Right on the heels of being listed in April PC Magazine as one of the "100 Hot Sites" on the Web, we find our humble e-zine mentioned right in the middle of the May edition of Playboy. You'll find our shameless four-line spread on page 17, left column. It's part of a small blurb on "clever sites with links to the Web's more interesting Home Pages". Little did we dream when we started this thing that we'd find ourselves in the company of post-feminist bad girl Camille Paglia, pre-feminist boot girl Nancy Sinatra, and post-airbrush playmate Cynthia Gwyn Brown (34C-23-34; from neighboring San Jose, no less). We bought a few issues - strictly for the articles, of course. Anyway, our thanks to both publications for recognizing our modest efforts. PC Magazine: "http://www.pcmag.ziff.com/~pcmag/" Playboy: "http://www.playboy.com/" Cynthia: "http://www.playboy.com/playmates/playmate-may95.html"
SPEAKING OF OUR HUMBLE E-ZINE...
We switched the order of our issues. From now on, even-numbered issues will contain Surfing Sites and its brethren while odd-numbered issues will have Breaking Surf, etc. Let's just say we did that... on purpose. Yeah, that's the ticket. Also notice that we've added a new section, Surfing Science, which consolidates all the science sites that use to float aimlessly through the rest of the digest. Enjoy!
RIDDLER WARPS YOUR BRAIN - AND PAYS YOU FOR IT
The home page is cryptic, but the idea is quite good. The folks at the Riddler post a puzzle and offer $500 to the first person to solve it. That's just the start of it though. Chances are, to solve the puzzles you'll need additional info, found playing trivia and finding secret keywords hidden on other Web pages. Two other variations offer the possibility of winning more cash. Unclaimed prizes roll over to the next contest. There's no cost to register (which you must do to prove you're over 18) since they're sponsor-supported, presumably by all those pages you visit. If the sites are cool, this could be quite good. Click on "Sign Up" for the rules. "http://www.riddler.com/"
CYBERHUNT: CATCH VINCENT, GET A THINKPAD
This Vincent character (Vincent? Now really...) gets sucked into the computer one day in an old chestnut of a premise that goes all the way back to the movie "Tron", popular when we were mere tots. But the corny premise here leads to an absolutely first-class implementation of an old-fashioned Web scavenger hunt on behalf of none other than the recently hip IBM. The objective is to find Vincent on some Web pages and ultimately win an IBM ThinkPad 755 computer. There are rewards for being first to decipher clues along the way. Start at the URL below and follow the story to get at the rules. First clues will be available April 17 and the game begins May 17. This one is definitely worth a visit. "http://www.cyberhunt.com/"
MECKLER OPENS VR METROPOLIS, OFFERS FREE SPACE TO VR DESIGNERS
The site is supposed to be dedicated to the latest and greatest set of materials dealing with Virtual Reality. Right now it has a link to VR World magazine, four VR books, info on the VR World conference (5/22-5/25 San Jose, CA), and a fairly interesting set of VRM Newsbytes, a VR oriented newsletter. In an effort to breathe some life into VR Metropolis, MecklerWeb is currently offering designers of virtual worlds an opportunity to post their creations on the site at no cost, a good chance for some free exposure. "http://www.mecklerweb.com/vr.htm"
NETSCAPE TO INTEGRATE ACROBAT IN BROWSER
Acrobat is the slow-to-take-off portable, device-independent document display software from Adobe. It seems that Adobe and Netscape have struck a deal whereby Acrobat will be integrated with the Netscape browser. Naturally, all this is driven by the control freak content publishers out there who want to enslave your brain with their layout. But then, Netsurfer could have weird fonts in every other word, and garish graphics, and those neat neon backgrounds.... Maybe not. Here are some web sites with cool PDF: "http://www.adobe.com/Acrobat/PDFsites.html"
PAGEALERT(TM) WEB MONITORING SYSTEM EYES YOUR UPS AND DOWNS
PageAlert will monitor your URLs and immediately notify you via e-mail if there are problems accessing your pages. There is also an option to send out a pager call if your site goes down. PageAlert connects to the server hosting your page, requests your URL, and notifies you if it encounters an error or if your page appears damaged or modified. Price is $15/month plus $.02 per page check. Click on the slightly ominous set of eyes at this URL to find out more. "http://www.nfic.com/pagealert.html"
YELLOW RIBBON FOR DAVID AND BILL
If you follow the news, you're probably aware of a couple of hapless Americans caught trespassing in Iraq and held captive by what passes for government in that sad corner of the world. This page, put up by David's wife Kathy, puts a very human face on what could easily become yet another distant political news story. Visit, and marvel yet again at how the Web is challenging the concept of news media. "http://www.swaninc.com:80/yellowribbon/"
The entirely too useful Yahoo web index site is switching to a new URL. It is one of the finest web resources out there so make sure to add this to your bookmarks if you don't have it there already: "http://www.yahoo.com/"
ALT.* MORE POPULAR THAN "BIG SEVEN"?
Our colleague in the publishing biz, Brad Templeton, started this interesting thread in news.admin.misc and news.admin.policy with the premise that the alt.* newsgroups were more popular then the "Big Seven": news.*, comp.*, sci.*, rec.*, soc.*, misc.*, and talk.*. Brad's thesis is that the popularity of the alt.* hierarchy proves the failure of the more regulated Big Seven hierarchy. He cites noise, Net-police, and the hassle of newsgroup creation as some of the reasons why more and more people are gravitating to the alt.* groups. Read the arbitron ratings, interesting in their own right, as background to this discussion: "http://www.cc.utah.edu/~bf6515/arbitron/"
It's happened before (hasn't it ?) and it will happen again. People are piling on by the... well, dozens anyway, to be part of an historic effort to create the longest thread ever. It's on alt.life.internet. Oh, go ahead and join in. Someday you can tell your kids about how you were part of the Thread That Sucked Up All Bandwidth.
BALLS, MEAL, AND FARFEL - AS IN MATZAH
The Jewish holiday of Passover begins at sundown April 14, as the Matzah Market undoubtedly realizes. It has dozens of Passover recipes and links to rec.food.recipes Passover archives. Most recipes fall into the categories of dessert and side dishes, but you can find instructions for matzah balls, too - yum yum! More Passover recipes and discussions of customs are popping up as you read this in soc.culture.jewish. For the curious, farfel is matzah roughly broken into pieces about a half-inch on a side. "http://www.marketnet.com/mktnet/kosher"
A DIVERSE BODY OF WORK: THE MEDICAL ILLUSTRATORS' HOME PAGE
Some of us never got past dissecting frogs. That was enough. But for those in the medical and publishing fields, the Medical Illustrators' Home Page gives an excellent preview of a variety of work from some very talented illustrators. Links to related sites are also available. We never tire of saying that. "http://siesta.packet.net/med_illustrator/Welcome.html"
STEP ONTO THE "WORLD WIDE STAGE" OF FICTION, POETRY, AND PROSE
If all the world's a stage, and you're a writer, this might just be the place for you. The World Wide Stage is a non-commercial global platform for authors, poets, and artists of any work that can be presented via the WWW. You'll find long and short fiction, poetry, lyrics, and other writings. New contributions are always being sought. "http://www.iol.ie/~westrock/"
FILMMAKING HISTORY SITE AND STORE
Information on a number of obscure filmmakers, and legends like Buster Keaton and Abbott and Costello is available here, a good stop for old and strange movie buffs. Even if you're not old or strange, you may need the storekeepers at Gravity Entertainment's Picture Palace to help you find some rare movie that just isn't at the local Blockbuster. They promise to verify electronic orders by e-mail within 24 hours. "http://www.tagsys.com/Ads/PicPal/""
SOMETHING NEW TO TICKLE YOUR FUNNY BONE - OR LOOK AT BAYCAM
A cartoon a day to keep the psychiatrists away - or at least to keep them smiling. Gabe Martin draws and presents some really funny cartoons called "The Borderline". He does a new one each day, and the site keeps an archive of his previous work. While looking for "The Borderline" we happened to stumble into another cool home page at the same provider. Located in San Diego, Calif., it is loaded with features, the most intriguing of which is an almost live view of San Diego Bay. It's called Baycam; check it out once you're in the neighborhood. Borderline: "http://www.cts.com/~borderln/todays.html" Baycam: "http://www.cts.com/~jtara/baycam.html"
WILLIAM H. CALVIN - AUTHOR, LECTURER, WEB MASTER
William Calvin is a theoretical neurophysiologist by trade, so what - you undoubtedly ask - is he doing in the Books & E-Zines section? Well, he's also a writer. Calvin's more noted sphere, non-fiction about the grander schemes of brains and evolution, is well represented at his home page by the full texts of his books such as "The Ascent of Mind" and "The Throwing Madonna". His offering of fiction consists of two novels dealing with life on the Net. Calvin's home page is large, but has a homey feel; it seems as if he were inviting you into his living room for a chat. It is an example of superb content and context, as would be expected from a Net veteran of his magnitude. "http://weber.u.washington.edu/wcalvin/index.html"
OPINION ESSAY E-ZINE HAS PROMISE
WebRunner, an all-text monthly Web zine that put out its first issue in March, was established by a co-op bored with the stale rhetoric of newspaper op-ed pages. George Will, Charles Krauthammer, et al leave the WebRunners wanting, while Usenet excites them with what they call the New Essay - personal, provocative, to the point, and open to response. WebRunner provides a Web forum for New Essayists. A couple of the first issue's articles work, but others would benefit from carriage returns and a less verbose style. One neat feature is links to the original sources, like legislation, on which the authors comment. "http://www.access.digex.net/~web/"
EXTRA! EXTRA! NEW YORK TIMES DIGEST ONLINE
TimesFax Internet Edition is a WWW version of the New York Times' eight-page fax digest. It condenses the day's news, business, commentary, and sports - and even contains a crossword puzzle. The Web site is updated daily, but perusers need a .pdf file viewer to read the material, which emulates the look and feel of columned newspaper layout. Intelligently, the site contains links to a free .pdf viewer - Adobe Acrobat, available for most common platforms at least until it becomes a part of Netscape Navigator. "http://nytimesfax.com/"
GNN'S BOOK STORY: THE THIRD CULTURE
The site is part of a new section for GNN called "Book Story" designed to serialize interesting books on the Net. The book that kicks off the section is by John Brockman and deals with the premise that scientists, not the literary intellectuals, have the most to say about the future of humanity. All the trendy topics are covered: evolutionary science, artificial intelligence, cosmological origins, and information technology. The first chapter has been posted and subsequent chapters will be available in the coming weeks. The site also features an interview with the author as well as an interactive forum where netsurfers can flame - er - interact with the author. Nice concept, good book. "http://gnn.com/gnn/meta/book/third/index.html"
There's a great list of Chinese e-zines out on the Web. These aren't mags about China, not even mags about the Chinese, but are e-zines written and viewed in Chinese characters. Then again, all three probably apply since the articles aren't really likely to focus on Iceland, are they? E-zines are listed by site and by WWW, FTP, and Gopher versions. Two pages offer the list - one normal and one using HTML3's table feature, which makes things more orderly if your browser is so capable. In case you need help, a linked page provides info about and demos of Chinese character systems and external viewers. Untabled: "http://meena.cc.uregina.ca/~liushus/chn-mag.html" Tabled: "http://meena.cc.uregina.ca/~liushus/mag-tabl.html"
THE OFFICE OF HUMAN RADIATION EXPERIMENTS HOME PAGE
This office, part of the U.S. Department of Energy, was established in 1994 to deal with the consequences of a really bad idea - human radiation experiments from WWII to 1973. To help explain what went on, the site has photocopies of declassified documents, an index with a neat search tool, and a FAQ file. One of the FAQs somehow is not "How do I know if I was zapped?" You're supposed to call something called the Helpline to find out but the number isn't given - a serious flaw. Other FAQ answers can be summed up as "We dunno." Ah, government. On the lighter side, there are historical pictures here, but none of two-headed farmers with tails. Or even ones without tails. "http://www.eh.doe.gov/ohre/home.htm"
If you've ever needed incentive to brush and floss, we found it for you. The DERWeb Project (Dental Education Resources on the Web) is an online library of dental images for use in teaching and research, but we like it for its gross-out value. If you're particularly interested in, say, pathology due to scurvy, DERWeb even provides a searchable image contents page. Equally disgusting images can be found on the Virtual Periodontology pages of the Lund University Department of Periodontology and the University of Copenhagen's School of Dentistry. Don't visit near mealtime. DERWeb: "http://www.shef.ac.uk/uni/projects/der/derweb.html" Lund: "http://www.odont.lu.se/depts/par/periodontology.html" Copenhagen: "http://www/odont.ku.dk/index.html"
Don't let the long name of the Carl Hayden Bee Research Center's Global Entomology Agricultural Research Server scare you off; this hive of activity brings you in a pleasant informal atmosphere everything you want about bees. Read neat bee facts in the Internet Classroom and Tribeeal Pursuits, and learn what to do if you meet an angry swarm of Africanized honey bees (their sensible advice: RUN!). The site offers scads of images, sound files, and movies (Insect Theater On-Line) of many varieties of insect found in Arizona's Sonoran Desert. Our only complaint is the welcome page - the design's a bit too big and bzzzy. "http://gears.tucson.ars.ag.gov/"
This Kansas site is yet another Web destination bringing outer space to cyberspace. Astronomical images from the Hubble telescope and the observatory's own CCD camera are offered. Some of the images are large (over 200 KB) but all are stored on-site, avoiding the crowds at NASA - though you can hop there and to other astronomy sites via links. Helpful text files explain some of the images, but if you're still perplexed after reading them, you can always ask one of the astronomers for help. The observatory has other info which might be worth viewing if you plan to visit or are a grade-school teacher looking for astronomy teaching aids. "http://www.twsu.edu/o0.html"
A PRETTY PICTURE AND LOTS OF SPACE INFO
"Jonathan's Space Report" is put out about once a week on the Web. It's also available by FTP. The text-based report covers many aspects of space vehicle launches and returns from all over our planet. It is serious information put out by Jonathan McDowell at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, but he knows enough to avoid serious info without pics. "http://hea-www.harvard.edu/QEDT/jcm/jsr.html" "ftp://sao-ftp.harvard.edu/pub/jcm/space/news/"
THE EARTHNET INFO SERVER: A.K.A. DINO RUSS'S LAIR
Dino Russ, a.k.a. Russ Jacobson, who "lives and breathes dinosaurs" (that's gotta hurt...) at the Illinois State Geological Survey, has compiled a page of Earth science resources, dinosaur information and paleontology tidbits. Included are links to all the Web paleontology museums we've ever heard of, and a few more. This guy knows what he's talking about. You can even arrange to participate in a real dinosaur dig. "http://128.174.173.205/"
The folks who've set up the Rutgers University Graduate School of Management Internet Research Web Site need some kindly assistance. They are conducting a survey of Internet users and want all of us to visit their page and answer a few questions. The results will be analyzed by marketing and statistics classes and will be published on the Web, among other places. We'd like to tell you what the survey covers, but that would bias the sample now, wouldn't it? Take a few minutes and help them out, but remember: keep your eyes on your own paper. "http://bohica.rutgers.edu/research/"
NETSURFER SEEKS ADVERTISING SALES REPS
We are seeking part time contract sales representatives to sell ad space in our beloved Netsurfer Marketplace (well, it's beloved to us since it pays the bills). Qualifications: previous sales experience (1 year min), particularly in the magazine business, familiarity with the Net, super communication skills, ability to work independently, and a sense of humor. Low pressure, interested customers, fun netsurfing, and pizza. E-mail a plain text resume (not Postscript, not Photoshop, not Acrobat, not Sumerian clay tablets, just plain text) to salesjob@netsurf.com.
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