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My
Internet: a Personal View of Internet Business Opportunities
by Richard Seltzer, on CD, includes four books, 162 articles, and 49 newsletter
issues that will inspire you and provide the practical information you
need to build your own personal Web site or Internet-based business, helping
you to become a player in this new business environment.
What's New (etexts available on the Internet): B&R Samizdat Express, The Gutenberg Project, The Bartleby Project, Bibliomania, Theology on the Web, The Tech Archive, Philosophers (The U. of Idaho), The Electronic Text Center at the University of Virginia, The Tolstoy Library, the Jules Verne Collection, The Screenwriters Utopian Home Page, Wordman Production Company, Macmillan Computer Publishing Online Books, Chalidze Publications, The Online Medieval and Classical Library, The Virtual Bookshelf, Book People
Web Notes The Changing Face of Technology, Electronic Recruiting News, Mapping Your Future, CollegeBound.NET, Contact Center Network, Terra Chess, Live Computer Help, Lawguru.com, VersusLaw, Web Consultants Association, IBM Patent Server
Curious Non-Use of Technology Telephone over the Internet, Internet Fast Forward
Curious Technology Firefly, Site Watch, internet-now, Broadcaster, NewsMonger, LookSmart, Filez, Coola
Curious Business Models Millenium Interactive
Resources for the Disabled "Guidelines for Reporting and Writing about People with Disabilities", In Touch Network
Other Educational Resources Live from Antarctica 2, WebCT, Index of Resources for Historians, Al Bodzin's Home Page
Reviews of Internet Books
Features:from Theology on the Web http://www.dma.org/~thawes
from The Tech Archive http://classics.mit.edu
A searchable collection of about 400 classical Greek and Roman texts (in English translation) with user-provided commentary.
from Philosophers (at the University of Idaho) http://www.bookstore.uidaho.edu/philosophy
Works by: Aristotole, Augustine, Bacon, Berkeley, Boethius, Calvin, Confucius, Darwin, Descartes, Dostoevsky, Epictetus, Hippocrates, Hume, William James, Jefferson, Kant, Leibniz, Locke, Machiavelli, Marx, Mill, Nietzsche, Ortega y Gasset, Paine, Pascal, Plato, Plotinus, Rousseau, Russell, Swift, Thoreau, Van Til, Voltaire, Wittgenstein, Wollstonecraft
from The Electronic Text Center at the University of Virginiahttp://etext.lib.virginia.edu/uvaonline.html
Hundreds of texts of classic works of literature, some limited to usage by students at the U. of Virginia, but many accessible by the public.
from The Tolstoy Library http://users.aol.com/Tolstoy28/tolstoy.htm
from Jules Verne Collection http://www.math.technion.ac.il/~rl/JulesVerne/ NOTE NEW ADDRESS
from The Screenwriters Utopian Home Page http://www.wic.net/cpwehner/utopia2.html
from Wordman Production Company http://www.tcd.net/~bransom/jaguar.html
from Macmillan Computer Publishing Online Books http://www.mcp.com/3316680954417/mcp/online_books/
from Chalidze Publications http://www.chalidze.com/ethan.htm
The complete text of copyrighted previously published and unpublished books is available at this site. "You can download them for free. However, you are invited to send $5 per book to help keep this project alive."
American History -- J. Kevin Graffagnino's Introduction to Collected Works of Ethan and Ira Allen (46k)
from The Online Medieval and Classical Library http://sunsite.berkeley.edu/OMACL/
All texts are public domain in the U.S.
Mailing list for discussion of issues related to the production and distribution of electronic texts, with recent special emphasis on the insanity and complexity of current copyright laws.
PLEASE COPY THIS DISK includes:
We frequently add new disks. To receive regular email updates, send us email seltzer@samizdat.com and request to be added to our catalog list.
Each diskette (IBM or Macintosh) costs $10, and you are encouraged to make as many copies as you need, for colleagues and students. (When you do make copies, please treat the information and its originators with respect. Think of these diskettes as an extension of the Internet and treat the information with the same consideration as if you had obtained it directly from the Internet.)
If a public domain text is available on the Internet but isn't yet in our collection, we can custom-make a diskette for you at the same price of $10. (Keep in mind that Supreme Court decisions, federal legislation, UN resolutions and documents, and NATO documents are all available this way).
Also, if a book of yours has dropped out of print and the rights have reverted to you and you have it in electronic form, please contact us about making that book available again through PLEASE COPY THIS DISK.
Excellent, insightful weekly review of technology developments by Jeff Harrow
Electronic Recruiting News http://www.interbiznet.com/hrstart.html
Today, there are over 3500 employment related websites advertising 1.2 Million jobs and pointing to the resumes of over 1 Million job hunters.This on-line newsletter from John Sumser provides a daily chronicle of the comings and goings in that industry, along with site reviews, analysis, and tools for recruiters.
Mapping Your Future http://mapping-your-future.org/
A job site aimed at middle school, high school and college students and their parents. Includes info on scholarship resources.
CollegeBound.NET http://www.cbnet.com/collegebound
Designed for high school students selecting colleges, this site provides facts on the college application process and also an Internet college search engine. Students can ask questions and get advice from professionals, including psychologists, financial aid advisors, Broadway musicians, college coaches, etc.
Contact Center Network http://www.contact.org
Directory of over 8500 non-profit resources in 100 countries.
Terra Chess http://members.tripod.com/~yogo/teraches.htm
Terra Chess is a three dimensional chess board with a varied topography.
Live Computer Help http://www.HelpMeNow.com
Using Java-based chat software from ParaChat, users can pose their questions to experts in Windows 3.1, Windows 95, and Internet. Each chat room is staffed by an expert in a particular topic. Free service.
Lawguru.com http://www.lawguru.com
Collection of links to over 160 legal research tools and engines on the World Wide Web.
VersusLaw http://www.versuslaw.com
This legal research library provides archival access to appellate level opinions from all fifty states and all Federal Circuits, plus the U.S. Supreme Court.
The Web Consultants Association http://just4u.com/webconsultants
Topics include: Web design issues, advanced technical problems, information about new products, software,services, books, that would be of interest to and help a web consultant; how to market, advertise, publicize your service; sample contracts, payment issues, success stories, horror stories
IBM Patent Server http://patent.womplex.ibm.com/
Free online access to all US patent claims filed since 1974.
With Internet Phone (from Vocal Tech), Cool Talk (from Netscape), other similar applications which let you make phone calls at no cost beyond the cost of your Internet connection, is anybody using this capability for education? It seems like a natural for language training (with native speakers) and connecting classrooms in different countries (for social studies etc.)
Internet Fast Forward http://www.privnet.com
I raved about this software in a previous issue -- it zaps banner ads and also wipes out cookies. I loved the beta version. Now that version has timed out and the company has been bought by PGP. There is no mention of this magnificent software at their site, and they don't answer email. It's bizarre.
This site lets you builds a profile of your tastes in movies and music, based on your ratings of ones that you are familiar with. Then you can join chat sessions with others whose tastes are similar. Check http://www.my.yahoo.com for another implementation of the same underlying software.
Site Watch http://home.fastrans.net/sitewatch/
Site Watch will monitor any site you designate by contacting it every 15 minutes, and recording a confirmation of contact so you know your site is up and running. If contact cannot be made, you get an immediate e-mail warning. It also records the amount of time elapsed before contact is made. It also has a data base of performance on over 4,000 ISPs.
internet-now http://www.internet-now.com
This site lets you search the non-Web side of the Internet -- FTP sites, gopher, newgroups, telnet, and WAIS gateways.
Broadcaster http://www.broadcaster.co.uk/cgi-bin/broadcaster?nfv
From this site you can submits your URL and information to over 200 Search Engines and other web media. Then you receive an emailed response automatically telling you where and to which category your information was successfully sent.
NewsMonger http://www.techsmith.com/
A news group monitoring service that uses Digital's AltaVista Search service http://altavista.digital.com
LookSmart http://www.looksmart.com/
A Web directory of over 140,000 sites, organized by subject categories, and with reviews. If you prefer your Internet pre-digested, you might find this useful.
Filez http://www.filez.com
This commercial search engine focuses on thousands of software ftp sites rather than Web pages Category headings make it easy for users of Windows, Macintosh, OS/2, Atari, Amiga and other computer platforms to select only titles applicable to their needs.
Coola http://www.coola.com
Many traditional magazines now have Web-based editions. This free service let's you sign up to receive these magazines by email when new issues are posted.
Purportedly, this company is offering "Digital Currency Units" (DCUs) to people who retrieve advertising e-mail from its web site. The DCU is a form of digital currency that can be converted into U.S. dollars, Swiss Francs, Japanese Yen, German D-Marks, Canadian dollars, and British Sterling.
Excellent information, but provided in the most ridiculous form -- a .gif of the text, so it takes a long time to load, it cannot be indexed, and it cannot be edited/reformatted after you save it locally. And, of course, the blind cannot access it at all. Very strange.
In Touch Network
A service for Internet users who are blind -- access to two radio reading services on the World Wide Web. Go to http://www.tstradio.com, then click on In Touch Network You'll see 24-hour readings from newspapers, magazines and recent books from Touch Network in New York City and the Kansas Audio Reader, from the University of Kansas. To access the programming, your computer needs at least a 14.4 modem and a sound card. The audio is provided in RealAudio.
Another in the on-going series of "Live From..." programs, combining television broadcasts on the Public Broadcasting System and teaching resources posted on the Web.
WebCT http://homebrew.cs.ubc.ca/webct
Over the last year a team at the University of British Columbia has been working on a tool that facilitates the creation of sophisticated web-based educational environments by educators with little or no technical expertise. They are looking for beta testers.
Index of Resources for Historians http://kuhttp.cc.ukans.edu/history/index.html
A large list of URLs, with links listed in alphabetical order by subject area.
Al Bodzin's Home Page http://www4.ncsu.edu/unity/users/a/ambodzin/public/home.htm
A resource for K-12 educators, especially science teachers.
Published by QUE Macmillan Publishing, hardcover $49.99.
Reviewed by Barbara Hartley Seltzer seltzer@samizdat.com
Some people say the Internet is cold and impersonal. You never get to see who you are corresponding with, who is interested in your Web pages, why what you are doing is so important and makes a difference.
Rick Smolan and his team bring out the human side of the Internet. They have captured the people who use it, the reasons they use it, and the strong effect the Internet is having on people in all parts of the world -- even remote poor areas.
Their book, 24 Hours in Cyberspace, is a collection of wonderful photographs and vignettes of the people who use the Internet. All the photographs were taken on one day, Thursday, February 8, 1996. There are no pictures of computers or Web sites. The pictures are about people and learning and passions.
Each secion is personal, graphical, enlightening, and shows you another aspect of the Internet:
Read the book. Look at the pictures. It will give you ideas, encourage your hopes, and open up the possiblities of the world of the Internet that all of the people in this fascinating book belong to.
"Business chat" sounds like an oxymoron. But when done right, it can draw active and involved users repeatedly to your Web site and help you build an archive of high-quality, low-cost content that will attract more users.
Actually, there are two related classes of software, both of which can be used for holding online discussions involving multiple people: chat and forum.
Web-based chat software allows numerous people to exchange text messages simultaneously in the same "session." It is often used for quick, casual, anonymous one-liner conversation. As soon as you type your message, it's available for others in the same session to read. When a dozen or people actively participate at the same time, it gets very difficult to read what is said and even more difficult to follow the multiple threads of conversation. You need to read fast and type fast, but if you do, and if the topic is up your alley, the experience can be exhilarating and stimulating -- whether you are flirting or flaming or brainstorming.
Web-based forum software, like notes and bulletin board, allows people to leave messages which will be read later. In this case, writers have the time to reflect -- there is no time limit. They also can give their messages titles and indicate if these are answers to previous messages or new threads of thought. Typically, readers can view the list of messages available, with their threaded relationships shown. Often they can also have highlighted the titles of those messages that they haven't read before. And the messages can be saved indefinitely and can be searched. Here it is possible to carry on an extended, thoughtful, multi-person correspondence.
The only problem with forums is a matter of human nature -- we tend to procrastinate. We know that we can post and read there anytime that we want, so there is no urgency. If a conversation really gets going, then the momentum can carry it along. But it is often difficult to get that kind of interactivity going. The discussion needs to reach some critical mass before it becomes compelling. Yes, we intend to participate, just like we intend to follow through on New Year's resolutions; but more often than not, it just doesn't happen.
Chat on the other hand has immediacy. And when a chat topic is scheduled for a particular time, you either connect or you miss it. Chat also can generate energy and enthusiasm and stimulate useful ideas because of the element of live interaction.
The ideal would be to combine the immediacy/urgency of chat with the ability to save the discussions in threaded form, so those who participated can catch up on what they missed and what they need to reflect on further, and others who weren't able to connect at that time can see what was said; and so all can add their followup thoughts and continue the discussion in a more leisurely and reasoned environment.
That ideal does not yet exist as a single push-button piece of software. But you can produce results like that if you are willing to invest the time and effort to do by hand what can't yet be done automatically. And from this one class of "collaboration" software you can fashion numerous modes of communication and numerous business models.
For example, you can set up:
I started doing "business chat" last summer, when the Boston Computer Society asked me to host a regular session at the Boston Globe's Web site. The Boston Computer Society has since dissolved, but my weekly chat sessions about "Business on the World Wide Web" continue at http://www.web-net.org For a volunteer activity, it's been a lot of work, but I've learned a lot in the process. The following suggestions are based on that experience:
By the way, if you run a business chat session at your site, you might want to set it up so participants, when joining, acknowledge that they are granting you the non-exclusive right to republish material from that session in other media, without having to get further approval from the participants. (Check with a lawyer, but avoid using legal jargon -- you don't want to scare people away or confuse them.) That blanket permission would allow you to include excerpts in CDROMs or printed books, or in other media, etc. Remember, the future of the Internet is "content".
Wish list for software developers:
PS -- If you hear about a particular chat session and want to participate, connect to the Web site with your browser and see what's required. In many cases (like at boston.com), you don't need anything more than an ordinary browser. In other cases, you need a recent browser that understands Java. And sometimes you may need to download a extra piece of software (usually a "plug-in" for your browser, and usually free).
Email: paciello@yuri.org PH/FAX: (603) 598-9544 WebAble! http://www.yuri.org/webable/
Additionally, as a result of the increasing paradigm shift by the publishing industry toward Internet and WWW-based document delivery systems, the importance of producing accessible information using electronic document mechanisms has increased immeasurably.
The primary focus of this paper involves the production of electronic documents for people with disabilities. However, the key principals involved in the design, production, and delivery of information apply regardless of the document medium.
The paper will attempt to:
For temporarily able bodied (TABs) persons, the shift has resulted in increased availability to a global information set never before achieved.
Because of this apparent increased availability of information the publishing industry has wrongly assumed that "what is good for the goose, is good for the gander".
The sad truth is that the proliferation of information does not guarantee its accessibility. Availability does not equate to accessibility.
Where people with disabilities (particularly those with print disabilities) are concerned, thoughtless barriers to information are being constructed by electronic publishers. The barrier factor is increased by the magnitude of inexperienced on-line businesses and organizations who have correctly assessed the inexpensive cost of delivering information on the Internet, but have inaccurately assumed that because it's "on the Web", it must be easy to read...or access.
What are the key issues involving information accessibility for people with disabilities? Do solutions exist to assist publishers in the design, production, and delivery of accessible publications? Can publishers increase the accessibility and availability of their documents without sacrificing additional time, creativity, quality, personnel, and money?
The answers to these questions and available resources are discussed in the sections that follow.
The blind may require a document output of braille or synthetic voice
Those with low vision or dyslexia may need large text or spatial adjustments
Individuals who are deaf or the hearing impaired may require visual cues for electronic documents that include sound or audio events
The physically or mobility challenged may require the ability to use the document viewer or browser without being able to use a keyboard, mouse, or input device that requires a part of their body other than just their eyes or mouth
Access systems for people with disabilities include (but are not limited to): screen magnifiers, refreshable braille displays, screen readers, synthetic speech, caption-ready monitors, or alternative keyboards. The important point here is that the designer of the information need not worry about producing several versions of specialized documents. Rather, the focus should be on designing the source document with a rich set of characteristics can be subsequently rendered or viewed by a wider audience.
To emphasize, this is not a new technology. Those involved in on-line publishing know that a source document can be coded using, for example, symbolic reference tags that are recognized by the document processor and then rendered to plain text, postscript, or browser-compatible output. The same pre- and post-processing capabilities can be refined to produce braille, large text, and synthetic-voice output documents. No doubt, with the advent of publishing mechanisms like HyTime and Digital Audio, natural language voice documents (NLVDs) are possible. Therefore, access is not only achieved for people with disabilities, but language barriers also diminish. Indeed with the W3C and SGML consortium support for style sheets and link process definitions, the ability to produce accessible information for all people, disabled or not has never been greater. This is the essence of universal design.
Design
In the design phase, consider that the most common issues related to document inaccessibility involve complex notation, image rendering, multimedia features and navigation.
Complex notation including math and science is extremely difficult to render in an acceptable format, especially for the blind. Note that most blind persons require an alternative format of the information. Likely the alternative is either ASCII text, Grade II Braille or synthetic speech. Therefore, the proper rendition of the notation is critical to the reader. However, the challenge of rendering complex notation that tends to be graphical in appearance often requires a transformation process. Subsequently, few information publishers are interested in making the investment.
Image rendering provides similar problems. Because the blind or low vision user is likely to be using alternative output (access systems), certain design considerations should be implemented. For example, using meaningful descriptive text in conjunction with figures, images, or other graphical entities within a document. Descriptive or alternative text has become a standard for web based documents. In fact, some authoring tools like HotMeTaL Pro, HotDog Pro, and Corel Web.Designer have built-in prompts for alternate text.
Ideally then browser providers should be able to properly display alternative text. The best implementation of alternate text display (are you listening Bill?) is Microsoft's Internet Explorer which automatically displays alternative text using bubble-help type notes as the user passes over the image with the mouse cursor. What will it take to get Netscape into the picture?
Electronic documents that contain multimedia features, including sound or video clips require additional attention. Keep in mind that anything that emits sound cannot be heard by the deaf. It may not be heard by the hard of hearing or, for that matter, anyone viewing the document in a noisy environment. If you believe this to be an impractical example, consider the current industry move to WebTV and public kiosks. While a specific solution for providing web captioning does not exist today, this should be considered an important feature of the document. Logic dictates that if consumer electronic manufacturers can produce televisions and monitors that support internal captioning controls, browser manufacturers and server protocol developers can design the means for delivering captioning through browsers.
Descriptive video provides a blind or low vision user with additional narrative that is useful, sometimes critical to their comprehension of an electronic document. The process simply requires the interjection of descriptive narration during the spots within the video that are not otherwise filled with sound effects or dialogue. As a result, the blind or visually impaired viewer achieves increased comprehension of the video event.
The National Center for Accessible Media (NCAM) in Boston, Massachusetts currently provides a service that implements descriptive video for the motion picture industry. Descriptive video and captioning are perfect examples of how the power of markup should be used to enhance the richness and accessibility of a document. They have recently grants to assist them in the research, design, and delivery of of web-based information for public television.
Navigating an electronic document, particularly a hypertext document is a challenge for anyone. Keeping track of where you've been, where you want to go and then getting there can be a cybernightmare. Still, being able to visually navigate through a document has obvious advantages the blind or low vision user cannot easily imitate. A navigational cue as simple as providing colored text provides meaning and definition that the non-visual user cannot see.
Therefore, there is a need to design solutions that implement audio cues in concert with visual cues.
Remember too that navigation is often closely tied with memory and consistent design. People with cognitive limitations simply require visual memory aids and simplified page design. An example of this can be found at the WebABLE! website (http://www.yuri.org/webable/). The designer, Colin Moock, implemented a system of visual cues consisting of opened and closed doors. The concept is basic to most people and simple to learn and remember.
Navigational difficulties clearly present challenges to every user. Consider the difficulty a visual user has today and then imagine doing the same thing with your computer monitor turned off! Or try navigating through a multi-columned table or an on-line newspaper that contains multiple columns on a single page.
Without a doubt, navigation requires acute sensory awareness.
Navigation is not just a document roadmap; it is not a linear link Rather, good navigational design includes a combination of seeing, hearing and "feeling" your way to a specific destination in a comprehensible way.
1. Authoring tools that are themselves accessible and also enforce accessible design tags, semantics, and protocols.
2. The ability of the processor to receive a single source document and build accessible or alternative outputs.
For example, the IBM Bookmanager can build documents for the blind to use with their screen readers and voice synthesizers. This is because IBM Bookmanager supports the ICADD (International Committee for Accessible Document Design) DTD which was designed to produce accessible documents for the print impaired.
Documents produced for the World Wide Web are gradually becoming more accessible and require less "massaging" by a post processor or other intermediary actions because some web browsers contain access features that enhance the readability of a document to persons with disabilities.
Additionally, they are rarely designed to allow assistive product manufacturers to easily link their products to using software "hooks".
A classic example is pwWebSpeak (The Productivity Works, Inc.). This GUI browser was designed with synthetic speech and large text functionality built in. It also supports the HTML 2.0 specification which includes the ICADD SGML
Document Access attributes
Ensuring electronic document delivery through a browser could be significantly enhanced if developers included assistive preference options that allow a user to "turn on" captioning, descriptive video, sound cues, synthetic voice, keyboard mapping, screen magnification and other accessibility features.
The Productivity Works, pwWebspeak Web Browser
pwWebSpeak is an Internet browser designed for users who wish to access the Internet in a non-visual manner. This includes users who cannot be tied to a keyboard or monitor, blind or visually impaired users, users with dyslexia or other learning disorders, and users who are learning new languages. The intelligence built into pwWebSpeak understands the HTML constructs and automatically bypasses those constructs that have no relation to the information content of a document. Both speech and large character interpretation of the Webpages are provided so that all classes or users can use the software effectively.
pwWebSpeak is designed specifically to interact directly with the information on the Web pages and to translate the information content into speech. The user may navigate through the structure of a document based on its contents, paragraphs and sentences, rather than having to deal with scrolling and interpreting a structured screen display.
Center for Applied Special Technology (CAST) "Bobby" Web Site Accessibility Verifier
Bobby is a program which finds common accessibility problems on web sites.
It was created to help web designers insure the greatest possible audience for their web sites and especially to highlight common accessibility problems that make using the web difficult for those with disabilities. When Bobby analyzes a page, it provides detailed information on:
Problem HTML tags and constructs that make it difficult for people with a variety of disabilities to access a web page
Image and document load times to insure quick page acess on slow modems.
A comprehensive analysis of how the page's HTML might be incompatible with those versions of HTML implemented by the major web browsers (including NetscapeNavigator, Internet Explorer, Mosaic, and AOL).
Both UCLA (http://www.ucla.edu/ICADD/html2icadd-form.html) and the University at Dresden (http://elvis.inf.tu-dresden.de/html2brl/) provide an HTML to Braille transformation service. These services allow anyone who has an HTML coded document to send that document to the server which then:
SoftQuad together with the University of Toronto are presently engaged in a project to make SGML and HTML authoring and browsing tools accessible to people with disabilities and to guide SGML and HTML authors in creating accessible documents. The user who is reading hyperlinked multimedia documents using access technology such as screen readers, Braille displays or screen magnifiers, faces three challenges:
Organizations:
Environment Canada's Adaptive Computer Technology Centre: Accessible Web Page Design (http://www.igs.net/~starling/acces.htm).
Environment Canada's Adaptive Computer Technology Centre was one of the first web sites to include guidelines and on-line examples of accessible web pages and HTML implementations.
Adaptive Technology Resource Centre at the University of Toronto (http://www.utoronto.ca/atrc/).
The Purpose of the ATRC is to:
Providing services for nearly half a century, Recording for the Blind & Dyslexic (RFB&D) is a national nonprofit organization that serves people who cannot read standard print because of a visual, perceptual or other physical disability. RFB&D is recognized as the nation's leading educational lending library of academic and professional textbooks on audio tape from elementary through post-graduate and professional levels.
Trace Research & Development Center's Designing an Accessible World (http://www.trace.wisc.edu/world/world.html).
The Trace R&D Center is one of the leading assistive technology research facilities in the world. This section one their web page is a classic example of accessible design. Additionally, Trace provides several on-line reference documents.
WGBH National Center for Accessible Media (http://www.wgbh.org/ncam).
NCAM develops strategies and technologies to make media accessible to millions of Americans, including people with disabilities, minority language users, and those with low literacy skills.
For 85 million Americans with little or no access to media's sights and sounds, the CPB/WGBH National Center for Accessible Media (NCAM) is working to remove the barriers to communication by:
The Yuri Rubinsky Insight Foundation is dedicated to bringing together workers from a broad spectrum of disciplines to stimulate research and development of technologies which will ensure equality of access to information of all kinds. The YRIF is dedicated to commemorating the genius of the late Yuri Rubinsky. The YRIF is also the new home of the WebABLE! disabilities information repository (http://www.yuri.org/webable/).
World Wide Web Browser Access Recommendations (http://www.staff.uiuc.edu/~jongund/access-browsers.html) By: Jon Gunderson, Ph.D. Mosaic Accessibility Project, Usability Access Chair, University of Illinois at Urbana/Champaign
World Wide Web Accessibility to People with Disabilities A Usability Perspective (http://www.staff.uiuc.edu/~jongund/access-overview.html) By: Jon Gunderson, Ph.D. Mosaic Accessibility Project, Usability Access Chair, University of Illinois at Urbana/Champaign
Universal Accessibility - A Matter of Design (http://www.prodworks.com/ua_9606.htm) By: Ray Ingram, The Productivity Works, Inc., Princeton, New Jersey
I am a student at UVa who saw an article of yours on the Net. I am writing a paper on the Internet's shaping of public discource and the subsequent consequences for American democracy. Do you feel that the Internet will or is currently forcing a profound change of public discource in this country? How would you compare it to the impact television has had? What do you see happening to democracy in this country as a result of the Internet, and how soon will these changes, if any take place?
Michael Hanzel
REPLY
Which article? At my Web site? (http://www.samizdat.com/) there are several articles there that might help you:
Internet is many-to many or rather everyone-to-everyone. Everyone can be a publisher today, and in the not too distant future everyone will be able to be a broadcaster.
I see great promise from:
But, let's face it, the Internet had next to zero impact on the 1996 presidential election. (And Clinton guessed that one right, daring to support the immensely unpopular censorship provisions of the Telecom Bill, even after the courts said it was unconstitutional.)
In the absence of any real choice, I voted for Perot.
In four years --
Good luck with your paper.
-- Richard Seltzer
REPLY TO REPLY
From: Michael Brian Hanzel <mbh9z@uva.pcmail.virginia.edu> Date: Sat, 7 Dec 96 21:35:22 EST
Thanks for sending me your thoughts on the Internet's future role in shaping our discource and democracy. I was able to use what you told for my paper, so it helped out a lot. I got your email address from reading your "Commerce..." article, actually. The Internet definitely seems to have an important future. I suppose we just won't know exactly what it is for a few years now anyway. Thanks again for replying to my letter.
Michael Hanzel
You don't know me, but I've just read your article on evolution, technology and the internet and I have a comment to make. Biologists know that creatures in a confined space evolve more quickly - the so-called island situation (put a bunch of birds on a remote island and they will evolve more quickly than the same bunch of birds placed on a large continent.) If this is true (I'm not a biologist), is it possible that the notion of cyberspace i.e. putting 3 billion people in the same "virtual space", may be detrimental to our evolution? I have an interest in this field and would appreciate any feedback, criticism, comment.
-Joby Allen, School of Information Systems, University of East Anglia, Norwich NR4 7TJ England.
REPLY
Interesting observation.
I'm inclined to believe that when people become connected in an information sense, as they do with the Internet, aspects of human nature that had not been evident start to come out. Not that human nature changes, but that potential that was previously hidden comes to light.(Check my related essay at http://www.samizdat.com/spirit.html)
We begin to see large groups of people working together/cooperating, without central control -- moving toward positive modes of group action and decision-making.
So as more people become connected and the kinds of connection become more full-blown (rather than just text), we may need to rethink what constitutes the entity that is evolving. It may well not be the individual human being, but rather some entity consisting of millions of human beings (cf. beehive or ant colony, but in a rational positive sense). And a step beyond that would be some notion of Gaia, or all life on Earth considered as a single entity. (From that perspective, growth of the Internet is like an early stage in the development of Gaia's nervous system.)
Looking at your premise from that perspective, putting 3 billion people on the Internet would in fact reduce the number of entities and hence speed higher-order evolution.
-- Richard Seltzer
I'm a teacher in Caracas, Venezuela, who's making an investigation about the future of books. That's why I want to ask you this:
Do you think that the book, will die as the result of multimedia computer systems development?
I am obliged to you in advance for your kind acceptance and look forward to read your answer.
Prof. Luis Jose Hernandez
REPLY
I don't believe that the paper book will go away. But over time, it will become the higher priced, luxury form of conveying content. Electronic books (with varying amounts of multimedia) will become very inexpensive to produce and easy and attractive to use.
Books intended as entertainment will increasingly depend on multimedia content for mass market sales. (Today's mass-market paperback will become tomorrow's multimedia electronic book).
Books intended to convey information sometimes need no graphics at all and sometimes need just a minimum of illustrations. These are already very inexpensive to reproduce in electronic form today (whether over the Internet or on diskette or CD ROM). There are two barriers to the acceptance of electronic books today: ease of use (it's hard to read lengthy text on a standard computer monitor) and consumer habits. Both barriers will go away over the next five years.
When people commonly read books in electronic form, the paper version becomes a luxury -- because it costs far more to produce and to distribute.
Text, rather than multimedia, is likely to predominate for information books (as opposed to entertainment books), because of the power of full-text indexing and search software. If your content is plain text, you can (as with AltaVista today) find whatever you want wherever it is.
I hope you find these opinions helpful.
-- Richard Seltzer
We are three students from the Limburg University Center. We are working on a paper about Intranet, advantages and disadvantages. The advantages are incredible, everybody is slapping us with 'improved communication', 'ROI 150%', ... But what are the limitations ? Since we are doing a critical review (with tendencies towards positive) of business- & work-related Intranet, we would like to know if there are any disadvantages.
Can you help us out ?
Daniel Buvens, Jurgen Lemmens, Maarten Ectors
REPLY
Real quick (I'm at a trade show in New York, connecting from my hotel room, and so exhausted I'm probably not thinking straight, but here goes...)
The success of an Intranet depends largely on the human element, not technology. There is tremendous potential, but most companies (especially large ones) do not have a corporate culture that is consistent with the opportunities, and hence won't be able to cash in.
There are risks all across the spectrum --
In this regard, companies should also encourage their employees (particularly sales people) to set up their own Web pages with external service providers -- pages tailored to the particular needs of their customers. They should be given training and templates so they can do it right; and financial incentives to do it as well (at least paying for the access/Web space). This approach multiples a company's visibility to the outside world.
Anyway, that's my personal opinion on the matter.
-- Richard Seltzer
Have been following your site for a while, and wish to congratulate you on a job well done. Very useful stuff.
I've been publishing etexts and ebooks for a while, and have a site with lots of texts available for downloading as well as some to read right on the web. Books from all over the world, mostly classics. Of especial note is the collection of ancient Chinese texts. It's really a unique collection and one of the largest libraries around. I'm ready to put the whole library up on the web to read as soon as I can figure out a way to get paid for the effort -- a more major problem than I first thought. Since you ask for suggestions of links to such places, I thought I'd let you know. Check out <http://www.galileosoftware.com> if you get a chance. If you could put up a link to it, I'd really appreciate it.
Anyway, thanks for your time. Keep up the good work.
Mike Presky, Galileo Software
REPLY
How to get paid is indeed a puzzle.
Two suggestions:
From my experience I'd say that today about 80-90% of the people who read and are willing to pay for electronic texts are blind. Diane Croft at National Braille Press knows of a way of providing etexts in encrypted form that can be read with a device that many blind people have. I suggest that you contact her for details and try to figure out if there is any way that approach would allow you to get paid. She is at dcroft@world.std.com
I've corresponded with Infonautics, which is in the process of setting up a database of electronic texts, with the notion that users will be charged some small amount for each text and royalties will be paid to the source. I suggest getting in touch with them. Michael Holland/Infonautics Corporation Michael_Holland@infonautics.com
Of course, the most common model is to give the etexts away and benefit from the notoriety. It's also possible to sell in printed form the very texts which you give away in electronic form (once again, because very few people, aside from the blind, really read electronic text today. For most people, the electronic version is just an extensive sample. Richard Bear from Oregon State posted the full text of his book of poetry and asked for donations/pre-publication purchase of a print edition, and raised enough to pay for the printing. He also has made available quite a few of his scholarly editions of 17th and 18th centuryliterary texts. You might want to swap experiences with him. RBEAR@OREGON.UOREGON.EDU
-- Richard Seltzer
I received a copy of your Internet on a Disk through forwarding from my supervisor. I checked out some of the sites that you mention, and I am very impressed with the extensive nature of your work.
I have a question that you may be able to help me with. I am thinking about creating a web page of my own, and since my educational background (and hopefully, future) involves mathematics, I would like to create a web page providing assistance to people doing research in the area of 9-12 math.
One thing I would like to do is include text reprints of some magazine articles that I have found to be very informative or otherwise helpful. Are you familiar with copyright restrictions surrounding retyping articles for printing on the web? I would obviously fully cite the sources, authors, etc.
-Katie Morrill, Associate Editor, Mathematics, University of Nebraska - Lincoln
REPLY
My understanding is that material published on the Web has the same copyright protections as material published in print; and that to republish material on the Web, you need to obtain the same kinds of permissions that you would to republish it in print.
Keep in mind, however, that there is lots of good educational information -- including 9-12 math -- which is prepared under grants by the US Department of Education, and hence in the public domain.
Try the ERIC home page at http://ericir.sunsite.syr.edu and their Clearinghouse for Science, Math, and Enviornmental Education at http://www.ericsc.ohio-state.edu and their lesson plans at gopher://ericir.syr.edu/11/Lesson.
-- Richard Seltzer
i've been a subscriber to "please copy this disk" for, well, it seems like forever. i've always been very impressed at the time and consideration and content-value of "please copy this disk". today i looked for the first time, at your web page and was completely blown away! a content rich page without spinning graphics, laughing "real audio", etc. it took seconds to load and was filled with interesting information. i've been on a tirade for a few years now to make web pages information intensive and graphically slight.
i wanted to congratulate you on a job well done for years and let you know that you might want to check out my web page, http://www.rowan.edu/~cassidy/home.htm -- i've got more graphics on my page, but i think the ones i have there are relevant to what people might be looking for if they come to my homepage. i update it frequently and have been pleased to discover that it has worked as intended, my friends and relations check it periodically to see what's happening in my life. sort of like letter writing in reverse.
i was greatly impressed by your articles on "low tech web page design" http://www.samizdat.com/lowtech.html and "flypaper" http://www.samizdat.com/joy.html, what a brilliant idea.
thanks for the excellent service over the years (have you heard, btw, while i have you here, of a hypertext project for tristram shandy? i've heard allusions, but only in conversation, no proof, and an alta vista search has turned up nil... tnx.)
kyle
REPLY
I haven't found Tristram Shandy yet either. Perhaps a reader of this might point us there.
-- Richard Seltzer
VERY informative Internet on a disc just received. I don't know if anyone bothers to thank you .... but I do. Keep them rolling. Might even join you on your chat. [Thursdays noon to 1 PM US Eastern time, http://www.web-net.org]
Brian Snellgrove (London), consultant@pobox.com
Please unsubscribe me from your INTERNET-ON-A-DISK mailing. It's not that your mailing is bad. It's very good. But I just get too much mail in my mailbox, and as long as you keep your issues on your web page, I'll access it there.
Actually, if I could have the best of both worlds, I'd prefer getting a one-line reminder whenever a new issue of the INTERNET-ON-A-DISK is available at your web page.
Les Moskowitz
REPLY
Thanks for the idea. Yes, we'll do that for anyone who asks.
-- Richard Seltzer
I am really enjoying your Internet on a Disk. I taught a course last Spring and will again in the Fall called, "How to Do Business on the Internet" at Fairleigh Dickinson University(Course Description at www.outofchaos.com). Your Web Site has been a great resource for my students. Thanks.
Thanks . . . Charlie
From: "SUE TAYLOR" <TAYLOR@WTAMU-COB.WTAMU.EDU> Date: Thu, 29 Aug 1996 11:48:59 CST
Richard, you are doing a fantastic job with your Internet-on-a-Disk service. I use it in my undergraduate and graduate ed tech course here at the University. Please add my name to your reminder list.
Sue Ellen Taylor, CIS Department, West Texas A&M University, Canyon, TX 79016
Please subscribe me to INTERNET-ON-A-DISK. I just spent THREE full hours at your site and its links, gaining a lot of useful information and missing half the last evening of the Democratic Convention as a result! Thanks! Excellent resources...I'm wanting to learn all I can about what works and doesn't work in regard to web page design before doing my own, and my own marketing. Already, my aim is to CONTRIBUTE...and not hit people on the head with marketing at all. And now, to give up some of my time-consuming fantasies for fancy graphics and animation. Better perhaps to choose a few really good ones and as you say, go for the content....
Tracy Marks
i need data on China especially all places and its state. i have one hompage address, but i can't assess that address (http://www.chinamz.org) Are you have any sources on China like homepage address or email id or any bookform. pl. sir it is very useful to me because i am writing one paper on India and China comparative study in the field of Electrochemistry for the year 91-95. Hence, I need urgently sir, pl. do kind favourble to me
K. THANGARASU, Jr. Documentation Assistant, Central Leather Research Inst, Madras, India
REPLY
An excellent source on China is the Area/Country Study (a complete book available on-line) done by the US State Department. It is available from the gopher site umslvma.umsl.edu:70 From a Web browser you'd enter gopher://umslvma.umsl.edu:70
I don't know if they have anything to say about your specialty, but there is an enormous wealth of info available there.
Hope it helps.
-- Richard Seltzer
Hi, Richard, I'm hoping to have a home page/website within the next two weeks, if I can figure out how to do it. I'm still struggling with technicalities. We now have a Performer 640 (Mac) and Netscape, but as usual I am in a tizzy. I have Elizabeth Castro's book, but I'd feel more comfortable with a human tutorial. Anyhow, I am interested in hotlinking with your website. Let me know cost, etc.and of getting involved with the Super Library. In fact, I am zealous about being involved everywhere on the web, having decided there is really no other way to go with advertising.
As for my fiction, I will probably publish on the web too, but that is toomuch of an undertaking for me right now. I've had a bit of luck with traditionla publishing. Believe it or not, I'm a hit in Italy. I've had a novella and some stories translated there and published to rave reviews in important publications, and am having another short novel translated and published there. I was invited last April to talk to students majoring in Maerican literature at the University of Florence, andmet with them. They are reading my material seriously, really, seriously, and several graduate students have writen their thesis on me. It's all in Italian and I don't know what they're saying, but it looks good. The professor who invited me had several receptions for me and i met the literati of Florence. I couldn't believe the respect they treated me with. The professor introduced me as "a writer without honor in her own country." Well, it's a long way from home and comes as a surprise, but am very gratified someone is reading my work.
Roberta Kalechofsky
REPLY
1) I'm not familiar with the Mac. If, however, you happen to have Microsoft Word for Mac, then you could follow the instructions in my article on Low Tech Web Page Design http://www.samizdat.com/lowtech.html If not, then I've heard the PageMill is a very good product for creating HTML pages on the Mac.
2) I'd be happy to add a link to your site. No cost. It's something I'd want to do anyway.
3) Once up, you should check my article on How to Publicize Web sites over the Internet (the free ways to do it). http://www.samizdat.com/public.html
Regarding Italy, that's terrific news. The recognition is long overdue.
-- Richard Seltzer
I just began to receive your newsletter, and I *love* it!!
I am a blind computer user who works very hard to help ensure that there remains full and usable access to all people on the Net. Recently, I found the Wal-Mart page, http://www.wal-mart.com and visited it. To my disappointment, it was totally graphic-oriented. I left them an e-mail, and let them know that effectively, they closed the door to many thousands of blind computer users who might otherwise be able to access the pages and spend their money at Wal-mart's page.
A few days later, I received an e-mail from them, telling me they'd look into it. I thought, "the check's in the mail" syndrome had hit again.
Last Friday, I received a call from Wal-Mart, asking me to visit their page and let them know if they'd redesigned it correctly. They wanted to ensure that all users could access the pages. I tell you this story in the hopes that you will do what *you* can to encourage businesses to follow that trend of making pages accessible.
Using alt equal statements, and setting pages up in a menu fashion, with one item per line, are 2 keys to easy access for we who use text-to-speech conversion systems to read information from the web.
Thanks for a great newsletter! I'll plan to be at one of your live chats on doing business on the web, as I am just beginning my own home-based business.
Marlaina Lieberg http://iquest.com/~mlieberg/
Please send me more details about how to do the flyer paper approach, to get connect with the people I want, my subject of interest. (http://www.samizdat.com/joy.html) Because I understand the same approach could be effective in trying to be recruited particular individuals to work.
Marian Anghel <manghel@alpha.sorostm.ro>
REPLY
The basic idea is that people using search engines look first for themselves and then for the subjects nearest and dearest to them. Hence you can use a targeted approach or a general approach to attract the people you want to get in touch with.
With the targeted approach, to reach a particular person and/or particular company, create a simple Web page that mentions that person or company. Say good things about them. Say something about the things you could do to help them. Make a page that you'd really like them to see. Make sure the name is in the HTML title and the first couple lines of text. Then if they look for themselves, they are likely to find you. (There are no guarantees, but it's worth a try; and if they do contact you, the conversation starts on a very different level than if you had tried to contact them first.)
As an example of the general approach, at my Web site I have a list of every book I've read for the last 38 years. It's just a list. When I posted it, I doubted that anyone would be interested. I posted it as a lark, for the fun of it. But because of search engines it draws lots of traffic to my site. I've gotten email from authors, agents, and publishers who found the list either looking for themselves or looking for books they have been involved with. I've also gotten lots of good correspondence from other people who love to read.
And, yes, you can use this approach to try to find a job. Just post your resume at your Web site. But sure that the main characteristics that a potential employer would be looking for appear in the HTML title and the first couple lines of text. And to be sure it gets indexed promptly, go to AltaVista http://www.altavista.digital.com and at the bottom of the page click on ADD URL and enter the URL for that particular page.
My wife was recently looking for a job. Newspaper ads and job-focused Web sites didn't get her anywhere. Then she got a call from a headhunter who had found her resume at our little Web site.
When you think about it, it's logical that it would be easier for a headhunter to find her at our little site than at a site designed for jobs. The job sites are all set up as database applications. That means you can do detailed and interesting searches if and only if you are connected to their site. AltaVista finds and indexes none of that. As a plain HTML document at my site, her resume does get indexed by AltaVista. So anyone in the world who searches AltaVista looking for someone with certain credentials and skills will be able to find the resume at our site. But they would have to go out of their way to visit dozens of separate career/job sites and do separate searches using very different software to get info from there (not a very efficient use of a headhunter's time.)
If you were a headhunter, which would you rather do --
-- Richard Seltzer
The flypaper observation is interesting. It is really what community newspapers have done for years to keep their circulation churning and make the paper valuable to the advertisers. In the sports sections they always carry every name of every little league player, teenage football player, etc, knowing that all the kids will look for their names, all the grandmothers and ants will look, as well as dad and his buddies.
I do it to a certain extent with my magazine. I figure there must be five hundred different names in each issue, and all of that is uploaded, eventualy, to the web site. It might be one reason I have had reasonable hits since the beginning.
John Shinnick, Editor/Publisher, Media Wave Magazine, Shorelines Newsletter, Future File Newsletter, Brave New Words Newsletter, http://www.media-wave.com
Thank you very much for your magazine! I couldn't believe it - I have learned new things from the FIRST issue I have received! Please, if possible, send me the available back issues also byemail, as my normal Internet access is down (the ISP is having problems) for some time.
You are saying something about articles:
>We welcome submissions of related articles and information.
What kind of articles? From what domains? I mean - should they be technical-, social-, or (anything)-oriented? Don't misunderstand me - although I would like to write something that will be read by many people, I am not that eager to make a fool of myself, so please let me now if I can HELP with something - I would really like to reward you for such a terrific magazine!
Marcel Popescu, Romania
REPLY
We welcome articles that deal with Internet trends, use of electronic texts, and access with the blind/handicapped. We're particularly interested in articles written for those who have relatively slow, modem access to the Internet and maybe not the latest greatest equipment -- articles with ideas on how to make creative use of what's available. Since our newsletter is free, we cannot afford to pay for articles. Your motivation when submitting should be to share your insights with people in a similar position.
-- Richard Seltzer
Last night I have visited your web site. It's nice, but I could not admire it for too long: first because of the awful snail-like speed that's the rule here (and I mean about 50-100 chars / sec), and second because I have seen TWO articles about Romania (maybe there were more - which I hope there weren't). I have read the one about your trip with your son, to the chess tournament - at first I was angry, until I have realized that everything was true, and it really had to be a shock for someone from the "civilized world", how we sometimes call it.
I'll try to read the other article next time I regain web access.
Anyway, I am really eager to the next issue of your ezine - and, in the mean time, I am actively looking for some servers that could deliver me web pages by email... :-)
Mark
REPLY
Sorry for the speed problem. We have zero graphics to try to speed loading, but at 50 chars/sec anything would be slow. Let me know if you'd like me to email to you any of the articles from my site.
Which of the Romania articles did you read? -- one was just about the trip (http://www.samizdat.com/romglobe.html) and the other dealt with my son's bout with asthma while we were there (http://www.samizdat.com/timis.html).
Things really were crazy (from a Western perspective) -- it did seem like something out of science fiction: a system set up so everyone felt guilty and suspicious of everyone else (kafkaesque). Of course, I had limited info to base my observations on -- mainly one very friendly doctor who was treating my son.
Have things changed significantly since the revolution?
Meanwhile, Gabriel Schartzman, a chess player my son's age, from Bucharest, who we met at the tournament, emigrated to the US, became a grandmaster, and recently won the US Open.
-- Richard Seltzer
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From: mdpopescu@pcnet.pcnet.ro (Marcel Popescu)
I have received #13 of your magazine (thanks again!) and, as - already - usual, I am very pleased of it. I would like to make some personal comments:
1. Regarding MOVIE NOTES - "Hackers" - have you EVER seen a movie OR read a book involving computers in which the director / writer / author seem to know what he is talking about? I mean, even a SF monster like Asimov wrote once in a novel (unfortunately, I don't remember which) that "the robot felt its voltage increased" (or something like that)... I think it's a matter of policy - people believe a computer HAS to have many lights, so if you don't show them such a computer, they find it "unreal".
On the hacking matter, I have been once approached by an acquaintance (I hope I spelled it right, my mail manager does not have a spell checker) who tried to persuade me to go into thebank-hacking business, as he just bought a ZX-compatible computer! (REALLY!)
I just think that movie makers don't want to educate people on their own money...
Mark
REPLY TO REPLY TO REPLY
Actually, the Net with Sandra Bullock did a pretty good job. (There's a review of that at my Web site as well.)
But, in general, you are right, in the past most movies are clueless when it comes to computers and networking.
-- Richard Seltzer
Dear Richard,
Let me use such a familiar addressing, as I know some of your papers since 1993 or 1994. Also thinking to the age of your chess champion son Bobby comparatively with my kids, I'm sure you are younger than me.
I'm living in Cluj in Romania, and consequently I discovered the OnLine World - the Internet, only few years ago, after '89 political changes (revolution). Reading your story about your 1988 experiences from Timisoara, I would like to invite now in Romania (at least virtualy) to appreciate today situation. I hope the life changes will begin now, more effective, after the last elections. In 1988 it was impossible for us to think at such uncontrolled e-mail mesage... with such a discussion...
Few words about me: I'm mathematician, working in a research institute of physics. I like very much your 'internet evangelist' expression, and I think me too. After 25 years on experimental data processing, acquisiton systems, programming in Algol, Fortran, Basic, on various mainframes and operating systems, I changed since 1992 to the Internet world. It was quit difficult I got started with the translation of Bob Rankin guide for access by e-mail to other Internet services. Now we have the 6th edition and a lot of students ask me for the document which I completed with our local examples. You can find accmail.ro file at BobRankin@mhv.net (Subject: get accmail.ro), and of course on some ftp, web and gopher sites.
I succeeded to write and publish two romanian books about Internet (the first one with Internet resources, called 'Internet : informare si instruire', 1995 while the second one, published last March is called 'Acces in Internet : E-mail, Telnet, FTP'). It was a success and I'm working now to the second revised edition of the first, preparing also a romanian printed version of Odd de Presno's 'The Online World' e-book.
We needed 4 years to have a proper Internet access, developing a LAN with a Linux server, using only free software and cheapper PC's... but finaly, now I can browse and navigate on the Net.
Visiting again your great Home page I got the decision to write you now, without special preparation.
First of all I would like to ask you about the romanian translation of 'Internet-on-a-disk'. Do you have an agreement for this? As I understand you are interested to have translations, other than Portuguese, isn't it?
The second question is about your new book 'The Alta Vista Revolution'. I think it will be nice to have a Romanian translation of it.
The third question is about my interest in Online learning. I would like to organize a workshop, here in Romania, in next June (9-14). And it will be nice to have you as an invited lecture. It will be a good ocassion for you to have a new insight about Romania, isn't it?.
Thinking to Timisoara... You can reach now a SimtelNet mirror and many other resources at Soros Foundation for an Open Society, Timisoara branch page, at: http://www.sorostm.ro
You can try also http://www.soroscj.ro At http://www.agora.ro you can find a lot of my romanian papers, as well as my mounthly electronic journal called BEAIS (Image and Signal Analysis).
Dr. Mihail Jalobeanu
REPLY
I would welcome a Romanian translation of Internet-on-a-Disk. We have volunteers who have translated a couple of issues into Portuguese and French and others have been working on Spanish (for quite a while, but haven't yet completed an issue.) Someone also translated a single article (on low-cost Web page design) into Chinese. Doing an entire issue is a lot of work (though we'd welcome the results). You might want to start with translating an article or two. I would make your translation available at my Web site and also by email to those who request it.
Regarding doing a lecture/worksop in Romania, that's something I would like to do. But we'd have to talk about the cost.
-- Richard Seltzer
Searching through for stuff about me for something and came across your reading list with one of my Grandfather's Books on it. Towards Manhood. Cool.
And, what a great idea to keep a list of everything you have read.
I have a few books out and one coming out with my grandaughter in April 97---which I will send you when we get a copy so that you can have read an author and his great-great-grandaughter--if that stuff appeals to you.
Lynne Bundesen
Hello Richard what a great service you are doing and all this being the digital cyber-daddy and all that. Now what is important to me at the moment is if you know of any sites on the Net, which are cool for "Digital Architecture of the Internet" essay that I am doing? If you've written something on the theme yourself and where & how can I get it? or rather where can I download it???.
I am a multimedia graphic artist/designer ( officially unemployed) from London It would make an interesting study if I can find any decent literature? Hasn't Old Arthur Kroker got anything similar cooked up ?Is he being very active lately ???Regards to him, he is way cool =:-) +:>
REPLY --
Good luck. There are quite a few Web-related articles at my site http://www.samizdat.com/ perhaps some of that might help. But in general, my idea of "cool" is a site with lots of good content that's easy to get to. I find decorative graphics and gimmicks for the sake of gimmicks very annoying. Text is king. A picture needs to really say something -- to be worth 10,000 words; and video and audio need to be worth far more than that to merit being posted on the Web.
-- Richard Seltzer
Do you know if anyone is putting text-books on disk? Would they be indexed and searchable? For instance - go to page 52, or find the chapter on environment, etc. Is this possible with the current technology? Thank you for any answers you may supply.
Tina Bell
REPLY
It's a very logical idea. Unfortunately, the main aim of text-book publishers is to generate profit.
Books in etext form on diskette can be quickly and easily duplicated -- meaning that schools and students would not have to spend anywhere near what they spend today. E.g., Virgil's Aeneid in Latin -- plain text with no frills -- could be far easier to use and learn from than a printed book, because it's so much easier to search, etc. And copies of such a public domain text could be made available virtually for free to all who wanted/needed. In fact, that's the basic purpose of our PLEASE COPY THIS DISK project.
But don't expect any such solutions from traditional text book publishers -- they have lots to lose and nothing to gain.
-- Richard Seltzer
I read about your web site on page 44-46 of the August/September 1996 issue of Fast Company. Quite the impressive web site. One question: How fast do you read?
Vinny Natale
REPLY
Glad you liked the site. Actually, I'm a rather slow reader, just persistent and obsessive (and enjoy it a heck of a lot).
-- Richard Seltzer
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So, Richard, to read as much as you do plus all your other family and work responsibilities, you must be one of those people who hardly ever sleep. If not, how can you read so much. Since I was a child, or I have always had the not enough time to read everything I want to in spite of my relatively speedy reading speed.
Vinny
Thank you for what was an excellent newsletter. I know you get a lot of e-mail, so let me be brief. First, my husband is blind and has a lot of experience with computers, so if you ever need anything related to blindness, you can always contact us. Second, I just have a question. We offer a service often referred to as "virtual servers" which I believe can benefit a lot of people on developing nations such as Brazil, where internet access is not so reliable. Would you consider mentioning our service on your newsletter?
Finally, a country which we are thinking of in particular is Brazil. Would you be able to share the email addresses of the two Brazilians you mentioned in the latest issue?
Thank you very much in advance.
Yelina Botelho http://www.adgrafix.com/info/ybotelho/
REPLY
Thanks for the offer of help. And I've included your URL with your message. You can reach Juselino Lima and Andre Luis Toledo (who are translating Internet-on-a-Disk to Portuguese) at idemperidem@ax.apc.org
-- Richard Seltzer
I've just found your page at http://www.samizdat.com/lowtech.html What splendidly refreshing common sense.
I'm in the process of designing my own set of web pages and I'm going to take your advice throughout.
With your permission I'll quote from your article, with a suitable acknowledgement of course.
Andy Lee, Burton-On-Trent, Staffordshire, England 100525.2536@compuserve.com
REPLY
Glad you found it useful.
You might also like to check a couple of related articles -- Degrees of Separation and Flypaper -- in issue #18 of my Internet-on-a-Disk http://www.samizdat.com/joy.html
-- Richard Seltzer
Richard--thanks for the tip of the hat to The Jesus Incident and The Lazarus Effect. [in http://www.samizdat.com/readbest.html] Curious about what you'd think about The Ascension Factor, since Frank passed away before he could do any writing on it. I'm proud of it because I believe Frank would be. One of my solo novels, JAGUAR, is available free on the web at: http://www.tcd.net/~bransom
All best wishes,
Bill Ransom
REPLY
It's great to hear from you. And, yes, I'll have to check out both The Ascension Factor and Jaguar. Glad to hear that you have posted Jaguar free on the Web. Is it also for sale in print? If so, did you have to go through a monumental battle with the publisher to retain electronic publishing rights. Most publishers don't seem to have woken up to the fact that on-line publication is an excellent way to promote print sales.
PS -- That reading list of mine has produced some very interesting responses. One of the more recent ones was from Deane Rink, who does such PBS/NSF shows as Live from Antarctica. He's a very heavy reader and is right now stocking up a supply of must-read books for another lengthy stint in Antarctica. You might want to get in touch with him -- Deane Rink <deane@quest.arc.nasa.gov>
-- Richard Seltzer
Please tell me how you learned how to write a screenplay! [http://www.samizdat.com/spit.html]
REPLY
With advice from my sister, Sallie, http://www.samizdat.com/mag1.html who studied screenwriting at USC, I read a few good clear books on the subject -- Elements of Screenwriting by Irwin R. Blacker, Screenplay by Syd Field, The Screenwriter's Workbook by Syd Field, The Complete Guide to Standard Script Formats: Part 1, the Screenplay by Cole/Haag
And I read about a dozen screenplays.
-- Richard Seltzer
Do you know of any programs that will look at a CD or disk and searches words? Forinstance, I have a CD with the Bible verses on it. I want to find a program that will search for the times love is in the CD. I know I can use the Concordat, I want the children to search for other words and match them with another Bible verse.
I really like the newsletter. Keep up the great work!
Marie Emery, Ph.D., Erickson Hall, Room 353, Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI 48823
REPLY
I believe that the personal edition of AltaVista will let you do that. Check out their product literature at http://altavista.software.digital.com And if it looks right for you, you can download it from there. My understanding is that the search capabilities and look/feel of it is just like the Web search engine, but it let's you find things on your hard disk and (I believe) other devices such as CD.
-- Richard Seltzer
As you know I once maintained a large (3,000 to 4,000 name) mailing list. From time to time I concidered creating a database to handle it. I also concidered serious automation to the process of adding and removing names. I never did it though because the payback didn't seem to warrent it. I think I did the right thing.
I did do some things to help myself out. One was that I created a number of form letters for use in common situations. ie. "You've been added and here's what to expect", "You've been removed", "your address has been changed", "good luck now that you've been laid off" :-), that sort of thing.
I'm a firm believer that removals should never be handled just on a single could not deliver. One vacation and a full mailbox should not cause someone to have to re-sign with every mailing list they're on. And there are other transient errors that a human reading send failure messages can parse much better then a computer.
I also feel that the "hand handling" allowed for a far more personal touch.
When my business situation forced me to hand off my list to someone else the messages from my subscribers were warm and supportive. I doubt that would have happened without the personal touch.
Alfred C Thompson II http://www.tiac.net/users/act2/alfred.htm
What software or email program do you use to mail out your newsletter? How long does it take to email to all of your clients, how many do you have?
Daniel W. May
REPLY
I use pine for email. I keep my lists on my PC -- a separate file for each letter of the alphabet.
When I'm ready to send the newsletter I upload the lists to my shell account. I import the first file into the text area. Then cut it and then paste it into the blind cc: line in the header.
My total list is over 10,000 names -- but the typical piece (one letter of the alphabet) is about 500 names.
To avoid crashing the system, I try not to send to more than a couple letters of the alphabet per hour.
The biggest problem is the returns -- email addresses change quite frequently. And one bad address (of address that's temporarily down) can generate multiple error messages, most of which return the entire original message.
Also, keep in mind that I typically break each issue into two parts which I mail separately. That means that the number of error messages for each wrong address is doubled.
It's a lot of work. And my approach is a kludge. But I don't like any of the automated mail systems. About 10% of my subscribers would be lost to any form of automation, because of peculiarities of their return addresses or the fact that they send from one site but want to receive the publication at a different address.
-- Richard Seltzer
Great site! I am the editor of a small newspaper in Northern Canada - Thompson Manitoba to be exact. In researching material for our upcoming Halloween special issue, I ran across "Why Bother To Save Halloween" http://www.samizdat.com/hallow.html and would like very much to publish this, if at all possible.
We are a very new, very small publication - having been in business since May of this year. Approximately 2000 copies of our free publication are circulated on a weekly basis.
Furthermore, I found other items of interest and would ask for your policy around publication.
Audrie Brooks, Northern Life and Times, Thompson, Manitoba R8N OC4
From: Mathew Ingram <mathewi@interlog.com> Date: Tue, 24 Sep 1996 16:14:48 +0200
I'm a journalist with a newspaper in Toronto called the Globe and Mail, and I'm writing a feature on personal home pages. I was struck by some of the comments you made in the online excerpt from your forthcoming book, about why it is that people do this sort of thing, and I was wondering if you would mind if I quoted from that excerpt.
Mathew Ingram
REPLY
Fine. I'd appreciate it if you could include my URL http://www.samizdat.com/ and my email address (seltzer@samizdat.com) in case anyone would like to receive my free newsletter Internet-on-a-Disk, and also if you could send me a copy of what you write.
By the way, as I expand and revise the book, I've decided to change the title to How to Succeed when the rules of the game keep changing: an Internet empowerment guide I'm trying to demystify the Internet and inspire and empower people to do good things on a shoestring.
-- Richard Seltzer
Hello Richard me & my wife would like to start graphics design business.We have a 5 Mb Home page space on demon.co.uk(ourprovider).Have you got any suggestions for us??We both got married on the Internet in May 96and are still very happy.
Liquid Chaos Design, http://www.cruncha.demon.co.uk (nothing is up yet,we're making it now)
thanks Dawn & Dragan
REPLY
If you use plain text, you can do a lot with 5 Mbytes. But if the business you want to start is graphics design, you're going to need a lot more than that. Will your provider let you increase the space you have in reasonable increments and for a reasonable price? If so, get started where you are. If not, find another provider fast.
Aside from that, there's lots of advice at my home page http://www.samizdat.com
-- Richard Seltzer
I was amazed and delighted to see your lists! My only question is what do the numbers in front of each book mean? I'll be checking back periodically for inspiration!
REPLY
re: http://www.samizdat.com/readall.html and http://www.samizdat.com/readalln.html
I keep annual lists as well as the overall one. Each year in January start counting at 1 -- as a way to encourage myself to read more. Also, each year I keep count of how many books of each genre (Novel, etc.) and how many from which country and century.
-- Richard Seltzer
Thank you for approving my application.
bn is Brunei Darussalam. It's a country at the northern tip of Borneo Island which is in Southeast Asia. Not much people know about us.
Firstly, thank you for your advice about distribution of e-mails using pine. I've been using pine, but I never thought it could do.
You asked (two months ago :) what was the nature of my publication...
My magazine: Pavucina (can be translated as web) has started to become on-line at 1.Oct.96 and can be reached at: http://www.euke.sk/~skultetr/pavuk.html
The magazine offers a wide range of information about Inet which could slovaks find useful. The structure of Pavucina is:
Since the magazine is not yet known to many people in Slovakia or Czech Republic, I would be grateful if you could possible write something about it in the next issue of InternetOnADisk.
Rastislav Skultety http://www.euke.sk/~skultetr
[responding to http://www.samizdat.com/hallow.html]
You are right on target concerning your little essay on neighborhoods and Halloween. Neighborhoods are in great danger of becoming not neighborhoods but strangerhoods. As a preservationist I believe this strangerhood attitude is ruining older neighborhoods, what were functioning, communicating groups are becoming isolated, non trusting islands.
I love Halloween and believe it is a wonderful holiday bringing people together and enabling people of all ages to release inhabitions. The kids who always wonder about the little old lady, find out she is kind and loves to talk. In my younger years she was the one who gave the great popcarn balls and loved your costume.
The mystery and intrigue of the evening filled us as children. My father still dresses up and recites MacBeth, scaring the hell out of kids, but leaving them with the puzzle of what was that cool stuff he was saying?
Well enough - good article!!!
In INTERNET-ON-A-DISK #18, September 1996 <http://www.samizdat.com/news18.html> in "Need an Internet Style Guide? Instead, use AltaVista to Determine Common Usage", you answered several excellent questions from Roger Barnaby, one of which related to upper/lower case in Email addresses:
"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">."
Your answer was correct, as far as it went. The "mailbox" name is indeed case-sensitive, however the "host" name portion is not. Case can safely be altered in the host/domain name portion of any Email address (the part after the "@" at-sign).
For further details, take a look in RFC 821, "Simple Mail Transfer Protocol" (SMTP), Page 3, available at <http://ds.internic.net/rfc/rfc821.txt>:
"For some hosts the user name is case sensitive, and SMTP implementations must take case to preserve the case of user names as they appear in mailbox arguments. Host names are not case sensitive."
The "host name" aspect is further discussed in RFC 1035, "Domain Names -- Implementation and Specification", Section 2.3.3 "Character Case", which can be found at <http://ds.internic.net/rfc/rfc1035.txt>:
"... all comparisons between character strings ... are done in a case-insensitive manner."
Similarly, in a URL, case can be altered in the "scheme" (or protocol) and host name portions, but the "url-path" portion must have case preserved. For example, all of the following are equivalent:
http://www.cdrom.com/titles/games/quake_t.htm
Http://www.cdrom.com/titles/games/quake_t.htm
HTTP://Www.CdRom.Com/titles/games/quake_t.htm
hTTp://WWW.CDRom.COM/titles/games/quake_t.htm
Refer to RFC 1738, "Uniform Resource Locators (URL)", Page 2, which can be found at <http://ds.internic.net/rfc/rfc1738.txt>:
For resiliency, programs interpreting URLs should treat upper case letters as equivalent to lower case in scheme names (e.g., allow "HTTP" as well as "http").
Admittedly, it's safer to simply advise people "if it works, don't mess with it", but I thought this might be of interest.
Craig Strickland
PS -- I had discovered a reference to your web page several months ago, but hadn't had time to follow up since then. I finally got my "subscribe" request off last night, and read a few articles online today.
I agree with several of your other subscribers -- you write excellent material, it's useful and readable. You seem to have a number of very good ideas; I particularly liked the "flypaper" concept (I haven't seen it anywhere else).
Thanks for producing a valuable, practical and effective Internet resource!
I just read your thing about giants with velcro shoulders (http://www.samizdat.com/velcro.html) - ran across it trying to find out if the famous quote is from Rutherford or about Rutherford. It's one of the best descriptions of the internet and what it's good for that I've run across - I have just printed it for my wife, who is non-techie (as in, a weaver, graphics artist, and educational assistant for what are euphemistically called "special needs" preschoolers) (I've been a software developer for 20 years, so there is some gap here).
Just checked out your reference to Robert Burton - the reference I was looking for was, I think, from the english physicist Rutherford, who, when (as I recall) was accepting a Nobel, said "If I have seen farther than others, it is because I stood on the shoulders of giants". I didn't know about the earlier reference - as an English university guy he probably knew the first and paraphrased it - little bit difference sense to his statement though.
Thanks for your stuff.
Karl Burton
Just wondered if you happen to know if such a thing exists as a program that will read electronic texts. i.e Is it possible for plain vanilla ASCII text files to be read in a simulated voice by a computer? If so, where do you get the software? Thanks for your help in anticipation.
Marg Hutton
-- Richard Seltzer
Published by Samizdat Express, 213 Deerfield Lane, West Roxbury, MA 02132. (203) 553-9925. seltzer@samizdat.com
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