AOL: THE MORE YA SURFED, THE LESS YOU'RE WORTH
AOL at least temporarily settled accounts with 36 state attorneys general with
an agreement to reimburse customers across the US for providing shoddy access
to its service. Customer refunds depend on how much time was spent online in
December and January: customers online for less than two hours during those
months will receive the maximum reimbursement of $39.90; customers on for two
to eight hours get 75% of that; customers on for eight to 15 hours get 25%; and
anyone online more than 15 hours gets no refund. Check out the CNN article
below. The AOL announcement (of January 29) doesn't mention anything about
lawyers, but it does give the snail mail address for refund requests.
CNN: <http://www.cnn.com/TECH/9701/29/aol.final/index.html>
AOL: <http://www-db.aol.com/corp/news/press/>
FAA TO POST SAFETY DATA BY AIRLINE
Starting February 1, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) will post at its
Web site the safety records of individual airlines. Airlines have denounced the
move, claiming such information will promote competition based on safety. While
we applaud the FAA for supplying more specific information, the airlines have a
point. There are too few airline safety incidents to allow a statistically
reliable differentiation among most carriers and even some of those - bombs and
clear-air turbulence come to mind - strike randomly. On the other hand, the
ValuJets of the skies could use some exposure.
CNN: <http://www.cnn.com/US/9701/29/faa.update.ap/index.html>
FAA: <http://www.faa.gov/>
WHAT'S THE FREQUENCY, KENNETH?
A number of articles have interpreted the legendary sentence a number of ways:
"What's the frequency?"; "Kenneth, what is the frequency?"; and "What's the
frequency, Kenneth?" Whichever is correct, the mystery is solved. In 1986, CBS
anchorman Dan Rather claimed an unidentified assailant chased and pummelled him
while asking the question of the newsman. The assailant some thought was a
figment of Rather's loosening grip on reality turns out to have been William
Tager, who in 1994 gunned down an NBC stagehand with an assault rifle outside
Rockefeller Center. Read all about it.
<http://www.cnn.com/SHOWBIZ/9701/29/rather.mystery.ap/index.html>
STAR WARS AND THE NEW MYTHOLOGY
Star Wars is back. You may not be aware of the hand mythologist Joseph Campbell
had in sewing the "Star Wars" tapestry, but you probably have some grasp of the
archetypal themes woven through the trilogy. Here's a site that looks at SF in
general and its role in the establishment of a new technical-age mythology. The
site is poorly organized, but content-rich. The highlight of the Star Wars page
is an analysis of what can be expected in the three upcoming Star Wars
prequels. Click on the contents link to access links to large text files:
explorations of the existing trilogy and files containing the scripts. Expect
plenty of theory and a sore clicking finger.
<http://www.dom.net/wrd/new/index.html>
CLOWN PRINCE ROBIN WILLIAMS HOLDS COURT
We came across this a bit late, but not too late, thank goodness. Yahoo
Internet Life (YIL) interviewed Robin Williams last fall. Now Robin's answers
are being posted thrice a week, and they make for some entertaining reading. He
has been online longer than you might suppose, and his pontifications on online
chat, gaming, and culture bear some weight. The people at YIL are smart enough
to know that Robin's talents play as well to the ear as to the mind so they've
provided sound clips of the interview on each page. Robin's favorite site?
Monty Python's PythOnline.
<http://www5.zdnet.com/yil/content/mag/9702/robin/rw-main.html>
Tuesday, February 11 is Mardi Gras, and if you can't make New Orleans to see
the costumes, parades, and occasional partial nudity, you can do the next best
thing and sit down with a turkey TV dinner in front of Frasier on the tube. If
you're really hurting for fun, we found two sites that should give you your
fill of the festival spirit, minus the nudity (it's there, just not filling).
The ICorp site is the friendlier of the two, and provides a nifty site tour and
a Bourbon Street Carnival cam. The MardiGrasNewOrleans site takes a more
commercial tack, and includes practical carnivalling advice. There's more stuff
to download, including, at 7 p.m. (New Orleans time) February 10, a live net
cam feed from the Orpheuscapade party.
ICorp: <http://www.icorp.net/carnival/>
MardiGrasNewOrleans: <http://www.mardigrasneworleans.com/>
MORE MARDI GRAS, AND OTHER CARNIVALS
Mardi Gras Central features much of the same information as do the sites in the
previous article, with the addition of links to Shrove Tuesday carnivals around
the world. Learn about the party you've heard about in Brazil, and more obscure
festivals like Belgium's Binche and celebrations in Venice and Trinidad and
Tobago. Even this page leaves out the carnival closest in heritage yet farthest
in practice from the Louisiana festivities: Quebec City's Winter Carnival, a
week of ice sculpture and Bonhomme (picture the offspring off Frosty the
Snowman and the Michelin Man in a long red toque). Ain't no flesh gonna be
exposed there.
Central: <http://www.satchmo.com/main.html>
Quebec: <http://www.carnaval.qc.ca/>
MUSIC, CULTURE, AND FOOD STEW TOGETHER IN THE GUMBO PAGES
We are not about to pass up any celebration involving beignets, no matter how
tangentially. If you have more refined tastes, check out the Creole and Cajun
Recipe Page, by Chuck Taggart, culinary arts student at UCLA and a native of
New Orleans (sort of). In addition to his superb recipes and history of Cajun
and Creole food, Chuck discusses New Orleans culture and Acadiana. The pages
are wonderfully sparse in design yet bursting with utility. Between school, his
radio show, and his IRC addiction, it's amazing Chuck has the the time to post
such complete and valuable pages. <http://www.gumbopages.com/index.html>
A COOL LOOK AT THE COMMUNICATION REVOLUTION
Intelligence lies thickly here. Interviews with such technology luminaries as
Media Labs' Seymour Papert, digital media editor Mitch Radcliffe, and CyberGrrl
Aliza Sherman - all highly active in the cerebral side of the Internet - prove
fodder for browsing in topics as diverse as artificial intelligence and women
and minorities in technology. Described as "a stage to allow the people who are
living the revolution to speak for themselves", this page has hundreds of
interviews with such relevant people pontificating upon posed questions, All
participants provide their e-mail addresses. It's like a damned good dinner
party. <http://www.totaltour.com/revolution/>
What are intelligent writers and editors with years of experience doing working
on a - gasp - free newsletter for no pay? Well, they're having a pretty good
time if you believe their publicity. The pub, Nethead, parades obvious
technical expertise and fairly interesting articles. To make a long story short
(so they say), Scott Finnie, Cyndy Bates, Bryan Campbell, and Steven J.
Vaughan-Nichols were too darned idle for their own good so they came up with
Nethead. Good thing, for us. <http://www.tiac.net/users/sfinnie/index.html>
The Space Age was conceived in dreams and born on the launch pad when
engineering finally caught up to imagination. Artist Ken Fair figures the
creative community can drive the Space Age beyond Earth orbit onto the surface
of Mars by undertaking a collaborative effort to stimulate public support for
exploration of the Red Planet. His open letter to artists makes the case for
Mars and features a set of links to arts organizations focusing on science and
technology. Fair's own Mars Direct gallery displays his vision of a new home
for the next generation.
Letter: <http://www.electricolive.com/marsletter.html>
Gallery: <http://www.electricolive.com/mars.html>
NATIONAL MUSEUM OF WOMEN IN THE ARTS
The National Museum of Women in the Arts has launched a Web site that will help
popularize some of the world's greatest artists and bring visitors to this
little known gem. With a permanent collection encompassing works from the 16th
century to living masters and providing access to a wealth of research
resources through their library, the NMWA holds its own among all of
Washington's sights. <http://www.nmwa.org/>
Joanne keeps chuggin' and we keep pluggin'. This issue's featured titles are:
"The Complete Idiot's Guide to the Internet"; "Converting Content for Web
Publishing"; "Designing Multimedia Web Sites"; "Creating Commercial Web Pages";
and "Kids Do the Web". Now all we need to do is find is a book called
"Converting Commercial Multimedia Web Sites for Complete Idiot Kids".
<http://www.netsurf.com/nsd/books/book.03.04.html>
Some of the more unusual tales to reach the San Francisco Examiner are archived
in the "Bondage" files. Though most of them have nothing to do with bondage per
se, they are an interesting bunch of news stories which walk on the wild side.
There's the topless donut shop, the boy with birds in his hair, and the hog who
humps Harleys. If weird news is your thing, this is your place.
<http://www.sfgate.com/examiner/bondage/>
E-ZINE REPRINTS BEST ONLINE FICTION
eScene is currently developed around a coffee theme, and the foreword of this
excellent collection mentions how appropriate that is for both the scholarly
beat atmosphere toward which certain writers gravitate and the acknowledgement
of caffeine as the backbone of the Internet. The choice between espresso (rich
in graphics), cappuccino (lighter fare) and decaf-americano (for people on the
go) provides great options. We burnt our lips and got the jitters.
<http://www.etext.org/Zines/eScene/>
NEWHUB UPDATES THE NEWS EVERY 15 MINUTES
Sort of a low-bandwidth PointCast, NewsHub is a free service that goes out on
the Net every 15 minutes to retrieve new news from technically oriented sites.
The page cleanly organizes the news for the user either by time or by site. The
site creator welcomes comments and suggestions for improvement. Currently the
site requires either Netscape 3.0 or MSIE 3.0, but on th eother hand takes up a
whole lot less space and memory than PointCast. <http://www.newshub.com/>
Ever wish that you could switch channels while you're on the Net? If so, maybe
you should put down that remote and take a walk. Seriously, though, Clix lets
you virtually do just that. The variety is pretty impressive. It's based in
Amsterdam, so if that's a city you've always wanted to visit, now you can tune
in to what's hip and happening there. It's all quite a novel interpretation.
<http://clix.net/>
We're always pleased to find an e-zine which thinks to provide a snippet of the
first few paragraphs of each article. It lets you taste before choosing a story.
This one, titled 15 Minutes, is like browsing in a bookshop with an atmosphere
of great fun. Mud Flap Girl's Sex Advice kicks some black humour with such
suggestions as "No sense in fooling with girls who don't want it" and "If you
can't do it, she can do it herself." Fast food reviews, Bleacher Bob's Sport
discussions, and Horror Scopes provide a witty approach to alternative columns.
It's yummy. <http://www.15minutes.com/>
Back in March we told you about Comet Hyakutake blowing into our skies and onto
the Web. It's time to rev up that ol' comet PR campaign again, as yet another
possibly bright comet is headed our way. Anticipated for months, Comet
Hale-Bopp may strut more cometary stuff than its tongue-twisting predecessor.
The Comet Hale-Bopp home page is an informative, chatty site that covers the
history of Hale-Bopp, features early photos of this comet and others, offers
guidance on viewing Hale-Bopp early this spring, and delves into some of the
more bizarre reports concerning the comet that have circulated on the Net. Look
for the comet, and more Web sites, as Hale-Bopp breezes by this spring.
<http://www.halebopp.com/>
BIRD ENTHUSIASTS FLOCK TO PETERSON ONLINE
The late Roger Tory Peterson was the skilled artist and avid naturalist who
created the original book series entitled "A Field Guide to the Birds". His
drawings and detailed identification processes are neatly arranged here in this
vast birding site - a fitting tribute to a truly talented and dedicated man.
Stop by the Birding Forums section to exchange information with other bird
lovers. Check out the Bird Watcher's Digest for even more ornithologically
relevant material. <http://www.petersononline.com/>
Yes, it's Popular Science Magazine online, and it's just like the original
except no trees died in the making. There are new products, speculations on the
possible future, the same sections on automotive innovations. Catch this
abbreviated form of the magazine you've come to love and wonder over, before
all the wonderful toys are carted off to that secret government warehouse.
<http://www.popsci.com/>
An important step forward in medical imaging was the development of the
electronic manipulation of images. You can view the progress of another step -
manipulation of data to produce synthetic images - at BrainWeb: Simulated Brain
Database, maintained by the McConnell Brain Imaging Centre of the Montreal
Neurological Institute, McGill University, Montreal. Why synthetic images?
Databases like this will help physicians in diagnosis and treatment:
hypothetical conditions can produce synthetic images that may resemble
conditions in living brains. To benefit most from this site, of course, you'll
want to know something about cranial anatomy and magnetic resonance imaging.
But you don't need to be a radiologist or surgeon to see that this is part of
the future of medical education and research. BrainWeb will show you that
medical science and computer science are fast becoming one.
<http://fabian.bic.mni.mcgill.ca/cgi/brainweb/>
LOTS O' STUFF ON A TOUCHY SUBJECT
OBGYN.net was designed by and for obstetricians and gynecologists to help
practitioners learn about new procedures and innovations, network with their
peers, and acquire published materials. Just as medical Usenet groups are
frequented by layfolk, OBGYN.net too is likely to interest patients and
relatives because of its international scope and variety of resources. You'll
find daily medical news, an acronym "expander", directories of medical
organizations and vendors, job listings, forums, links to practitioners' Web
pages and clinical resources, and more. This might be a good place to surf,
whether you possess an MD, an abnormal growth, or just plain old curiosity.
<http://www.obgyn.net/>
TO DOWNLOAD OR NOT TO DOWNLOAD: THAT IS THE QUESTION
You've read the hype, but should you download the software? At Ratings, cruise
the free evaluations of freeware, shareware, and commercial software. Ratings
are available for almost every category and platform. The sponsors welcome
ratings from everyone, although they promise comments to come from
"professional reviewers". You can add your opinions and rate software in
categories like "Documentation?", "Ease of use?", "Features compared to
competition?", and "How often does the program crash?" (FYI, Netscape has
higher ratings than Internet Explorer.) There are also video game and hardware
ratings. As opinions accumulate, this site grows more useful. As one note says:
"If you love it, or hate it, rate it." <http://www.ratings.org/>
Jason Fox is the protagonist of Foxtrot, one of the few daily comic strips that
can be counted on for consistent entertainment. Jason is also a comp geek - sort
of a Dilbert before his dreams were crushed. Heck, they even wear the same
glasses. Jason's latest programming frenzy resulted in Slug-Man, found at the
URL below. It's for Macs only, and is essentially just another version of
Glypha, but what a neat marketing tool.
<http://www.uexpress.com/ups/comics/ft/html/downldft.html>
We goofed and forgot to set line breaks after 80 characters in the last issue, causing all kinds of tsuris, as they say in shtetl-speak (Leo Rosten would be so proud). Oddly enough, in an issue in which we discussed the Pegasus e-mail client, we may have discovered a bug. Pegasus tech support writes: "The (lines) all seem to be truncated at 255 characters. This shouldn't be happening with version 2.52, but I'm looking into the problem now." Glad to be of service.
NetGuide, possibly because it was overwhelmed with nominations for Netsurfer
Digest (yeah, sure), moved the page on which you could nominate outfits for its
People's Choice Awards. While nominations close January 31, you'll be able to
vote for the finalists February 8-21.
<http://www.netguide.com/server-java/NGPage/awards>
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