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BREAKING SURF
This week, the US Government released strict guidelines for human stem cell research. Stem cells survive the course of organism development retaining the potential to mature into different types of tissue. Bone marrow cells, for example, can grow into different blood cells. This ability makes stem cells incredibly interesting and useful to medical scientists, both for therapeutic reasons and for their potential use in drug safety tests that do not use animals. Nobody argues the usefulness of this type of cell but since useful stem cells must come from fetuses (from terminated pregnencies) or zygotes (unimplanted excess fertilized eggs left over from in-vitro fertilization), the politics around the science are explosive. In the interest of heading off knee-jerk reactions we bring you these links. The National Institutes of Health (NIH) presents a first-rate primer on stem cells: what they are; how they are obtained; and what they are good for. Both the primer and the guidelines live at the NIH Stem Cells home page. If you're going to sound off about the politically charged issue, at least do so in an informed state.Guidelines: http://www.nih.gov/news/stemcell/stemcellguidelines.htm
Primer: http://www.nih.gov/news/stemcell/primer.htm
Stem Cells: http://www.nih.gov/news/stemcell/index.htm
A new article from the Sunday Times has the most detailed information so far regarding the probable cause for the sinking of the Russian submarine Kursk. Numerous strands of evidence point to the Kursk having suffered a devastating explosion while testing either a rocket-propelled torpedo or cruise missile. The article also notes that while an American submarine and spy ship were both in the vicinity and could have pieced together a great deal of what happened, the American authorities have so far said very little about the incident.
http://www.sunday-times.co.uk/news/pages/sti/2000/08/27/stifgnrus01003.html
Changing Online Retail Experience
Resource Marketing, a marketing research company, just completed a study of how well online e-commerce sites are faring, particularly compared to their performance last holiday season. A number of well publicized problems last December saw several companies shell out millions of dollars in fines and good-will gestures to consumers who they had misled about delivery schedules and merchandise availability. Overall, the consumer experience has improved, but surprisingly the brick and mortar stores have improved the most. The full study will set you back $2,200, but the executive summary is worth reading, as is this Fortune article which discusses the study. Good data for anybody interested in the online retail industry.Study: http://ecommercewatch.resource.com/html/study/index.asp?pg=intro42.asp
Fortune: http://www.fortune.com/fortune/technology/2000/09/04/eco2.html
It seems that the official Olympic Web site was built without ALT tags. ALT tags provide alternate, written descriptions for Web page images, descriptions to be used either in non-graphical browsers (we're Lynx fans by the way) or for the use of visually handicapped netsurfers. The issue came to a head after an activist for the blind lodged a complaint with the Australian Human Rights and Equal Opportunities Commission. The Commission turned right around and ordered the Sydney Olympic committee to change its Web site. The Olympic comittee found expert advice that the change would cost $2 million (Aussie) and take more than a year. Before you laugh too hard, think how much work would be needed to caption all those live photos going up at a prodigious rate on the site during the competitions. Still, it's a bit of an embarassment for IBM, which built and hosts the site.
Olympics: http://www.olympics.com/eng/
Article: http://www.theage.com.au/frontpage/20000828/A32287-2000Aug28.html
Lynx: http://lynx.browser.org/
NSGP: PGP Encryption Hole Discovered
PGP, everybody's favorite encryption program, has a big gaping hole in recent versions. The addition of key recovery features, supposedly demanded by government and corporations, introduced the hole. The details are a bit esoteric, but the upshot is that when using keys which can be theoretically only recovered by a specified third party, in certain cases anybody can alter the keys invisibly and read your message. Nasty. Many crypto experts spoke out long ago about the complexity and inherent insecurity of key recovery technology, and the predictions seem to have come true. Wired has the overview, while Ralf Senderek, who discovered the problem, has a technical write-up. To their credit, Network Associates, which owns PGP these days, has quickly responded with a number of fixes and utilities to address the problem. If you're still worried, use the classic PGP 2.6.x, which does not have key recovery features and thus does not have these problems.Wired: http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,1282,38437,00.html
Senderek: http://senderek.de/security/key-experiments.html
Fixes: http://www.pgp.com/other/advisories/adk.asp
Steven Cohen has been making millions from Sex.com, a domain name that Gary Kremen claims Cohen stole from him four years ago. Seeking restitution, Kremen sued Network Solutions (NSI), which had transferred ownership of the domain to Cohen as a result of an allegedly forged request, but the judge dismissed the case with a ruling that domain names are not property and so cannot be stolen. Now, US District Court Judge James Ware has scuppered Kremen's charge of theft against Cohen on the same basis. Kremen still has legal pokers in the fire, however, as the same judge has granted him permission to modify his suit and charge Cohen with violating California's unfair competition code. Kremen also has a second charge pending against Cohen based on a catch-all fraud statute in California. Whatever happened to Kremen may not be fair, and it may not be legal, but whatever it is, theft it ain't.
http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,38398,00.html
New Issues of Netsurfer Science, Education
For that healthy dose of brain stimulation don't forget to check the latest issues of Netsurfer Science and Netsurfer Education. As usual, do sign up if you enjoy them.Netsurfer Science 03.12: http://www.netsurf.com/nss/nss.03.12.html
Netsurfer Education 02.08: http://www.netsurf.com/nse/nse.02.08.html
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Items our staff likes and you might too. Click on the image or title to order at a hefty discount from our affiliate Amazon.com, and send a few pennies our way as well.
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One Up on Wall Street: How to Use What You Already Know to Make Money in the Market
Building Linux Clusters
Collapsium
The Mammoth Book of Tasteless ListsONLINE CULTURE
James Murdoch, Chairman and CEO of the STAR TV global network gave this insightful speech at a recent Edinburgh gathering of TV and media types. Inevitably, the Internet came up. Murdoch's main point was that the Western media just does not get the global market. He noted that the global media audience overwhelmingly speaks only four languages: Mandarin (835 million native speakers), English (470 million), Spanish (330 million), and Hindi (300 million). The usage of every other language rests, comparatively, down in the noise. Yet, English out of the US - and to a lesser extent Great Britain - dominates the Net. Murdoch castigates the English language media conglomerates for running under the mistaken assumption that English will win out as the one and only language of the global network. He notes that the demographics overwhelmingly oppose such narrow thinking. Take the time to read and ponder this thought-provoking speech.http://www.geitf.co.uk/prog/murdochspeech.htm
SURFING SITES
The Mac Show Live is an engaging Web site and live radio show. Listeners can interact with guests in real time via IRC and chat. The show airs weekly, and can be heard in many places over the air via antique AM/FM or on your QuickTime-enabled computer. The audio quality is generally better on your computer. The show attracts interesting, intelligent guests and covers all things Mac. The Web site features the best navigation screen we've seen recently and may convince you that frames actually have a place on the Web. At the Web site, you can download or listen to recent programs and access a wide range of Mac-oriented news links. The quality of the links is outstanding. For one-stop Mac news, this site is very hard to beat. Completely coincidental to this review - wink! - our very own editor will be/will have been a guest of the show August 30.http://www.macshowlive.com/
Radio for People without Radios
Before television, people would gather around glowing tubes to listen to "The Shadow", and boomer kids can still remember fiddling with transistor sets under their pillows, trying to hear Wolfman Jack out of Mexico or Kid Leo beaming from Chicago (yes, some of us are that old). Now, radio is background noise for the ride home from work, jamming the same 10 songs into your brain. But by scanning the world's broadcasts from What's On Web Radio (WOWR), the sounds of Echo Moscow or Radio FG Paris might just blow the N*Sync right out of your head. While the site needs to fill some gaping holes in coverage - where are the stations in Australia or South America? - and the site features strictly broadcast radio, clicking on the continental maps is a great way to get back some of the romance of radio. Check out GoGaGa for radio that has never hit the air, by the way.WOWR: http://www.whatsonwebradio.com/
Gogaga: http://www.gogaga.com/
We found this one rather hypnotic, and we're not even active players! RealityRun might be a takeoff on some of those old B-movies, but it happens in real time. A runner is given 24 days to remain undiscovered in a major metropolitan area (at first, Berlin). If he or she succeeds, the runner receives $10,000 and a chance to win $100,000 by remaining undiscovered for 24 days in New York City. Hoping to prevent the runner's success, a hunter receives the $10,000 prize if he or she unmasks the runner prior to the expiration of the 24-day limit. The Web audience helps the hunter. In the first scenario, Wodger the wunner - uh, Roger the runner failed to escape the attention of the hunter, who found Roger in the Staatsbibliothek. Whether or not you play, it looks like a cool site. It requires Shockwave.
http://www.realityrun.com/
If you run a journal section on your site, you know hoe tedious updating it can be. You don't want to have stale thoughts displayed on your page, but it's such a drag to find the time to sit down and write, then save it, then code it into your page, then upload it. What's worse, sometimes you end up thinking up something great while you're in a meeting or on the subway, and the series of thoughts completely escapes your brain by the time you can FTP your idea to the Web. Meet Blogger, a free Web-based tool which allows you to post from any browser (including wireless), in any location, instantly to your site. You set up everything once, providing a template and the FTP information, and then your blogs (short for "weblogs") get on the Web with the click of a single button. Brilliant.
http://www.blogger.com/
A Vital Service for Those Glued to Their Monitors
You spend all day staring at your screens. So do we. That's why we all read NSD. But what would you do if a tornado was bearing down on your office? You'd never hear the emergency sirens over your PC's sound system. You need the Emergency Email Network. If e-mail rules your life, you need to join it. A simple sign-up at this non-profit site can bring Americans all sorts of data, ranging from regular weather reports to severe weather alerts and warnings. If your local utilities join (more do regularly), you can also receive outage reports from them. This site provides a much needed service that is only beginning to tap its potential. This service is a great concept, extremely well implemented.http://www.emergencyemailnetwork.com/
Soon, much of the world will watch tapes of Olympic events rather than live coverage because of time-zone lag and its intersection with TV ad revenue. If you want to punish the official Olympic site for blacklisting webcasters (see last NSD), you have an excellent alterantive in Sydney2000.com. We're amazed at the variety and depth of content already up at this slick smorgasbord: an icon-rollover calendar of events; databases searchable by Olympiad, sport, and country; and many quizzes and "the most extensive trivia competition in the history of the Internet." You can make a virtual visit with the beautiful Ipix (3-D) tours of Olympic venues, Sydney, and other Australian locales, and with interactive maps. A banner ad lets you send flowers within Sydney - a nice touch if want to congratulate a medal-winner. This site uses a lot of Java, despite which we say this unofficial site is Ozsome.
http://www.sydney2000.com/
If you liked Denis Leary's rantings against well, everything, but vegetarianism in particular, you can find an online counterpart in the Official Meatatarian Homepage. Here's an excerpt from their definition of the term: "Meatatarianism is a diet which avoids the consumption/harm of plants. A true Meatatarian is sickened by the thought of the 'evil veggie people' munching on the dead plant carcasses." The site is rife with sarcasm, expletives, and sXe (Straightedge, a program extolling the virtues of abstinence in many forms) and vegetarian bashing, so although it's amusing to read, it isn't for all audiences. The creator is clearly serious but very tongue-in-cheek, which doesn't come through for all the readers, judging from the responses, especially for those who agree with him. "Vegetarians eat even more of these plants... giving us less oxygen," states the site, and clearly several correspondents were in an oxygen-deprived state while visiting. The site even offers a How to Win an Argument with a Plant Eater section so fans won't have to think for themselves, always a daunting task.
http://www.i-mockery.com/meatatarian/
A surprising percentage of webheads seem to find cows a source of fascination and humor. We don't know why; it's not like cows are as glamorous as frogs. Perhaps people appreciate cows because they seem the antithesis of humans - after all, to err is human; to moo bovine. With that in mind, we pulled on our dairy boots and hiked through the fertile pastures of the Net to Big Dave's Cow Page. Watch where you step. The site, last updated in August 1995, could really use a bath. Few of the links work any more but there are still several excellent images, some mooving sound clips, and links to such places as the Cow Gallery that offer brief but informative material. Bet you didn't know that cows have both a chine and a pastern. Get over there and bone up, and you'll be ready to amze your dinner companions with trivia in no time. If you're like us (and we are), you'll find Big Dave's Cow Page worth hoofing over to, if for no other reason than to graze though and see which links still work, and where they go.
http://www.gl.umbc.edu/~dschmi1/links/cow.html
This Ain't No Yodel; This Ain't No Mooing Around
Continuing our foray into the countryside, we found the old custom of hollerin' alive and well in Spivey's Corner, N.C. (population 49). Once, there was just as much a need of hollerin' as there was of eatin', says 1971 hollerin' champion, Leonard Emanuel (The Rounder Collective, Hollerin Record Jacket, 1975, p.4). A good holler can carry as far as three miles. This site presents some interesting history regarding the National Hollerin' Contest, and hollerin' in general. It offers RealAudio examples of typical hollerers, and if that ain't enough, you can order a Hollerin' CD of your very own. This site is a bit dated, too - the link to the next contest sports a date of June 19, 1999. Still, your trip to the country won't be complete without a visit to the Hollerin' Contest. Tune up those vocal cords and catch a bit of country livin'.http://metalab.unc.edu/hollerin/
Visiting Scanwave.com reminds us of navigating through Myst. You walk through doors to encounter interactive exhibits and games which challenge your intellect, and when you're done, you're not quite sure why. The product of Bill Barker's imagination, scanwave includes over 4,000 such items. Don't visit this on your lunch hour, unless your boss is flexible and "hour" is a self-defined term. The only annoying thing about the site is that Bill's Caps Lock key appears to be stuck, and quite a bit of the text is all-caps and centered, making it difficult to read. The games can be difficult; the help text shouldn't be. We're not entirely sure what the browser requirements are, but you should probably have all the latest plug-ins, just to be safe.
http://scanwave.com/
Zork fans take note: text-based adventuring is coming farther every day on the Web. While most game manufacturers are trying to perfect 3-D imaging, people like Thomas Holz are satisfying the needs of those of us who just want a good plot. Suspicion of Murder, an online adventure game, requires a 4.x browser with Javascript. It has sound effects, the ever-crucial ability to save, and the playing pane is divided into multiple frames so players can see a map, inventory, help, and the main story concurrently. The basic premise, like any interactive fiction, holds that you're a character in a non-linear story, meaning that your next move is not predetermined. One of the best things about Suspicion of Murder is that you can't die in it, so it makes players much less timid about their choices, and perhaps also less wise. Muhahahaha.
http://www.suspicion-of-murder.com/
Political cartoons once seemed the sole reign of newspapers and news magazines. They still regularly appear there, though unless you cut out and save those you enjoyed, you risk never seeing them again - unless you've aleady discovered the Professional Cartoonists Index. Hundreds of creative jokes, criticisms, and spoofs are collated together by Daryl Cagle, president of the National Cartoonists Society. He tosses thousands of cartoons on every topic imaginable into the mix, letting you lighten your day whatever your preference. Coverage of Campaign 2000 in particular will placate every member of the political party spectrum. Sections include archives of cartoons about news of the day, including Elian Gonzalez, the world of Harry Potter, and even the little controversy around ideas like Napster.
http://cagle.slate.msn.com/
If you've ever had someone pass your online rantings off as his or her own - and we have - you know how rampant online plagarism is. IntegriGuard and Plagiarism.org both offer electronic plagiarism detection and deterrence services. Right now they aim to combat online paper mills, the wired market for termpapers that do business among students not worthy of the title. Both sites, not surprisingly, were designed by fed-up educators. They use search logic to "fingerprint" papers. If an identical pattern appears in another paper, it is tagged for further scrutiny. Both services charge for the whole shebang, although both also offer a limited free section. We can see wider applications in the future, perhaps allowing webmasters to register their entire domain so that they'll be notified when someone steals something from one of their pages. The possibilities are dizzying.
IntegriGuard: http://www.integriguard.com/
Plagiarism.org: http://www.plagiarism.org/
The technology that drives the WWW is simply complex simplicity. There's little magic in the pieces but wonder in the result. Like the phone or TV, the Web works for almost everyone, and no one (well, almost no one) needs to know how it actually works. It just works; the bottom line suffices. If you're driven to understand why what you see is, well, what you see, visit Serving Up Web Server Basics. The site consists of 11 pages, each detailing an important facet of Web technology. The language is technical, but clear and understandable. After working through this entire site, your browser won't work better or sites appear quicker, alas, but at least you'll have a much better understanding of why what you see is happening.
http://webcompare.internet.com/webbasics/index.html
The days of whois, nslookup, dig, host, and traceroute are winding down. Anyone wanting to troubleshoot or learn more of the Net nitty gritty once needed these semi-obscure commands, but now they can use a Web site. Amnesi lets you find out all of the details about a particular domain with a click. If you don't remember a name you heard on the radio or saw on TV, you can give Amnesi your best guess and it will try possible alternatives. A system's connectivity can be qualified with the traceroute interface from sites around the world. The global nature of the Net becomes clear when you see how fast you can be reached from Florida, yet so slowly from Australia. Those who download their Web site's log files can resolve the raw IP addresses in those logs by doing a reverse IP lookup. Offered a number like 12.34.5.67, Amnesi will give you back the actual name for that system. Combined, these utilities can let casual queries be quick and easy.
http://www.amnesi.com/
The Most Complete List of Domain Name Registrars
The doors have been flung open. It seems that anyone can be a domain name registrar these days and take your money for providing you a domain name. There are enough protections in place so that you don't have to worry about spending your money for a name someone else already owns. You should be looking at cost (the US registrars here charge $10-35 per year for essentially the same end result; foreign prices are often much higher) and service (how hard is it to register, renew, and, most important, change your registration data). There are big differences in the levels of service, not directly tied to price. This site list an incredible 130 or so (remember, there was only one not that long ago) registration services worldwide. It offers price comparisons for 13 US registrars and a wealth of information about the whole process. A visit here should result in lower costs when you buy your domain names.http://www.newregistrars.com/registrars.html
ONLINE TRAVEL
Remember when your mom would threaten to send you to a convent if you weren't good? Oh, maybe that was just our mom.... Anyway, now you can disspell those old fears by visiting St. Ann's Academy in Victoria, B.C. from the comfort and relative safety of your computer. Built in 1858 and last used in 1973, the three-building complex and grounds underwent restoration in 1993 (some of the construction still continues), and a lovely bit of work it is. QuickTime panoramas provide a virtual tour of many of the reclaimed interiors, and the high-contrast black-and-white photography going back some 70 years shows off the chapel, arboretum, and Novitiate Garden like a window in time. Now you can finish your supper whenever you want, and put your elbows on the table, too!http://collections.ic.gc.ca/saintanns/
Using the American Southwest site as a guide, anybody with an interest in pre-Columbian American civilizations could plan a great two-week tour of some of the most significant ruins in Colorado, Utah, and Arizona. Eight national parks protect beautiful, surprisingly well preserved remains of pueblos, multi-storied apartment buildings sculpted into gigantic rock formations. Adjunct Professor of archaeology James Jacobs of Central Arizona College includes photos and tips for travelers.
http://www.geocities.com/jqjacobs/southwest/southwest.html
Online History Project Studies the St. Louis Area
Poor East St. Louis has suffered such a bad rap, few think of it as the cradle of one of America's most organizationally complex native cultures. Actually, the marshy, fertile floodplain just east of East St. Louis, the American bottom, was the homeland for the powerful Mississippi tribe from about 800 to 1400 C.E. Later, after the Civil War, St. Louis became an essential rail link between east and west. Read more about the history of this floodplain below the confluence of the Mississippi, the Missouri, and the Illinois rivers. RiverWeb is an educational outreach pilot project of the University of Illinois.http://www.museum.state.il.us/RiverWeb/landings/Ambot/
Whatever you say about the US government, it's commissioned a staggering collection of high quality maps, and now Joe Taxpayer can look at them free. The Maptech site lets you view, print, and e-mail a huge selection of three types of government issued charts: topographical; nautical; and aeronautical, including high altitude photography of coastal regions. You can also buy large printed charts.
http://www.maptech.com/mapserver/index.cfm
FLOTSAM & JETSAM
A Regular Dose of Useless Knowledge
There are so many things you need to know that you don't know you don't know. The weekly Entertaining Facts Newsletter will decrease your knowledge deficit and tell you things like why Greek runners are always depicted naked on antique pots - stuff everyone needs to know.http://www.nplaumann.de/facts/index.html
Voter turnout in the US is appalling, but discovering how to register is no longer an excuse. RegisterVote.com gathers and presents a complete collection of voter registration information. Of course, you'll get links to the registration pages of those states enlightened enough to let people register to vote online.
http://registervote.com/
Industry experts say that one in ten mobile/cell phones ends up lost or stolen. Celltrace acts as a registry point for your phone, and accepts reports of any phone you find. The various carriers can use the database to help recover customers' phones, with Celltrace assisting both parties - for free.
http://www.celltrace.com/
SOFTWARE
Almost everyone who uses the Web has Macromedia's Flash Player installed, or should. Flash has become one of those key Web products so widely used it's a de facto standard. Macromedia Flash 5, the latest version of the software Web designers use to create those dazzling animations, is ready to help scintillate and bedazzle, animate and entertain. The Macromedia site offers two online tours of this sophisticated product, one for experienced users and another for neophytes. We also suggest you stop by the Showcase, a fascinating tour of some pretty keen corporate sites that extensively use Flash. You can also view the usual white papers, support info, system requirements, and much more. The press release has general product data, prices and availability information. Fig Leaf's Smack Down boxing game is kind of neat, too, 700 kB worth of a great number pad work out. Think you can survive four rounds? We don't. Press release:Macromedia: http://www.macromedia.com/software/flash/
http://www.macromedia.com/macromedia/proom/pr/2000/index_flash5ship.fhtml
Boxing: http://www.figleaf.com/smackdown/splash.cfm
Details, details. Is demoney in da details? We don't know. But what we can say for sure is that the site is clean, regularly updated, and strictly for current Windows users. Frankly, the Forum area seems a bit sparse for a site that's been around for a year and a half. On the other hand, the review of the Evidence Eliminator program (for cleaning those messy Windows) impressed us with its accuracy, as did the ZoneAlarm firewall software analysis. Novices may find a few tips of value, as well. At press time, there were ten product reviews available for your browsing or grazing pleasure. There's also a nice, succinct list of popular Windows Easter Eggs and directions for accessing them, so one could say there's a little something for everyone at this site. Not enough to keep body and soul together, but hey - browsers thrive on variety.
http://www.demoney.com/www/
SpaceAgent is a Windows and Macintosh utility that removes unneeded code from most of the graphics and text files used to build Web pages. Reductions vary depending on file type, with multimedia files dramatically reduced in size and text files reduced typically eight to 12 percent. Anything that makes Web files smaller is good, and SpaceAgent is very good. Its best feature is that is does no harm. That's vital, since removing necessary code is the worst possible thing it could do. It's a worthwhile addition to the savvy Web creator's arsenal.
http://www.insidersoftware.com/
CORRECTIONS
Last issue we said "The upshot is that free Usenet lives on at the RemarQ URL." We made a mistake. You can get 30 days of free Usenet, but Critical Path's support of RemarQ is bets summed up by this sentence: "Critical Path will no longer provide free, Web-based access to newsgroups at RemarQ.com." You want free Usenet? Hit Deja.http://www.deja.com/usenet/