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If Yahoo doesn't quench your thirst for tens of thousands of new Web pages, try the new searchable database at Carnegie Mellon University -- Lycos Search (http://lycos.cs.cmu.edu/ ). Their "short catalog" includes nearly half a million URLs, and their long one has over a million. But while Yahoo adds new sites when people submit the information, this database grows through automatic searches over the Internet. As a result many of the sites pointed to from here may have changed addresses or gone away, and others may not yet be ready for public viewing.
Digital Equipment's "Reading Rooms" are particularly useful starting points for teachers, librarians and researchers. While Yahoo is all-inclusive and massive, these Reading Rooms consist of pointers to hand-picked selections of the best and most-useful sites for these audiences -- places you'll want to go back to time after time.
Canada's Schoolnet, "a cooperative initiative of Canada's provincial, territorial, and federal governments, educators, universities and colleges, and industry," now has its own Web page and information and pointers that would be useful to teachers wherever they may reside (http://schoolnet.carleton.ca/english/ ). Their goal is "to link all ofCanada's 16,000 plus schools to the electronic highway as quickly as possible."
The IRS has landed (http://www.ustreas.gov/treasury/bureaus/irs/irs.html ). Not exactly classic texts, but very useful -- here you get all of your U.S. tax forms on-line, easily and immediately.
H.M Treasury (U.K.) just came on line too http://www.hm-treasury.gov.uk/
The Wall St. Journal, New York Times, Dow Jones News Service, etc. are all on-line now as part of DowVision (http://dowvision.wais.net /) For a limited time, during their startup test period, they are letting people register for free. Then you are going to have to pay for this service. Check it out. It's well done. And fill out their survey form, and let them loudly know that regardless of what they charge to commercial customers, a resource such as this should be free to the .edu community.
Taylor Road Middle School in Alpharetta, Georgia, just put its pages on the Web (http://www.trms.ga.net/ ), and announced that it is going to provide local insight into preparations for the 1996 Olympics.
The Internet Mall, with pointers to electronic book sources on the "First Floor", has moved to http://www.mecklerweb.com/imall
SkiWeb plans to provide ski condition reports for major resorts in the U.S. http://diamond.sierra.net/SkiWeb
California Virtual Tourist has pointers to lots of good stuff in California. http://www.research.digital.com/SRC/virtual-tourist/California.html
There are three good Web sites for lovers of chess -- Chess Archives (http://www.traveller.com/chess/ ) , the Internet Chess Library (http://caissa.onenet.net/chess/ ), and Chess Server (http://www.willamette.edu/~tjones/chessmain.html )
I've tried it out on world.std.com, and it works great. You can download the software and instructions from
ftp://oak.oakland.edu/SimTel/win3/internet/slnot100.zip or
ftp://ftp.netcom.com/pub/pbrooks/slipknot/slnot100.zip
For general info check their Web site
http://interport.net/~pbrooks/slipknot.html
or send a blank e-mail message to slipknot@micromind.com.
I just stumbled across another interesting technological twist. Universal Access Inc., offers Web Fax, which purportedly can retrieve World Wide Web documents from any FAX machine with a touch-tone phone. I don't have the equipment to check this out personally, but it sounds intriguing. (http://www.datawave.net/ )
People often ask: What are the demographics of the Internet? Where do these people live? What do they do for a living? What kinds of things do they buy?
That's a traditional set of questions. Many successful retail businesses have been based on good answers to such questions -- enabling them to decide exactly where they should set up shop or who they should send direct mail advertising to.
From that point of view, the Internet is very difficult to understand because of the enormous rate of growth, and especially the shift from its education and research origins.
With increasing commercialization, the demographics of the Internet are changing -- not just the numbers but the kinds of people who are out there as a potential audience and marketplace. An audience that is willing and able to buy attracts businesses, and competing businesses creatively do their best to attract audiences; so both business and audience keep growing in an ever-widening spiral.
In the swirl of today's activity, we can see societal, economic, and technological forces leading to the growth and change of the Internet. But if we step back and try to visualize where all this activity is leading, we can begin to see the Internet as a cause rather than just an effect -- the Internet as a force with the potential to change society and economics. And what might be the direction of that change?
I believe that commercial use of the Internet has the capacity to transform the world -- giving people new and broader choices of where and how to live and work. Putting it simply: once the audience and business on the Internet reaches critical mass, we won't need cities anymore.
In other words, the growth of commerce on the Internet could have the kind of impact that the great advances in transportation brought. History lessons hammer home how transportation technology led to the growth of cities and determined where they would lie, and then led to the growth of suburbs. It sounds so deterministic -- here's the confluence of major rivers, here's where the caravan routes or the major highways cross, etc.
Use of the "information super highway" metaphor implies that the same kind of determinism might apply in the future. The implication is -- invest heavily to get the fastest possible communication lines, and you will bring the world's business to your territory. Singapore seems to have that model in mind as it invests to develop the world's best telecommunications infrastructure.
Yes, some companies will go out of their way to locate offices where the telecommunications are best. But that is a very short-term advantage. Out of necessity, the rest of the world will come up to speed very quickly, and meanwhile compression and other technology advances will produce effects similar to those brought by greater speed, but making it possible to do much more with ordinary telephone lines.
More importantly, the Internet is not a highway. It takes you nowhere. Rather it brings the world to your desktop. It enables you to get information from anywhere and to do business with people anywhere, without concerning yourself with where they are.
As the audience available on the Internet grows, we see the beginnings of a global distributed marketplace. It doesn't matter where people live -- all that matters for companies with goods for sale is that the people are connected. And vice versa, it doesn't matter where the companies are located -- all that matters is that the companies are connected. So people don't have to move where the stores are if they want to buy. And companies don't have to move to where the people are if they want to sell. And in some businesses which have heavy information or software content, people can use the Internet to work at a distance. This means that people don't have to move to go to where the jobs are; and companies don't have to move to go where they can find a skilled work force.
The combined effect of these changes could be that companies and individuals have a greater degree of choice about where they locate and how they operate. Talented young people need not gravitate to cities or emigrate to "industrialized" countries.
Students at colleges in rural Mexico who today have access to the Internet and are creating their own Web servers are developing the skills and knowledge to create businesses on the Internet that can compete in a global electronic marketplace from wherever they choose to set up shop. They will not feel compelled to move to Mexico City.
Similarly, scientists can now choose to stay in Russia, rather than emigrate to the West. A few years ago, science students, professors, and researchers in Russia saw a bleak future ahead of them. Runaway inflation, salary scales out of line with the world market, the difficulty of obtaining foreign currency, and the high cost of technical journals and of international travel made it virtually impossible for them to get the latest information about scientific developments in the rest of the world. This meant a choice of staying in their native land as second-class members of the scientific community, or emigrating to the West.
Thanks to the Internet, those who stayed can now participate much more fully in the global community -- obtaining much valuable information for very low cost and being able to take part in global discussions. And in an increasing number of instances it is possible for them to get work assignments from companies elsewhere in the world, which involve doing work or submitting it over the Internet, which means they can live where they want to live and get paid at salary levels that previously would have been impossible.
Up until now, this has only happened on a small scale. But the potential is tremendous.
Giving people a real choice of where and how they live could transform the world. No longer will a handful of "industrialized" countries act as a magnate attracting talent and capital from all over the world. No longer will cities grow out of control.
I see the knowledge worker of the future as Thoreau with an Internet connection. He sits on a mountain top, leaning against a tree, and with a mobile computer in his lap. The Internet is a social tool putting him in touch with people of like mind around the world; it's a global library that gives him access to the works of the great thinkers of all time; and it's also a business tool, providing him with the livelihood he needs to enjoy his mountain retreat.
To check out the latest commercial sites on the World Wide Web, see Open Market's Commercial Sites Index --http://www.directory.net/
For a listing of books on business use of the Internet and reviews of them see http://arganet.tenagra.com/Tenagra/books.html
The combination of "adaptive technology" and the Internet opened the world to many visually impaired people.
Before, they were limited to audio tapes and Braille books, and books with extra large type, all of which are difficult and expensive to produce. That meant that only a small portion of the literature and information available to everyone else was open to them.
Then computer technology led to development of a variety of devices that can turn plain ASCII text into voice or show it as extra large letters or even provide Braille output. And the Internet, through applications such as mail, newsgroups, ftp and gopher, provided an almost inexhaustible supply of information in plain text form.
Many blind people became Internet gurus. The Internet was the ultimate equal opportunity global environment -- no one knows if you are blind or have three feet tall or your skin is purple. All that matters is your ideas and your ability to express them and the respect and care that you show for others in your dealings in this public arena.
For the sighted, the coming of the World Wide Web and graphics browsers like Mosaic and Netscape was a glorious revolution. Suddenly, they could point and click their way with ease from one end of the world to the other, without bothering about complex addresses. The world of the Internet became like a CD-ROM (only slower), with information easily viewed and manipulated in a Windows environment, and with the welcome addition of great color graphics, the beginnings of video, and even audio. Over the last year, it seems that everyone has been scrambling to put up a Web server. Great work is being done. But if the only way to get to it were with a graphics interface, the blind would be locked out and consigned once again to the role of second-class citizens.
Fortunately, a handful of people at the University of Kansas in Lawrence, Kansas, (Lou Montilli, Charles Rezac, and Michael Grobe) developed a character-cell browser named Lynx, and made the code freely available over the Internet. According to Lynx Users Guide Version 2.3 (http://www.cc.ukans.edu/lynx_help/Lynx_users_guide.html )
"Lynx is a fully-featured World Wide Web (WWW) client for users running cursor-addressable, character-cell display devices (e.g. vt100 terminals, vt100 emulators running on PCs or Macs, or any other "curses-oriented" display). It will display hypertext markup language (HTML) hypertext documents containing links to files residing on the local system, as well as files residing on remote systems running Gopher, HTTP, FTP, WAIS, and NNTP servers. Current versions of Lynx run on UNIX and VMS. A DOS version is in development."
Simply put, Lynx delivers documents from the World Wide Web as plain ASCII text characters. This means that they can be "read" by the blind, as well as people who are limited to character-cell (no graphics) access to the Internet.
So there is a solution available for the blind, but lack of awareness limits its usefulness. Many blind people who could use this capability still do not know that it is available. And many people who now run or are building Web sites seem to be unaware of the importance of Lynx, and are designing their pages without taking into account that means of access. In other words, many exciting and interesting Web sites (such as HotWired -- produced by Wired Magazine, and located at http://www.hotwired.com/) are so heavily dependent on graphics that it's impossible to use Lynx there.
If you know an Internet user who is blind, let them know about Lynx.
If you know someone who is building a Web server, remind them that they should design their pages with text-only alternatives for maneuvering from one place to the next and not depend on the user seeing icons and fancy graphics.
If you know someone who designs, or builds or sells Internet-related computer products or on-line information services, remind them that if they or their customers do business with the U.S. government they may at some time be required to make their information accessible to the blind, and Lynx can help them accomplish this.
If you know someone who is involved in the further development of Web server software and html authoring tools, encourage them to make it easy for the creators of Web pages to see how their work will appear with a Lynx browser as well as with the full graphics.
And if you know someone who is involved in the further development of Lynx, remind them how important that tool is for the blind and that they should consult with blind users for advice on features they should include in future versions.
(Lynx is currently available via anonymous FTP from ftp://ftp2.cc.ukans.edu/pub/lynx )
We would welcome further such messages for inclusion in future issues. Please send you mail to samizdat@samizdat.com
(Thanks to Diane Croft at National Braille Press for pointing us to some of the key people.)
Date: Wed, 2 Nov 1994 17:48:21 +0001 (EST)
From: B+R Samizdat Express <samizdat@world.std.com>
We'd like to include an article about LYNX in our next issue of the Internet-on-a-Disk newsletter. There's been a lot of hype about the World Wide Web and the various graphical browsers like Mosaic and Netscape. I'd like to alert people -- particularly the blind -- that there is a character cell alternative, that as long as the information provider keeps LYNX in mind when designing pages, the blind should be able to access their information.
I'm looking for brief first-hand accounts of what it is like to use LYNX -- especially what it is like for a blind person. What works well and what doesn't? Are there problems/barriers? Are there sites which you find particularly easy or difficult to use (because of the page design)?
Do you have any way to create your own home page? Would it be useful to you if someone maintained a home page of sites particularly useful to the blind -- so you only had to type in one address, to get to that, and then could just select from the menu of choices?
Do you have a wish-list of features you would like developers to include in future versions?
Also any tips on usage would be very helpful.
Richard Seltzer
Samizdat Express
Date: Wed, 2 Nov 1994 18:01:41 -0500 (EST)
From: "Judith M. Dixon" <jdix@loc.gov>
Hello,
I am a user of both Lynx and Doslynx. I find them both very easy to use. I use a braille display to access the computer. My only wish would be to be able to play audio clips within the program rather than having to download them for later playing. Just because I don't want graphical images, I still want audio.
* Judith M. Dixon jdix@loc.gov *
* Consumer Relations Officer (202) 707-0722 *
* National Library Service (202) 707-0712 fax *
* for the Blind and *
* Physically Handicapped *
* Library of Congress *
* Washington, DC 20542 *
On Wed, 2 Nov 1994, B+R Samizdat Express wrote:
> By the way, I'm not familiar with DOSLYNX. Where can you get that and what is different about it?
Doslynx is also available from the University of Kansas. It is the version of Lynx that runs on a DOS machine. At work, I am connected to a token Ring and run DOSlynx on my PC. However, from home, I can only dial into the Unix shell so I think use the Lynx that is available on our Unix system.
* Judith M. Dixon jdix@loc.gov *
Date: Wed, 02 Nov 1994 19:46:01 -0500 (EST)
From: PROF NORM COOMBS <NRCGSH@ritvax.isc.rit.edu>
Lynx is a good system at present. I have been just too busy to learn orexplore it very much. There is a special lynx command that is most useful for a blind user
lynx -show_cursor
that will put my cursor on the highlighted line. With one keystroke I can ask what is on the cursor line. Then, when I downarrow, the system speaks what is on the line I move to. I don't have to go read the screen to see what is highlighted. This feature is MOST important.
Second, Mosaic is being modified for blind access. In fact its producers claim they want to set the national standard and model for access for blind persons. They have $100,000 from NSF to help them.
If you want to know more about it, write to Larry Scadden, lscadden@nsf.gov
Norman Coombs
Date: Fri, 04 Nov 94 08:15:20 EST
From: lscadden@nsf.gov
Thank you for the info. Norm Coombs' information is not totally accurate, however. NSF is one of the key funders for Mosaic development at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications as the lead in a very large inter-agency cooperative agreement. I put in $100,000 this past year to put accessibility on the development agenda for NCSA. chief of software development at NCSA for Mosaic, Joseph Hardin, has now made accessibility one of the high priorities for Mosaic, but it is going to take a long time; I have no idea how long, and it will still need to work within a Windows environment, and we don't yet have an exemplary screen reader for Windows.
Joseph Hardin is working with the Lynx people on this topic, so I have to assume that he is drawing from their experience to make Mosaic accessible. I use Lynx here at NSF to access the Mosaic home pages. Still, I find Lynx difficult on the WWW, but it may be the operator rather than the program.
The expert on Lynx for Dos use by blind people is Doug Wakefield of the General Services Administration. He uses it, and he has worked with the White House to make their Mosaic-driven information system accessible to blind people using Lynx for Dos. Doug can be found at: doug.wakefield@gsa.gov
I hope I will be able to learn more about your work and publication, and hopefully learn to Lynx better when I have time to sit and work with it for an adequate period of time.
Larry Scadden
Lawrence A. Scadden, Ph.D.
Senior Program Director
Program for Persons with Disabilities
National Science Foundation
Phone: (703) 306-1636 ext. 6865
Internet: lscadden@nsf.gov
Date: Sat, 5 Nov 1994 11:16:24 -0500 (EST)
From: Jo Churcher <jchurche@io.org>
Hello Richard,
Thank you for the letter about LYNX, which gave me pause to stop and consider what, exactly, my relationship is with that marvellous, often frustrating, program.
I don't use LYNX a great deal, and tend not to use it if there is another alternative. This is due mainly to the amount of unnecessary chatter it gives me as I move from one link to another, since my speech program faithfully reads me all the count of bytes received (at least I think that's what it's reading me!), and if I suppress that, I then usually miss the first screen of information. Also, most of my LYNX sessions have ended with the computer getting locked up, though I suspect this is not a fault of LYNX itself, but of something else, whether in our local system or in Telix I have not been able to determine.
Now those are the negatives, and trivial, too, when set against the positives. My big step--the step which made it possible for me to use LYNX at all--was to discover that an option could be set to number the links. As a blind user, I found that numbering extremely valuable, as before that, I really couldn't determine what the links were. It has made all the difference!
I think it is quite possible for a blind person to design his own home page, and I've been toying with the idea of doing so, though it'll probably take me a while to get around to it. In the meantime I rely on bookmarks and other people's home pages--yours, for instance--to take me where I want to go. I know I have barely skimmed the surface of what's available to me, and the more I skim, the more I'm aware of what *isn't* available. The Rossetti archive, for example, was one of my greatest joys and frustrations in using LYNX. So many links leading to those unattainable pictures! ... I've been a devotee of the PreRaphaelites since studying them at university, but the written word, in their case, goes hand in hand with their visual art, and this complicated my wanderings through the Rossetti archive.
It will be unfortunate for the visually impaired if further development of LYNX is abandoned. It could probably be a bit more stable, and I'm sure that, if it remains as it is now, it will soon drop behind developments in the Worldwide Web. In my wish list, I would place at the top the need for ongoing development of LYNX, and also that knowledgeable blind users (I doubt whether I'd fall into that category!) might offer suggestions on how the program could be made more useful to them.
To respond to another of your queries, I think that a home page with sites that might be of particular value to the visually impaired would be most useful. Of course I have no need to tell you that individual tastes amongst the blind vary as much as in any other segment of the population, but popular, text-oriented sites that could be reached without the hours and hours of search and experiment that many of us spend in their location would be great! (I seem to have got lost in that last convoluted sentence. Sorry! I'm writing this online.)
Good to hear from you again, and hope this rambling was of some use.
Cheers!
Jo
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