RMIsaac's CyberPage

RMIsaac's CyberPage CONTENTS: *General & Miscellaneous *(E)-mail *Webpage Development *Browsing the Web *Search Engines *Security *Demographics & Surveys *Spam & Commercialization *Graphics *Fun or Interesting

GENERAL AND MISCELLANEOUS:

Where it all began: World Wide Web Home Page
Ever wonder what all that cyber-jargon means? Look it up in the Free On-line Dictionary of Computing
Computer Currents On-line Dictionary
Acronym and abbreviations
How the Internet Works
Liszt: "If you're wondering if an email discussion group exists about a particular topic, try this useful directory of mailing lists. Enter any word or phrase to search over 32,000 listserv, listproc, majordomo mailing lists and independently managed lists from nearly 900 sites."
ONElist: "free mailing list service where you can start and manage new e-mail communities, subscribe to existing communities"; has an extensive list of e-mail lists spanning a wide variety of topics
Sounds from Cyberspace: useful links from 'Life on the Internet' for those who need the helper applications to hear sounds off the Net, including Virtual Radio and RealAudio
Internet Hoaxes

Alligators in the sewers? Poodles in the microwave? Sick boy wants postcards? GoodTimes virus? Check the Urban Legends page, including:

     * David and Barbara Mikkelson's Urban Legend Reference Pages
     * Arthur Goldstuck's Legends from a Small Country
     * Dave Wilton's home page, containing English language and etymology
       information and links 
     * Andy Warinner's home page, which debunks and comments on several
       interesting urban legends and factoids
     * Terry Chan's UL material

The AFU & Urban Legends Archive: the archives of alt.folklore.urban
Trolls, Hoaxes, Culture Jamming, Poetic Terrorism, Media Hacks, Frauds, Impostors, Spoofs, Counterfeits, Fakes, Pranks, Scams, Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds

(E)MAIL:

HotMail: web-based e-mail
When you write email, don't forget! The Core Rules of Netiquette: excerpted from Netiquette by Virginia Shea.
Anonymous Email: use the subject line "remailer-help" for a help file
Remind U-Mail: send yourself e-mail reminders of significant dates; free of charge
e-minder: will send you e-mail reminders of important events in your life
Why send email when you can Fakemail?
The Electric Postcard: having a great time in cyberspace, wish you were virtually here!

WEBPAGE DEVELOPMENT:

Yale Web Style Guide: all you need to know to design a webpage
Special characters for HTML
How to Build a Webpage: a very organized and thorough site with lots of links to helpful pages (HTML authoring, etc.)
Bobby: "a free web-based service that will help you make web pages accessible to people with disabilities. It will also find HTML compatibility problems that prevent pages from displaying correctly on different web browsers."
What does your HTML look like without graphics?
Thalia: test colors for backgrounds and text and links using this page
ColorMaker: use this site to test colors
Undocumented Internet Secrets: "A street-smart guide to using the Web to get ahead, spy on the competition, and uncover hidden stashes of incredible free stuff..." Contains lots of good tips on webpage design with hypertexted links to the recommended sites. Features include: * Secret Steals and Deals (free Internet access, hidden stashes of giveaway software) * Get the Good Stuff (how you how to break into the Web's secret cache) * Watch Your Back (dig up dirt--and protect yourself) * Webmaster Tricks
A Kinder, Gentler HTML Validator to check the HTML syntax of your webpage
WebTechs HTML Validation Service
NetMechanic: submit your URL, it will validate your links and notify you when it is done; you can then go to a hypertext report
Submission pages of various search engines: very convenient!
Submit It!: another spot to submit your webpage to numerous search engines
Search Engine Submission Tips
wwwstat-1.0: an application to figure statistics for your webpage

BROWSING:

Surf the Web ANONYMOUSLY: a very important tool, as much personal information about yourself can be gathered every time you make a hit on a website!
Toss them? Crush them? Find out about Cookies
Netscape: "Netscape's Navigator is the very popular WWW browser on the Internet, under attack from Microsoft. Support it!
BrowserWatch: "You can monitor everything that is happening in the world of WWW browsers at this site - whether your interest is in new browsers, servers, cgi's, html editors, plug-ins, or other software-related offerings of interest to users and developers of the Web."
Browser Stats: find out if you have the latest version of your browser

SEARCH ENGINES:

did you know the top 10 search terms (on Inktomi)?

...sex/nude/pictures/adult/women/software/erotic/erotica/gay/naked!

Not quite what you think: VOYEUR: lets you see what search-terms are being used at this very moment
Navigating the Web: Using Web Search Engines and Evaluating Web Resources * Navigating the Web * Web Search Engines * Evaluating Web Sites * Citing Electronic Sources

Web Directories:
- Yahoo!: a web directory (not an index) of 40,000 sites, organized by subject; search by single or multiple words; Boolean equivalent options
- Personalized Yahoo
- Gopher Jewels: Over 2,000 pointers to information by category
- Webring: over 15,000 of them already exist. They are a new way to find sites of interest to you. Webrings link sites of similar content and you can move from one to the next without a lot of searching or passing through sites of no interest. My JewishPage is part of the Jewish Ring, for example.

Lists of Search Engines:

Netscape's Internet Search: links to a dozen or so of the most popular search sites
Search Engine Listings
- Search Engine Reviews Chart
NlightN: an interface to the most popular search engines
Search the Web through varios Web browsers, arranged by subject
All-in-One Search Page for a variety of search engines for the Web; a bit confusing

Search engines (Web indexes):

Google!: "uses a complicated mathematical analysis, calculated on more than a billion hyperlinks on the web, to return high-quality search results... uses sophisticated text-matching techniques to find pages that are both important and relevant to your search...gives you an excerpt of the text that matches your query -- with your search terms in bold -- right in the search results...returns pages which match all of your search terms in the text of the page or the link anchors pointing to it...keeps a copy of many of the web pages it returns. If the server is down or otherwise not available, Google!'s copy of the page can be a life saver. Using our cached version can often be much faster than following the regular link, though the information you receive will be less up to date. But in many cases, no more frustrating 404 Not Found errors!"
AltaVista: full-text index; has the largest database: 22 million Web pages and 13,000 Usenet newsgroups; Boolean terms OK, as well as proximity "near"; relevancy rankings "not the most effective"; may restrict searches to certain parts of documents (titles, links, dates, etc.); does not support stemming; gives the most comprehensive results, "when you want to find as much as you can on a single topic" (Internet World survey, 5/96)
Excite: full-text index of the Web (1.5m pages using the most popular sites); searches by content rather than keyword; slower; 50,000 Websites, 10,000 newsgroups; relevancy ranking; no Boolean logic; does not display URLs in the search results; good for those interested in mainstream topics which are widely discussed
InfoSeek: most complete and relevant results (Internet World survey, 5/96); full-text index (WWW, FTP, gopher); proximity rankings used; relevancy rankings; Similar Pages command; limited database at present; for when you want to find a specific piece of information
Inktomi: one of the largest indexes of the Web; no proximity option
Lycos: partial-text index (based on headers, titles, links, first few words) of WWW, gopher, FTP files; relevancy ranking, partly based on sites' popularity; search term marked in bold in results; Boolean search OK; minus sign (-) decreases relevancy of search term; casts a wide net
Direct Hit: "you can instantly see the best sites that other people have selected as the most relevant sites for your search request. You benefit from the human intelligence of all previous searchers who were looking for similar information...Direct Hit tracks what sites previous Internet searchers have actually selected from the search results list to determine the relevancy of sites. Based on these previous selections and a number of other metrics, Direct Hit provides highly relevant search results for the next searcher who is looking for similar information."
OpenText: Boolean operators OK; relevancy score; three types of searches: *simple term; *multiple terms and operators, with field filter (title, URL, etc.); * your own weighted search; Similar Pages command; good if you care to expend some effort tailoring your search
WebCrawler: does not display text summary for found items; sparse customization options; no Boolean operators or upper-case letters; relevancy ranking; uses well-traveled pages; 500,000 websites at present; good for finding the most popular pages, but not for complex searches
Galaxy: "The Web's resources, compiled for professionals...": Business And Commerce; Engineering And Technology; Government; Humanities; Law; Medicine; Reference; Science; Social Sciences

"Meta"-Search Engines (search search engines):

Ask Jeeves!: searches the top several search engines and presents the results; when going to a result, leaves a frame behind so you can return to Ask Jeeves! easily
All4One: executes searches in Yahoo!, Lycos, AltaVista, and Webcrawler simultaneously
Metacrawler: queries nine search engines simultaneously; collates, ranks and displays the results; search by type of site; use + before essential words
SavvySearch: queries 25 search engines; ranks results; search plan scans appropriate search engines first, others may be invoked later
A great search engine: WebTaxi: you can narrow the number of engines by subject; WebTaxi can also remain as a frame on your screen, ready to use, while you continue to surf the Web

Usenet searches:

DejaNews: searches Usenet newsgroups (except alt.*)
Search for a Newsgroup on a given subject
Zen & the Art of the Internet: "Explains what Usenet is and is not, as well as its history, diversity, and propagation of the news."
Usenet FAQ
list of Usenet FAQs for all sorts of newsgroups

SECURITY:

Official PGP User's Guide, the user's manual for PGP (Pretty Good Privacy) public-key cryptography software by Phil Zimmermann, its inventor
Why Do You Need PGP?

DEMOGRAPHICS/SURVEYS:

GVU Center's WWW User Survey Home Page: join thousands of others in this semi-annual survey of Web demographics! This survey included questions on:

	- Basic Demographics (new questions!)
	- Web and Internet Usage
	- Data Privacy (new questions!)
	- Politics
	- Consumer Opinions and Behaviors
	- Webmasters
	- HTML Authoring, Java
	- Web Service Providers

GVU's (Graphics, Visualization, and Usability Center) 8th WWW User survey results: * general demographics * internet/web usage * electronic privacy * consumer issues * cultural issues in web design *...and more
Find out the latest Internet statistics
InfoQuest! Internet Surveys & Statistics: lots and lots of analyses of the growth of the Web, the Internet and its users
Growth and Usage of the Web and the Internet: "Want to know how big the Internet is? How fast is it growing? Will it ever stop? These pages are meant to be a collection of Internet statistics in one place."

Breakdown of Internic Domains: such as:

   .com 2,680,546
   .net 258,902
   .org 210,466
   .edu 4,678
   .gov 564

ISO Country Codes: for when you wonder what the two-letter suffix for Mali is...
ISO Country domains
Country Domains to Watch: Three country-code domains are being marketed as alternatives to .com such as .tm (Turkmenistan), .nu (Niue), and .to (Tonga)
Host Count History: see the exponential growth of the Net through the fantastic growth of the number of hosts
Distributions by Top-Level Domain Name (by name): i.e. how many .edu (.com, .de, .jp, .mil) sites are there? (in alphabetical order)
Distributions by Top-Level Domain Name (by hostcount): i.e. how many .edu (.com, .de, .jp, .mil) sites are there? (in order of how many there are)
100 U.S Cities with the most domain names
Mac Software Archives
Free Mac Software

SPAM AND COMMERCIALIZATION:

Hate commercialization of the Web? Blacklist of Internet Advertisers
Beating the E-Mail Spammers
Coalition Against Unsolicited Commercial Email
Washington State Junk Email Spam Law: a 1998 law now protects Washington State citizens against unsolicited commercial email. See how at the Attorney General's page
Spam Filter; another Spam Filter

GRAPHICS:

w e b s e r v i c e s . . . Graphics Archive
Animated GIF links
Animated GIF links
Animated GIF Links
CyberOlive Animated GIFs
Can you tell I'm fond of TEXTURES?
GIF Wizard will compress your GIFs
Barry's Clip Art
ArtToday clip art
Triangles and rainbows and other queer stuff to spice up your webpage:
- Rainbow Icon Archive
- Queer Icons
ASCII Art: lots of it, too, including signatures and Star Trek ASCII art and Smilies
All about FIGlets
Figlet Ascii Font Converter

FUN OR INTERESTING:

What's Cool on the Net, including the Site of the Day and LOTS of other neat stuff
Useless Domain Names
!sdrawkcaB: this web browser displays pages REVERSED! Has to be seen to be believed!
Shredder: "The web browser is an organ of perception through which we 'see' the web. It filters and organizes a huge mass of structured information that spans continents, is constantly growing, reorganizing itself, shifting its appearance, evolving. The Shredder presents this global structure as a chaotic, irrational, raucous collage. By altering the HTML code before the browser reads it, the Shredder appropriates the data of the web, transforming it into a parallel web. Content become abstraction. Text becomes graphics. Information becomes art."
The End of the Internet
AltaVista Translation Service: will translate text or a whole webpage (if you provide the URL) into French, German, Spanish or Portuguese. Of course it makes mistakes but that's what's so fascinating about it!
The Dialectizer: will "translate" text or a webpage to: Redneck, Jive, Cockney, Elmer Fudd, Swedish Chef, Moron, or Pig Latin.
Not quite what you think: VOYEUR: lets you see what search-terms are being used at this very moment
On the other hand, this IS voyeurism: Sean Patrick Live!: like the JennyCam, this features every moment in the life of a gay man at home
Domain Name Disputes
Domain Name Disputes: Cases
Here you will find (very) many Useless Sites
Useless Pages
More Useless Pages, including a particularly amusing Abandoned Site
Bad Web Pages: Yahoo listing
Website Parodies: Yahoo listing
AOL sucks
The Macintosh Secret Trick List
Moochers: free software on the 'net

Comments? Write me at rmisaac@gmail.com