by Alan Mann
Here are ten very popular sites for your web browsing delight. The URL, or
address, needed to visit these sites appears in bold type.
Just type the URL into your web browser and press
VDOLive is the hottest new spot on Internet. This new technology
makes desktop video broadcasting relatively simple. Prospects are good for
a marriage between television and the Internet. The excitement is generated
by delivering realtime audio/video over dialup Internet connections at 14400
bps. This means delivery of realtime video to the mass market.
Realtime means that you can watch the video (and listen to audio)
while you download instead of waiting for the entire file to download before
viewing. Few sites and examples are available now, but they really do work.
WCVB (Channel 5, Boston) allows Internet users to watch portions of their
newscasts, current movie reviews (with film clips), or WCVB's report on VDOLive
at the fall Internet World conference. I tried this on my 486 dx2/80 with
28.8 modem and got good results (not perfect). Experts recently said that
realtime video was possible only on high speed connections running at least
1 Mb per second. Boy, were they wrong!
Magazines are perfect for the web. Magazine publishers lose
money on printing costs, but make money on advertising. The web's uniqueness
allows publishers to produce a magazine without ever printing it. They just
put it (color images and all) on the web. It will take several things for
this to really catch on, but enthusiasts are predicting that web publishing
will eventually replace the printed periodical. It offers several advantages
to both publisher and reader. Readers simply click on the table to contents
to read the related article without having to hunt through the magazine (you
know those ads that don't have page numbers on them?), don't have recycling
or physical storage space to worry about, and can even search the whole magazine
for a key word of interest. Publishers have reduced cost, greater reader
access, can correct an error before anyone else sees it, and have five minutes
from completion to delivery. If you like this column (HotSpots), try a whole
magazine of HotSpots updated daily.
Other interesting Internet magazines include:
Yahoo maintains a list of magazines available on the web. The list of over
4000 magazines is divided into 43 categories (some with sub-categories).
To see the categories and the list (which has a searchable index), click
here.
PowWow (Tribal Voice)
is another hot new technology product. It allows up to seven people
to make a sort of conference call and go web browsing together. The original
idea was to let teachers guide a small class through several web sites and
illustrate how things should be done. By far the greatest use of the program,
however, has been to form small chat groups that go community browsing on
the Web. If you have a 28.8 modem (or faster connection), you also get full
voice communication in your chat group (yes, you talk to each other while
browsing the web--even though you may be thousands of miles apart). The program
can be downloaded free of charge (305K), but is limited to Windows users.
There are extensive help files and detailed instructions.
If you want to download the program, note the second alternative download
site is aros.net, right here in Salt Lake!
USWEST is considered an aggressive
WorldWideWeb company. They'll answer questions, quote rates, tell you what's
new and what's planned for release soon. For example, learn what ISDN is
about and what USWest's plans are for ISDN in Utah (as of 8 Jan 96). ISDN
is a faster way of connecting to Internet (about 4 times the fastest possible
speed through a regular modem). It requires a special modem and a special
phone line, but it could be attractive in the future. Or learn about new
services for your phone, such as voice dialing (50 numbers stored for $4.95/mo).
Voice dialing allows you to dial someone automatically just by speaking the
name of the person you want to call. USWest also plans to let you check your
phone account status or place orders via Internet soon.
Comparison Shopping and Malls
Anderson Consulting's Smartstore Bargain Finder is an intelligence agent
for comparison shopping. You use their program,
bargain finder,
to do comparison shopping for you. You select an item you want and it checks
various websites that offer it for sale, reporting who has the lowest price
for that item (and reports each vendor's price so you can order elsewhere
if who you buy from is important to you). It's experimental right now, as
Anderson needs to identify various mall sites for the comparisons. Only one
function is being tested--CD shopping (music CD's). I asked it to find the
CD Dare to Dream by Yanni. Bargain Finder checked nine sites selling
music CDs via WWW and gave me price and shipping policy of each (the cheapest
was $12.77 + 2.74 s/h at CDWorld).
The idea is to save gas, shop the Net, ask questions online, and get informed
and accurate responses (in "writing"). This site also has connections to
many virtual shopping
malls. These malls are:
Spiegel and five other major merchants
Outer Space can be explored from your computer. Numerous
educational and experimental projects can entertain you or your children
for many hours. Fun space exploration sites include:
Deep Space Program Science
Experiment (DSPSE), has a summary of the Clementine satellite and
Lunar Image Browser. The Browser shows you the moon and allows you to click
on the area you would like to see up close. It then selects which of 1.8
million images matches your request. You have to see it to believe it. If
you want, you can download each of the images one at a time. It only takes
400 gigabytes. Let's see, I was thinking of buying a new hard drive anyway...
Project
Galileo's satellite reached Jupiter on 9 December 1995. You can
see images taken of the Earth, moon, Mars and asteroids along the way, or
read discussions of the mission, its aims, and its progress. Information
is updated every minute. You can even look over the shoulder of NASA personnel
working on the project.
These are some current HotSpots on Internet. Don't be afraid to try them
out. Just type the URL given in bold type into your web
browser, and you'll soon be spending your leisure hours cruising the Net.
Computer Credible readers can download
VDOLIVE for free (so can
anyone else who knows about it). To use it, you need to have Windows 3.1
or Windows '95 running at 66 MHz or faster with at least 8 Mb RAM. Your Internet
connection must be through a 14.4 modem or faster. VDOLive will automatically
adjust the "video stream" (speed of delivery) to your connection, modem,
and computer capabilities. Downloading takes only a few minutes (285K to
download), and there are four easy steps from download to application. Complete
instructions are included.
ToyStory is a delightful
movie and also an impressive website. It gives details on each character,
tells how the movie was made, which theaters are showing it, and "other important
stuff." You can read letters to Dear Bo, join the fan club, talk
to fellow toystory addicts, take a quiz, or read about Woody vs. Buzz. Its
appeal is enhanced by allowing downloads of video clips, a memory game, 30
sound files from the movie (farewell, I go on to a better place),
wallpaper, icons, and a screen saver. All in all, a delightful site at.
Movie studios are blitzing the Net with everything from hyping an upcoming
movie to supporting a specific movie cult. Official sites are created by
the studios, but there are many unofficial sites being created by adoring
fans, movie critics, college students (nothing better to do?) and actors
for their own fans. Would you believe that Star Wars has over 90 different
web sites? If not, just click
here for a list.
For an excellent review of a few dozen sites and information on where to
find hundreds more, try
ZDNet.
Internet World
All about Internet and how to use it
Netwatch Announce new technology
on the Net
NetGuide
Online/Internet sites & news
Online Access
Internet/online services for beginner
Web Week What's happening
on the web
Dreamshop (Time Warner) If I hadn't
found this, I might have missed the Turbo Auto Drive(TM) two speed digital
control tie rack for only $68.95 (+ s/h)! This site connects you to Spiegel,
Eddie Bauer, and other recognized companies.
The Fashion Mall really shows
off fashion--a long and impressive list of designers with their latest fashion
show photos right from the runways.
Access Market Square (winner of
best storefront award) From art to sports (The OJ store??), Access
Market Square shows a two story mall with icons representing each category,
which are also listed alphabetically.
Science from San Francisco's
Exploratorium, a site for educators
and students (on the Net called ExploraNet). It has many hints to help teachers
make effective science experiments and demonstrations. It also has pointers
to many other sites. I was impressed by the "10 cool sites," which is similar
to this column. My favorites was the
T.W.I.N.K.I.E.S.
experiment (T.W.I.N.K.I.E.S. stands for Tests With Inorganic Noxious Kakes
In Extreme Situations--"As soon as the Twinkie was released, it began to
fall. It fell until it hit the ground. Upon impact, ...").
Oracle
PowerBrowser is a new Windows-based Web browser from Oracle. This web
browser builds a quality mail client (sends, receives, organizes, and stores
email), a news reader (for newsgroups), a web page authoring tool (Personal
Publisher), basic programming, and a local database (BLAZE) in one program.
It can replace your web browser. Best of all, its free to anyone reading
this page. It has simple instructions included. I installed the program and
was up and running within ten minutes! I was very impressed.
WebCal is
a shared calendar for use with Netscape-compatible browsers. WebCal allows
you to create automatic e-mail reminders before appointments. The demo version
allows you to enter "an event," such as a birthday or appointment. WebCal
will then email you a reminder of the event Great for those with "notify"
capability on their email accounts. I tried it out and just before my meeting
with my boss, my computer said "you have a message waiting." It was WebCal,
reminding me of my meeting through Internet. Password and username are required.
Just use "guest" for both. This will allow you to add/remove events, and
create new calendars.
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