INTERNET-ON-A-DISK #21, August 1997

The newsletter of electronic texts and Internet trends.

edited by Richard Seltzer, seltzer@samizdat.com, www.samizdat.com


Permission is granted to freely distribute this newsletter in electronic form for non-commercial use. All other rights reserved.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

WEB NOTES -- Amazon.com Associates Program, Power Searching with AltaVista, Mainspring, The Elsop Webmaster Resource Center, Language Tags at AltaVista Search, Example of use of AltaVista, PriceScan -- Web-based computer price search engine, A Clue...to Internet Commerce by Dana Blankenthorn, Barcode Web, Windweaver, Center for International Legal Studies

EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES -- Study Web, LIVE FROM MARS, Empowerment Zone, Distance Education Clearinghouse, Online Class

CURIOUS TECHNOLOGY -- AltaVista Search Personal eXtension 97, Cosmo Player, PGPcookie.cutter for Windows 95 and NT 4.0

INTERNET RESOURCES FOR THE DISABLED -- National Braille Press, dev-access mailing list

REVIEWS OF INTERNET BOOKS -- Net Gain, Rules of the Net

FEATURES AND FEATURETTES:

LETTERS TO & RESPONSES FROM THE EDITOR What Did You Learn from All that Reading? Updike's Rabbit Novels, How to Publicize a Web Site? Culture and Web-Site Design

WHAT'S NEW -- (etexts available on the Internet): Samizdat Express, The Gutenberg Project, Naked World, Electronic Frontier Foundation, Screenwriters Utopian Home Page, MIT Press, On-Line Books Page new books listing, Accessing the Internet by Email, Moths to the Flame: The Seductions of Computer Technology, The Duke Papyrus Archive, The Secular Web (formerly called the Freethought Web), Russian Story - Russian Periodicals Online, CultureWork, Athena Pages, American Literary Classics - A Chapter a Day

PLEASE COPY THIS DISK


WEB NOTES

Amazon.com Associates Program http://www.amazon.com

Check the "associates program." If you have a Web site of your own -- no matter how small -- you can add links from your pages to books at Amazon and get referral fees of 5-15% of the retail price of the book if your visitors buy that book. (Since we do so much about reading at books at http://www.samizdat.com, we now include Amazon links for many of those titles. We're not getting much money for it, but there is little work involved, and it's a convenience for our visitors who would want to buy those books anyway.) Schools that have Web sites could use this approach to raise money, while at the same time making it easier for students to buy summer reading books and textbooks. And in any case, there's nothing to stop you from doing it on your own.

Power Searching with AltaVista http://www.cobb.com/go/altavist

New paid-subscription newsletter focusing on the AltaVista search service. (Richard Seltzer writes a regular column for them.)

Mainspring http://www.mainspring.com

New paid-subscription Web-community for people designing Internets/intranets/extranets. (Richard Seltzer will be writing for them as well.)

The Elsop Webmaster Resource Center http://www.elsop.com/wrc/

Lists of links to resources that might be useful to Webmasters.

Language Tags at AltaVista Search http://altavista.digital.com

AltaVista now lets you choose the language of the Web pages you are looking for. The default is "any language," but you can pick any of dozens of languages from Swedish and Hebrew to Japanese and Korean.

Example of use of AltaVista to solve a practical problem http://www.intermediacy.com/sherlock/alta_vista_tip.html

As a quick tutorial, Sanford Carr provides all the steps for fine-tuning a search for the use of gold oil to treat leg wounds.

PriceScan -- Web-based computer price search engine http://www.pricescan.com

This free service lets you search for the hardware, software, and computer supplies you need -- entering the features, parameters, and price range you want. As results, you get not just the model number and vendor name, but also a selection of dealers, with their prices.

A Clue...to Internet Commerce by Dana Blankenthorn http://www.tbass.com/clue

For a free copy of this insightful weekly publication about business on the Internet, send email to Dana.Blankenthorn@worldnet.att.net

BarcodeWeb http://www.barcodeweb.com

For a fee, this site lets you instantly create and download high-resolution barcodes. Very handy if you are running a business out of your basement and need to provide your products with barcodes attached to get them onto store shelves.

Windweaver http://www.windweaver.com/

Web training, research and design from Tracy Marks.

Center for International Legal Studies http://www.cils.org/

Online books, newsletters, articles, International Legal Resources Directory, LawWebs for lawyers, discussion group, International Business Law Consortium, online registration for conferences, etc.


EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES

Study Web http://www.studyweb.com/

Reviews of over 15,000 educational Web sites, ranked by grade level.

LIVE FROM MARS http://quest.arc.nasa.gov/mars

More in the on-going series of "Live From..." programs, combining television broadcasts on the Public Broadcasting System and teaching resources posted on the Web. Great way to follow the Mars Pathfinder Mission.

Empowerment Zone http://www.empowermentzone.com search for "politics"

This collection of etexts on political action includes:

Distance Education Clearinghouse (at the University of Wisconsin)http://www.uwex.edu/disted/home.html

News, advice and pointers to other Internet resources for folks interested in distance education.

OnlineClass http://www.onlineclass.com

Original K-12 programming for the Internet. "Planned, organized and moderated e-mail/Web learning experience."


CURIOUS TECHNOLOGY

AltaVista Search Personal eXtension 97 http://altavista.software.digital.com/searchpx97/index.htm

Once you have this software on your hard drive, you'll change the way you file and the way you work. This uses the same format and same full-text indexing technology used at the AltaVista search site to help you find anything on your own computer quickly and easily -- regardless of what you named it or what directory you put it in. (In my case, it's indispensable as I try to write a book and need to quickly put my hands on files that are scattered all over my computer.) Requires Windows 95 of NT 4.0. Free 30-day evaluation or buy it for $29.95.

Cosmo Player (virtual reality browser plug-in from Silicon Graphics) http://vrml.sgi.com

I was tempted to see a 3D panorama of Mars with a`virtual reality (VRML) browser. But even for free it's too expensive -- the experience is simply not worth the time it takes to download the software. Eventually, this may be a very hot category of software; but not today.

PGPcookie.cutter for Windows 95 and NT 4.0 http://www.pgp.com

This free software makes it so you don't leave a cookie trail as you navigate around the Internet. It seems to be derived from Internet Fast Forward, which I praised in #19. 


INTERNET RESOURCES FOR THE DISABLED

National Braille Press http://www.nbp.org/

Braille books and other reading material for the blind (including a Braille edition of The AltaVista Search Revolution by Richard Seltzer). In particular, check their children's book club and opportunities to sponsor the Braille publication of particular titles.

dev-access mailing list

To subscribe, send a message to majordomo@world.std.com with the following line in the body: subscribe dev-access To post, send email to dev-access@world.std.com

Set up by Jamal Mazrui and Jeff Turner, this list is intended to facilitate discussion about the accessibility of software development mechanisms to people with disabilities. Questions covered include:


REVIEWS OF INTERNET BOOKS

Net Gain: Expanding Markets Through Virtual Communities by John Hagel and Arthur Armstrong (Harvard Business School Press 1997) reviewed by Richard Seltzer (available from Amazon.com)

Discussing the theory of "virtual communities," their basic premise is excellent -- that business success on the Internet depends on building communities in which users can talk to one another and provide much of the content that attracts and holds still more users. But they don't provide the experience-based practical advice necessary to help ordinary individuals and businesses actually build communities. Also, they vastly underestimate the difficulty and work involved in building effective chats and forums. There is no sign that the authors ever created a Web page, much less a Web site or Internet-based business.

While they provide revenue and cost numbers and graphs for a travel-based community, these numbers have no basis in practical experience. For their hypothetical model, the authors presume starting capital of $15 million and they project revenues of $618 million over 10 years. But no Internet company has ever lasted that long (the Web has only been around since 1993) nor has any been anywhere near as successful as this model.

The book contains numerous quotable quotes that could be helpful in convincing a CEO or a venture capitalist of the value and importance of on-line communities. But it's like a tantalizing description of Shangri-la, without a map or directions for how to get from here to there.

Rules of the Net by Thomas Mandel and Gerard Van der Leun (Hyperion 1996) reviewed by Richard Seltzer (available from Amazon.com)

The authors focus the behavior and people perspective of the Internet, rather than technology -- a much-needed viewpoint. Much of the very readable, chatty discussion deals with the newsgroups and mailing list culture of the classic Internet. The Web of today, where "personal pages" proliferate and discussions take place in Web-based forums and chat gets relatively short shrift. But the book is filled with the wisdom of years of experience (much of it through the Well http://www.well.com).


FEATURES AND FEATURETTES


BUILDING ON-LINE COMMUNITIES

by Alfred C. Thompson II, "Teacher, Hacker, Net Surfer" act2@tiac.net http://www.tiac.net/users/act2/

The latest great "discovery" is that communities can be built on the Internet. On-line communities are not, however, a completely new thing. Usenet newsgroups have existed on-line as communities for years. Bulletin Board sites, such as The Well, have also built real though virtual communities. Employees of Digital Equipment Corporation built international communities of thousands of people using that companies internal network and a tool called VAX Notes. While the implementation details are different, there is much to be learned about building on-line communities from these precedents.

Successful on-line communities include a mix of people and types of contributions. Most of all they include large amounts of dialogue. Unanswered speeches, documents without discussion, and one way communication will not make a community. Discussion makes communities.

The discussion must also be "safe." The participants must feel that they can express themselves. The most successful on-line communities also include an "in real life" component.

Types of People

Most on-line communities consist of a number of types of people.

These people provide the give and take that builds community.

While a community can exist with a subset, the best (most interesting and stable) include all of them.

Question Askers

People who ask questions start things off. In some communities the questions they ask are purely informational. "Is it time to plant?" in a gardening community. Or "what should I buy?" in almost any community. In a political community, and many are even if not in the sense of election events, the questions relate to why things are, how they can be changed, or who's at fault. Questions start dialogue.

Question Answerers

People who answer questions are the on-line communities single biggest asset. In many communities the person who answers questions is an expert. People come to learn from them. In "political" communities, the question answerer may just be the person with the most or the loudest or the most extreme opinions. In any case that person either attracts controversy or additional questions.

Sometimes they attract both. Having several experts or opinionated people can really spark interesting discussions. Others will wade in from time to time and "stir the pot."

People Who Disagree

People who disagree are often a variety of question answerers. They are also, occasionally, people who show up just to disagree with the community. Sometimes they do it for fun. Sometimes they are out to convert people. For whatever reason they speak out in disagreement with the majority of the community. Within reason these people actually help build community. The community rallies to defend itself, supports its resident experts, and fights back against an intruder. Hence people who disagree can be the irritant that builds a pearl in a community. As long as the irritant is not too severe.

People Who Sit and Watch

Some would argue that "lurkers", those who read the on-line discussion but don't actively participate are not part of the community. I believe that they are. They may not seem to be actively building the community but they are a part of it. While some of them may never participate, many will. When the time is right, when they feel comfortable enough or when an issue really moves them, they will participate. And of course on the Internet, where readers mean as much in calculating advertising rates, they can not be overlooked. Keeping them interested in returning is important. At Digital, tests we ran indicated that most on-line conferences had between 7 and 10 people who only read for every person who actually wrote to a conference.

Moderators

Moderators perform several functions. in some cases they feed conversation. They add comments or ask questions. Sometimes they play the devil's advocate. But most often the watch and make sure the communities rules and mores are followed. Good moderators understand the community and its expectations; they don't try and change a community. Rather they allow it to evolve in safe ways. These are the people with power and authority to enforce rules. They may remove participants or discussion comments. While some communities appear to function well without such people that generally means they are operating quietly and effectively.

Safety

Contributors feel safe in a good community. This does not mean that they don't expect to have people disagree with them. Rather it means that the level and type of disagreement will stay within known and tolerable limits. Such limits vary by community. In some disagreement may be hard and fast, flaming may be common.

As long as these flames are expected and the recipient is prepared to take them, the discussion may still be considered safe. In other communities the mores and expectations will be different.

What the rules are or that they be written is not important. What is important is that the rules are known and enforced either by peer pressure or moderators.

In Real Life Meetings

The best on-line communities meet face to face from time to time. The Well had its Well Parties. Digital's VAX Notes communities had their Note's Parties. These face to face meetings built community though a combination of factors. One of course was the "high bandwidth" communication that they facilitated. But more important are the intangible effects of actually looking someone in the eye.

People who meet in a social context, be it a diner in a restaurant or a barbecue in someone's backyard, tend not to remain or become enemies. They come to a get together with preconceived notions, what someone looks like, or how their voice sounds, and invariably those notions are shattered. The 6' 6" giant one expects is only 5' 9". The Japanese person one expects to be short and skinny is actually 6' 4" and built like a linebacker.

Expectations are seldom realized. One is forced to see, not a stereotype based on ideas and opinions but a real person.

The whole community does not need to meet for this to work. It is often enough if a few of the most vocal are involved. The best meetings often involve a few people who are local to each other, who host one or two people, who are normally very far away in geography.

These sort of meetings bridge a gap that is more then just physical. It brings a psychological closeness to the group. It is tempting to believe that geography has no meaning to an on-line community. That would be a mistake. The effects of geography are there even if they normally do not effect the flow of conversation. Bridging that physical gap, even if only in part and for a subset of the community, works well to strengthen the community as a whole.

Summary

Dialogue is important. People must feel safe and valued. But most important, the people in an on-line community must believe that they are a community. Then and only then does a living, growing and real community exist in the virtual reality of cyberspace.


WHAT IT TAKES: SKILLS FOR ON-LINE COMMUNITIES

by Richard Seltzer, Samizdat Express, seltzer@samizdat.com

I was recently brainstorming with my wife about her job credentials and how they fit what's needed for Internet business (just laid off from a marketing assistant job and redoing her resume). We came up with the following ways in which experience in teaching kindergarten/nursery school/daycare could prove helpful in building on-line communities.


PUSH? MAYBE. MAYBE NOT

by Richard Seltzer, Samizdat Express, seltzer@samizdat.com

Not every application that's possible will be successful in the long run.

If you believe, as I do, that the heart of the Internet is people interacting with one another, then the push/broadcast model feels a bit off target.

Remember that in the early days of the telephone, creative push/broadcast applications of that technology looked promising. It took some years before its natural, successful use became clear. It's easy to hear Internet echoes when reading this passage from The Culture of Time and Space 1880-1918 by Stephen Kern, p. 69 (NB this book is available from Amazon.com):

"Party lines created another kind of simultaneous experience, because in the early systems bells rang along the entire line and everyone who was interested could listen in. ...

"Within a few years of its invention in 1876 the telephone was used for public 'broadcasts.' In 1879 sermons were broadcast over telephone lines in the United States, and in 1880 a concert in Zurich was sent over telephone lines fifty miles to Basel. The following year an opera in Berlin and a string quartet in Manchester were transmitted to neighboring cities. The Belgians began such transmissions in 1884: the telephone company of Charleroi gave a concert which could be heard by all of the subscribers, an opera in Monnaie was heard 250 kilometers away at the royal palace at Ostend, and the North Railroad Station in Brussels piped in music from the Vaux-Hall in what was perhaps the first experiment with muzak.

"Jules Verne envisioned 'telephonic journalism' in a science-fiction story of 1888. Five years later it became a reality when a Hungarian engineer started such a news service in Budapest and expanded it into a comprehensive entertainment service with outlets in the homes of its 6000 subscribers, each of whom had a timetable of programs including concerts, lectures, dramatic readings, newspaper reviews, stock market reports, and direct transmissions of speeches by member of Parliament. It focused the attention of the inhabitants of an entire city on a single experience, regulated their lives according to the program scheduled, and invaded their privacy with an emergency signal that enabled the station to ring every subscriber when special news broke. ... In the United Sates in 1896, telephones were used to report presidential election returns, and, according to a contemporary report, 'thousands sat with their ear glued to the receiver the whole night long, hypnotized by the possibilities unfolded to them for the first time."


SPECULATION ABOUT THE EFFECT OF THE INTERNET ON THE ECONOMY

by Richard Seltzer, Samizdat Express, seltzer@samizdat.com

Recent GDP figures were up significantly and caught everyone by surprise. Is it possible that we're beginning to see the effect of an Internet boost on the economy?

Admittedly, electronic commerce is still in its infancy; and it's impossible to put together reliable statistics on how much new (not replacement) business is happening over the Internet and because of the Internet. But the traditional models used to project economic activity probably do not yet have an Internet component. And a small additive effect from new Internet-related business could boost the GDP beyond the range of expectations and hence have an enormous effect on the stock market.

Meanwhile the Internet has become the main communications utility for global business, and the implications of that for the stock market have not yet been sorted out. At the most superficial level, many investors today use the Internet to get up to the minute stock price reports and in depth info on potential investments. And when they decide to go ahead with a transaction, the on-line brokerage companies make the cost of the transaction far less than it was before.

This means that the number of investors who can participate in this game with some degree of confidence is far greater than before, and also that there is less inertia restraining their making buy and sell decisions (because the cost of the transaction won't be eating up too large a chunk of the profits from a small trade).

The crash of 1929 was a "panic" -- ignorance of what was happening fed mass fear and prompted large scale irrational, mob behavior. Today most investors can get the info they want when they want it -- immediately.

Far more important that those matters is the impact that the Internet is having on the global economy -- not just in terms of revenue and cost savings, but also in speeding up business processes.


LETTERS


WHAT DID YOU LEARN FROM ALL THAT READING?

From: vincenzo <vincenzo@chilli.net.au> Date: Sat, 19 Apr 1997 03:23:46 +1000

Richard! Hi!

That is truly remarkable.

I thought joseph campbell or carl jung had read a lot...but you.....

I must ask you one question.....reading is a great window to look out and into from....so what was the greatest thing you learned from all that reading, all that knowledge..what were the main things coming through to you from so many of those wonderful minds...

Thanks, Richard , you are an inspiration for us book lovers...

Vincenzo [in Australia]

REPLY FROM RICHARD SELTZER --

Thanks for the undeserved praise. If I only remembered all that I read...

Main lessons:

I guess that's enough spontaneous profundity for today :^)

UPDIKE'S RABBIT NOVELS

From: Roberto Ferreira Junior <robertjr@tropical.com.br> Date: Fri, 11 Apr 1997 23:18:40 -0700

Have you read any book by Updike? I am really interested in your comments on the Rabbit novels as I am doing my dissertation on this tetralogy.

Thank you!!

Roberto Ferreira Junior [in Brazil]

REPLY FROM RICHARD SELTZER --

Yes, I read the Rabbit books, but quite some time ago. My general impression -- I'd compare the series (bizarrely) to Tristram Shandy. It starts exuberant and clever -- the author in complete control. Then gradually time becomes a major factor -- the time of the author's real life, overlapping with the time of the fictional storyline. Despite himself, the author finds his tale becoming increasingly serious. Despite himself, he finds that the theme of his tale is not of his own choosing. Increasingly, whatever the twists and turns of the plot, the story becomes about getting older, about the inexorable advance of time; it becomes a race against death -- not just for the main character, but also for the author, to get it all down, to tell the whole story, to try to make sense of this life before it ends.

HOW TO PUBLICIZE A WEB SITE?

From: godschld@btigate.com Date: Thu, 19 Jun 1997 11:01:37 -0700

Your address was cited in the June 12 Chronicles of Philanthropy to get information about free advertising space on the internet.

You'll have to pardon me, however, as I have just moved up a step or two and have now become an internet "moron" instead of an internet "idiot".

We currently have a donated website at www.godschild.org but we don't seem to be getting alot of exposure with it. Can you suggest something we can do to get wider coverage but will cost nothing?

Thank you so much for whatever you can tell me. We learn everyday, don't we?

Belinda R. Garey, Executive Assistant, The GOD'S CHILD Project [from North Dakota]

REPLY FROM RICHARD SELTZER --

We don't do anything with advertising. There is however an article of mine at my Web site with practical suggestions on how to promote a Web site for free over the Internet http://www.samizdat.com/public.html

You also should look at some of my articles, particularly those dealing with making good use of the search/indexing engines -- making sure you are properly indexed etc. http://www.samizdat.com/#soapbox

You also might benefit from my book The AltaVista Search Revolution, which is available at books stores and from Amazon.com

CULTURE AND WEB-SITE DESIGN

From: "Frances.Burns" <hiu95138@ccsun.strath.ac.uk> Date: Sat, 19 Jul 1997 16:03:58 +0100 ()

I am a MSC student reading Business and Information Technology at Strathclyde Graduate Business School. This summer I am writing my final project on the impact of culture on the internet.

The project shall specifically question how web page designs are influenced by different countries cultures, concentrating mainly on Japanese, British and American cultures. I wish to question the Internets ability to break down all cultural barriers (not corporate culture).

I would be extremely grateful for any comments or views you could share with me on this subject.

Frances Burns [in the UK]

REPLY FROM RICHARD SELTZER --

For your research, have you used AltaVista? Keep in mind that you can restrict a search to a particular domain, e.g. domain:uk domain:jp

You can also restrict your search to a particular language. (That's a feature that they just added.)

It may be a bit premature to pursue this topic. Today, most people access the Internet with slow modems and hence graphics are more of a nuisance than a benefit. Savvy commercial sites everywhere in the world are figuring that out and cutting back on their use of fancy effects and graphics. So it is hard to determine when Web page design is influenced by culture and when it is influenced by necessity.

It might be interesting to compare uses of the same images in different cultural contexts. For that, you could use the AltaVista command image: followed by a typical image file name such as "comet" or "mars"

Good luck.

RE: INTERNET BY EMAIL (in this issue)

From: Bob Appleton <4u@interquest.de> Date: Wed, 23 Jul 1997 16:03:49 GMT

I noticed that you mentioned Bob Rankin's Accessing the Internet by Email in this issue. If you'd like to add my list of files concerning email, be my guest. Have included below the latest blurb sent to mailing lists and newsgroups. Bob A.

These files show in specific detail how to use email to retrieve files, programs and documents from FTP and WWW sites, etc. In other words, how to get just about anything by email. The files are FREE and everything mentioned in them is also FREE. All files have been updated. You can now get these files individually or together in zipped format as well as in text format. Substitute the file that you want in place of the XXX in the URL below and add a line for each additional file requested.

Files available are:

email4u.txt getit4u.txt fun4u.txt pix4u.txt email4u.zip getit4u.zip fun4u.zip pix4u.zip 4useries.zip

Send a message to: agora@dna.affrc.go.jp and in the body of the message:

send ftp://ftp.crl.com/users/iv/iverham/XXX

Only the .txt files are available here:

send http://inetw.com/home/ak/4useries/XXX

send http://members.aol.com/bombagirl/freeware/XXX


WHAT'S NEW

Texts recently made available by ftp, gopher, www, and mailing list.

from the Samizdat Express seltzer@samizdat.com http://www.samizdat.com

My little Web site (Samizdat Express http://www.samizdat.com) is now hosted by Acunet, a commercial Internet Service Provider in Marlboro, Mass. They are now providing detailed stats of my site.

It turns out that I'm getting far more traffic than I ever imagined. Over the last two months, requests for my home page were about 5,900 -- that's about what I was figuring. But total requests for pages at my little site were over 45,000, from over 20,000 distinct hosts. For the most recent week, I had an average of 962 page requests per day for a total of 6,737 requests from 3,308 distinct hosts.

I've always said that with search engines lots of people by-pass home pages and go right to what they want. But I never imagined it was at this order of magnitude.

And I guess some people are taking what I do seriously. That's gratifying.

from the Gutenberg Project ftp://ftp.prairienet.org/pub/providers/gutenberg/etext97/http://promo.net/pg/ from The Naked Word http://www.softdisk.com/comp/naked/ from Electronic Frontier Foundation http://www.eff.org from The Screenwriters Utopian Home Page http://www.screenwritersutopia.com/ NOTE NEW ADDRESS

Lots of new advice and tips for screenwriters.

from MIT Press http://www-mitpress.mit.edu/City_of_Bits

City of Bits by William Mitchell. Looks like the whole book is available for sampling on-line. "Mitchell argues that the crucial issue before us is not one of putting in place the digital plumbing of telecommunications links and associated electronic appliances, nor even of producing content for electronic delivery, but rather one of creating electronically mediated environments for the kinds of lives that we want to lead."

from On-Line Books Page new books listing http://www.cs.cmu.edu/books.html

Best list of new electronic texts on the Internet.

"Accessing the Internet by E-Mail: Dr. Bob's Guide to Offline Internet Access"

To obtain a copy, send email to: mailserver@rtfm.mit.edu (if you are in North and South America) with the message

send usenet/news.answers/internet-services/access-via-email

or send email to: mailbase@mailbase.ac.uk (for the rest of the world)

send lis-iis e-access-inet.txt

Translations available in over twenty languages..

[for related info, see in Letters]

Moths to the Flame: The Seductions of Computer Technology by Gregory J. E. Rawlins http://www.obs-us.com/obs/english/books/rawlins/moths/

Full text of a book that explains "computers and their social consequences to literate readers without using any unnecessary jargon or pedantry -- or math.

from the Duke Papyrus Archive (from the Special Collections Library at Duke University) http://odyssey.lib.duke.edu/papyrus/

Electronic access to texts about and images of 1,373 papyri from ancient Egypt.

from the Secular Web (formerly called the Freethought Web -- NOTE NEW ADDRESS) http://www.infidels.org

Lots of history-related etexts.

from Russian Story - Russian Periodicals Online http://www.russianstory.com

Current and archived issues of major Russian newspapers in full image and text. Acrobat PDF or plain text format. You are charged for each document you download.

CultureWork: A Periodic Broadside for Arts and Culture Workershttp://darkwing.uoregon.edu/~aad/culturework/culturework.html

A new on-line periodical from the University of Oregon's Institute for Community Arts Studies and Program in Arts & Administration. "Its editorial mission is to provide timely workplace-oriented information/advisories for professionals and workers in culture, arts, education, and community. The first issue addresses how to provide universal access to web pages. For info re: submissions, send email to the editor Richard Bear rbear@oregon.uoregon.edu

from Athena Pages (Republique et Canton de Geneve, Departement de l'instruction publique, Switzerland) http://160.53.182.200:80/www/athena/html/athome.html

from American Literary Classics - A Chapter A Day http://www.mindport.net/~arezis/

This site provides classic works at the rate of a chapter a day. Past classics available on-line, formatted, include:


PLEASE COPY THIS DISK

For those who do not have the capability or the time to retrieve electronic texts from the Internet, many are available on IBM diskettes from PLEASE COPY THIS DISK, and on CD from Seedy Press books on CD, both projects of The B&R Samizdat Express. For further information, send email to seltzer@samizdat.com or check our Web site http://www.samizdat.com/catalog.html (diskettes) or http://www.samizdat.com/readme.html (CDs)


Published by Samizdat Express, 213 Deerfield Lane, Orange, CT 06477. seltzer@samizdat.com


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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.

Web Business Boot Camp: Hands-on Internet lessons for manager, entrepreneurs, and professionals by Richard Seltzer (Wiley, 2002). No-nonsense guide targets activities that anyone can perform to achieve online business
success. Reviews.

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Published by Samizdat Express, 213 Deerfield Lane, Orange, CT 06477. (203) 553-9925. seltzer@samizdat.com


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