CyberMalls, a noted WWW marketplace with over 70 client shops, has closed after deciding "to favor its ethical values over its own business success." Majority owner Jeffrey Frost said CyberMalls needed a significant infusion of capital to up its services, but was unwilling to raise prices. "The truth is that our 18 months in the trenches has taught us just how difficult it will be for companies to benefit from utilizing the Internet for electronic marketing," said Frost. "We could not encourage our client companies to invest further sums under the status quo.... Cybersplat is never pretty, but you will be seeing a lot of it." He should know. BTW - Cybersplat, n.: polite term for superhighway roadkill, or the sound it makes.
A torrent of mail from readers wiser, quicker, and with obviously more time on their hands than us has clued us in on what happens when you omit a URL's "http://" prefix in Netscape 1.1N. Netscape will replace any missing prefix in any URL with "http://", for example leading you to the Web page of an FTP site if you leave out "ftp://", etc. If you really want go straight to FTP files, you must leave the "ftp://" in. Apparently this has been in place since the 0.9 beta, so you can judge yourself on an evolutionary scale - from lemur to man to Dogbert - depending on when you figured this out. We figure we rank just after Homo habilis.
Netscape put a few little tricks into its new product. Opening "about:" will get you a built-in Netscape page. Clicking on the page's "N" icon will get you a list of employees. Typing "about:jwz" sends you to Jamie Zawinski's home page, one of the better of many possible accesses. To see Marc Andreesen looking like he's basking in Hades, try "about:marca". X-Windows has unique tricks: paging back from and returning to Zawinski's page turns the shooting stars into a spinning compass; "about:mozilla" will insert Mozilla there and load a page from its Book. The Mozilla animation can be seen by all at the URL below. Nonsense following an "about:" will get you a bland "Yeah Whatever" in Windows, but a timeless "Whatchew talkin' 'bout, Willis?" in X-Windows or on a Mac. "http://home.mcom.com/assist/net_sites/mozilla/index.html"
Johnny Mnemonic is William Gibson's first feature film, due out May 26. To promote its film, Sony is holding a Net-wide scavenger hunt from May 18 to June 2. Find enough movie-related tidbits hidden among the Webs dusty strands and you may win some pretty neat prizes. We only ask one thing: when you register, use the "other" field to tell them Netsurfer Digest sent ya. You have heard of William Gibson, haven't you? "http://www.mnemonic.sony.com/nethunt"
TCI TO OFFER NET WITH CABLE TV
Tele-Communications Inc., the United States' largest cable TV company, in partnership with a Silicon Valley venture capital firm, has formed a company that expects to begin offering consumers high-speed Net access on existing coaxial cables by early 1996. Called "@home", the new company expects to offer service at speeds near 10 Mbps nationwide by 1998. A handful of as yet undetermined cities will act as test markets for @home's earliest service, which will be sold to cable customers as a premium service.
Those baseball fans not completely disgusted with the ongoing labor dispute will appreciate this info. We found three sites of varying quality out there. The best site belongs to ESPN. Written by insightful, intelligent, and often witty reporters, its feature stories are a pleasure to read. ESPN also has a transaction newswire and the standard boxscores and stat leaders. If you want team-by-team detail, though, the Baseball Server is your goal, with major-league stats, minor-league stats, a boxscore archive, and photo archives for each team. Major League Baseball's official site is so pathetic, we decided to spare you the URL. ESPN: "http://espnet.sportszone/mlb" Baseball Server: "http://www.nando.net/baseball/bbmain.html"
Although no official word is yet forthcoming, rumor has it Prodigy Services will soon announce that it will provide Net space for its customers to post Web pages. It's a good thing, too, because Netsurfer Digest is running out of things to cover. Yeah, right.
The Net.Legends FAQ is available in Web-browsable form. The FAQ is a pointer to some of the wilder and weirder people and happenings on the Net. Most of the entries are little bios of and samples of text from various net.gods, net.personalities, and net.loons. Wondering who Kibo really is? Want to know if that psycho in your fave newsgroup is as infamous as it seems he should be? Find out here. The table of contents is not much help unless you already know what or who you are looking for, but the site can be entertaining as you stroll along, reading at random. "http://www.shadow.net/~proub/net.legends/"
THE CHURCH OF SCIENTOLOGY VERSUS THE NET
This Web page details the ongoing conflict between the Church of Scientology and the Internet/Usenet culture. It chronicles the legal and extra-legal efforts of church members and officials to curtail criticism of the church's activities. The controversy makes interesting reading, and adds information beyond the occasional article you may have read in Time Magazine or the newspaper. While documents serve as evidence of legal actions, some of the extra-legal activities seem almost too cliche, like using private investigators to tail and harrass. Decide for yourself. "http://www.mit.edu:8001/people/rnewman/scientology/home.html"
Johann Georg Laubles, 27, comes from the Black Forest region of Germany. He's deeply rooted in his native culture, one aspect of which is cuckoo clock making. This page exposes Laubles's twist on the traditional Black Forest craft. His clocks, more than timepieces, are works of art which draw inspiration from fantasy and pop art influences. Lauble is quite the craftsman and artist; you wouldn't expect cuckoo clocks could be both elaborate and practical, but we wouldn't mind having any one of these on our walls. "http://deep-thought.biologie.uni-freiburg.de/~clock/"
We're not really sure what or who Marin is. Is it the California county? The model? In any case, this exhibition of images relies on a single model in a variety of costumes in and out of said garden. Kathleen Olson's photographs come in two styles: starkly dark or dreamy. Elaborate HTML 3.0 backgrounds attempt to complement the images, but don't always succeed. Surprisingly, for the quality of the photographs, the pages don't take very long to load at all. "http://www.ipp.com/ipp/art/marin/index.html"
We don't mean boxes in which you may find five-fingered instruments of heat retention. We mean big airtight metal containers with two thick rubber gloves bolted on a front see-through panel - the kind of thing used for handling toxic materials or biological warfare research. If you're enamored of them - and who isn't - don't miss this opportunity to participate in an interactive glove box art experiment. Simply download the grayscale glove box image from the Web page, then redesign the art with your own software to suit your own personal glove box fancies. The author asks that you send along a copy of your completed masterpiece. "http://sable.ox.ac.uk/~hert0056"
You gotta wonder if infants can appreciate art, but then some folks read aloud to their babies while they're still enwombed.... In any case, parents who believe their tiny tots are future art lovers can test their theories by clicking to the Baby's Art Gallery site. This independent storefront features "Eclectic Entertainment for 90s Newborns", and is advertised with a wide-eyed admittedly cute little sample of the human race. The art itself is supposed to "capture the attention of newborns, and encourage parent-infant interaction." Since we aren't newborns, we can't say that we were terribly enraptured. "http://www.infohaus.com/access/by-seller/Babys_Art_Gallery"
Colin Baker, a Toronto artist, has posted some of his images, which are "inspired by digital processes". His portfolio samples five years of art, all acrylic on canvas. Several interesting originals, most with outer space themes and titles, can be found on the page and are expandable with a click. "http://www.interlog.com/~cwcjb/home.html"
Described as the "mutant child of Popular Mechanics magazine", the PM Zone features cool pictures and profiles of more than 200 1995 cars and trucks, a searchable archive of illustrated technology news, and so much other fascinating automotive stuff, you'll just have to stop by for yourself. This page is well worth a visit for the slick graphics alone, and very helpful if you're in the market for a new car. "http://popularmechanics.com"
OH, MY - EMILY DICKINSON IS WIRED
What would Emily say about being on the World Wide Web? We're not quite sure, but it would probably be short and sweet with a bizarre, yet heart-rending twist of stark realism. This Web site devoted to Emily and other Emily-related sites on the Internet is a must for English majors and poetry buffs. "http://lal.cs.byu.edu/people/black/dickinson.html"
PARTICIPATE IN FICTIONAL STORY
"Letters from ABroad - or Two!" is an ongoing hyper-linked correspondence between two fictional characters, sort of a "Griffin and Sabine" for the online set. The tale allows users to respond to the e-mail interactions of the heroines, Doreen and Birdie. Their lives and loves are described in fictional messages to each other, past flames, and users. If you do choose to respond to the messages, your e-mail may be incorporated into the saga. "http://copper.compulink.co.uk/users/arc/abroad.htm"
NWHQ - AN ANTHOLOGY OF EXPERIMENTAL WORK
NWHQ might be described as a literary e-zine in that it offers a collection of fiction on the Net, but it is both more and less. NWHQ is more an anthology of pages than of stories. The authors write fiction in a form that strives to take full advantage of the Web medium. The writing style is avant-garde or experimental or whatever adjective you want to use, and is often placed beyond clickable maps or buttons. Like most fiction of this ilk, some feeds the curiosity, some kills it, but the site is worth a peek if only for the gorgeous little bookend graphics that look like hammered metal. "http://www.knosso.com/NWHQ/"
GFX NEWS COVERS HI-TECH AND GAMES
GFX News has a nice little gimmick. Each page of this little newsmagazine is presented in GIF format, viewable online or downloadable for offline perusal. The current issue's four pages highlight the Internet industry and a few electronic games. The articles are of some interest but hardly contain earth-shaking content, and the main reason to visit is to see the format. Those readers with extremely slow modems or little patience had best avoid this site. Each page is about 40 KB. "http://barchetta.stu.rpi.edu/gn"
Newly processed images from the Spaceborne Imaging Radar-C/X-Band Synthetic Aperture Radar mission that flew on the space shuttle last year just keep coming off the NASA assembly line. The detailed images are used by scientists in several disciplines and are made available for our viewing pleasure. Each pic comes in two sizes: big and humungous. The merely big GIFs range upwards of 200 kB. The humungous can get up to 15 MB. Among many selections are New Orleans, New York City, Mauna Loa, and Mt. Everest. There are more each month. "http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/sircxsar"
WOLVES WANDER THE WEB WILDERNESS
If you want wolves, Desert Moon's Wolf Page has got 'em. A large but pretty photo of a snowbound wolf introduces you to dozens of links. From this page you can find info about wolf organizations; the wolf in mythology, culture, and literature (including an online copy of Jack London's "Call of the Wild"); and FTP links to hundreds of images and sounds. Our only complaint is the choice of text color, which makes the links hard to read against the textured background. One link leads to the International Wolf Center, a less fancy but better organized wolf info storehouse, whose URL we supplied below as well. Desert Moon: "http://wwwnncc.scs.unr.edu/wolves/desertm.html" Wolf Center: "http://usa.net:80/WolfHome/"
DINOSAURS AT THE ROYAL TYRRELL
Alberta's Royal Tyrrell Museum of Palaeontology, which specializes in dinosaurs harvested from the province's badlands, is open for virtual tours. The site is organized around a clickable floor-plan imagemap, but a sequential list of exhibits is available, too. The museum's pages provide information just about any dino fan will already know, but this is compensated for with great numbers of downloadable images of reconstructed skeletons. As far as genera go, this is one of the largest collections of dinosaurs you'll find on the Web. You can also find information here about educational programs, exhibits, and field trips. "http://freenet.calgary.ab.ca/science/tyrrell/"
With a page featuring a map of the late Jurassic globe, the Morrison Research Initiative aims to reconstruct the environments, habitats, and climates of that time in the Rocky Mountain region. The Morrison Formation contains some of the world's most prolific dinosaur-bearing strata, but this site is less concerned with the beasts than with an explanation of the rigorous paleontological techniques used to explore the ecosystem they lived in. The Web site has almost no images but has plenty of information, and is a window on the cutting edge of paleontology. "http://yuma.colostate.edu/~cwis70/morrison.html"
Amethyst Galleries deserves accolades for being one of those few commercial sites with something to offer the average netsurfer. Their Mineral Gallery page is chalk-full (yes, it's a pun) of mineral information and pictures. Minerals, a category that includes gems, crystals, and components of plain old rock, can be searched for by name or class, or in groupings like gemstones, birthstones, or minerals of the Bible. The database includes as much information as any basic field guide would: hardness, cleavage, composition, etc. Each mineral is depicted, and - this being a commercial site, after all - pictured examples are for sale. "http://mineral.galleries.com/"
OKLAHOMA CITY MEMORIAL QUILT PROJECT
The Oklahoma City Memorial Quilt Project is collecting squares for a quilt that it hopes will serve as an expression of grief and as a statement against terrorism. The project grew out of Usenet discussions, and the final product will be donated to the people of Oklahoma City this summer. If you would like to be a part of this, or if you just want more information, visit the following URL. "http://www.xmission.com/~arts/ok/"
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