Sat, September 19 1998
Welcome to this weeks edition of Things on the Web.
A Special welcome to our new subscribers. This week past has seen an unparalleled exposure to the web from the TV industry
The release of the Star Report has meant a great deal of comment and discussion on the value of the web to release this information. What are your views on this, not the Clinton issue so much as the role of the web in the ongoing re invention of democracy?
Requests for inclusion on the weekly mailing
list should be sent to [email protected]
with Things in the subject, easy, aint
it? We will, as we receive them publish letters
to the editor.
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SUPER SHARP SCREENS
IBM has invented a flat panel monitor that
displays 200 pixels an inch, giving results almost
indistinguishable from a printed page. The Roentgen monitor uses
active matrix liquid crystal technology to produce razor-sharp
text and images. The first units will cost $5,000, three times
that of normal cathode ray monitors, but prices should quickly
fall. The screens display 5.2 million full-colour pixels, and use
15.7 million transistors and two kilometers of thin film aluminum
wiring. IBM has also devised a graphics system using
off-the-shelf components, that can process the 1 billion bits of
graphics data per second that the screens need, meaning they can
run on highness Wintel PCs. See Here
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DUSTY PHOBOS
Phobos, one of Mars' moons, is covered by
super-fine dust a meter thick. NASA says it was probably formed
by meteor impacts over eons, without explaining why our Moon
isn't waist deep in talcum powder too. The dust was discovered by
the Mars Global Surveyor spacecraft, which has clearly
photographed mini avalanches on the tiny moon. See the pictures
at this site.
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GATES GIVES $20 MILLION
Bill and Melinda Gates have given $20
million to Duke University of North Carolina. Mrs. Gates did her
bachelors and masters degrees at Duke, and has been on the
university's board of trustees since 1996
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THERE'S SOMETHING OUT THERE
The Solar System contains a puzzling
gravity anomaly. NASA found it from regular monitoring of the
Pioneer 10 spacecraft, launched in 1972, and now 26 years into
its 2 million year journey to the giant red star Aldeberan. The
doppler shift of radio signals from the craft show it is not
moving as quickly as it could - there's more gravitational pull
than can be explained. And the same thing is happening to Pioneer
11, the Ulysses probe, and Galileo (still orbiting Jupiter)...
The Pioneer 10 site is here.
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INTERNET GROWTH
The Internet is still growing like the eggplant that ate Chicago. According to the Internet Archive's Alexa search bots, the Web is expanding by 1.5 million new pages a day, doubling in size every 8 months. Most pages remain in the outer dark as 50% of all traffic goes to the top 900 Web sites. There are now 20 million Web content areas. See this.
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NO BEER PLEASE, WE'RE SURFING!
This is hard to believe, but the Internet
is now more popular than drinking beer for US college students,
according to a new survey from Student Monitor which looks at
campus lifestyles. This is the first time beer drinking has lost
the top spot since the Monitor began 10 years ago.
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TRIBE SITE WINS PRIZE
The winner of the first UNESCO Web Prize is
the team which created the Brazilian site about the Kamayura and
Urubu-Kaapor tribes at this site.
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SURFING
While surfing you can come across some very
unusual sites this one serves absolutely no use whatsoever ever,
a list of links, that
go no where. It had to happen . Need the
rules to Rock
Paper Scissors, well here they are. How about
the entire words of
99 bottles? Well, they are on the web, of
course. We can all use some humor from time to time, so I
have some fun sites for ya. Amused, is a great
starting place, try Snap
Humor, always some good links there
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SEARCH
All of us from time to time need to use a search engine, while researching this little bit, I found so many my mind was in over drive. A good resource I found is Ready, 'Net, Go! Archival Internet Resources The lists here are grouped well, from text achives to common search engines, so if you need to find something, this is a good place to start.
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LONG ARGUMENT NEAR END
The Internet Assigned Names Authority today
released the final draft for the new non-profit body that will
run the Internet of the future - the Internet Corporation for
Assigned Names and Numbers. The draft says groups like the
Internet Engineering Task Force should be involved. ICANN will be
responsible for technical aspects, standards and protocols, as
well as policy decisions. The draft is open for comment before
going to President Clinton’s Net adviser, Ira Magaziner, on
September 30. See Here
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CHILD ACT PASSES
The US House of
Representatives subcommittee on telecommunications has passed the
Child Online Protection Act which carries heavy penalties for
posting material judged harmful to minors. The full text of the
bill is at THIS LOCATION
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NETIZENS ARE REAL PEOPLE TOO
Netizens aren’t that different after
all. A survey by Market Facts found the general consumer
population and Internet users mirror each another in most buying
habits, behaviors and attitudes, and concludes that the Net is a
viable means of collecting general consumer data. See
Here
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GOOD NEWS SITE
Media legend has it there was once a
Californian newspaper called The Good News Paper, which only
printed good news. It lasted about three issues. But out on the
Net, Geraldine
Weis-Corbley is celebrating the first anniversary of
the Good News Network, which only publishes positive articles.
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GREY LADY STILL SICK
The New York Times Web site at http://www.nytimes.com/
looks OK at a glance – but its still suffering from a bad
hack attack last weekend. Look for a job and “The
classifieds are temporarily unavailable” message comes up.
The site was off-line for 9 hours as staff fixed the worst of the
damage, cased by a group calling itself “Hacking for
Girlies.” The FBI is investigating.
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AMAZING HACK
Associated Press reports a 28-year-old
computer technician in Denver hijacked processing time on 2,585
computers to help him solve a 350-year-old math problem to find a
new prime number. He failed – but the computers he hacked,
at phone company US West, ran up 10.63 years of processing time
instead of doing their job – answering customer complaints.
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iMAC DEMAND THROUGH ROOF
Apple is expected to out source production
of its iMac computers to meet demand. About 450,000 iMacs will be
sold by the end of the next quarter, making it Apple’s most
successful product launch ever. ZDNet has a special report on the
iMac’s first 30 days at http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/special/imac30.html
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CARS
Wanting to buy a car on the web, well everyone is selling from Microsoft, Edmund's , Autosite, Auto Channel and a thousand others. The major auto makers are catching on as well, what this space, more of the majors in many fields are coming online and using the Web to make themselves competitive into the next millennium. By the way I like the interface created for the Auto Channel.
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EDUCATION
Education on the web is one of the reasons many go online to begin with, and given the history of the web, with many of the worlds major Universities on the web, it is a great resource. Kaplan is a great starting place. Of course Princeton has a commendable site as well. The quality and quantity of courses available both online and in combination with resources online is outstanding. I would even stick my neck out to say that in the future the method of choice for study will be online, of course becoming a brain surgeon may still need a hands on instructor.
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KIDS SPACE
Kids Space
is a great site for kids, along with all time favorites like Nickelodeon and Phobe they are
quality for kids.
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This is all for this edition of the Things on the Web !
We trust you enjoyed this edition, Things has now a web site
where the back issues are published it it at http://members.xoom.com/dsalt/
Stephen & Dawn Carlyon
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