Internet Tools for Business.

Introduction

These notes, and those of other presentations, are available from the World Wide Web, via http://www.uvm.edu/~sjc/powerbook.html and may be used from the Internet lab at the conference. You may also obtain a copy via e-mail from Steve.Cavrak@Uvm.Edu. If you decide to read this document, be aware that anything you read here will self destruct in 5 minutes. We will disclaim all knowledge of this document.

The basic tools

• Address: The Internet address is an "easy to remember" way of identifying computers, institutions, and "domains." Reading the address "moose.uvm.edu" left-to-right, spelling out letters which do not form recognizable words, (moose dot uvm dot edu), specifies the "moose" computer at "uvm" which is in the educational domain. In the US, the main or top domains are ".com", ".edu", ".gov", ".mil", ".net", with ".us" now becoming popular for "local" entities. Outside the US, the top domains are the two letter ISO codes: ".at" for Austria, ".de" for "Deutschland," etc. In the UK, the address is often written backwards, just the way they drive.

• E-mail address is an internet address with a userid attached to the front with an "@" (at) sign. My e-mail address reads "steve dot cavrak at uvm dot edu".

• URL: The Universal Resource Locator provides a more or less uniform reference mechanism for internet resources. It identifies the type of service offered, the address of the hosting computer, and perhaps a (UNIX style) specification of the file name. Under my e-mail address is the URL for my "home page" - which reads "http colon slash slash www dot uvm dot edu slash tilde sjc slash"

• [w] World Wide Web: WWW is the "hot" internet providing simultaneous delivery of text, image, motion, audio, and video - multimedia - to a desktop. The interface is based on active links embedded in the normal flow of text and images. hypertext. At the server end, there is a series of "HyperText Markup Language" (HTML) files - text files with "marked" tags. A URL that looks like "http://www.uvm.edu/" points to a HTML resource. The key word "http" identifies a hypertext document.

• [w] Mosaic: NCSA (National Center for Supercomputer Applications) Mosaic was the first WWW user tool to make it big time - mainly because it was available for Macintosh and Windows workstations first. Several other "mosaic like" tools are available, including EiNET"s MacWeb and WinWeb (which can run "stand along", perfect for notebook computers without a connection to the network), and The Mosaic Corporation's NetScape (written by the original NCSA Mosaic team who were recruited to California by an aggressive developer.) The word "mosaic" is now as used both specifically and generically.

• [g] Gopher: is an menu oriented internet document delivery system. At the server end of the network is a directory (folder) of files. The URL for a gopher looks like "gopher://gopher.uvm.edu/."

• [e] E-mail: The sine qua non service. This is the low cost, low overhead, high impact, high contact tool. This allows your customers to get in touch with you and viceversa.

• [v] CU-SeeMe: An experimental video conferencing system for the internet. This is still in "beta test."

• [w] Apple Computer's web is home to the latest Apple technical information, software updates and a variety of information resources about Apple related products and services. This site is updated on a daily basis.

  

• [w] You Will! be a winner ! (Maybe.) AT&T opens it's contest home page!.

• [w] British Broadcasting Company hosts a web page for its Networking Club. The club aims to help people in the UK get to grips with computer networking, and the Internet in general. Their second aim is to enable the BBC to explore ways of using the Internet as a broadcast medium in its own right.

• [w] Bell Atlantic uses its home page for a variety of purposes -- telecommunication news, legislative update, as well as some product information.

  

• [w] Burlington Coat Factory One size fits all !

• [w] Cybermalls, Colchester, VT shows that you don't have to be a megalon to grab a nice piece of cyberspace real estate (Virtual Estate?)

• [w] Champlain Valley Union, a high school on the internet.

• [w] Welcome to CD-Now is "The Internet Music Store" stocks over 140,000 CDs, cassettes and mini-discs, with over 100,000 different titles, CDnow! is the largest music store in the world.

• [w] Deluxe Business Systems offers over 2,000 items for our office needs.

• [w] The Directory of Advertising and Direct Marketing Agencies is maintained by Michael Strangelove, who also publishes the Internet Business Journal. For more information you may e-mail mstrangelove@fonerola.net.

• [w] The Electronic Freedom Foundation is a non-profit civil liberties public interest organization working to protect freedom of expression, privacy, and access to online resources and information. Press a button and change the world.

• [w] The Internet Florist Shop Send flowers by e-mail.

• [w] Hawaii, FYI the State of Hawaii's statewide public information system designed to support the Hawaii INC initiative to make Hawaii the information bridge between east and west. On the net, there is no east or west.

• [w] The Information Arcade houses a collection of eclectic knowledge. It also houses some commercial firms.

• [w] IBM currently uses the Internet to provide general information, and is planning to use it to support specific customers with a service giving IBM engineers the ability to diagnose computers remotely. Don't call us, we'll call you.

• [w] The Internet Credit Reporting Agency lets you check for the validity of social security numbers ($7.50 each), run credit reports, etc. Hmmm.

• [w] The Internet Shopping Network, is hiring webmasters and html writers at their Menlo Park, California location. Internet Shopping Network was recently purchased by the Home Shopping Network ( a $1.2 billion cable TV retailer located in St. Petersburg, FL). ISN operates the largest mall on the Internet with 20,000 products from 2,000 different vendors and is currently expanding its staff.

• [w] Kspace.Com is the home of the Kaleidoscope Art Gallery, a gallery that offers independent artists an opportunity to meet clients.

• [e][g] Senator Leahy's e-mail address is "Senator_Leahy@Leahy.Senate.Gov" He also has a gopher directory in the Senate Gopher. However, "Senate policy restricts a Senator's use of the Senate Internet servers during the sixty days before an election."

• [w] McDonalds is an example of someone asleep at the wheel. If McDonald's has a CIO, he should be fired, then rehired and fired again. This site was registered by a free lance reporter writing for Wired Magazine.

• [w][w] MTV was asleep at the wheel, and Adam Curry, one of their DJ's registered "mtv.com," installed a Sun workstation in his basement, and ran a T-1 link for about half a year until MTV woke up. The McDonald's reporter was just replicating this trick. Adam Curry split the MTV scene and opened up the Onramp, Inc.

• [w] Microsoft, Com. is developing a gopher as well as a web to support it's customers who have internet access. They are introducing a network service product called The Knowledge Base.

• [w] Millipore, Inc. is a supplier of electronic and scientific apparatus who's put their catalog online.

• [w] Nearnet is the internet service provider we are using today. Their web page provides a marketing overview, while an older BBN Internet Services Corporation, as is Palo Alto-based BARRNET.

• [o] New York Times. Although the New York Times has an an internet connection, "nytimes.com", they do not provide any user services here. Rather they use a service provided by on America Online.

• [w]
• [w] Pizza Hut will deliver pizzas to folks in Santa Cruz, California.

• [g] PBS, the Public Broadcasting Network, runs a gopher server which supports several of its special educational offerings. The Corporation for Public Broadcasting runs a new EdWeb page.

• [w] P.DEVELOPMENTS LTD [1989] publishes a manual showing how anybody can work from home.

• Promus Hotels, has web pages for each of it's hotel chains - the Embassy Suites, the Hampton Inn, and the Homewood Suites.

• [w] The Russian Trade Center has a exposition center that links several Moscow firms. It may help if your WWW browser speaks Russian.

• [w] The Smart Valley , a Silicon Valley oriented "Route 128" for the Information Superhighway.

• [w] Service Merchandise . A real shopping center on the internet. (Almost :-) At the time writing these notes, they were not quite connected. Instead, we ended up at web page of their internet service provider, The Edge.

• [w] Singapore, , the intelligent island is a national project led by the Singapore Technet with the Singapore Information Map.

• [w] Stop Smoking

• [w] Hey! Look! A real Surf Shop! Not one of those phony "cybersurfing" surfing ones. It's even got videos of the morning's surf! Lets' check it out!

• [w] David Taylor's Internet Mall a 5 story megamall. David Taylor is the author of the Internet Business Guide You can request a copy through email too: send a message to 'taylor@netcom.com' with the SUBJECT 'send mall'.

• [w][g] The University of Vermont offers a Gopher Gateway and a WWW Gateway to the campus and other Vermont sites.

• [w] A Used Car Lot! A pretty good selection of cars, too! Right next to the University. Wonder who got elected to the zoning commission :-)

• [e] Voyager, a favorite publisher of Macintosh CD-ROM's makes their catalog available via e-mail. Send a request to catalog@voyagerco.com

• [w] Wired Magazine is the Vanity Fair of the internet generation, good reading on either a sunny or a rainy day. Wired also offers a HotWired service. It's supposed to be updated daily, but sometimes things seem to slip.

• [w] The Vermont Teddy Bear Company which almost brings us home again. Except that in the disoriented world of cyberspace, Vermont Teddy Bear is really on a computer in Palo Alto California!

• [g] Vermont Educational Telecommunications Consortium. offers a gopher service for Vermont educational institutions.

• [w] Lyndon State College Weather reports from the Lyndon State College Meteorology program.

• [w] Z is for Ziff, which runs a web server and forums on America Online, Compuserve, and ...

• [w] On beyond Zebra,

• [w] are several key jumping off points, most Mosaic clients come with built-in starting points selected by the vendor. The original CERN (European Center for Particle Physics, Geneva, Switzerland), while the NSCA (National Center for Supercomputing Applications), leads the way in the USA.

• [w] The daily Dr Fun Cartoon

Construction Notes

Gopher data take less preparation. Most files are treated as if they are "plain text." The menu we generally see is just the names of the files, or the names of the directories they reside in. (This makes use of the Unix and Macintosh provision for relatively long file names.) Non-text data, i.e. binary data for images, sounds, video clips, are identified by their "file type", and are treated by appropriate programs to display images, play sounds, or show movies.

Resources

The Mosaic Handbook for Macintosh [... for MS-Windows, ... for UNIX], Dale Dougherty and Richard Korman, O'Reilly and Associates, Sebastapol, California, 1995. Includes a diskette with the SpyGlass version of Mosaic.

Net-Happenings is mailing list providing daily net updates. To subscribe, send e-mail to "majordomo@is.internic.net" with the message "subscribe net-happenings". For more information from majordomo, the message should be just the word "help".

Wired Magazine, Wired Ventures, Ltd. For more information, send email to "info@wired.com". For the World Wide Web version, check http://www.wired.com/. America Online users can go to the WIRED forum.