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NETSURFER DIGEST
More Signal, Less Noise |
Volume 05, Issue 15 Sunday, May 16, 1999 |
NETSURFER LINKS
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BREAKING SURF European Report on US Echelon Electronic Surveillance Network As we've reported in the past, the US Intelligence agencies are running a sophisticated electronic surveillance network which is causing some anxiety in privacy-minded Europe. The network, called Echelon, intercepts Internet and other digital communications and funnels them into the US intelligence community. The European Parliament's Science and Technology Options Assessment Panel (STOA) commissioned a report about the network, and you can peruse the fascinating results at this site. The report includes information on how the FBI is covertly trying to create trap doors in various communications systems, the fact that popular browsers and software such as Lotus Notes already have hooks which can be used to reveal information about your browsing habits to intelligence agencies, and even screen shots of traffic analysis software used to keep tabs on global digital traffic. Since one of the key findings of the report is that there is little if any accountability in how this system is being used, it's probably a good idea to find out about how your communications can be intercepted.http://www.iptvreports.mcmail.com/stoa_cover.htm
New Web Site for Finding and Hiring Open Source Programmers Hewlett-Packard (HP) and O'Reilly have designed a meeting place for open source programmers and the companies that are looking to hire them. Programmers can bid for projects here, much as auction sites like eBay allow you to bid on tangible items. Any software developed from a connection made at this site will be released to the open source community. HP plans to fine tune the site and open it to any company by fall. Is this the logical continuation of the trend for technical professionals to auction off their talents to the highest bidder? Sure seems like it to us.http://www.sourcexchange.com/ (Nearly) Naked in a Room with the Internet An amusing promotional stunt from the UK version of Microsoft's MSN online service led four volunteers to find themselves shut in a room with only a robe, a credit card, and access to the Internet. The subjects had to clothe, feed, and entertain themselves for a week. The experiment has ended, but the transcripts and daily reports still survive, and make for amusing reading.http://msn.co.uk/page/140-989.asp Zagat Restaurant Guide Opens Web Site For many years, Zagat has been famous for the quality of its restaurant reviews compiled from the votes of thousands of ordinary patrons. Zagat has just opened a Web site that brings the whole operation online. The site requires registration, free until September 1, which gets you access to their review database and a chance to vote for your own favorite restaurants. A sophisticated search facility, of course, allows you to find a place to eat according to all sorts of food, location, and service criteria. We found it especially useful for finding places to eat while on the road. Worth bookmarking.http://www.zagat.com/ DejaNews Revamps Its Look, Adopts New Name The site best known for providing search facilities for Usenet news is changing its look and orientation. You can now access two main menus from the home page. One, a rating service, lets users rate the quality of various products and services. The other, a discussion area, lets you comment on a wide range of topic-specific threads selected from the Usenet feed. The news search facility is still there, but the word Usenet is not found anywhere - it's as if Deja.com does not want you to know their existence is based on this ancient splinter of the Internet created and maintained by thousands of individual Usenet posters.http://www.deja.com/ SURFING SITES Life During Wartime - Yugoslavia War Diaries A personal, intense series of diary entries from the Yugoslav theatre of war, Yugoslavia War Diaries comes from A.G., a 34-year-old Serbian filmmaker living in Belgrade. In a politically charged arena, the diaries read as simple accounts of day-to-day activities in an extraordinary situation. A.G.'s non-politicized writing, while certainly not dispassionate, does not fall on either side of the conflict but rather sees madness from all sides - and beauty in a philodendron that has survived multiple bombings. The immediacy of the Internet is one of its principal strengths and that real-time reporting capability is used to full effect here: the dissonance between the slick and polished mass media war briefings and the dispatches of a man and his friends engaged in mere living during wartime is jarring. Absolutely absorbing.http://www.webcinema.org/war_diaries/ The crisis in Kosovo and recent humanitarian disasters in Iraq and Sudan underscore the perilous results war, famine, and poverty can unleash. The World Health Organization (WHO) charges its Division of Emergency and Humanitarian Action (EHA) with "coordinating the international response to emergencies and natural disasters in the health field." This responsibility, carried out in concert with other global relief agencies, includes both aggressive and reactive measures meant to limit the consequences of natural and man-made disasters around the world. Although we found the EHA Web page somewhat confusing (it's apparently still under construction), it is nonetheless packed with information about the organization and its good works, from publications to maps to discussion group mailing lists on topics such as Kosovo. The WHO's main site is also worth a look. EHA: http://www.who.int/eha/ WHO: http://www.who.int/ As new images of "ethnic cleansing" flicker across our televisions, memories of the Nazi Holocaust, perhaps the nadir of the century, continue to fade. Packed with powerful and disturbing imagery ill-suited to younger viewers, this textually rich site relies on several well-written essays concerning the Holocaust-era story of Oscar Schindler, made famous in "Schindler's List". Author Louis Bulow's narratives offer fresh insights into the title character and other aspects of the movie, although a good deal of the site is not in English. In short, Bulow's work can safely be categorized as a valuable contribution to our collective memory. However, the site suffers from a strange intensity of corporate advertising (we hope meant to support its work), numerous bandwidth-demanding Java applets, and an absence (at least in English - we're not as polyglot as you might expect) of any explanation as to the author's purpose or background. http://home8.inet.tele.dk/aaaa/ In its years as America's leading purveyor of infotainment, Fox Movietone generated some 75 million feet of newsreel film and outtakes. The University of South Carolina has managed to get their hands on some 11 million feet of that, including all outtakes from 1919-1934 - and, as anyone knows, there is often much more of historical interest in what someone didn't want you to see than in what they did. In addition, the university possesses complete reels from September, 1942 to August 1944, with a lot of WWII action. On the site, you can watch RealPlayer files of the Navy dirigible Los Angeles and its blimp escorts as it cruises over New York City in 1929, an air show crash in Spokane in 1944, and Adolf Hitler at a 1932 rally. http://www.sc.edu/newsfilm/index.html The Life and Death of an American Factory Photographer Bill Bamberger has done important work documenting the big changes in the lives of American workers as we pass into a post-industrial economy. In 1993, Bamberger took photos of the White furniture factory in Mebane, N.C. as it shut down after more than 100 years of business. Yale University is currently exhibiting 60 of the photos through June 13, at which time the exhibit moves on to the Smithsonian Museum of History. While the photos lose some impact on a computer screen, the online exhibit is extremely powerful in other ways. Don't miss the forum page, where workers lament becoming disposable workers in a disposable world.http://www.emji.net/bamberger/ rTMark is the opposite of the modern corporation: where the corporation seeks to improve shareholder earnings, rTMark strives to improve shareholders' life and culture. There is also a fair bit of sarcasm with a leftist verve. rTMark supports the informative alteration of corporate images and products, including Web sites, videos, and seminars. For example, a large multinational oil firm's Web site has been copied and deconstructed, with the insertion of insightful and sometimes biting criticism not only of the company but of the company's portrayal of itself. rTMark is subversive, clever, and weird. We're surprised a hail of lawsuits hasn't ensued. http://rtmark.com/ A Place for Oppressed Geek Teens In the wake of the Littleton massacre, a Web site has been launched to approach disaffected high school teens. Posing questions such as "Have you ever felt like everyone in your high school is brain dead?" and "What cliques in your school piss you off?", High School Underground tries to direct teen bitterness and resentment to constructive ends before they build up to potentially explosive levels. Run by young people with intelligence and empathy, it aims to inspire kids on the fringe in high school to publish their own newsletters or newspapers in their high schools.http://www.bpm.ai/hsunderground/ Access Your E-Mail through the Web Many people have multiple e-mail accounts or aliases with free e-mail services for one reason: to ensure a steady flow of e-mail when you're away from your local provider. You might get the best service from a local ISP, but that doesn't help you read your e-mail when you're away and you don't feel like shelling out for a long distance call back home. So, you get some other account that you can access globally, or via some Web gateway. Umailme.com has rendered these extra addresses superfluous with its Web-based POP e-mail interface. If you have a POP e-mail account (and you probably do), just dial up the URL and read your mail. It's that simple. Unfortunately, Umailme.com can't do away with your need to maintain a global dial-up account.http://umailme.com/ If you're a devotee of search engines, a visit the Search IQ Web site will make you shout "yahoo!" - unless, that is, you work for Yahoo! which Search IQ rates only fourth in terms of usability and relevance. And don't get too excited if you work for Excite, which came in fifth. Little known Inference grabs the proverbial brass ring. The Search IQ site includes a listing of and reviews for all the search engines and tools, tips on making your searches more efficient, and more. http://www.searchiq.com/ You Once Never Knew Where that Money's Been Want to trace the history of the paper currency in your wallet? Plenty of people do, apparently. If you live in the US, cruise on over to this Web site, register, and dole out the serial numbers, denominations, and condition of all the bills you have on hand, and where you found it. Combined with that of others, your input helps trace what happens to money. We enjoyed the calculations of average speed of each bill as it travels across the country.http://www.wheresgeorge.com/ Need to convince someone worried about safety and security to shop online? Check out Safershopper.com, an educational site with the implicit premise that the best shopper is an informed shopper. Even if you've already spent a fortune online, you might pick up at least a few practical tips here that may help assuage lingering fears of hackers, credit-card fraud, scams, and other dangers trumpeted daily by news media. There's a list of Safershopping Sites with a profile of each merchant. Sure, part of the raison d'etre is to drive traffic to featured sites - by means of links, a newsletter, and a giveaway registration. But a little reassurance now and then is good for peace of mind, if not always for your bank account. http://www.safershopper.com/ Some of the hard-core Web surfers in the audience may be familiar with That's Useful This Is Cool (TUTIC). The New Homemaker is the latest venture of the former editor of the daily TUTIC Web review column, Lynn Siprelle. Hoping to provide practical advice to the sexually-undefined human who stays at home to run a household and cater to loved ones, the New Homemaker offers aid on a variety of subjects ranging from community involvement to decorating. For instance, did you know that a quarter-cup of baking soda can help prevent clogged drains? Lynn's years of Web design expertise shine through in New Homemaker's crisp, refreshing design. http://www.newhomemaker.com/ ONLINE TRAVEL Around the World on a Boat, Alone Could you sail around the world? Alone? In a race? Around Alone is the online multimedia chronicle of sailors who compete in a four-leg, nine-month, 27,000-mile round-the-world race held every four years. A pop-up introduction gets you started. We sped first to the list of international competitors, which includes a motivational speaker, a retired marketing entrepreneur, a former Berkshire firefighter, and other adventurers whose backgrounds might inspire a Hollywood action film. Every leg of the race is covered with slick yet comprehensive authority, including photos, audio interviews, e-mail from the racers, and a Daily Race Report with satellite maps of the boats' positions at sea. Sailors and other outdoor enthusiasts will love this site, which news media will likely hit heavily during the next race.http://www.aroundalone.com/ The Web site of the Irish Times, a newspaper based in Dublin, couples the paper's daily articles with up-to-the-moment coverage of breaking events in a Java ticker on the front screen. The front screen also features links to the weather, employment, and even an online crossword. A weekly Irish language section lets you brush up on your Irish online. Perhaps the most outstanding feature is their guide to Dublin, which includes a webcam on the O'Connell Bridge and virtual postcards to send to your online friends. http://www.ireland.com/ Where better to study entertainment, event management, and tourism than Las Vegas, a city with gondolas and a sphinx within walking distance of each other? The University of Nevada-Las Vegas's Tourism and Convention Administration Department has put together Wacky Hospitality Sites, a list of the same ranging from the Lettuce Preservation Society to the Hamburger Simulator, which you have to see to believe. Actually, most of these things you'll have to see to believe. The department's best resource, not surprisingly, is their collection of links that make up their All Things Vegas page. Visit it before you visit Sin City so you won't miss out on any potential sin. Wacky: http://www.unlv.edu/Tourism/wacky.html Vegas: http://www.unlv.edu/Tourism/vegas.html The California State Auto Association (CSAA), the regional American Automobile Association covering northern California, Utah, and Nevada, has a Web site that lets you smoothly find everything and anything related to travel, cars, and insurance. The links are useful for general travel and auto info as well. You can make travel reservations, find AAA-approved accommodations, research your auto purchasing options, and read a variety of documents from the organization. http://www.csaa.com/ FLOTSAM & JETSAM OK, computer industry movers and shakers, we're counting on you to incorporate some of Wolfgang Feierbach's design patents in the next generation of computers. How about a whole workstation that folds up the size of a printer? And can't we get rid of all those cables? Better living through ergonomics....http://www.feierbach.com/ Spend ten seconds at World Time Zone, and you'll want to bookmark it, especially if you often need to check the time in other parts of the world. The list seems to include every country. Those multiple-clock walls that show times in foreign capitals seem quaintly limited in comparison. http://www.isbister.com/worldtime/ TopBestsellers.com, a new portal site for books, features "the bottom line on bestsellers" with lists of best-selling books and links to Amazon sales of same. The site posts reviews from numerous sources, news, and analysis as well as a variety of detailed indices. http://www.topbestsellers.com/ News junkies take note: 1stHeadlines is a collection of headlines from 50 top newspaper, broadcast, and online news sources, continually updated in an excellent way to keep abreast of breaking news. http://www.1stheadlines.com/ These 16-color animated GIFs set you back far less than a movie ticket. Provide your own popcorn - or, if you're feeling ambitious, create your own. http://www.16color.com/ The Acronym Finder deciphers acronyms. If you need to, go and search over 88,000 entries. We found that NSD also stands for Navy Support Date and National Security Division. P.S. We know that "acronym" really only refers to first-letter abbreviations that form a pronounceable word, but what the heck.... http://www.acronymfinder.com/ Dan's List of Italian Holidays In his spare time, Dan has collected over 2,600 entries for parties and holidays in Italy. Choose a month and a region and Dan serves up a detailed list of what's going on and why. Some entries have photos and all have links to more info. A great way to plan where to be or what to avoid in Italy.http://www.hostetler.net/CGI-SHL/dbml.exe?template=hostetler/italy.dbm Capri-Sun has built a series of Shockwave escapades, guaranteed to keep kids of all ages entertained. Once you've conquered the first six games, you can venture on to Treasure Island. Prizes are for UK visitors only, so if you're elsewhere goofing off during lunch, all you're getting is in trouble with your boss. http://www.capri-sun.co.uk/ SOFTWARE For many groups, an Internet presence is intended to augment conventional means of group interaction. However, lack of funds and/or expertise means many Net communities are confined to a rudimentary, decidedly one-way flow of information. Those that attain even a modicum of genuine interaction tend to be scattered across a mishmash of services and protocols, from Usenet discussion groups to IRC chat rooms. Anexa seeks to end all this by allowing users to easily establish community Web pages that consolidate the full gamut of interactivity, from discussion groups to classified ads to live Java chat rooms. Anexa describes itself as a way to "bring real-world relationships and affiliations to the Web, allowing new ways to communicate, collaborate, share information and keep in touch." The only costs are the mandatory, and relatively benign, banner ads, which strike us as a fair price for an impressively dynamic service.http://www.anexa.com/ A visual handicap often means peering at a screen trying to make out the words, especially now that the Internet is so full of artistic Web pages with unreadable text. For those with poor vision, a screen magnifier can prove useful, as such software can increase the size of the words by up to 16 times. The software varies in quality, price and performance, and one of the the best ways to find out which screen magnifier is best for you is to visit this review site. As well as reviewing the software, the site provides relevant news hints on how to make your own page more accessible, information about speech synthesizers, and a lively forum for discussions about being sight-impaired in an electronic age. http://www.magnifiers.demon.nl CORRECTIONS Modern Mixed Media - No Glasses Required In last issue's "Modern Mixed Media", we wrote that the "virtual photographs... require 3-D glasses for proper appreciation." We meant that they do not require such devices. Sorry. |
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