Wednesday, July 29, 1998
I've been a NSD subscriber since forever and as I think back on it, NSD has been the key to most of the cool sites I've found in the past. When everyone and their dog has a site, it's even more important. So, thank you.
Today, I realized a whole new value. I was trying to find a site I first found via NSD ages ago (turns out it was towards the end of 1996) and so did a lot of NSD surfing. It wasn't easy, but I finally did find it. But I also found that NSD is a fabulous resource for the history of the Web. The other day I was trying to remember when Netscape 2 came out and had to guess. Today, I found it easily while looking for my other site. In fact, I got completely distracted by my little trip down Web Memory Lane. So, double thank you!
Susan Dennis - Seattle, Washington
Just a quick thank-you to you folks for mentioning my Web site in NSD. Very nice comments, and I'm getting lots of good feedback from people who surf to the site after your review.
Doc Smith
I just wanted to thank you for including Team Monty in NSD! It certainly brought traffic to our site. You surely deserve your good reputation.
Steve Huber - Creative Director, Team Monty
Our traffic ballooned yesterday. And lo, at the root of it is something called Netsurfer Digest. Oddly, AltaVista didn't quite find you, but chasing links eventually led me to a remarkably well-written review. Terse, but thorough, covering pretty much exactly what we're up to in a handful of sentences. We look forward to staying "a step above" our competitors. Thanks!
P. S. May we quote you (with appropriate attribution), and does the reviewer recall how they found us?
Dave Howell - Principal Manager, Alexandria Digital Literature
Glad to see we did our job. As far as Net searches go, I
use Debriefing. It's a meta search
engine, but very fast and accurate.
I personally choose the sites that go into NSD, but I don't recall how I find
your site. I think it was recommended to our press room at pressrm@netsurf.com, either in a press
release or from a fan of yours.
You can quote us, no prob. We have a logo, if you want one, here. - LN
According to our stats, over 500 user sessions at the review originated from your domain in the last month. Thanks very much for the mention. We are pleased to have our hard work and talent be recognized by a peer such as Netsurfer.
Stan Faryna
I just want to thank you for listing Rate.Net. We're proud of our new site and hope your surfers find it helpful.
Jan Pierce
When the number of visits to my site, "A Positive Light...intriguing stories, and good books at great prices" jumped by a factor of five, I polled my new subscribers and was told that they were all responding the review in NSD 4.16. I'm so delighted by the number of high quality visitors that I've added a link to you on my "Friends and Resources" page. Thank you for the favorable comments. I'm recommending NSD to anyone looking for an excellent guide to new sites on the Web, and to everyone who has a quality site that the world should know about.
John Shepler
I've been subscribing for longer than I can remember and I treasure your fun, useful suggestions. Digital Journalist ("Photojournalism", NSD 4.14) was created by Dirck Halstead, a friend of mine and one of Time Magazine's top photographers for years. (Those Time covers of Nixon during Watergate were usually his). I think it's a shame you don't give him personal credit. Lots of sites are strictly business, but many people put sites up for pure passion for the subject and I think those people should get the credit they deserve.
Logan Bentley Lessona - Rome
I am quite confused by the following quote from "Web Eye Candy" (NSD 4.13): "Normally we pay little attention to usually self-serving sites that merely list other sites or to Web page awards...."
What can be "self-serving" about a site that "merely" lists other sites. In my case, can it be the pleasure I receive by surfing the Net and passing this pleasure on to others?
As to your site - is it a notch above other sites because you add a little critique to your listings? Isn't your gratification just a little bit self-serving?
Joyce London
It's the - to me - uselessness of a list of links with no
or little comment. These sites just post a list of links to get their own hits
up. They add little creative content and rely entirely on what's at the other
end of the link to provide the visitor with value.
I think we add a significant amount of entertaining and useful content. You
more or less know before clicking what you're getting into. Furthermore, I
wouldn't call NSD a mere "listing" of sites. To me, a list is just that - line
after line of links, whereas we're more of a review mag. - LN
What you don't mention about AlexLit is that it is geared strongly toward science fiction/fantasy literature, which really isn't my cup of tea. After getting about 20 titles picked, I realized it was going to be difficult to find the 40 they asked for without resorting to picking out Shakespeare and Poe reads from a long time ago.
Bill Dinger
I've been a NSD subscriber from the beginning (that ought to warrant a T-shirt at least). I've seen good, bad, interesting, and just plain odd sites thanks to NSD, but WHAT THE HELL IS THAT SCHWA WEBSITE?
Enquiring minds want to know.
Tom Bradley
If you find out, let us know too, OK? - LN
Super thanks for the neat write up in NSD of the world famous company town, Cowchip, Ala. Your words of praise have precipitated at least 200 hits so far. Now, that's not too bad at all for a set of little old Web pages that do nothing more than extoll the benefits of life in this small southern town and the wonders of the delightful beverage produced by the happy smiling residents, (Norm's Three Virgins Scuppernong Wine). I mean, I could see visiting the NASA site or something, but an afternoon (in this heat!) in Cowchip? Only NSD produces results like this!
Norm Morrison
You included my journal ("A Male 17-Year-Old's Brief Observations", NSD 4.19) in your newsletter. Thank you very much, but I have one question. Not to be rude, but why wasn't I told?
Name withheld
'Cuz I don't have the copious time needed to hunt down the relevant e-mail addresses of the creators/hosters/maintainers of all the Web sites we review. - LN
Thanks for the support of Mac users with your excellent newsletter. I've been subscribing for two years and I surf it top to bottom. It's good to see that even though the Quantum Fog app (NSD 4.20) is only for Mac, you didn't let that fact deter you from giving it a mention. Keep up the good work.
Andy Freeman
Heck, I use a StarMax.... With compilers and some extremely capable online plug-ins, I don't see too much reason for any platform to be left out of the loop for technical reasons (marketing and profit is another story). If you send me a URL or software announcement that fails to encompass all reasonable platform options, it had better be extremely cool to get by my personal filter. This, for example, passed. - LN
I've subscribed to NSD for a time and I have found some interesting places, but why the Hell do you have to include all bad pornographic sites? Of course, everyone can't like everything, but there are natural limits to what's OK. Who do you think likes or appreciates it? Maybe some men who are somewhat "wrong" in social life and homosexual, but the rest of us hate it!
I'm so bloody tired of finding out what I thought was something else is some disgusting pictures of stupid women with nothing for brains. And just to check, I found links to pages announced in NSD about young sex-acting children! Isn't there something wrong with people who want to display their sexuality online?
I hope you stop putting sex links in NSD.
Marie Soderstrom - Linkoping, Sweden
We don't put pornography in NSD. We rarely feature some
tasteful erotic art, but other than that, we don't write up porn. There is no
nudity at Our First Time. What you call "sex-acting children" come from, I
assume, an article called "The Naked Family Cam" in NSD 4.17. While everyone
there is naked, they are also geese. If you meant the kids at Our First Time,
they were portrayed as 18, not children.
There are limits, but they are not natural. People reaches their own limits -
or they don't. I'm not prepared to judge people who post lascivious pics of
themselves online, but I can decide whether I publicize them or not in NSD. And
you can decide to read the results of my decision or not. - LN
As I don't like pornographic sites I of course do not look at them. Strange? But you must agree that the text implied that there were erotic pictures to be found at the site. And it seems wrong for you not to check the sites you put in NSD. And lastly, you lie if you say you haven't had links to pornographic pictures before. I have seen several.
If you think some people like to watch such, why don't you make a special e-zine for them and take out everything related from NSD so the rest of us don't have to see it?
It's not strange that you ignore sites you don't want to
visit. But if you want to talk about them, you should visit them so that you
know what you are talking about. We didn't say there were pictures of naked
people at Our First Time, but we didn't say there weren't.
I must strenuously point out that of course we check all sites we review. And I
stand by my point that we do not feature porn. I challenge you to prove your
point and tell me exactly which NSD article covered a porn site.
Flotsam and Jetsam was always an interesting category. I hope you're not abandoning it.
David Tharp
What makes you think that? - LN
Um, it's absence in your 6/23 publication?
You really had me thinking I was being perhaps legitimately psychoanalyzed with your leading response until I double-checked.
I can tell you're probably a newish subscriber. We have two formats of NSD, which we swap every edition. F&J appears in the odd-numbered NSDs only, at least for now.
Would you buy a telephone answering machine without an indicating light showing if messages have been received? The answer is probably no!
But what happens when e-mail or other messages are on the Internet server and the computer is offline? Nothing!
Shouldn't all computers have an indicating light too? Is there something out there that does the job?
Please advise. Thank you!
Gunter Schafer
I've heard of nothing that does this, but I'm not
surprised. If your computer is offline, it's exactly like unplugging the phone
line from an answering machine. There's no way to make a connection between
your computer and the mail server if you're disconnected.
Now, if you modify your question to: "why doesn't your computer notify you when
e-mail arrives at your mail server when you're online" things get more
complicated.
Servers don't broadcast the arrival of e-mail. Even surfers with constant
connections - such as those who stay online all the time or people connected to
a network at work - need to go check their mail in order to find out if they
have any.
This is a good thing. If mail servers broadcast instead of waiting passively,
they would be constantly sending out "e-mail has arrived" messages - even to
computers that are not online. Now complicate that with dynamic IP addresses
(i.e. your home computer probably gets a new Net address each time you go
online) and you have more for that e-mail server to work on. And with each bit
of additional work it has to do, performance suffers.
That's why mail servers don't forward e-mail but wait with it in a mailbox
until it is requested. It would be twice as bad if they had to send out e-mail
and e-mail notices.
You can approximate a constant e-mail feed, however. All decent e-mail programs
allow you to automate and set the interval between e-mail checks. I have mine
set to five minutes. As long as my computer is on, my Eudora Light checks for
mail every five minutes no matter what I'm doing. Sure, the potential exists
for me to get an e-mail a whole four minutes late, but it's just as good as
instant. - LN
"Feces" (NSD 4.21) has an a in it - "faeces" - unless of course that is an American spelling....
Apart from this minor point, the publication is excellent - keep up the good work.
Edward Quan - somewhere in the UK
Oh, you goofy Brits.... We use American spelling in NSD
(except for the inexcusable "catalog", etc.), though I myself am Canadian.
While I will generally use British spellings (honour, etc.) in my personal
missives, I don't usually use Latinate compound vowels.
foetus -> fetus
- LN
faeces -> feces
archeaology -> archeology
I have to say, I love Netsurfer - both NSD and now Netsurfer Science. It's a solid idea whose time has come, and as long as they're out there I'll be subscribing.
But why stop there? There is an enormous market out there for a companion e-zine based on medicine, nursing, and other health-care sites. Hundreds of thousands of these sites now exist, and they seem to be growing at least as fast as the science-related ones. Healthcare people don't have time to sort through the flotsam and jetsam, they want the best/quirkiest/interesting sites at their fingertips.
Give it some thought, if you haven't already - there are a lot of people out there who'd jump at a subscription to Netsurfer Health.
Rich Churcher - Dunedin, New Zealand
Well, it's outside my sphere of influence, but there is a section devoted to health care in NSS. As for my personal preference, if I had to do any more health care sites than I do, I'd go nuts. - LN
Let me add my two cents. The problem with health care is that for the vast
majority of people it's not an ongoing issue (barring chronic sufferers and
hupochondriacs). When you need healthcare info you need it NOW and you need it
accurate and you need it specific to what you've got.
Any one person is likely to need information only on a single specific topic
related to their own condition. Not many people have a heart condition, cancer,
liver failure, a broken leg, and a rash on their privates all at the same time.
This makes it difficult to build a sustained publication covering a broad
category like that - who's your audience? The mere existance of a broad
category of sites does not make for a viable e-zine.
Now I can see an e-zine aimed at doctors covering new health developments, or
even one on fitness (preventive health care, as it were). As usual it's a
question of money, people, and resources. - AB
You know; you guys have it just about right. And with sense coupled to literacy. Quickly then, "thanks".
Pete Turner
I've just finished reading NSD 4.14 and I'm sending my compliments. I'm a corporate intranet programmer and really appreciate your excellent design. This is the best designed HTML table I've ever seen. The appearance is elegant -visually dynamic yet clean and tastefully balanced. This harmony makes the content, which is very well written and interesting, easier to grasp.
There ought to be a term for the psychological cause/effect of Web page design and viewer reception, don't you think? Were there one, I'd recommend your current issue as the "Do This" example in the "Do This - Don't Do That" manual.
The JavaScript ads are a tad garish - the only detracting note. I suppose we must bow to commercial realities.
Yours is the only subscribed newsmail that I read cover to cover, due to the above factors. Please pass on my compliments to my colleague geek programmers and your fine writers.
David Crook
You guys and girls do a great job. Keep it going and coming.
Emmett Smith
This is the third digest I've received, and they just keep getting more entertaining. I love the work you all are doing, and look forward to future editions.
Emma Suarez Pawlicki
NSD continues to sift through the growing overburden to give the gems. Thanks!
Terry and Cinda Brant
I just want to thank you for the link to Animations of Questionable Taste (NSD 4.15) with the "fishbar" movies. They are the best movies for the little screen I have seen yet. Without the subscription to NSD, I never would have seen them.
Barbara Iverson
Gee, what a really nice and really useful howdy message. I appreciate the readability, utility, and niceness. Thanks very much. I'm already glad I subscribed.
Pat Flowers
I've received your great e-zine for some time now. It's still the best and I look forward to every issuee. I appreciate it - many thanks, guys!
Melvin - Singapore
Congratulations. Your Web site has been judged one of the best 3,000 sites of interest for New Zealanders.
Consequently, it has been reviewed and included in the New Zealand edition of the Internet Phone Book.
The Internet Phone Book will be available from selected Foodtown, Countdown, Big Fresh, Whitcoulls, Paper Plus, bookshops, newsagents, dairies, superettes, and other appropriate outlets.
I'm sure you will find you Internet Phone Book listing beneficial.
Leanne Jones
My dream has been fulfilled. I am at peace. - LN
NSD is a really cool e-zine. The look is really awesome. "Keep it up! I think I'll recommend the e-zine to a few of my friends.
Abhijeet Premkumar
OK, but don't bother with New Zealanders. We have that covered already. - LN
You guys and girls do a great job. Keep it going and coming.
Emmett Smith
Thank you again, Emmett. - LN
Thank you. NSD 4.17 is one of your best issues to date. Thanks again.
Norman Golding
Yeah, I thought it was a good one when I was putting it together. But my wife and best friend gave me grief over my suggestion of Jon Lovitz for NewsRadio. I am now, however, drunk with my prescient power and lord it over them. - LN
Just wanted to say how much I enjoy your e-mail digest. Keep up the good work!
Bill Mabee
Just let me say what a great e-zine you guys and gals are running!
Andrew Brown - Sydney, Australia.
I have been a long-time subscriber and I would like to submit my sincerest gratitude for the steady stream of informative, quality-oriented, entertaining, as well as educational articles in each series.
You have more than lived up to your original claim years ago, when I first subscribed, that there will be no junk mail.
More power to you.
Ramon Tan
I was just surfing around the Net when I came up onto your cool homepage. You have done a very good job. I really enjoy how you've laid out your graphics and used color. There are so many bad sites out on the Internet that it is a joy to find a really nice one like yours! I liked the links that you had chosen as well as your own homepage content as well. Keep up the good work, it is appreciated!
Ken Wigger
Tina Koenig here from Xpress Press. I noticed you mentioned several of our clients in NSD 4.19.
Thanks mucho and thanks for the really great writing you push out - what a pleasure to read. :-)
Tina Koenig
It's just not fair to keep receiving, enjoying, and getting kicks out of your finely edited NSD and never send word of praise to you all. I've been watching your work since the very beginning, I think. I liked it, and I like it even more now (no hype, just plain interesting and worthy tips, extremely well put into words by your staff). Thanks for so many happy moments.
Jesus Raymat - Caracas
Just a note to thank you for our inclusion in Netsurfer Digest 04.21 ("The Museum of Questionable Nostalgia"). We appreciate you choosing us as one of your surfing sites. We here at Dreams and Bones are avid readers of NSD and its science counterpart. Again, many thanks.
Kevin Gendreau
Congratulations, your Web site has been reviewed and indexed on MedSite.com. The MedSite review committee utilizes strict guidelines for design and content and your inclusion in the MedSite search engine is a testimony to your hard work.
Jennifer Parise
Isn't it about time you guys fixed that brain-damaged sendmail ">From" feature in your articles? (See "New Scientist's Rex Files", NSD 4.16). If you don't know where it comes from, see "The UNIX-HATERS Handbook", p. 79. (Hint: How does sendmail distinguish between lines in the mail header that begin with "From' and lines in your mail message that begin with "From"? It doesn't.)
Matt Feinstein
Ever since y'all switched to HTML format, your publication has been completely useless to me. I check e-mail through a UNIX account using a variation of ELM. I resent your implication that if you are not using an HTML compliant e-mail client, you are not "modern". HTML is not compliant with current RFCs on Internet e-mail, either.
Get with it. Put out a separate version of NSD without all that HTML crap if you expect me to stay a subscriber or recommend NSD, as I have done in the past.
SeanMike Whipkey
While reading "The Naked Family Cam" (NSD 4.17), I could not tell if you were being sarcastic or serious. Can you please let me know if you were serious when you said "Let's hope some kinder foster parents take these youngsters under their wings."
If on the other hand, you were being sarcastic, I would urge you to use a smiley in the future so you dont end up confusing your readers of your intentions.
Tony Basoglu
Which one of you decided that pithy, clever, snappy phrases don't prove anything and what are we trying to prove to whom and why? If you can't prove whatever that is with language, are you suggesting that we use mathematics?
I found the observation that original phrasing proves nothing to be the height of inane, sterile, highly conditioned, linear, tight-assed thinking. And it makes me feel bad 'cause that's what I do on occasion when I want to lighten a day for someone who may enjoy an odd premise or queer (in the classical, not the modern urbane) thought.
Larry Ball
"You are the piquant particle of a radiant promise." (for instance)
I didn't edit the last issue (Judi subbed for me) and I have no idea what you are referring to, so... just what are you referring to? - LN
The first ad banner at your sight that I saw was about "proving nothing" with clever verbiage. I thought that must be your own favorite premise. Clearly, it isn't.
At any rate it stuck me as very San Jose and kind of sad. It goes to prove my own favorite premise: "Never trust anyone under 30."
Ahhhh. I thought you meant something in the text. That would be Arthur's creation, I believe. - LN
I liked the quote "A witty saying proves nothing" because I want our readers to think about the content while they appreciate the wit. Just because we're witty doesn't mean what we're saying has weight - it's an invitation to keep a sharp eye on us, and by extension on all media. - AB
By the way, most of us - including all the editorial and production staff - are over 30. -LN
I was somewhat taken aback by NSD 4.21. I found many of the sites iffy to questionable in taste. This is somewhat unusual for your digest. The Spiff Web site ("Spiffy Experimental Web Design") was a total waste of time. The business site ("Business Ideas Forum") didn't have anything of interest or offer any new ideas. The so-called humour site was totally senseless. Good humour is in my book is supposed to make one laugh. I can see nothing funny when it comes to all the tools one needs nowadays to have sex.
Please get back to providing good quality sites
Linda Darwent
NSD is unreadable on some browsers. This is easy to fix.
An image of the page as I render it is available here.
If you set a background colour or supply a background image for your page, please ensure that you also set foreground colours for the text and links so that people who don't happen to use _your_ text colour are guaranteed a useful contrasting colour.
Remember, there are folks out there (like me) whose default environment uses light text on a dark background. If you override only one of these in your document, the other setting comes from the reader's default. This mix is unpredictable, and usually bad if the reader and the author come from differing light-on-dark and dark-on-light environments. Thus, if you override the one you should override the other, too. A useful colour is probably your own default colour, since you will have checked the page's appearance using it.
If you set just one (many authors set a background and forget the foreground)
there is no guarantee of contrast. As a consequence, if you set one you incur a
responsibility to set the other to maintain contrast. Details may be found at
Netscape's
site. Note in particular the bit on "How to control the document's
foreground". The attributes you need to set in the
Cameron Simpson - Sydney, Australia
I just read a review of the Altar to the Eclectic on your site and I felt
compelled to write in and express my disagreement with your reviewer.
The review states "The homepage has a few quasi-esoteric links, but the site's
pretty much only an extensive catalogue of tarot illustrations...." I went
there and found there are over 100 pages that aren't even related to the tarot.
I think your reviewers comments are pretty much skin deep, and it shows that
they didn't really look around too hard.
Sol
That's a fair criticism, but then, we did get you to go
visit the site. To that extent we've done our job, since we thought it was
worth enough attention to include it in NSD.
Kind of a weasly way out of a criticism, but there you go :)
Our reviews are written by humans for humans, and not by omniscient
journalistic gods(*) for sheep - say, like Time or CNN. As such, our writers
don't always have infinite time to delve into every nook and cranny. If you
approach us with that in mind then I think you'll find that on the whole we've
done a reasonably good job over a long period of time.
Thanks for reading and paying attention.
(*) With the exception, of course, of our editors, who are Olympian in their
wisdom. - AB
Publisher: Arthur Bebak
Address your letters to
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Editor: Lawrence Nyveen
Letters and signatures edited for clarity and brevity.
NETSURFER DIGEST © 1998 Netsurfer Communications, Inc. All
rights reserved.
NETSURFER DIGEST is a trademark of Netsurfer Communications, Inc.
