The Scout Report - June 16, 1995

June 16, 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:

World Wide Web

  • The Johnson Technology Commercialization Center (JTCC) opened in 1993 and is located close to the Johnson Space Center. The JTCC is funded by a grant from NASA and is managed by the IC2 Institute, an international research center for the study of Innovation, Creativity and Capital (ICC) at the University of Texas at Austin. Among its credits, the IC2 Institute manages the Austin Technology Incubator (ATI), a recognized resource for the development of emerging technology companies a model for JTCC. The IC2 introduced a a laboratory-to-market approach, utilized by JTCC, which takes technology output from JSC and matches it with accomplished business and financial partners in the local community. The final transfer can be the result of either of two primary methods, "Small Business Incubator Services" and technology licensing. http://technology.jsc.nasa.gov/
  • Put Prevention into Practice (PPIP) is a national preventive services campaign to increase the awareness and use of clinical preventive services by providers, patients, and office staff. PPIP is sponsored by the U.S. Public Health Service in cooperation with a dozen national health-related organizations. The campaign encourages consumers to work with their health care provider to stay well; organizations (Health Care Systems, Professional Associations) to implement PPIP; educators to use PPIP in health professions curricula; and researchers to use PPIP research design tools. Resources on the Web page include a PPIP FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions), DHHS Secretary Donna Shalala's comments About PPIP, a QuickTime movie, a link to the National Health Information Center, and PPIP contact/ordering information (e-mail, phone, fax, mail). http://www.ahcpr.gov/ppip/
  • The U.S. Civil War Center's area of interest includes all aspects of the Civil War and Reconstruction. The Center combines scholarly pursuits with projects and programs designed to enhance the general public's perception of the Civil War. Anyone with an interest in the Civil War is welcome to visit the CWC homepage and their collection of Web links related to the Civil War, which include indexes, letters, diaries, museums, discussion groups, newspapers, university archives, and Web-accessible documents. http://www.cwc.lsu.edu/
  • The University of California Museum of Paleontology's Web site has information about the museum itself, the exhibits, catalogs, and a very readable FAQ (frequently asked questions) on paleontology. Ask a private question to a museum researcher. Read about how they built their server -- all tricks are revealed. http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/
  • The U.S. Federal Court's Home Page is maintained by the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts on behalf of the U.S. Courts. The purpose of the site is to function as a clearinghouse for information from and about the Judicial Branch of the U.S. Government. The hypertext document Understanding The Federal Courts gives a description of how the U.S. Federal Courts operate. Selected articles from The Third Branch, the monthly newsletter of the federal courts, are available. Recent Press Releases are also available. The Directory of Electronic Public Access Services provides information on automated access to U.S. federal court information and records. http://www.uscourts.gov/
  • Ride the Web Geological Time Machine at the University of California Museum of Paleontology. Click on an item in the list of 25 geological periods [15 of the 25 periods are available now, the remainder to be completed] and view a page describing each period, its subdivisions, and the life and fossils of that period. http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/help/timeform.html
  • The Yale-New Haven Medical Center Web site contains information about the Medical Center and its constituent organizations, Yale-New Haven Hospital, the Yale University School of Medicine, and the Yale University School of Nursing. You will also find links to valuable external biomedical Internet resources. http://info.med.yale.edu

Gopher

  • HUD: Homes and Communities is the Information Center of HUD's Office of Community Planning and Development (CPD). Formerly the HOME Information Center and American Communities (AMCOM), Homes and Communities has been expanded to serve as a resource for all CPD programs and initiatives, including the Community Development Block Grant program; HOME Investment Partnership; homeless and Special Needs Assistance Programs; Economic Development programs including Empowerment Zones/Enterprise Communities; the Consolidated Plan (formerly the Comprehensive Housing Affordability Strategy); and Environment and Energy. Homes and Communities serves nonprofit housing and community development organizations, State and local government agencies, public interest groups, and HUD staff. The Homes and Communities gopher disseminates notices of funding announcement (NOFAs), grant applications, CPD's newsletter for community and economic development professionals, case studies and success stories of effective public and private strategies for affordable housing production. gopher to: amcom.aspensys.com
    [Note: Orginally reviewed as a gopher site; gopher may no longer be current.]
    http://www.hud.gov/core.html
    [Note: Site title has changed since the original Scout Report review. Site formerly referred to in the Scout Report as "American Communities."]
  • The Association of American Medical Colleges' (AAMC) gopher server provides access to all kinds of information for and about the association, including news, events and schedules, constituents, admissions, financial aid, minority affairs, student affairs, governmental relations, medical education, residency issues, and AAMC program, publications, library resources and archives.
    [Note: Originally reviewed as a gopher site; gopher site has been replaced by web site.]
    http://www.aamc.org/
  • The MacArthur Foundation Gopher includes general information about the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, such as how to apply for grants, the names of staff members, and the history of the Foundation. It also includes information specific to each of the Foundation's eight program areas, such as recent program activities, application guidelines, contact information, and a listing of grants made in the previous calendar year. http://www.macfdn.org/
    [Note: Originally reviewed as a gopher site; gopher site has been replaced by web site.]
  • The National Data Archive on Child Abuse and Neglect acquires, preserves and disseminates high quality datasets relevant to the study of child abuse and neglect. The Archive facilitates secondary analysis by distributing data in ready-to-use formats for microcomputers and mainframes, providing technical support to data users, and sponsoring training programs for researchers. http://www.fldc.cornell.edu/
    [Note: Originally reviewed as a gopher site; gopher site has been replaced by web site.]
  • Tennessee Board of Regents is the governing body of the State University and Community College System of Tennessee. The gopher includes policies, guidelines, publications and yearly legislative digests. gopher to: www.tbr.state.tn.us
  • The University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio provides information about the center, its mission, academic programs, magazine, and related selected network resources. gopher to: gopher.uthscsa.edu
    [Note: Originally reviewed as a gopher site; gopher site has been replaced by web site.]
    http://www.uthscsa.edu/

Electronic Mailing Lists

  • The Telecom Post [Note: this announcement is about a month old, and as you may realize the passage of legislation has already begun. However it's not too late to get informed.] This spring and early summer will witness the design and passage of legislation that will shape our communication infrastructure for many years to come. In an effort to keep the Internet community abreast of legislative events, Free Speech Media, LLC intends to publish a weekly bulletin, , with brief updates on the DC action. This alert will cover the issues and concerns of the public interest community and point to actions that can be taken on behalf of these issues. Material will be collected from Internet postings, newsletters, and interviews. It will consist of summarizations, paraphrased articles, and excerpts. There will be at least 8 weekly editions of the Post. It will continue for the duration of the legislative activity.
    http://www.cpsr.org/telecom-post/index.html
    send mail to: LISTSERV@CPSR.ORG
    in the body of the message type:
    SUBSCRIBE TELECOM-POST your name
  • Oceans Online (c) is a new service which serves the loosely labeled "marine community" and provides access to peer groups within a large number of professions, databases, online teleconferencing, libraries for marine related software, Internet and Usenet access, customer support services, and more. The Oceans Online system has been established to service professionals in oceanography, marine biology, geophysics, geology, engineering, manufacturing, navy, Coast Guard, civil maritime, maritime law and insurance, state and federal maritime professionals, and university, collegiate and secondary school interests. Oceans Online currently provides a LISTSERVE function for basic information on the system and will shortly be adding LISTSERVS for the major discussion areas. For an automated reply of topic listings
    send mail to: OCEANS@VBS.COM
    in the subject line type: INDEX

NetBytes

  • DejaNews has the largest collection of indexed archived Usenet news available anywhere. While WAIS servers typically contain only articles from a limited number of newsgroups, DejaNews gives you access to most of the usenet postings (articles posted to groups that match alt.*, soc.*, talk.* or *.binaries are excluded) in the last month. This amounts to over 4Gbytes of searchable data. Selected groups have an extended history of up to a year. http://www.dejanews.com/

Weekend Scouting

  • If you watch TV, listen to the radio, or read newspapers or magazines, you know that Batman Forever is opened on Friday, June 16. Visit Gotham City and try to beat the riddler at his own game or file a report with Commissioner Gordon. On the second site listed below, see dozens of photos, info bits, and "spoilers."
    http://www.batmanforever.com/ ("official")
    http://www.batcave.com/main.html (more fun, IMHO)
    [Note: Resource(s)/URL(s) mentioned above is no longer available.]
  • Water Sports Web page is organized by tours, equipment, schools and stores, with links to industry home pages, trade organizations, clubs, preservation projects and other related pages. Still in progress is a hierarchical system of links beginning with your choice of whitewater or touring categories. Find information on The North American Paddlesports Association (NAPSA) and an alphabetical list of companies that are Trade Association of Sea Kayaking (TASK) and/or NAPSA members. http://www.halcyon.com/wtr/Watersports_Resources.html
  • The Wimbledon Championships run from June 26 to July 9. Use the official (All England Lawn Tennis Club) Web page to track the tournament. Promised are links to: the Draw, Today's Order of Play, Matches in Progress, Today's Results, News Flashes, Wimbledon and its future, and Technology at Wimbledon. http://championships.wimbledon.org/

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 the National Science Foundation Cooperative Agreement No. NCR-9218742. 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.