The Scout Report - April 28, 1995

To all patient (and not-so-patient ;-) Scout Report subscribers:

...A month or two ago the Info Scout took a bad turn on the trail, and was ambushed by outlaws with some bad medicine they were feeding to unsuspecting Scouts. This required the Scout to set up camp and stay put until the bad medicine was overcome by the good medicine of health treatments, rest, and good friends and family. The Scout is back in the saddle now and plans are to return to sending weekly reports from the frontier...

Alas, yes there is life off the 'Net that sometimes needs attention! :-) Apologies for the recent series of events preventing regular publication of the Scout Report -- it seems that between sick systems and sick people it hasn't been a good Spring for scouting! All your notes of interest and inquiry as to the whereabouts of the Scout Report were appreciated and inspiring. It is good to hear that so many of you consider it a valuable resource and have missed its appearance in your mailbox and on the Web.

Thanks for your interest, enthusiasm, and patience.

Best Regards,

Susan Calcari
Info Scout

April 28, 1995

A Service to the Internet Community Provided by the InterNIC


The Scout Report is a weekly publication offering a selection of new and newly discovered Internet resources of interest to researchers and educators, the InterNIC's primary audience. However everyone is welcome to subscribe to one of the mailing lists (plain text or HTML) or visit the Web version of the Scout Report on the InterNIC server:http://scout.cs.wisc.edu/report/sr/

Additional information and detailed access and subscription instructions are included at the end of each Scout Report.

Highlights In This Week's Report:

Open Position with the InterNIC

Candidates are sought for the position of NIC Liaison, a newly established leadership position within InterNIC Registration Services. The NIC Liaison will be responsible for determining how the InterNIC can assist campus Network Information Centers (NICs) and libraries in supporting their local Internet users. The successful candidate will have experience in higher-education in the support of Internet users, and be innovative and self-motivated in the establishment of new InterNIC services on a national level. Excellent writing and public speaking are a must for the distribution of information over the network and at conferences around the country. The NIC Liaison will be an employee of Network Solutions, Inc. (NSI) in Herndon, Virginia, outside Washington D.C. NSI manages the InterNIC Registration Services project under a cooperative agreement with the National Science Foundation. For more information about the open position, send mail to the address below or see the full description on the Web:

Mail: recruit@rs.internic.net

Web: http://rs.internic.net/liaison.html


World Wide Web

Gopher

  • The complete archives of the recently concluded National Technology Plan discussion list are now available. The Office of Educational Technology in U.S. Department of Education sponsored this online discussion which took place over the last three months. The discussion concerned professional development, financing and infrastructure, software and content, and equity and access. gopher to: gopher.ed.gov 10002
  • THE LEGI-SLATE Gopher Service provides information about all bills and resolutions introduced in Congress since 1993. You can locate bills and resolutions by specific number, 'Hot Bills' category, Legi-Slate subject term, sponsor, chamber and type of legislation, words in the official title and words in full text. Updated daily, the Legi-Slate Gopher Service provides up to 17 different documents for each bill and resolution. http://www.legislate.com/
    [Note: Originally reviewed as a gopher site; gopher site has been replaced by web site.]
    [Note: This site is no longer available for free; subscription fee(s) required.]
  • THE ACTIVE LIVING -- GO FOR GREEN (ALEP) Project gopher contains a host of interesting information about active living projects that are taking place across Canada. The resources available fall into two categories - first those resources assembled and maintained by the participating agencies in ALEP; and second those resources which have been identified as being useful and/or informative within the context of the perceived mandate of the ALEP participating agencies. http://alep.Unibase.com/
    [Note: Originally reviewed as a gopher site; gopher site has been replaced by web site.]
  • B.C. TEACHERS' FEDERATION Gopher provides useful information about: the B.C. Ministry of Education K-12 Plan, social responsibility in education, mainstreaming/integration, and the global education project online. http://www.bctf.bc.ca/
    [Note: Originally reviewed as a gopher site; gopher site has been replaced by web site.]
  • INSPIRE (INnovative SPI Resources for Educators) is provided as a service of the Washington State Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction to assist K-12 educators in locating useful resources on the Internet. There is information about Curriuclum Materials and Resources, District and State Technology Plans, Educational Reform abnd Improvement, K-12 Acceptable Use policies and the Educational Technology Support Center (ETSC). gopher to: inspire.ospi.wednet.edu

National Information Infrastructure (NII)

  • NATIONAL ELECTRONIC OPEN MEETING ON "PEOPLE AND THEIR GOVERNMENTS IN THE INFORMATION AGE" MAY 1-14, 1995. The Clinton Administration's Information Infrastructure Task Force (IITF), the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA), the National Technical Information Service's (NTIS) FedWorld, and the National Performance Review (NPR) will be sponsoring a national electronic open meeting entitled "People and Their Governments in the Information Age," from Monday, May 1 to Sunday, May 14, 1995. You may participate through multiple methods:

The open meeting will focus on five topics:

  • Services -- from emergency help to health care.
  • Benefits -- from Social Security and food stamps to business assistance.
  • Information -- from declassified secrets and economic statistics to satellite maps.
  • Participatory Democracy -- improving everyone's opportunity to participate in rulemaking and other governmental decisions.
  • Technology -- how the technical portion of electronic government will work.

NetBytes

  • SYBEX has just released Internet for Kids by Daneen Frazier with Dr. Barbara Kurshan and Dr. Sara Armstrong. This book provides teachers, parents, and kids with information about interesting places on the Internet, interesting activities that empower kids and allow tthem to share their ideas, research, and creativity. SYBEX 1995 ISBN 0-7821-1741-4.
  • MICRO TUTOR PRODUCTS announces the first formal course designed to give teachers all the expertise they need to put their class on a MOO. Beginning with 'What is a MOO?', the course assumes no previous MOO experience, yet soon each student will be creating MOO objects, designing their online classrooms, and even doing just a little MOO programming. Completion of the course assignments, as well as a personal design-and-application Project, will result in the awarding of a course certificate for the student's permanent resume. More information, as well as registration details, can be found at: http://fred.net/cindy/moo.html
    [Note: When last checked by the Internet Scout team, this site URL was no longer available.]
  • The National Library of Canada's ELECTRONIC PUBLICATIONS PILOT Project (EPPP) is now available on the World Wide Web and the Gopher. Using 12 Canadian periodicals currently available only online, the EPPP is examining various means by which Canadian electronic publications can be deposited at the National Library, where they will be catalogued, permanently stored in a database and made accessible to library patrons across Canada. Information on the status of the project and the publications it includes is now on the Internetinfoserver at: http://www.nlc-bnc.ca/eppp/e3p.htm or gopher to: gopher.nlc-bnc.ca select Canadian electronic publications
  • GOPHERCON '95 will take place Friday and Saturday June 9 and 10 in Minneapolis, MN at the Radisson Hotel MetroDome (the site of the last two Internet Gopher conferences). Features for this year's GopherCON will include: - Tutorials for new gopher server administrators. - New gopher 3D user interfaces; component software - Showcasing interesting gopher applications, including clients, servers, tools, new subject areas etc. - Forum for gopher software folk to discuss gopher protocol extensions, tools, and new functionality. For more information on presenting a session or to propose a session please send e-mail to: gopher95@boombox.micro.umn.edu

Weekend Scouting

  • BMG 's CLASSICS WORLD is a site for all classical music lovers. You can journey to the Concert Hall for audio and video clips of classical performances. There is a CD Catalog where you can search the complete release database of RCA Victor Red Seal, Gold Seal, Living Stereo, duetsche harmonia mundi, Catalyst and other classical labels in the BMG family. There are links to discussion groups on Opera Talk, New Music, General Classical and Early Music. Check out the Artists and Composer areas for bieographies, recordings, tour schedules, audio/video and more. http://classicalmus.com/
  • WELCOME TO MTV.COM currently spotlights "MTV's Oddities" --MTV;s newest animation series. http://www.mtv.com/
  • THE GILBERT AND SULLIVAN ARCHIVE is devoted to the works of William S.Gilbert and Arthur S. Sullivan. It includes a variety of G&S related items, including clip art, librettos, song scores, and newsletter articles. It also contains the Opera Schedule Server which is a searchable database of opera performance schedules worldwide. http://diamond.idbsu.edu/gas/GaS.html
  • AMERICA'S CUP ON-LINE web site provides up-to-date information onf America Cub Race Results, Real-time Deltas, Ship's Log, and answers to the Top Ten Questions regarding the America's Cup Race. http://www.ac2000.co.nz/
  • ESPNET SportsZone provides up-to-date information on the Sports World including the top stories of the day, scoreboards, and features. http://espn.go.com/
  • FLY WITH US! allows you to take the controls of a high-performance fighter jet in Moscow, break the speed of sound, pull 9 g's - with one of the best pilots in the world as your co-pilot. http://www.mig29.com/n2fwu.html

About the Scout Report

The Scout Report is a weekly publication offered by the InterNIC to the Internet community as a fast, convenient way to stay informed about network activities. Its purpose is to combine in one place selected new (and newly-discovered) Internet resources.

A wide range of topics are included in the Report with an emphasis on resources thought to be of interest to the InterNIC's primary audience, the research and education community. Each resource has been verified for substantial content and accessibility within a day of the release of the Report.

The Scout Report is provided in multiple formats -- mailing lists for both a plain text and HTML version; gopher; and World Wide Web. The gopher and World Wide Web versions of the Report include links to all listed resources. The report is released every weekend.

In addition to the plain text version, the Scout Report is distributed in HTML format allowing sites to post the Scout Report on local WorldWideWeb servers each week. The result is faster access for local users. You are welcome and encouraged to re-post and re-distribute the report. Note that copyright statements appear on all versions of the Scout Report, and we ask that these be included when re-posting or re-distributing.

If you haven't yet subscribed or told your friends and colleagues, now is the time. Spread the news by word-of-net. Join 20,000 of your colleagues already using the Scout Report as a painless tool for tracking what's new on the 'Net!

Comments and contributions to the Scout Report are encouraged and can be sent to scout@cs.wisc.edu

-- Susan Calcari
InterNIC Info Scout

Scout Report Access Methods

  • To receive the electronic mail version of the Scout Report each Friday, join the scout-report mailing list. You will receive one message a week -- the Scout Report every weekend.

    Send email to: majordomo@dstest.internic.net in the body of the message, type:

    subscribe scout-report
    to unsubscribe to the list, repeat this procedure substituting the word "unsubscribe" for subscribe.
    • To receive the Scout Report in HTML format for local posting, subscribe to the scout-report-html mailing list, used exclusively to distribute the Scout Report in HTML format once a week.

      Send mail to: majordomo@dstest.internic.net in the body of the message, type:

      subscribe scout-report-html

      Resource Addressing Conventions

      After each resource in the Scout Report one or more network addresses are listed. Every attempt is made to use the same convention in each listing for the network address of each resource. It is assumed that users recognize the type of address and know how to use it. However, for those users unfamiliar with the Internet we provide here the order in which addresses are listed (by network tool) and instructions for accessing additional information in the InterNIC InfoGuide about each network tool. A brief explanation of one tool, WWW is included below.

      The four network tools referenced most often in the Scout Report are World Wide Web, gopher, email, and FTP. Occasionally WAIS and Telnet addresses are also listed.

      After each resource at least one address is listed, and sometimes more. This is because some resources are available using multiple network tools. The network tool addresses are always listed in the same order after each resource:

      • World Wide Web (WWW)
      • Gopher
      • FTP
      • Email
      • Telnet
      • WAIS
      A WWW address is called a URL (Uniform Resource Locator) and always begins with a string of characters followed by a colon and two forward slashes. For example:

      http://www.internic.net/
      gopher://gibbs.oit.unc.edu:70/11/research.d/grants.d
      ftp://ftp.digex.net/pub/access/hecker/internet/slip-ppp.txt

      To access the resource through the WWW you can use a WWW browser installed on your desktop computer, or a "command-line" WWW client on your local Internet host computer. Web browsers are available for all major computer platforms, including Macintosh, PC, and UNIX. Check with your local support center or your Internet Service Provider for more information about Web browsers installed on the Internet host computer or for your desktop computer.

      Copyright Susan Calcari, 1995.

      Permission is granted to make and distribute verbatim copies of the Scout Report provided the copyright notice, this permission notice, and the two paragraphs below are preserved on all copies.

      The InterNIC provides information about the Internet and the resources on the Internet to the US research and education community under cooperative agreement with the National Science Foundation. The Government has certain rights in this material.

      Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this publication are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation, AT&T, or Network Solutions, Inc.