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TABLE OF CONTENTS
What's New (etexts available on the Internet): Samizdat Express, The Gutenberg Project, Internet World Magazine, Henry James Scholar's Guide, Bartleby Project, Bibliomania, Moby Lexicon Project
On-line Commercial Publishing Experiments Que Publishing, O'Reilly, Reality Software
Web Notes : Intranet, Health, Blindness/Disabilities, Telephone Etc. Directories, Government, Travel, Miscellaneous
Other Educational Resources : Copyright & Fair Use, Passport to Knowledge, UK Boarding Schools, CubaNet, MapQuest, Teaching about the Americas, Astronomy
Curious Technology : Faxes and Voicemail Delivered by Email (JFAX), Zap Banner Ads and Kill the Cookie Monster with Internet Fast Forward, More on Cookies and Other Insidious Traps, Free Email (HotMail and Juno)
The Joy of Being Found: What to Connect to Old Friends, Customers, Employers? Try Using Flypaper by Richard Seltzer
Suggestion -- No Frills Web Pages for Community Service Organizations by Richard Seltzer
Let Plain Text Take You to a Different World -- the Potential of MUDby Michael Andrew Clubine and Adriana Cristina Oliveri
Degrees of Separation: a Design Goal by Richard Seltzer
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.
For further information, send email to seltzer@samizdat.com or check our Web site http://www.samizdat.com/
Then it gradually dawned on me -- why should they look for me? Just like me, they probably each have a hundred or more people who they once were close to (old roommates, business associates, etc.) who they've lost touch with. And why, out of all those others, should they actively come looking for me?
With a few quick queries I soon established that they weren't looking for me at all. They were looking for themselves. Yes, they had gone to search engines (most to AltaVista), and there they had done what most people do at those sites -- they had entered their own name as the query. And since I have a lot of content at my Web site -- including lots of mywriting -- many of my old friends are mentioned somewhere there, typically in the list of thank you's at the end of a book. Searching for themselves, they chanced upon me; and delighted at that unexpected occurrence, they sent me email.
So when the number of long-lost friends finding me starts to slow down, I should create a new page at my Web site (http://www.samizdat.com) where I mention folks I haven't mentioned elsewhere. In other words, instead of trying to systematically find other people on the Internet, I'll set things up to make it easy for those people to find themselves in documents at my Web site -- what I call the "fly paper approach."
It's a neat flip of your usual expectations -- you connect with the people you want to by making their names and their subjects of interest findable at your site. And the same approach could also work well in the world of business, when you are trying to connect with potential customers or potential employers.
Unintentionally, I've seen several business-related instances of this phenomenon over the last few months.
Ebooks Multimedia in San Francisco, maker of interactive CD ROMs for children, was looking for content that they could turn into product in time for this Christmas. Using search engines, they found my book The Lizard of Oz at my Web site. This is a book that I self-published22 years ago, and which had simply been gathering dust. Within about a week of their first contacting me, we had a signed contract, and they are now at work on the project.
Soon thereafter, a movie producer in Iceland looking for new material found my never-produced screenplay Spit and Polish. That's not likely to lead anywhere, but it's an opportunity that I would never have dreamed of pursuing actively myself.
In both those cases, instead of my having to identify prospects, write query letters, and submit manuscripts -- which takes time, effort, and money -- they found me. And because they made the first contact, the conversation started at a different level -- they had a particular need, and they had already determined that my work might fill it.
The most dramatic instance of this principle was totally unexpected -- a kind of opportunity that I would never have dreamt of.
A Gary Trudeau fan, looking for a copy of Bull Tales (Trudeau's first book, published back when he was an undergraduate at Yale), found it mentioned at my Web site in a list I have there of every book I've read over the last 38 years. He sent me email to find outif I still had a copy. He also noticed at my site that my daughter (now a sophomore at Sarah Lawrence) is into acting. It turns out that he is the writer/producer of several popular TV shows, and she was in LA over the summer acting in a movie written and produced by my sister Sallie. After a few friendly email messages, I wound up trading my copy of the book for my daughter to get an audition for a possible part in an episode of one of those TV shows. Nothing immediate is likely result, but she learned a lot from the auditioning experience and made contacts that could prove important in the future.
Another close relative has been looking for a new job. She did all the traditional things -- checking newspapers and job-related Web sites. She's had some interviews, but none of the opportunities looked particularly tempting. Then, out of the blue, she got a call from a headhunter who had found her resume on our Web site. A company located far closer to her home than her present job was looking for someone with her credentials. She's gone for a couple of interviews and it looks very promising and tempting. Regardless of how it turns out, this is another instance of how effective it can be to make yourself findable on the Internet.
So how could a business use the flypaper approach? Instead of (or in addition to) pounding on the doors of prospective customers or partners, set up pages that mention them and the topics that are of most interest to them. If possible, mention the names of the keyindividuals. You needn't link from your home page to those flypaper pages at all , but do link from the flypaper back to either your homepage of other pages you'd particularly want those folks to see. Just be sure to submit the individual URLs AltaVista and other search sites.
Then the odds are good (and getting better all the time as more and morecompanies and people come onto the Internet) that some of them will find you while looking for themselves or looking for the topics of most interest to them, possibly leading to the kind of business contact you want.
And, of course the same approach could be effective in trying to recruit particular individuals to come and work for you, as well as trying to get particular employers to come looking for you.
So get to work -- set out your flypaper. It needn't take much time or effort, but the payoff could be significant.
Enter brochures, booklets, newsletters, meeting schedules, contact information, etc. Provide a place for members to share experiences and information with one another. Keep it simple. Go with plain text (no graphics). (For details on how to create such pages as easily as doing a word processing document, see "Low-Tech Web-Page Design" from our last issue, now at http://www.samizdat.com/lowtech.html).
If you have the time and inclination, take active steps to let people knowthat your page exists. (For tips on how to do that, see "How to publicize Web Sites over the Internet" at http://www.samizdat.com/public.html)
If you don't have time for that, then simply connect to AltaVista (http://altavista.digital.com/) and submit your URL there. Then many people seraching for your kind of organization will be able to find you.
My wife and I took this approach with Prescription Parents, a support group for parents of children born with cleft lip/cleft palate. We posted the basic organization info, several booklets, and pointers to related organizations. We get about 50 visits per month to those pages, mostly from people who need the information and who otherwise would have had to request booklets by snail mail (if they were lucky enough to find the right address), and would have had to wait a week or two to get them. (Keep in mind that it costs us nothing when folks retrievethese booklets online, while otherwise it would cost us time and money to reprint them and send them these same requesters.)
Every month, several of those visitors have unique specific questions that they send us by email, and we do our best to answer. Since ours is a local Boston-area organization and the Web reaches the world, our replies are sometimes pointers to related organizations.
All in all, at no cost, and for a minimum investment of time, we're able to extend the benefits of our organization to a much broader audience.
As with many new things, there are many misconceptions about the Internet. One such misconception is directed toward MUDs. The term MUD stands for either "Multi User Domain" or "Multi User Dungeon", depending on whom you are talking to. Basically a MUD is a place or virtual world on the net where people from all over the world can connect, relax and create an interactive environment. What one does in this environment differs from MUD to MUD.
There are also other virtual worlds available, which are generally referred to as MU* worlds. Included in this group are MOOs (MUD, Object Oriented); MUCKs (A social version of a MUD); and MUSHs (Multi User Shared Hallucination). Each is a virtual world, with a different format. Usually these worlds will be set up as a game for the sole purpose of enjoyment, however, they can serve other purposes. MOOs are generally used in conjunction with educational or business organizations, serving for anywhere from foreign language instruction to researching human behavior. The environment setup by MU* worlds can be very helpful and interesting no matter the format. The most obvious is that players get a sense of camaraderie with people across the globe. This is especially nice for people who find it difficult to approach and meet new people in real life. The MUDding environment also allows younger players to improve their reading skills, as the MUDding environment is entirely text based. In addition, communicating in a MUD also helps users improve their typing speed and accuracy. So for the player the MUD can be a true learning experience, both practically and intellectually as people from many different cultures meet and exchange ideas. There is no bias against age, sex, race, culture, because you know only what that person tells you about himself/herself. The MUDding environment removes the prejudices found too commonly in the everyday world. These virtual worlds also encourage people to form groups and friendships. Respect in a MUD is earned by levels. As you move through each virtual world, you have the opportunity to gain experience which then increases your level. The higher the level you obtain, the more prestigious you become in that community. One of the best ways to gain experience is by grouping with other players in the game, which is very conducive to group interaction. Due to the sense of camaraderie formed within a group, close long lasting friendships often result from the MUD.
When you first enter a MUD you will see a description of your surroundings. These descriptions are entirely text based, using the language of the mind to create a stimulating world, rather than the language of the senses. The images of the world around you are only limited by your imagination. The creators of the virtual world may draw you an outline of the world, but the world is entirely what you envision it to be. After entering the world for your first time, you will want to explore the world. You may do so by walking, flying, swimming or many other means of transportation, only dependent on what the developers of that particular MUD decide to implement. As you explore the world you will find many objects, weapons, potions and equipment. Some of these items might aid you in becoming stronger and more powerful, while others may harm you. It is never a bad idea to closely examine anything you find in a MUD. As mentioned earlier one of the objects of a MUD is to obtain a higher level. Levels are attained through experience which is obtained by killing various things in the MUD. For example you and a group of your MUD friends may group together to kill the fearsome red dragon. After defeating the dragon by use of great spells and powerful weapons, each player will receive a certain amount of experience points. For this example, 10,000 points each. For the lower leveled players in your group this maybe enough to increment their level by one. For another higher member of your group it may just decrease the amount of experience needed to attain the next level.
The MUD we run and maintain has been provided by Syracuse University CIS Department. We have named it "Eternal", since it exists in it's own world and in it's own time. The account, server space, e-mail lists, etc. have all been provided by the University. Originally the MUD was run only by Syracuse students, but it is now run by users in places such as California, Arizona, Buffalo, Puerto Rico, Texas and South Carolina, to name a few. All of these people work together through the Internet to communicate their thoughts and ideas.
MUDs also serve to educate in a much deeper way for those who design and maintain them. These people are normally known as "Wizards" or "Immortals". They are then broken down into two groups, coders and builders. A coders job is to maintain the working aspect of the MUD. The MUD is coded in the "C" programming language, and all new things are programmed by one of the coders. The other group known as builders are those who design the internal world. They set the scene, and the environment. They are responsible for all the rooms, objects, and mobiles (interactive computer players). These roles that coders and builders take are very serious, just as they would be in the workplace. Things are expected to be delivered on-time from the builders. Coders must find the most efficient workable solution to a problem, as to ensure a fast connection for all those playing. Everyone must take part in administration of the game, and rules can usually be found by typing "policy" once you connect.
We suggest before going into any virtual world to be prepared for anything. There are people there administering the MUD, but you never know what to expect. If you enter a world with which you are uncomfortable, all you have to do is close the connection. Everything is anonymous. MUD in moderation can be a very thrilling and enjoyable experience.
To connect to a MUD or MU* world, you must find an interface connection which allows MUDding to be both painless and enjoyable. Two highly recommended clients are zMUD for PC users on Windows, and MUDDweller for the Macintosh. (A complete list of clients can be found on Eternal's WWW page.) All clients that you do find will require a PPP, SLIP, ISDN, or Ethernet connection to the Internet. You can also connect using a WWW browser interface, so long as you have the Telnet option selected in the options menu. We are also working on a JAVA interface from a WWW browser. If you don't have this type of Internet access, you can also connect using any UNIX account. There are also some excellent programs for UNIX such as tintin++. The advantage of a MU* world is that it is platform independent. Using any platform and a UNIX account, use the Telnet option to connect. Color is available, but only viewable if you are using an account or client that has ANSI color capabilities.
If you would like to try Eternal, or any other MU* world, I suggest you read more about the specifics on each world before you connect. We have an extensive WWW page about Eternal at http://web.syr.edu/~maclubin/eternal.html [new version scheduled to go live Sept. 6] . However, if you want to jump right in, our Telnet address is Telnet: smith.syr.edu 4000 . You will find yourself smiling and talking with players from around the world. You may decide to spend your first time chatting, exploring or defeating loathsome monsters. Whatever you decide we hope to see you online!
References:
Eternal WWW page: http://web.syr.edu/~maclubin/eternal.html
(MUD space and connection provided by Syracuse University CIS Department.)
MUD Connector: http://www.absi.com/mud/
CircleMUD WWW page: http://www.Circlemud.org/
MUD Research: http://journal.tinymush.org/~jomr/
Having often experienced the frustration of having to click again and again and again within a Web site to get to information that I need and that I know is there, it occurred to me that "degrees of separation" should be a design goal/principle for both Web sites and Web software.
Far too often, the user has to go from one menu of links to another to another to another. (For example, last night, my wife was checking out jobs at the new Boston Herald site -- http://www.bostonherald.com/ -- and had to click again and again, each time waiting for useless decorative graphics to load.)
Sometimes Webmasters set up their sites this way out of a mistaken notion that small pages make for ease of use. Hence they deliberately limit the size of their pages to two or three screens full of information at most.
Basically, the fewer the clicks the better. At my own little Web site -- http://www.samizdat.com/ -- which now has over 300 pages, I aim for two clicks as a limit -- in other words, no matter where you enter, you should be no more than two clicks away form any other page at the site. (It's not perfect - there are some cases where it would take three; but two is the goal).
Clicking is not a pleasurable activity; it's a means to an end. And navigating through a Web site shouldn't be link finding your way through a maze. Keep it simple.
To some extent, design is mixture of taste and utility. What makes Web page design particularly difficult is that the utility of different designs depends on your computing platform. And while many Webmasters seem to use UNIX workstations, an increasingly large majority of the potential audience for Web pages uses PCs.
The notion of limiting Web pages to three screens makes good sense from a UNIX workstation point of view. But from my PC, navigation within a page is a breeze. I rarely use the scroll bar. Instead, I use CONTROL-end and CONTROL-home to go to the bottom and then to the top again; or Page-up and Page-down; internal links within the page; and the Find function in my browser. Hence, as a user, I delight in large, content-rich pages. And the more relevant links the better.
Two and three years ago, when I was accessing the Web through a UNIX workstation, it made sense to me to keep Web pages small. But today, I'm a PC-person; and at my little site, the overwhelming majority of visitors are PC-people. And they keep cheering me on to make my already monstrous home page even larger and more content-rich. And AltaVista and other search engines help immensely by indexing it all for me, and making it easy for people to find what's at my site without the need for tree-like directories.
Personally, I don't care for frames or navigational bars in the margins, which reduce the useful viewing area of the screen and make page design more complicated than it needs to be. But that aspect of page design is probably more a matter of taste than utility.
I'm not sure if these are the right answers, but I'm convinced that this is the right question. We need to be open and experiment, using our Web pages as sandboxes to determine what are the optimum design rules for today's clients, and we need to share with one another what we learn.
Last thought - as we experiment, we should focus on utility first and process second. In other words, we should do what ever is necessary to make sure Web pages look and work the way they ought, rather than simply accepting the way today's automated tools make them look.
For example, I act as host for a series of chat sessions on Business on the World Wide Web at the Boston Globe's Web site (http://www.boston.com/), Thursdays from noon to 1 PM (Eastern Time, US). After each session, I rearrange and edit the transcript by hand to make the threads visible, and to add hyperlinks to pages and email addresses mentioned in the discussion. The immediacy of the chat application -- bringing people of common interest together at a regular scheduled time -- generates lots of good content in a short time. And the handcrafted editing afterwards turns a chaotic sequence of messages into a very readable and usable document (latest = http://www.samizdat.com/chat7.html).
Meanwhile, on the intranet inside Digital Equipment, I'm using the same simple techniques that I use for my personal site to build a central resource for information about marketing and selling Internet products and services. There, instead of using an automated application like hypermail to take the email messages sent out over internal Internet-related distribution lists and turn them into Web pages, I'm doing the conversion by hand -- putting related items together and using internal links for cross-referencing, and creating the context the way I would like it to be. And rather than rely on automated databases for contact information, I'm building my own page of internal Internet-related contacts, so I can conveniently browse to see who I want and so I can send email to someone by just clicking on a mail:to link.
These are labor-intensive tasks, but my goal is utility. If users then find that the utility is of value, then there is a basis for lobbying to get software developed or modified to make it easier to produce these kinds of outcomes.
The issue is how the information is structured or organized. The navigation of the information through its structure and the ensuing relationship to Web pages is one important aspect of site design. Latencies inherent in the intended environment are a major factor.
Designing a Web site is like designing any other product -- usability counts for a lot and should be a major focus of the design effort. You need to think about what users will be trying to accomplish.
There may be a good rule of thumb for the maximum number of clicks to get one from anywhere to anywhere within a site. I'll bet the number is 5, plus or minus 2.
So I'd measure clicks of all kinds, latencies of all kinds and how well the information is organized.
First: the "six degrees of separation" idea originates in research by the psychologist Stanley Milgram, who, interestingly, also did the famous "obedience to authority" study. Milgram published a popular article on this work in Scientific American, and from that information someone with better access than I to English-language libraries ought to be able to find reliable references. I'd be particularly interested in reprints of his refereed publications on the topic.
As long as we're going to speculate, we might as well at least *begin* with the facts.
Second: the problem with finding people on the Web is that very few of us are there, mostly geeks, very public figures, and the not-so-famous figures interesting to geeks. But not my siblings, for instance, because they aren't famous on the Web. Now I keep a collection of information about people, including their names, coordinates, and even some personal information like birthdays and the names and birthdays of their children and spouses. Been doing it for years, since I realized that either my memory wasn't perfect or else my population counter had overflowed.
What's to prevent me from putting this information on a public Web page, to make it easier to find people? What's to prevent *anyone* from doing that with any public information they find about individuals? Gee, with a little cooperation, even within Digital, we could really shorten the process of finding just about anyone, and even knowing what they had for breakfast. All from public information.
The idea isn't an unalloyed benefit. In fact it chills me down to my bones.
Meaning we are even farther from understanding how we should write for the Web medium.)
Your point about utility first and process second is also a cry I've heard often in my doctoral studies in the area of online help (related, but a couple of degrees of separation away?).
The research there shows me - a non-technical, learning theorist "outsider" -- that the main thrust of much of the research on help (and on user-interfaces in general) has been focused on what we CAN do rather than what we SHOULD do. We CAN make multimedia help systems - but do we NEED multimedia help systems? And when we get multimedia help systems, are they any more effective than what they replaced?
Unfortunately, usually not.
Why? Because the information they convey hasn't changed. Not the technical accuracy of the pure content ( that's sound), but the USABILITY and COMPREHENSIBILITY of that information. What was accurate but confusing or unhelpful as simple text, is no less frustrating when it sings and dances for us.
Focus on what works - focus on what works for the users - focus on designing the information and how to deliver it. If whatever we need is to be only a "click or two away", lets insure that both the journey and the destination are worthy of our time and effective in their impact.
I find your newsletter enthralling. I have been having my Internet site automatically downloaded to CompuServe and this cuts off the end of your articles so I am going back to straight Internet e-mail at wizard@magna.com.au.
Some odd thought. I live in Sydney where I have several Internet accounts working through 22.8 modems. I am connected to two TV cable companies and the first one that offers Internet access gets my business while I will drop the other one. What amazes me is how reluctant and slow the cable companies are to get into the Internet business. It costs them effectively nothing when they are laying new cable, as is the case throughout Australia, and seem to me to be a compelling sales add-on. As yet, neither of the companies has announced a commencement date and stick to bromide Real Soon Nows.
I am responsible for a magazine in Hong Kong called netLife which is distributed with the Hong Kong Standard newspapers. I would like to use your listings and comments on sites in that magazine. You give permission for electronic but not for printed distribution and being an author of travel books I am keen to see the copyright proprieties observed.
Could you let me know your views on this?
Gareth Powell
REPLY -- You have my permission to include items from Internet-on-a-Disk in netLife so long as you attribute the source as Internet-on-a-Disk and include both the URL (http://www.samizdat.com/) and my email address for people to read or subscribe to the full publication.
And I'd very much appreciate it if you could send me a sample of one such item (of the printed paper referencing Internet-on-a-Disk) so I can include it in my files. -- Richard Seltzer
Richard, thanks for your article, well written and clear.
One thing you didn't address -- in the Past, Internet assistant would not allow to reedit documents saved as .htm files or capture existing htm files and edit them as native Word documents, rather than as tagged text.
Was it ever fixed?
Nahum Goldmann, ARRAY Development, Ottawa, Canada Homepage: http://www.ARRAYdev.com/
REPLY -- I often reedit documents saved as .htm files and capture existing .htm files and edit them as Word documents. I suspect that they fixed the problem you were experiencing. I downloaded the latest version a couple months ago and I've been very pleased with the improvement. -- Richard Seltzer
My shoestsring-budget web site generates about 1200 hits a day. If they are the right 1200, then I feel I have done my job.
I know one high-tech operation that spent $17,000 launching a site that generates, in the best weeks, 250 hits per week, most of them just quick glances. The site's a mess of slow-to-load pages, heavy on the buttons and light on content.
I'm amazed at the people who will argue that content counts for nothing, that the glitzy interface is the only thing that has value on the web.
From an advertising standpoint, logo recognition and reinforcement are important, true, but who's going to see that logo if there's no content to "bring them back for more?"
Contentless Web sites are being oversold by so-called web professionals who wouldn't recognize conent if it jumped up and bit them in the mouse.
The point I try to make in this discussion (I seem to be discussing this inmy magazine and online all the time) is that I don't need to know how to write software to use a word processing package, so why do I have to write code to create content on the web. PageMill gave me the ability to control the content online. The new version comes out in September, and it will allow me to control tables, which is one of the most difficult part of the site for me. PageMill is being ported to Windows95 and I applaud its liberating aspects among the Windows crowd.
John Shinnick, Editor/Publisher, Media Wave Magazine, Shorelines Newsletter, Future File Newsletter, Brave New Words Newsletter, Vancouver, B.C., Canada, V5Z 1K7, http://www.media-wave.com
Besides the obvious THANK YOU for having written this book originally, I also give thanks for making the original text available on the WWW.
My good friend Charlie let me read this book back in high school, and he'd had it since he was a kid. I can't wait to e-mail him about this site!
I keep trying to find it in used bookstores, but alas, it's like tryingto find a diamond in the Alps.
PLEASE integrate the original illustrations - watching the PotHeads stumbling around is part of the Magic!
Thank you again,
REPLY -- Thanks for the vote of support. I love getting a message like that. When I get I chance, I want to put the original line drawings up on the Web. I'm excited about the prospect of the story coming to life on CD ROM. Ebooks Multimedia said they wanted to get it out by Christmas, but that seems awfully ambitious. There's also a radio script which I hope will some day be produced. By the way, the version on the Web differs a bit from the original print version. Mr. Newman and Miss Prysby go along to the various underworlds, instead of staying behind in the Library. And there are a couple of extra underworld chapters. -- Richard Seltzer
I borrowed this book (Lizard of Oz) from my neighbor when I was in 1st grade and never returned it...I have read it many times since and wondered if perhaps I had the sole existing copy. I am overjoyed to see that this was not merely a personal favorite, but indeed a classic!
I had borrowed the book from my neigbor when I was in first grade and never returned it! In the 22 years since, I have read it a number of times (and even lent it to friends) and LOVED IT!!! I thought that perhaps I was the only one in the world with a copy of this wonderful book. What I am interested in is a signed copy...I would like to purchase one as soon as you get a chance, if you have any left!
I do have my original, but I think my neighbor colored in it. And, alas, paperbacks do not hold up well under 22 years of use!
And thanks for the book! This has actually been my first true Internet epiphany; I think that perhaps this was the only way I could ever have found you!
REPLY -- Yes, I do still have a few copies. -- Richard Seltzer
In your Internet World article entitled "Heads Up," you list a number of different ways to make one's company's presence on the Net known. I was wondering if you know if Gopher and FTP are still being used as advertising mediums (I know they are now connected and accessible through the Web) in their own right? Would you recommend advertising through such a medium.
Michael Marzano
REPLY -- Some companies (like Digital Equipment) keep marketing material in anonymous ftp servers as well as making it available through the Web. Some customers can get to that who don't have Web capabilities. Also for getting large documents, ftp is convenient and easy. Netscape and many other companies put their downloadable software on ftp servers. Also, some UNIX oldtimers still don't feel comfortable with the Web and prefer to get info by ftp.
As for gopher, that seems to be primarily university-based and nearly all those sites are migrating to the Web.
For an updated version of that article, check http://www.samizdat.com/public.html -- Richard Seltzer
Your assistance in locating INTERNET support for home schooling would be greatly appreciated.
We're looking for a non-religious orientation. (We're Jewish and find most of these support organizations to be strongly Christian oriented) Search strings -i.e. "home schooling" are not producing specific results.
Robb Hensley
REPLY -- I suggest that you connect to http://www.parentplace.com/ That's a site devoted to letting parents share their experience and knowledge. You'll probably find other parents with interests similar to yours there.
I also did a search at AltaVista (http://altavista.digital.com/) I did an Advanced Search . In the query box I entered "home schooling" (the quotation marks are important). In the ranking box I entered internet resources (no quotation marks) The top matches all looked good. One of them was a page with the title "homeschooling resources". I suggest doing the same search andexploring. Looks like there's some excellent stuff out there. -- Richard Seltzer
Very interesting - I agree with many of your selections and would like to read some of the authors unfamiliar to me. Do you have a "best of the best" list of 5 or 10 to get me started?
Mark Rumreich
REPLY -- Thanks for the idea. I just added a list of the top dozen -- http://www.samizdat.com/read11.html
In case you were wondering if anyone appreciated your efforts in compiling your list of top Novelists, I did.
I am constantly searching for good modern fiction and my current method of just browsing through the bookstore has not worked out too well.
P.S. If you like Thomas Pynchon, you should try "The Crying of Lot 49"
REPLY -- Glad you found the list useful. As for Pynchon, yes, I've read the Crying of Lot 49 -- back in college when I was studying Jacobean drama. I was literally rolling on the floor with laughter. Yes, it's good. -- Richard Seltzer
Good for you! Dufresne, Louisiana Power and Light, is marvelous.
You should read his stories: The Way That Water Enters Stone. Currently OP, it will be reissued by Plume next January when John's new book , Love Warps the Mind a Little, comes from Norton. I am not biased but I am his agent. When I have more time I will be back to your good page! Thanks.
Richard P. McDonough
As you are - and have been - writing for a wide cross-section ofaudiences, I wonder if you have either come across, or have "developed" a style guide for Internet and Web related terminology...
For example: EMail; E-Mail; email; e-mail; Is "Internet" "always" capitalized? Same question for "web" ditto for "www" vs. "WWW".
On a business card, for example, would a URL address actually use the term "URL", or just indicate the www address? Would one include the "http://" in that address, or just "www.xxx.xom" ?
If a person you were referring to (in an article you were writing) had supplied you with an e-mail (email? :-) address of "Roger@bcs.org" would you change it to "roger@bcs.org" <lowercase "r"> ?
There are likely dozens of other examples of web and Internet related terms I have not included here... I also "know" that styles will change over time.. that even *if* "e-mail" is what is "correct" now, that it will become "email" in the future...
The style guides which I have seen - including the latest one from the Associated Press, do not cover ANY of these terms...
Any pointers would be appreciated -- such that our publications, web pages, and business correspondence, etc., are, at least, consistent!
Roger Barnaby, Boston Computer Society
REPLY -- This is a natural use for AltaVista. Go to Advanced Search. Click on the down arrow for Style (the default is Standard or Detailed). Click on the choice "Count Only". Enter the spelling you want to test in the query box, with capitalization etc. just as you want to test it. Click on Submit. Note the count. Then test the next alternative. If there is an enormous difference in the counts (which there probably will be), then you have the answer -- this is how to test for which usage is most common.
In issue #17 the question appeared:
David J. Stone
Wow, having a link from your "Let's talk about it" list makes a difference. The article your pages points to has 5-10 times the hits as my other articled do. Of course there is not much to attract people to my site so I never expect much. But links from your site seems to *work*. (Though probably not yet enough to set advertising space :-) ) Some of the visitors to my article appear to be backtracking up to my main page and from there to my resume. At least I think that's what's happening from viewing the hit rates. This is fun stuff.
Second. Try asking Alta Vista to find "alfred thompson" or "alfred c thompson" sometime. You'll see a number of references to your site and to mirrors of your newsletter. NONE to my home page or sub pages. I found 4 sites that point directly to mine (using Alta Vista's hints for finding sites that point to your own). Alta Vista does not seem to be able to find my actual site however. The Alta Vista people don't respond to my mail. :-( Probably busy doing real work.
Alfred C Thompson II, Teacher, Hacker, Net Surfer http://www.tiac.net/users/act2/
I am very interested in your "Low-Tech Web-Page Design". Do you have a Chinese version of this article? If not, I am very glad to translate it into Chinese.
Zhang Yang (David)
EDITOR'S NOTE -- That translation and related notes are now available at http://www.samizdat.com/lowtechch.html
Thank you for responding so quickly to my request. I thoroughly enjoyed the comments that you made regarding the book and will certainly tell my friend to visit this site. My own progress in the book is rather slow, but I can already tell that some of your comments hit the nail right on the head; for example, your comments on the use of technology in the novel.
Please keep up the good work! :^)
I'm writing to you to ask you a question concerning e-mail distribution so if you have time please answer me.
As I told you before, I'm going to publish my magazine in myweb page. But in the future I might need distribution of my mag through email and that's the problem. I do not know how to automatically answer e-mail letter containing subscribe msg. If I had e.g. 500 subscribers, it'd be timewasting to add everyone to the database and send them letters individually.
Rastislav Skultety
REPLY -- Simple advice -- don't automate if you don't have to; and don't use a database if you don't have to.
I manage a 10,000+ mailing list by hand. By doing so, I see every message that comes through and get a clear idea of who is interested in my publication and why; and my readers appreciate the human touch. I also don't throw away 10-20% of potential subscribers which would be the case with most automated mail systems which just look at the from: address. And subscribers don't get caught in a situation where getting off a subscription list is so much hassle that you are reluctant to ever ask to get on (which is often the case with LISTSERVs).
500 is a very small number.
If you use pine for email (which I find is very efficient), you can simply have a variety (maybe half a dozen) standard replies saved as ordinary files. When someone expresses interest, you reply with a standard message and save the subscriber's note in a folder.
Periodically, you download everything in the subscriber folder and cut and paste the addresses to your address list.
If you intend to charge for subscriptions, that complicates matters immensely -- trying to keep track of who owes what and who is entitled to what. You also face a variety of headaches related to the fact that with Internet mail today you can't be sure that mail will be delivered. Some small (but annoying) percentage of messages sent to good addresses will intermittently bounce (especially if the recipient is in a third-world country). If your publication is free, non-delivery is not an issue -- those who didn't receive and were looking forward to it will notify you and you send it again. (Also, because of the quirky nature of Internet mail, don't use automated systems to delete names. Just because mail bounced doesn't mean that person isn't there. Read mail-failure messages carefully and deal with each individually.)
I hope this helps. -- Richard Seltzer
I received your e-mail address from Internet World Magazine, anddecided to write to you, since you seem to have a lot of experience in the field of writing. I am trying to become a free lance writer for computer magazines, but I don't exactly know where to start. I wouldappreciate it if you could explain to me what you did to get your stories published in magazines.
Richie Urban
REPLY -- 1) create your own Web site -- many Internet service providers offer Web space for free or very little. Post lots of examples of your work, and make sure your pages are indexed by AltaVista and other search services.
2) send email query notes and email submissions to editors at mags you are interested in
3) if the above two don't work, then create your own newsletter, using that as an outlet for your writing; offer it for free by email and post brief notices about it in relevant newsgroups and LISTSERVs; if it's good and useful, word should spread; post current and past issues on your Web site.
At any rate that's what I've done. Check my Web site http://www.samizdat.com -- Richard Seltzer
My name is Musumeci and I'm an Italian student graduating in business and economics. My thesis is about industrial auctioneers (marketing aspects) but it's almost impossible to find any bibliographical resources and other info here in Italy (probably because auction sales are almost unknown by us).
I worked for a British auctioneer (JFT LAW & Co. Ltd, Uphamton, Ombersley, Worcs., UK) for over an year and this gave me good knowledge of the practice in the auctioneering industry but, unfortunately, very little theory and this is what I'm requested to talk about in my thesis.
I'd be very grateful if you could help me in any way by supplying any available information or by giving the source where it can be obtained from.
Robert Musumeci, 25062 Concesio (BS) Italy
REPLY -- Your best resource would probably be the AltaVista search service. Connect to http://altavista.digital.com/ Click on "Help" at the top of the screen for directions. And enter queries. AltaVista has a full text index of over 30 million Web pages. It's free and fast, and if you check the Help files you should be able to focus on what you want. Good luck. -- Richard Seltzer
You're amazing. Compulsive yes, but to this degree? I would like to ask you an honest question. Who is blind in your world? If it is you, and you have read this widely, I am amazed. Not really. But it is wonderful, miraculous. Please read Nadine Gordimer. Especially "None to Accompany Me." Incredibly human stores in the midst of history. I do admire you. Your work shines. That is the mark of a man.
REPLY -- No, I'm not blind. And have no friends or relatives who are. But I am very interested in literature and in the potential of electronic texts for inexpensively spreading good words to lots of people. I started out trying to make public domain etexts from the Internet available to teachers etc. who had little or no Internet access (on diskette). I soon discovered that the folks who benefit the most these days from etexts are the blind, because they can "read" them with text-to-voice conversion devices. I met Diane Croft from the National Braille Press who helped educate me further about the needs and concerns of the blind (e.g., the risk that graphic/Windows type applications will shut them out from the electronic text riches that have just been opened to them). And many of my readers have added their insights. So I've done whatever I can with my newsletter and my Web site to help further that cause.
Thanks very much for the vote of support. -- Richard Seltzer
My wife and I enjoyed your list. I also enjoyed many of the titles that you highlight. A couple of suggestions:
Thanks for your suggestions.
Paul
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