Let The Web Help Steer You Onto Fascinating Cyberbyways
The information revolution revolves at a dizzying pace and nowhere is the tempo more frenetic than on the Internet’s World Wide Web. A day doesn’t pass when another fascination doesn’t spring up in this grand and growing multimedia buffet table known as the Web.
So here’s a cook’s tour of the Web as it is during the hours that this article is being written, with a caution that the on-line landscape is always changing and that you’ll likely find even better stuff when you look.
The article will assume that you’ve got yourself up and running with a Web browser software package through one of the on-line Big Three or elsewhere and that you now are wondering what to do next.
Start with the question of how to find stuff. Type this in at the top of your Web browser screen: http://www.webcrawler.com
That address, an URL in Internet-speak (Uniform Resource Locator) should be at the top of everybody’s favorite places menu. It allows key word searching of a vast database of Internet content, and using it rarely disappoints.
The webcrawler lets you type in keywords and then produces a list of URLs elsewhere on-line where the words appear, amounting to something like an index to cyberspace.
Type in “Monty Python” and you’ll be greeted with dozens of places to poke about to do things like download scripts of immortal skits such as the dead parrot and the Mounties in ladies’ underwear.
Type in “epistemology” and you’ll find archives of the writings of Emmanuel Kant, Martin Heiddiger and Jean Paul Sartre. But enough frivolity. On to the tour.
http://www.pathfinder.com
This is a home page (another way of describing a URL on the Web) of media conglomerate Time-Warner Inc. It offers in one fell swoop the text of People, Time, Sports Illustrated, Vibe, Money and others.
Until about Sept. 1, the Pathfinder will include free access to what this writer considers to be the crown jewel of all Internet offerings.
We’re talking here the complete text of the Encyclopaedia Britannica in its spanking new Internet rendition replete with hypertext links to other resources throughout cyberspace.
Britannica officials explained that they are making the content of the venerable 32-volume reference work available on-line in a bid to recover from business losses caused when competitors like Compton’s and Groliers made their content available on-line at places like CompuServe and America Online years ago.
The idea now, said a Britannica spokeswoman, is to dangle the online version before customers for 60 days and then start charging for the service.
The Internet version of Britannica now available not only includes the text and artwork from the printed version but it also includes hypertext links that were collected by Britannica’s legendary scholars.
These links take you far afield from just the content in the books and are another heady illustration of the emerging powers of the Web.
For example, the Britannica article on viruses brings you up-to-date on the current ebola virus by including a link to the University of Wisconsin’s Institute for Molecular Virology at http://www.bocklabs.wisc.edu/
If you’re interested in slightly less depressing fare, Britannica also boasts a feature that lets you pull down biographies of every person born on any given day and an option to click on a hotlink to call up a random article from the huge database.
Enough scholarship. Let’s turn our pages to this home page: http://www.RealAudio.com/
The Real Audio home page is both advancement and anachronism wrapped up in one tidy, if noisy, bundle.
Real Audio is software that allows your computer to call up audio files on the Internet and then play them in real time as opposed to the most common model, in which one must download an entire file and then play it afterward.
For example, several radio networks already have established a major presence on the Web with Real Audio sites.
And a growing number of other homepages have started adding Real Audio sound files to their other offerings. which include photographs, traditional sound files, film clips and, of course, text.
Real Audio thus becomes something far more than regular radio can ever be. It is radio on demand, the ability to offer a menu of radio spots that the listener can either play or ignore at the listener’s own volition.
The ABC area, for example, offers a long listing of past Peter Jennings commentaries that one can listen to or breeze past to hear the news itself. Likewise, NPR’s shows such as “All Things Considered” can be called up any time of the day you want rather than waiting for the local station to play it.
Obviously Real Audio is a tip of an iceberg that offers much more in the form of something that current modem speeds and computer capacities prohibit: Real Video.
Imagine, the chance to browse through every “Jenny Jones” show ever broadcast. How about a menu offering access to the collected works of Beavis and Butthead at the click of an icon?
Meanwhile, another major development with on-line audio exists at this URL:
http://www.vocaltec.com/
That takes you to the home page of an Israel-based company, VocalTec Inc., that has come up with a procedure that uses the powers of the Internet to allow users of its software to make local telephone calls and then link up with other people on the Internet who also make local calls to get on-line.
Voila!-long-distance calls without paying a tariff to Ma Bell or any of her multitude of competitors.
VocalTec has some quirks, because most computer users have only a single sound card and thus must use the same channel for both talking and listening - sort of like a telephone without a separate mouthpiece and earpiece.
Thus when making a VocalTec call you experience something like on two-way radio conversations, where it helps to say “over” at the end of each thought. But with worldwide phone coverage for a local call, the inconvenience is minor.There is much, much more on the Web. That is, after all, the point to be made here.
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