Scout Report: Week ending September 16, 1994

September 16, 1994

The Scout Report is a weekly publication provided by InterNIC Information Services to assist InterNauts in their ongoing quest to know what's new on and about the Internet. It focuses on those resources thought to be of interest to the InterNIC's primary audience, researchers and educators, however everyone is welcome to subscribe and there are no associated fees.

The Scout Report is posted on the InterNIC InfoGuide's gopher and WorldWideWeb servers where you can easily follow links to the resources which interest you. Past issues are stored on the InfoGuide for quick reference, and you can search the InfoGuide contents to find the specific references you need. The Scout Report is also distributed in an HTML version for use on your own host, providing fast local access for yourself and other users at your site.

http://www.internic.net/infoguide.html
gopher is.internic.net choose Information Services/Scout Report

Comments and contributions to the Scout Report are encouraged and can be sent to scout@cs.wisc.edu

See the end of the report for additional information and detailed access and subscription instructions.

Highlights in this week's Report:

  • Special double issue this week to celebrate 10,000 subscribers!
  • A brief explanation of resource address listings in the Scout Report and pointers to information about network tools has been added to the "About the Scout Report" section at the end of the report.
  • Expanded NetBytes section includes videos and training materials
  • Mercury Site -- real-time interaction with a robot on the 'Net
  • Art Crimes; real and virtual surfing; and Adam Curry is back

World Wide Web

  • The Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research is a German national research centre for Polar and Marine research, and has huge amounts of data related to Global Change research. Efforts are underway to make the data widely available via the Web. Already on-line are ozone soundings from the Antarctic - you can watch the ozone depletion over the coming Antarctic summer in "real-time".
  • The Amnesty International Web site offers the full text of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights adopted by the United Nations General Assembly in 1948, the organizations goals and activities, and membership information.
  • The ASAP Canberra Office is pleased to announce that it now maintains the World Wide Web Virtual Library on the History of Science, Technology and Medicine.
    [Note: Resource(s)/URL(s) mentioned above may no longer be current/available.]
  • Environment Canada's Web server (english and french) includes Canada's climate and meteorological data updated daily, monthly, and seasonally. Forecasts, maps, satellite images, and weather service modernization information is available.
  • GrantSource(SM) - Information about grant and funding opportunities is provided by the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill Office of Research Services through their GrantSource(SM) Service. The GrantSource Service can search the full text of nearly 10,000 documents available from major funding sources.
    [Note: Originally reviewed as a gopher site; gopher site has been replaced by web site.]
  • Jesuits and the Sciences, 1540-1995, is available from the Science Library of Loyola University of Chicago. The Jesuits is a collection of images and text from rare works on astronomy, cosmology, engineering, mathematics and natural history written by members of the Society of Jesus in the 17th and 18th centuries.
    [Note: Site title has changed since the original Scout Report review. Site formerly referred to in the Scout Report as "The Jesuits and the Sciences, 1600-1800."]
  • The JPL Comet Shoemaker-Levy home page has been accessed over 2 million times as of September 13. The second million took a little longer to get to than the first million - the first million only took 10 days, most of that during the comet impact week.
  • The Medical Research Council of Canada has implemented a World Wide Web server to disseminate Canadian biomedical research funding information.
  • Mercury Site: Remote Tele-Excavation via the Web. An inter-disciplinary team at the University of Southern California has made available Mercury Site, a WWW server that allows users to tele-operate a robot arm over the net. Users view the environment surrounding the arm via a sequence of live images taken by a CCD camera mounted on a commercial robot arm. The robot is positioned over a terrain filled with sand; a pneumatic system, also mounted on the robot, allows users to direct short bursts of compressed air into the sand at selected points. Thus users can "excavate" regions within the sand by positioning the arm, delivering a burst of air, and viewing the newly cleared region. To operate the robot you'll need an ethernet link and a WWW client that handles forms. Have a blast.
  • NASA Ames Research Center K-12 World Wide Web Server homepage stated mission: "To provide support and services for schools, teachers and students to fully utilize the Internet, and its underlying information technologies, as one of the basic tools of learning and acquiring knowledge." Links to HPCC & K-12 Internet Projects, partner schools, and other NASA resources on the Internet.
  • An extensive listing of K12 and teacher resources.
  • The National Child Rights Alliance (NCRA), formed by youth and adult survivors of child abuse and neglect, is now on-line. Resources include the history of the NCRA, the youth bill of rights, and numerous articles on children's rights.
  • The National Marine Fisheries Service announces it's home page. The server includes links to the NOAA home page as well as links to National Marine Fisheries Science Centers and NMFS related sites. In addition, the books Our Living Oceans Annual Report 1993 and Index for Fisheries of the U.S -1992 are available online. There are also home pages for certain NMFS office including The Office of Protected Resources which contains a brochure called Protecting the Nation's Marine Species which gives a listing of endangered and threatened species. This page also has various marine sounds and mpeg movies.
  • A National Software Exchange for the High Performance Computing and Communications community has been established to facilitate the development and distribution of software enabling technologies for high performance computing a wide availability of high-quality, public-domain software for high performance computers. The exchange promotes software reuse and collaboration and information sharing between universities, research laboratories, and industry.
  • The NIH-Guide to Grants and Contracts is accessible through NYU's WWW server and NIH-Guide searchable database.
  • The Puerto Rico WWW page is now online. It contains information about Puerto Rico: interesting facts, history, places to visit, hotel information and a large library of beautiful images from the island.
  • Software Engineering Institute (SEI) is a federally funded research and development center whose objective is to provide leadership in software engineering and in the transition of new software engineering technology into practice. The SEI Information Server provides links to the ongoing research efforts of the ARPA Software and Intelligent Systems Technology Office and an index of information relating to numerous software and computing topics.

Gopher

Email/FTP

  • The GENII Project (Group Exploring the National Information Infrastructure) is open for business. The mission of our volunteer Virtual Faculty is to provide friendly, supportive guidance and simple answers when members of the K-12 Education Community go online for the first time, and for those who are training teachers to use the Internet. Today we are happy to announce the beginning of our Warm Bodies Response service. Send mail if you have a question or if you would like information about becoming a "Warm Body" mentor yourself.
    rlile2@ozarks.sgcl.lib.mo.us
  • Interactive Medical Anatomy Program for Biology Teachers available via FTP. You are advised to read the INDEX file for info on each program. send questions in email to:
    cornoiu@monu1.cc.monash.edu.au

National Information Infrastructure

  • Libraries and the National Information Infrastructure conference to be held on December 5-6 in Washington, DC and sponsored by the CAPCON Library Network. A brochure with the program and registration information may be obtained by calling CAPCON at (202)331-5771 or sending an e-mail message to niiconf@capcon.net (requests sent via e-mail should include the requester's surface mail address).
  • New documents on the Department of Commerce National Telecommunications Information Administration (NTIA) gopher:
    • The National Information Infrastructure: Progress Report
    • Putting the Info. Infra. to Work -- Comments Requested

NetBytes

  • The National Science Foundation (NSF) continues its series of regional outreach meetings with the NSF Midwest Regional Grants Seminar hosted by Northwestern University of Evanston, Illinois, October 27 and 28, 1994. This seminar will provide researchers and research administrators in the Midwest with an opportunity to learn more about the NSF including its role, budget, programs, grant policies, proposal requirements, etc. Attendance is limited to 300 and registration priority is given to midwest regional institutions. There is a nominal charge to cover costs of the meeting. To receive a brochure and registration material fax your name, title, institutional affiliation, and address to 708-491-4800 or write to
    NSF Regional Seminar
    c/o Office of Research and Sponsored Programs
    Northwestern University
    633 Clark Street, Room 2-502 Crown
    Evanston, Illinois 60208-1110
    For additional information, please contact policy@nsf.gov or call 703-306-1243.
  • NYSERNet has released a new videotape about Project GAIN, which extended Internet access to five rural New York State public libraries and one Indian Nation school. Project GAIN (Global Access Information Network) asked what would happen if rural librarians were given access to the Internet, its tools, and training. Could they learn to use networked information resources effectively? Was there anything of value on the Net to improve the quality of service offered to rural patrons? The video documents the project from training meetings to site visits, and is perfect for workshops introducing the Internet to librarians, or for anyone wondering how rural areas might benefit from a community Internet connection. The printed Project GAIN Report, bundled with the video, outlines the lessons learned from connecting; details critical success factors contributing to the overall accomplishments of the project; and offers a number of recommendations for public librarians, network service providers, policy makers, and researchers. Appendices include evaluation instruments, contracts, success stories, and more. $40.00 (non-NYSERNet affiliates) for more info: Call 315/453-2912, x221, or send email to info@nysernet.org.
  • WEBster is a new, fee-based electronic magazine billed as providing a guide and reference for the expanding World Wide Web and its applications. There will be up-to-date news of the latest Web servers and applications, particularly Mosaic services, and weekly features on the development of the Web, including software, commercial, technical, multimedia and political aspects and profiles on the people behind the headlines. Topics of interest to all segments of the Internet community will be included, from the "intrigued-but-yet-to-be-connected" beginner to the Net pioneers. To illustrate the wealth of information that can b e found on the WWW, WEBster is sponsoring an Internet Scavenger Hunt (with real prizes.) Net cruisers can retrieve a list of the items to be found by e-mailing the-hunt@webster.tgc.com. For a free trial subscription to WEBster, send a blank e-mail message to 4free@webster.tgc.com.
  • The Web Word is a newsletter devoted exclusively to the World Wide Web Community. This is a monthly, fee-based email publication is billed as an information filter for people who want to use the Web to do their job. The Web Word concentrates on analyzing what happens in the Web community and organizing the Web's information so that it is accessible and efficient to use. For a free copy,
    send email to: innovation@euronet.nl
    in the body of the message type:
    intro <your email address> <your name>
  • A WWW Development page is now available through the The WWW Virtual Library. Topics ranges from how to develop WWW pages, to setting up servers, to the evolution of the WWW. CGI // Catalogs // Clients // Conferences // Database //Demonstrations // FAQ // Guides // HTML // Icons/Images // MIME //Mail // Perl // Protocols // Providers // Robots // Security //Servers // Software // Tools // Translators // Validation //
  • The Internet Conference Calendar is a list of upcoming Internet-related events and is available on the WWW. A listing of Call For Papers is included, ordered by the due date of the paper.

Training related:

  • Teachers and students can subscribe to Newbie News if you answer 'yes' to: Are You A New Internet User? Do you have students who want to learn the basics of ftp, telnet, and WWW? Are you looking for resource sites? Newbie Newz will also mirror the ROADMAP Interactive Internet Workshop via listserv for Workshop #1, starting in October 1994. ROADMAP Workshop #1 is now closed for subscriptions, but not to Newbie Newz subscribers. ROADMAP will feature assignments to help users learn the ins and outs of ftp, telnet, WWW, and to experience the boundless resources of the Internet.
    send email to: NewbieNewz-request@IO.COM
    in the body of the message type:
    subscribe NewbieNewz <your_email_address>
    (Students can only subscribe themselves. Teachers may submit a list of email addresses for en masse subscription of their students to: Owner-NewbieNewz@IO.COM)
  • Now available online are the handouts from a one-hour presentation on designing and planning Internet workshops for faculty which was presented at the LOEX conference by Abbie J. Basile, Electronic Services Instruction Librarian at Miami University Libraries. Included are six succinct documents which offer many helpful suggestions for Internet training : an outline, timeline, teaching tips, glossary, bibliography, and good examples of netsites for newbies.
  • A collection of Internet tools and resources is available on a concise Web page which combines comprehensive tools documents (December's Internet Tools Summary) and links to software collections for Mac, PC, and UNIX. A starting point for preliminary computer science classes and the like who are looking for a simply-designed pointer to Internet tools.
  • A revised version of Frank Heker's paper "Personal Internet Access Using SLIP or PPP: How You Use It, How It Works" is freely available on the 'Net. It is a high-level overview of SLIP and PPP appropriate for people who have some familiarity with the Internet, have heard about SLIP or PPP and wondered what all the fuss was about, and who are now looking for a relatively brief non-technical introduction to get them oriented before they do anything else. It does _not_ contain installation or configuration instructions for particular versions of SLIP or PPP software; however it does contain pointers to sources of such information. {Comprehensive and readable.}

Weekend Scouting

  • Art Crimes, a graffiti art gallery, features wall art from the U.S. and the Czech Republic. These elaborate, spraypainted pieces are fresh off the street and shockingly good -- colorful and gorgeous. See guerrilla art worth being arrested for.
  • Rave Radio is available in 8 bit .au format and 44.1Khz Stereo MPEG2. MBone broadcasts are soon to follow. Rave Radio will be a weekly feature.
  • PennMUSH has created the Almost-Complete List of MUSHes, providing addresses, capsule summaries, MudWHO queries, and links to appropriate FTP sites and home pages for all known MUSHes. Included are addresses, commentary, links to home pages, and, if available, MudWHO queries. The list is quite long, but has a color-coded index which indicates the type of MUSH.
  • The administrators of the Surfers interactive chat program would like to announce their Surfers W3 server. Surfers is an interactive chat program known as a 'Talker'. For those of you who know what a MUD is, Surfers is exactly the same, without the nasty hacking and slaying bit. If you would like to meet some different people, give it a try!
  • If the item above caught your eye because you're interested in real (water) surfing versus virtual ('Net) surfing, try SurfNet.

About the Scout Report

The Scout Report is a weekly publication offered by InterNIC Information Services to the Internet community as a fast, convenient way to stay informed about network activities. Its purpose is to combine in one place the highlights of new (and newly-discovered) online resources and other announcements seen on the Internet during the preceding week.

A wide range of topics are included in the Report with an emphasis on resources thought to be of interest to the InterNIC's primary audience, the research and education community. Each resource has been verified for substantial content and accessibility within a day of the release of the Report.

The Scout Report is provided in multiple formats -- electronic mail, gopher, World Wide Web, and now HTML. The gopher and World Wide Web versions of the Report include links to all listed resources. The Report is released every weekend.

In addition to the ascii version, the Scout Report is distributed in HTML format via a separate mailing list. This allows sites to easily add the Scout Report to their local WorldWideWeb servers each week, providing fast access for local users. Subscription information for the scout-report-html mailing list is included below. Note that permission statements appear on both versions of the Scout Report, and we ask that these be included in any re-posting or re-distributing of the report. Thank you.

If you haven't yet subscribed or told your friends and colleagues, now is the time. Spread the news by word-of-net. Join thousands of your colleagues already using the Scout Report as a painless tool for tracking what's new on the 'Net!

Comments and contributions to the Scout Report are encouraged and can be sent to scout@cs.wisc.edu.

-- InterNIC Info Scout (SM)

Scout Report Access Methods

** To receive the electronic mail version of the Scout Report each Friday, join the scout-report mailing list which is used only to distribute the Scout Report once a week. Send mail to:
majordomo@is.internic.net
in the body of the message, type:
subscribe scout-report
to unsubscribe to the list, repeat this procedure substituting the word "unsubscribe" for subscribe.

** To receive the Scout Report in HTML format for local posting, subscribe to the scout-report-html mailing list, used exclusively to distribute the Scout Report in HTML format once a week. Send mail to:

majordomo@is.internic.net
in the body of the message, type:
subscribe scout-report-html
** To access the hypertext version of the Report, point your WWW client to:
http://www.internic.net/infoguide.html
>> Gopher users can tunnel to:
is.internic.net
select: Information Services/Scout Report.

Resource Addressing Conventions

After each resource in the Scout Report one or more network addresses are listed. In all cases a convention is used for listing the network address of each resource. It is assumed that users recognize the type of address and know how to use it. However, for those users unfamiliar with the Internet we provide here the order in which addresses are listed (by network tool) and instructions for accessing additional information in the InterNIC InfoGuide about each network tool. A brief explanation of one tool, WWW is included below.

The four network tools referenced most often in the Scout Report are World Wide Web, gopher, email, and FTP. Occasionally WAIS and Telnet addresses are also listed.

After each resource at least one address is listed, and sometimes more. This is because some resources are available through multiple network tools. The network tool addresses are always listed in the same order after each resource:

  • World Wide Web (WWW)
  • Gopher
  • FTP
  • Email
  • Telnet
  • WAIS

A WWW address is called a URL (Uniform Resource Locator) and always begins with a string of characters followed by a colon and two right brackets. For example:

http://www.internic.net/
gopher://gibbs.oit.unc.edu:70/11/research.d/grants.d
ftp://ftp.digex.net/pub/access/hecker/internet/slip-ppp.txt

To access the resource through the WWW you will need a WWW client installed on your host computer. Clients are available for all major computer platforms, including Macintosh, PC, and UNIX. To use a WWW client on your computer, you will need a TCP/IP connection to the Internet, either through a dedicated line connection or a SLIP/PPP connection. See the InfoGuide for additional information about the World Wide Web and for sites which archive WWW clients. For more information about SLIP/PPP, which can be used over a dial-up connection, see the document listed in the NetBytes section above.

gopher://is.internic.net/11/infoguide/using-internet/basic-resources/email/

Gopher to: is.internic.net
** Choose: Information Services/Using the Internet/

Send email to: mailserv@is.internic.net
In the body of the message type:

send INDEX
Copyright 1994 General Atomics.
Permission is granted to make and distribute verbatim copies of the Scout Report provided the copyright notice, this permission notice, and the two paragraphs below are preserved on all copies.

The InterNIC provides information about the Internet and the resources on the Internet to the US research and education community under the National Science Foundation Cooperative Agreement No. NCR-9218749. The Government has certain rights in this material.

Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this publication are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation, General Atomics, AT&T, or Network Solutions, Inc.

scout@is.internic.net
guide@is.internic.net