UGNetwork Channel _ / _ User Group Library _ / _ Life Online
Larry's favorite web places. From the "Blue Chip News", a publication
of the Saginaw Valley Computer Association, Saginaw, MI
Web Crawlin' with Larry Piper
by Larry Piper
The phrase 'good old days' seems to best fit the current state of affairs on the
Internet. It was only last November, 1996, when one could log on the Internet almost
at will, when companies were scrambling to give you free e-mail and when junk/spam
mail was at acceptable levels. What happened?
The biggest change was AOL's switch on December 1, 1996, to unlimited access for
$20 a month. Oh a few people and states howled at the way it was handled, but on
the whole AOL members, sometimes known as the 'social butterflies of the Internet',
stayed logged on to the Internet in record numbers. And in a brilliant marketing
move, Netscape released beta version 4.0 of their Navigator just at the holiday season
when all the students now had the time to download the 8 megabyte file. The 'forbidden
logon time zone' for me suddenly changed from 6-11pm to 4pm-1am. That makes it almost
impossible for a 8 to 5 working person to log on.
By the fall of 1996, Juno, a provider of free e-mail, had developed quite a following.
Juno was somewhat of a 'cult' product. Word was quickly spreading that, yes, it was
truly free, and it was providing 800 toll-free numbers. This meant that everyone
from Ima Klone in Crump, MI, to Joe Loner in Roundup, MT, had toll-free phone access
to Juno.
Meanwhile Freemark, the other major provider of free e-mail, folded its doors in
November of 1996. Juno was more than willing to take on Freemark's castoffs, but
the cost strain of 800 numbers became a big issue. Then many of us acquired Juno
as a backup e-mail account when AOL's response became sluggish. Within two to three
weeks the inevitable happened-Juno canceled its 800 numbers. And a third fallout
seems to be occurring-local e-mail and Internet providers, who don't have nearly
the problems with busy signals, seem to be raising rates!
I will say that junk e-mail, certainly relative to junk phone calls, is not too bad
a problem. If you are handy with the DEL key, it is almost too easy to deal with
spam and junk mail. The solution: they all type in CAPITALS! One glance at the subject
list in your e-mail inbox gives these clueless marketers away.
LookSmart http://www.looksmart.com
LookSmart has an entirely new 'look-and-feel' approach to information retrieval.
An initial list of 10 topics are displayed. After you chose one, a new classification
of 10 topics is presented. But the original list remains on the screen. After a second
choice, a third sub-classification is displayed, along with retaining the first two
lists.
This continues on with each further selection until there are 4 or 5 lists displayed
from left to right. Further selections create a list on the right with the oldest
list removed from the left. This allows one to easily see the path taken by their
decisions-indeed this is the concept of a decision tree applied to the Internet.
One ultimately reaches a site URL that you can click on to go "directly to the
horses mouth." It is my understanding that all the information has been manually
collected. Therefore, this is not truly a search engine. Nevertheless, it contains
in excess of 100,000 prime web sites-something to keep you busy for a while.
Digital Education Network http://www.actden.com
A highly rated site for students, parents and teachers. Its wide range of topics
are targeted at junior high and senior high school. I felt the graphics slowed down
the site too much; they are, however, described as "sophisticated."
Shareware.com http://www.shareware.com
One of the premier sites for downloading shareware. If you are either looking for
a specific file or checking out a particular topic, start here. There are classifications
for most popular and newest arrivals. There are links to five other search sites:
Cnet, News, Gamecenter, Search and Download.com.
New Yahoo http://search.yahoo.com
An attempt by Yahoo to provide an alternative to its extremely popular search engine.
Not as robust as the original, but still a good (and fast) place to begin your searches.
You can search the web for e-mail or Usenet and also search for people-I found seven
Larry Pipers.
WhoWhere http://www.whowhere.com
A search site primarily for locating people, addresses and e-mails. I only found
two Larry Pipers.
Readers Digest http://www.readersdigest.com
This site is not as good as it should be. You must have graphics on to see anything,
and then it takes forever to download the opening page. In fairness the site says
you must use Netscape 3.0 and I was on a less than Netscape 2.0 clone.
Send your questions or comments via e-mail to LARRYP56@AOL.COM
Please send a copy of your newsletter to Saginaw Valley Computer Association
PO Box 5827, Saginaw, MI 48603-0827
Lynn L Kauer, President/Editor
73450,3007@compuserve.com
LLKAUER@AOL.com
UGNetwork Channel _
/ _ User Group Library
_ / _ Life
Online
USER GROUP EDITORS: Articles posted in this area have been cleared for publication
in your newsletters. We do encourage you to contact the author for additional details
and/or updates. Please ALWAYS credit the original author!
Articles posted here by UGNetwork News staff, or the UGN News Service may be reproduced
ONLY after your group has become a registered Network affiliate. Contact the UGNet-News
for authorization and the UGNet News Affiliate publicity package. Thank you. Copyright
1995, 1996, 1997, The User Group Network, and on behalf of the respective authors.
All of this content, and the associated services are donated through the generous
efforts of members from the User Group community. This content area is provided by
The User Group Network News Service, and is sponsored by The Design & Publishing Center as a public
service.