Scout Report: Week ending October 28th, 1994

October 28, 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 resources of interest. Past issues are stored on the InfoGuide for quick reference, and you can search the InfoGuide contents to find the items reported in all previous issues. 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:

  • California Election results live on the 'Net
  • Data on the number of K12 Internet users
  • UK government on the Web
  • National Library of Medicine, Educational Technology Branch
  • Vice President's Open Meeting on Reinventing Government: Email participation is encouraged. Also available on the Web.

World Wide Web

  • The African Studies WWW server contains information on programs and resources at the University of Pennsylvania, in Africa, the U.S. and elsewhere. The African Studies Center is part of a four-school consortium, including Bryn Mawr, Haverford, and Swarthmore Colleges and the University of Pennsylvania.
  • When California's Fall election results are posted on the Web it will be the first time live, on-line election results and pre - and post-election information is available on the Web. On November 8 anyone with Internet access can see California's general election returns in graphical, tabular formats, with up-to-the-minute accuracy, making this the largest live, on-line Internet project undertaken. Following election night, they will be able to access detailed summary data on the voting results.
  • The Corporation for Public Broadcasting is proud to announce the creation of the CPB EdWeb. Edweb is an on-line tutorial on education, technology, school reform and the Information Highway. Designed for both teachers and telecommunication enthusiasts, EdWeb offers a vast collection of on-line educational resources, success stories of how technology is used in the classroom, a history of the development of the Infobahn, and much more.
  • The Educational Technology Branch at the Lister Hill National Center for Biomedical Communication of the National Library of Medicine (NLM) announces a newly revised and restructured home page. New information has been added: a relevant subset of the NLM's AVLINE database and a Generic Videodisc/CD-ROM Database for the Health Professions providing descriptions of materials that can be repurposed by health professions educators wishing to develop interactive teaching materials. All this and more is found in a new home page providing ready access to Resources, Monographs and descriptions of ongoing Research Projects.
  • The Geometry Sender at Keio University is now opening W3 server. Many 3D object data, including WebOOGL, off, rwx format, tutorial on data formats, and information about external viewers for 3D object on Web are available.
  • John and Janice's Research Page offers pointers to their work in counting the number of K12 schools and K12 users on the Internet. Data from previous counts is also included. Additional data can be sent to clement@k12.cnidr.org.
  • A series of "Letters from an Iowa Soldier in the Civil War" is now available. These letters are part of a collection written by Newton Scott, Private, Company A, of the 36th Infantry, Iowa Volunteers, from 1862 thru 1865. Scott's letters are filled with rich details of the war and the living conditions in the Union camps in Mississippi, Missouri, Iowa, and Arkansas. Not only do they offer a Company Clerk's detailed account of the war, they also provide a glimpse of the personal emotions of a 21-year old farm boy uprooted from family, friends and sweetheart.
  • The UK government is now on the web. Complete with a photo of Big Ben.
  • A Virtual Summer School is being run this month by The Human Cognition Research Laboratory at the UK's Open University. The summer school enables students of Cognitive Pscyhology to participate in group discussions and tutorials via Internet Videoconferencing, and to run experiments, conduct literature searches, undertake statistical analyses, and, of course, socialize and chit-chat, all without leaving their homes. The Human Cognition Research Laboratory undertakes a combination of basic and applied research in Artificial Intelligence (AI), Knowledge Engineering, Cognitive Science, and Human Computer Interaction (particularly program visualization). The long-term goal of this research is to understand the fundamental processes of cognition, and to exploit this understanding where appropriate in the design of complex software systems. Also have a look at the experimental Open University Home Page.

Gopher

Email

>From the Vice President's office:
Coming to Vice President Al Gore's recently released WebToolKit on November 9: the Vice President's Open Meeting on Reinventing Government on the Internet. Using tools like e-mail and the World Wide Web, this experimental venture will provide federal workers and others the opportunity to discuss implementation of government reform in a new way.

If you have internet email, you will have the opportunity to identify and create such networks during the Vice President's Open Meeting on Reinventing Government. (If you've seen previous publicity for a Town Hall meeting, this is the same event.) This venture will provide federal workers and others the opportunity to discuss implementation of government reform in a new way. We are working to be the best source of information on government reinvention, to be the best means to interact with other reinvention practitioners, and to be a valuable resource for workers to engage in policy discussion and implementation.

We are actively inviting federal workers from all parts of the country and all levels of the workforce, to ensure that a broad range of experience and perspectives will be represented. Interaction in the meeting will focus on issues drawn from NPR's Accompanying Reports on reinventing government, including "Changing Internal Culture," "Improving Customer Service," and "Streamlining Management Control." Participants will exchange their insights on implementing these changes,building a knowledge base of promising practices and brainstorming about next steps. Please register, and pass this notice along to others who might be interested!

send mail to: PARTICIPATE@AL.AI.MIT.EDU
in the subject line type: Participate
leave the body of the message blank

Or follow along on the Web:
http://www.npr.gov/OpenMeet/openmeet.html

National Information Infrastructure

New documents on the Department of Commerce National Telecommunications Information Administration (NTIA) gopher:
  • Universal Service Virtual Hearing Information
  • NII Security Issues Forum June Meeting Minutes
  • NII Security Issues Forum August Meeting Minutes
  • Roles and Responsibilities: NII Security Issues Forum

NetBytes

  • Boardwatch Magazine is now on the web. Constant updates plus full-text and multiple graphics.
  • The Internet Conference Calendar is an organized and concise listing of conferences, workshops, exhibitions and seminars related to the Internet.
  • The papers presented at the WWW conference in Chicago two weeks ago are now available in a full-text searchable index. Look in the demonstrations area, in the spider-built index demos.

Weekend Scouting

  • The Capitol Steps, the Washington-based troupe of Congressional staffers turned songwriters, have a WWW home page featuring music and political satire. Hear selections from recent albums (Lord of the Fries, The Joy of Sax, etc.) plus pre-releases of the latest songs.
  • Visit OKbridge to learn about playing bridge on the Internet. Play duplicate bridge in real time, with real people.
  • SCUBA Diving Web page now available at The University of Nevada Las : SCUBA Information (at UNLV) and links to other SCUBA related Web pages world-wide; the Internet Dive Computer Review lists features and provides reviews for many diving related computers; and the link to Lake Mead National Recreational Area includes camping and fishing regulations, dive spots and conditions.

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

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** To access the hypertext version of the Report, point your WWW client to:
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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.

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