NETSURFER DIGEST

Saturday, November 18, 1995 - Volume 01, Issue 36

"More Signal, Less Noise"

OUR SPONSORS: Netsurfer Marketplace

BREAKING SURF

Latest news from the online frontier

YITZHAK RABIN CONDOLENCE PAGE

You are aware, we're sure, of the assassination of Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin earlier this month. The Yitzhak Rabin Condolence Page presents a brief biography of the man, and allows you to send condolences to his family. Also on hand are memorial speeches and the lyrics of "A Song for Peace", the last song he sang. Virtually follow the Jewish tradition, and leave an e-pebble on this electronic headstone. "http://www.netking.com/index.html"

THANKSGIVING, THANKSEATING

America is a big country. Big money. Big hats. Big national debt. How fitting then that Thanksgiving, a quintessentially American holiday, has become associated with big eating. Really big eating. The kind of big eating that inspires visions of gas-filled zeppelins, blue whales, large gaseous planets, and the federal government. So what will it be? Some pumpkin apple soup or perhaps frumenty or maybe chestnut stuffing? They're all on the New England Thanksgiving Recipes page. For turkey pizza and links to cranberry or pumpkin (no, not the bands) home pages visit the Thanksgiving Links page. Let's face it; even if you're not from America, who doesn't enjoy getting bloated once in a while? Eat in sympathy on November 23. New England: "http://media3.com/plymouth/recipes.htm" Links: "http://perry.gulfnet.com/turkey/"

AOL GETS INTO WEB HOSTING BUSINESS WITH NAVISOFT

So why are we reporting on yet another Web hosting service when the Net is crawling with them? This particular company is owned by America Online. That in itself guarantees a certain elephantine authority in the marketplace, but they do seem to offer a unique and integrated set of services: easy-to-use graphical front-end site management and authoring software; robust back-end network and hardware; domain names; and reasonable prices ranging from $20/month to $1500/month depending on service. The bad bit: they charge extra if you exceed your allocated transfer bandwidth, something you have little control over. Still, it's a cheap way to set up a no-hassle and, one hopes, reliable personal or business Web site. Could be significant. Free demos available. "http://www.navisoft.com/index.htm"

WORLD AIDS DAY

December 1 has been designated World AIDS Day. Not surprisingly, there's all sorts of activity on the Web associated with the occasion. The World AIDS Day 95 Web Site has the scoop on the the whole deal, with information, links to related sites, events, and even suitable graphics and artwork. A Day Without Graphics is a privately organized effort to encourage Web page maintainers to remove their site graphics for that day. A Day Without Graphics was inspired by other World AIDS Day activities like A Day Without Art, for which museums remove or drape works of art, and A Day Without Light, for which city lights are lowered for candlelight marches. WAD: "http://www.wad.hea.org.uk/pages/home/" DWG: "http://www.cyberzine.org/html/WAD/index.html"

NETSCAPE POWER PACK, SLICK MARKETING, AND THE NET

You can't help but admire Netscape. In a shameless display of good old fashioned capitalism, they throw together a bunch of freely available tools on a CD-ROM and sell it for about $50 a pop as the Power Pack. It takes balls worthy of P.T. Barnum to do that kind of marketing to the ignorant public, but alas, the Net makes getting away with it much harder then it used to be. Witness this page put together by a disgruntled user who assembled links to all the software being sold by Netscape. Link to Netscape's own SmartMarks and Chat clients, the Adobe Acrobat Reader, Quicktime VR and Real Audio. Then download without spending big bucks. In fairness, you won't get much support or pretty documentation, or get on the mailing list with registration, but still, it's a bargain. The moral of our story? The Net routs around slick marketing. "http://www-cs-students.stanford.edu/~friedman/power_pack.html"

GENIE FOR SALE

GEnie, one of the oldest online service providers out there, used to be a contender. Now, the parent organization, GE Information Services, wants to unload the organization after mumbling something about it not being their main market. Apparently, "business productivity solutions" are where the real money is. All this is a euphemism for losing to the brutal online competition of the Internet and America Online. With persistent rumors that Sears and IBM want to unload Prodigy, this may be the start of a long anticipated shakeout among the proprietary interface online service providers. "http://www.genie.com/"

NEWSBYTES OFFERS STORY LICENSES TO WEB SITES

If you're a news junkie you probably know about Newsbytes. Since 1983, they've been cranking out top-notch news digests about the computer and telecom industries. Ahead of their time, they've delivered their work electronically almost since the start, most recently via e-mail and the Web. They've just announced a Top Stories program whereby you can, with a daily license, publish on your Web site up to five items chosen from 21 categories. You, as good webmasters, know that high-quality, up-to-date content is the lifeblood of a site, and should consider this opportunity to snag some award-winning reporting for your own corner of cyberspace. "http://www.nbnn.com/about.html"

ONLINE CULTURE

Online society in the spotlight

THE WEB GETS MENTAL

The text says, "This is the first of hopefully many inventories designed to examine World Wide Web users from a mental abilities perspective." Heck, it seems easy enough. You just answer a couple of those questions Intro Psych professors give you, hit the submit button, and that's it. Come on, how hard is it to choose between "Sometimes I can't understand how teachers arrive at the grades they give" and "There is a direct connection between how hard I study and the grade I get"? We didn't study for this and we answered everything. The folks at the University of Central Florida promise to post the results when they're finished. We hear the curve'll be awesome. "http://pegasus.cc.ucf.edu/~cwg65985/survey.html"

THREAD WATCH

Random threads to follow and know about

SPAM, AND THE POSTERS WHO LOVE IT

"Yes, you can make MANY millions of $$$$ selling the IDEA of selling Spam, America's most beloved mystery meat, over the Internet." So begins the hectically hyped-up $PAM-o-GRAM page, a tribute - nay an homage, to the venerable practice of Usenet spamming. By itself, it's a small grin in a long day, but the best part are the e-mail messages received from those who have read it. Staple any money you attach - tightly. "http://www.halcyon.com/weir/spam.html"

ART ONLINE

Art and art resources online

CHARLEY PARKER'S GRAPHIC JAM

We've seen some great graphics and amusing cartooning on the Web, but Charley Parker's "Argon Zark" is outstanding. Not only is this strip incredibly well drawn and seemingly three-dimensional, but the background details alone are worth a visit. If Dali had done a comic book on the Net, it might have been something like this. This site contains the e-quivalent of a full-sized comic book, so be prepared to spend some worthwhile time here. "http://www.netaxs.com/~cparker/index.html"

COOL PICTURES, HOT COMPUTER ART FROM GERMANY

A computer art site from Karlsruhe, Germany, has some of the coolest raytraces you'll ever see. They are absolutely beautiful; you could browse for hours on modems faster than ours and never see them all. The images average over 100 kB but the artist, Florian Maushart, has included enough small images to make you want to take the time to check out the others. The images are colorful, unreal, strange, and sometimes bizarre but definitely worth a visit. The site is Netscape-enhanced, but that didn't slow down even our Mariner browser. "http://www.fh-karlsruhe.de/~mafl0011"

PERFORMANCE ART POESY

There once was a Web site at Brown Upon which Lord Byron might frown. Few rhymes to be heard but these poets' spoken words might bring them some future reknown. Best-quality Audio Web Poems, aka BAWP. "http://www.cs.brown.edu/fun/bawp/"

COMPUTER ANIMATION FINAL PROJECTS

It's easy to reminisce about the days when such things were only exhibited where parents could gloat over the achievements of gifted offspring. In the 1990s, we place these projects on the Net. That's how Cornell University's Comp Sci 418 spotlights the final projects completed during the past two years. The MPEG selections are creative, varying from computer-generated race cars and jet fighters to the ominously titled "Death Trek", which pits the starship Enterprise against George Lucas's gigantic special effect, the Death Star. A word of warning: these animations range from 300 kB to a staggering 21 MB. It might be the year to ask kindly Mr. Claus for a T1 line. "http://www.tc.cornell.edu/Visualization/contrib/cs418-sp94/cs418.html"

ENGLISH TRANSMISSIONS

"Transmission" is an art exhibit based on the observations of artist Colin Pearce and his trip across the groynes of Gorleston-on-Sea, a small community on the east coast of England. For those who are hopelessly marine-challenged, groynes are wooden structures designed to stop the shifting of beach, and are used as stepping stones by the artist during his photographic examination of the minutiae of shifting sands and sea currents. Transmission is the first installment of a three-part multimedia exhibit culminating in the erection of a 60-meter-high tower at Gorleston-on-Sea, intended as a tribute to the beauty of the beach and sea, and to the culture and people of the region. "http://www.demon.co.uk/seachange/index.html"

GRAFICA OBSCURA REVEALS THE TECHNICAL BEHIND THE GRAPHICS

It's about graphics and it's obscure, so it must be GRAFICA Obscura! A technophile meets his artistic side and writes up the results. There are pages on how to synthetically change the lighting in a photograph after it's printed, an origami how-to, stirring samples of bad Japanese-to-English advertising slogan translations, and, of course, lines of C code describing matrix operations for image processing. Likely to be a hit among the less enlightened computer crowd. "http://www.sgi.com/grafica/index.html"

SCHWITTERS FOR ART HISTORIANS

Painter, sculptor, poet, author, collagist, typographer - Kurt Schwitters (1887-1948) has been called a complete artist. Paul Klee and Max Ernst were friends of his. Grenoble Museum has mounted a temporary retrospective of works by this German emigrant. Its Web site (in French only) provides samples of his elegant craftsmanship, but be prepared for a long download or two. This site will probably appeal most to art historians and other academics with an interest in modern precursors of pop art. "http://www.grenet.fr/gid/schwitters/"

BOOKS & E-ZINES

Book info, 'Zine info, E-Journal info

EPICURIOUS

If you like to eat, never mind if you like to cook even a little, then you must visit this site. Epicurious, a product of Conde Nast, has searchable online recipe databases of at least five years worth of Bon Appetit and Gourmet magazines, as well as info on what's fresh to buy in your neighborhood, tools of the trade, wine tasting reviews, beautiful table-setting products, and even a section for reader requests. It's written in a friendly tone that's suitable for chefs and first-year college students alike. Personally, we'll be working our way through the list of recipes containing chocolate for the next year, and loving every minute of it. Add this to your bookmarks. "http://www.epicurious.com/"

USA TODAY SERVES UP NEWS, QUICK AND EASY

USA Today offers another clean, well designed site for newshounds and the casual browser. You can quickly select from the familiar color-coded news, sports, money, life, and weather, as well as send feedback to the editors and peruse lottery results from every state. A short list of current online events at the likes of AOL, CompuServe, Prodigy, and ZD Net is also available. A complete index to USA Today's content is also available online. Good graphics and reasonable navigation. "http://www.usatoday.com/"

SCIENCE FICTION HORS D'OEUVRES

Science Fiction Weekly aims to offer something for all lovers of SF: book reviews, movie reviews, a game review, a TV preview, a promise of original fiction, and a Web page review. The writing is factual, concise, and free of the sophomoric attempts at humor that plague much of speculative entertainment (except us, right?). This site appears to be in an embryonic stage. Each issue is a little thin, in view of the enormity of the subject, but archives are easily accessed. Any site with a staff of 10 must have big plans (except us, again). "http://www.mordor.com/sfw/"

GRAY AREAS PUSHES THE SCANDALOUS

Gray Areas, a magazine featuring the "illegal, immoral and/or controversial" hosts this site mostly to entice you to subscribe to the print edition. In addition to several magazine covers and descriptions of back issues, you'll find a couple of interviews, letters to the editor, and two or three articles. Offerings when we went include an interview with adult film director Candida Royalle and a feature, "Breaking into the WELL: an Introduction to Hackers on the Net". The first page of the table of contents is shamelessly filled with the various "xxx site of the day" citations that Gray Areas has earned. Do those things even have meaning anymore? "http://www.gti.net/grayarea/"

.NET MAGAZINE

Yet another Internet magazine (YAIM), but this one's from the UK. This is the electronic version of a print publication, so expect the usual: index of the current issue, access to back issues, and a search field. Not all articles are online, but enough is here to satisfy. Y'all will feel quite at home in the ".net directory", which has reviews of newsgroups, Gopher sites, and Web pages. While well written and presented, much of this information can be seen in any number of other online Web publications, but if you like prices quoted in pounds, this is the one to read. "http://www.futurenet.co.uk/netmag/net.html"

SURFING SCIENCE

Knowledge is Good

THE MOST SUCCESSFUL LIFE FORM ON EARTH

Time for humility: humans will never become as prolific as insects. The Wonderful World of Insects treats you to amazing facts about an aspect of existence that we sometimes fear but seldom think much about. Did you know that a swarm of African desert locusts may contain 28 billion of the hungry critters? Or that in Japan a supercolony of ants had over 1 million queens? Egad! This site is creepier than a horror movie, yet remains scientific. Witness a bit of clinical analysis: "Ejaculation occurs into the bulb portion of the drone's endophallus prior to full eversion, and semen is discharged through a small opening in the bulb into the queen's vagina during copulation (Woyke and Ruttner 1958)." No wonder they outnumber us. "http://www.ex.ac.uk/~gjlramel/six.html"

LIONS AND TIGERS AND LYNX, OH MY!

Over 150 striking photos of cheetahs, cougars, jaguars, leopards, lions, lynx, panthers, servals, tigers, and wildcats prowl this site. The JPEGs range from 40 kB to over 700 kB, but Raymond Wu, the site builder, has thoughtfully supplied the size of each image. Descriptions are cryptic at best, and there are no thumbnails, but the images we sampled were exciting. If you wuv big puddytats and have a fast connection, you can nuzzle up to them from the safety and comfort of your computer. Nice background, too. "http://evolution.bio.cornell.edu/EFVS/"

WHAT THE DING-DANG IS A QUASAR?

Seems that one of the best places to get a glimpse of the night sky these days is your Web browser. The Net is lousy with astronomy sites, most offering pretty pics you'd see only if you had telescopic, charge-coupled eyeballs. Astrophysicist Sten Oldenwald has set up the Astronomy Cafe, a refreshingly different site that focuses more on how astronomers see than what they see. Ergo, the Guidebook to Astronomy follows his development as an astronomer, and the Anatomy of a Research Paper tells how to avoid perishing while publishing. If you want pretty snaps, the Cafe has the links. If you've got a question about anything astronomical, visit the Ask the Astronomer table in the Cafe. Just don't ask about those quasars - someone already has. "http://www2.ari.net/home/odenwald/cafe.html"

SNOOZING ON THE INFOBAHN

What serious netsurfer hasn't at some point suffered a breakdown in the sleep-wake cycle, rising at sunset and settling in at sunrise? For those who fret for the Land of Nod, researchers at Claude Bernard University's sleep-wake cycle lab in Lyon may be able to help. Their bilingual Web site is stuffed with research information on the function of sleep and dreaming, and the bits of brain that make it all happen. It also features enough links to neurology servers to spin any head. For the rest of us, red-eyed and praying for sleep, browsing through articles like "Afferent Projections to the Rat Locus Coeruleus" along with accompanying pictures of sliced rat brains ought to do the trick. "http://ura1195-6.univ-lyon1.fr/"

SPARTAN BUT INTERESTING SCIENCE NEWS

UniScience News Net publishes news of current science and research at American universities. Headlines and abstracts are free, and in-depth articles are offered for sale. Some of the titles when we dropped in involved rampant sexual diseases, AIDS, and problems with lubricants. No, not the Enquirer, just science out of context. "http://www.cyberstreet.com/unisci/"

COMMUNITY SUPPORT

Help your fellow netsurfers

TAKE CARE OF YOUR HEART

The American Heart Association (AHA), a major non-profit health organization dedicated to fighting heart disease and stroke, has arrived online in a big way. With over 400 documents, you can find AHA recommendations on everything from A to Z. At the cleanly organized site, scientists and doctors can find current research journals with full-text articles and up-to-the-minute advisories on medical protocols; educators can find details of the classroom or worksite programs; and folks who have suffered a heart attack or stroke can download useful brochures or find a local support group. The Heart Quiz is informative, the kid's cookbook is fun, and the resting heartbeat sound clip will come in handy next Halloween. "http://www.amhrt.org/"

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