We've tried to put some basic interaction into our HomeScout site by letting people save their searches.
We then send them an email on a regular basis and give them a URL then brings them directly to their specific search results. Not quite an all knowing robot, but we hope a step in the right direction.
Date: Sat, 23 Mar 1996 08:01:34 -0500 (EST)
Regarding the high costs of books, and the difficulty of composing course packs because of the publishers' fair use rules, and the general problem of making appropriate readings available to students, particularly in Africa...
The answer may be found in the development of e-journals, of which H-Net will be one of the pioneers. They will be placed at web sites and will be open to all subscribers at low fees, since the costs of print, paper, and distribution will be nil. H-Net journals will permit full fair use at the will of the scholar-professor. The e-journal will be provided gratis to African institutions and other hard currency-starved third world countries. This is not pie in the sky but an imminent possibility.
[see reference to H-net under Educational Resources in this issue]
Date: Sun, 21 Jan 1996 16:13:52 -0500
As a reply in your Letters to the Editor, you wrote:
>Yes, you do need a sound card for RealAudio (or any audio at all). And it's well worth the investment.
No, you do NOT need a sound card for RealAudio (or any audio at all). But it is well worth the investment. :)
Available is a PC-Speaker driver which can play, among other things, WAVs, MODs and all other WAV style audio data files. It may even be able to play MIDIs but I'm not sure on that one.
It is either shareware or freeware and is available in many places. BBSs, surely on the web, I think I saw one product which recommended its use if you did not have a sound card. If it's shareware I think it may be something like one-dollar ware, but I'm not 100% positive. I think that when it plays your mouse freezes because it takes rather complete control of the processor to achieve pretty good quality sound, but I'm still not sure. I had it for a while and it's quite nice!
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