Internet Resources Newsletter Issue 28 (Section D)

.....Previous Section

New MAILBASE Lists:

construct-it

This list is for researchers, academics and those who are interested in IT applications for the construction process. It provides a forum for the exchange of information on current research and initiatives for promoting the use of IT in the construction industry.

URL: http://www.mailbase.ac.uk/lists/construct-it/

insect-chemical-ecology

The study of intra- and interspecific communication between insects and their perception of the environment, using chemicals acting as signals or messengers.

URL: http://www.mailbase.ac.uk/lists/insect-chemical-ecology/

int-econ-biz-educators

A list for those interested in teaching, learning and currciulum issues involved in international economics and business education.

URL: http://www.mailbase.ac.uk/lists/int-econ-biz-educators/

software-teaching

This is an open list run by the Specialist Interest Group in the Teaching of Software Engineering (SIGToSE). It aims to provide a forum for all interested parties to exchange ideas, discuss issues, and present views on the teaching of software engineering in universities.

URL: http://www.mailbase.ac.uk/lists/software-teaching/

For information on how to subscribe to Mailbase lists, please see Issue 1 of Internet Resources Newsletter. More detailed information about Mailbase lists is always available from the Mailbase WWW Server ( URL: http://www.mailbase.ac.uk/ ).

.....Return to Table of Contents

New Listserv Lists and other E-Mail and FTP Resources:

Accessing The Internet By E-Mail - Doctor Bob's Guide to Offline Internet Access, 6th Edition - November 1996

To get the latest edition, send e-mail to:

    mailbase@mailbase.ac.uk 

Enter only this line in the BODY of the note:
  
    send lis-iis e-access-inet.txt

Clinical Laboratory Science Web Review

clsweb on majordomo@majordomo.srv.ualberta.ca

The primary  purpose of clsweb is to provide a forum to review Internet
resources of interest to medical laboratory professionals, focusing on but
(not limited to) world-wide web public and commercial sites.  It is
first-and-foremost a place to post reviews, rather than a discussion list.
However, a secondary purpose is to discuss the merits of particular sites,
lists, and software that have been reviewed.

To subscribe to the regular list and receive individual messages, send this
message to majordomo@majordomo.srv.ualberta.ca in the body of mail:

subscribe clsweb yourE-mail@address (your name)

For example:  subscribe clsweb psmith@foo.bar.gov (Pat Smith)

To subscribe to a digested version of the list (and receive one digested
message/day), send this message to majordomo@majordomo.srv.ualberta.ca

subscribe clsweb-digest yourE-mail@address (your name)

The address of the the list is  clsweb@majordomo.srv.ualberta.ca

.....Return to Table of Contents

In the course of finding sites of interest for this Newsletter, we sometimes come across Web sites which we feel deserve slightly more than a passing mention. Each month we will try to pick out one or more such sites, and give them a short review. The sites will normally be UK based, may be small or large, and be of interest or potential interest to academics. After lengthy discussions we have decided, with incredible creativity, to call these: Nice Web Sites. Details of previous Nice Web Sites are available in the Nice Web Site Archive.

R.I.C.S. (Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors )

URL: http://www.rics.org.uk/

Almost a Nice Web Site.

The Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (RICS) is the world's largest professional society of surveyors and has over 70,000 members with a further 20,000 in training. The RICS Web site is almost up to the standard one would expect from such an institution - it is attractive without being over the top and contains quite a lot of useful information.

I almost made it the Nice Web Site of the month, but then I looked at http://www.pro-net.co.uk/property/highway/academia.html, which is supposed to be a list of academic institutions which provide property related information on the Internet, but Heriot-Watt is not listed! Then I searched the site, but could not find ADAM: Art Design Architecture & Media Information Gateway, RUDI: Resources for Urban Design Information or EEVL: the Edinburgh Engineering Virtual Library.

The lists were actually at the Pro-Net 'Property Highway' Index site rather than the RICS site, but Pro-Net Internet Services Ltd produce the RICS pages.

So, almost a Nice Web Site, with information about surveying techniques, lots of press releases, and an A to Z of RICS professional guidance notes.

Roddy MacLeod

.....Return to Table of Contents

The Internet in Print - Index

Here is an index of all of the printed publications which have been reviewed in the Internet in Print section of the Internet Resources Newsletter. The index indicates in which issue the review or notes appeared.

.....Return to Table of Contents

The Internet in Print

EM - Electronic Markets

Publisher: vdf Hochschulverlag AG an der ETH Zurich, ETH Zentrum, CH-8092 Zurich
Frequency: Quarterly
Subscription: US$64 (4 editions)
ISSN: 1019-6781
Email: em-newsletter@smtpgate.unisg.ch

Supported by the Swiss Reinsurance Company, and with a print run of 3,000, the EM Newsletter is now in its sixth year. It covers electronic markets, electronic commerce, and electronic product catalogues, and is unlike some other publications in this area in that it is not simply trying to jump on the Internet bandwagon but rather has been in publication for some time. It shows a maturity of outlook towards its subject.

Its articles about Electronic Data Exchange (EDI), intercompany communications, and networked entreprise, as related to specific industries or companies are well researched but tend to be slightly too brief for in-depth needs. However, for information systems professionals this would be an interesting publication which deserves to be abstracted in relevant bibliographic databases.

Roddy MacLeod

Electronic Finance

Publisher: Learned Information Europe Ltd., Woodside, Hinksey Hill, Oxford, OX1 5BE
Frequency: Monthly
Subscription: £120 p.a.
Email: subscriptions@learned.co.uk
Web: http://www.learned.co.uk/li/

Electronic Finance started publication in late 1996 when it joined the Learned Information stable of periodicals/newsletter which includes Information World Review, Online & CDROM Review, and The Electronic Library. The issue I have to hand (December 1996) extends to 16 pages, and is aimed at financial professionals who have an interest in the use of digital and telecommunications technology. This includes management accountants, tax advisers, auditors, financial directors, and such like. As someone whose main experience of 'high finance' extends only to paying the monthly MacLeod household Visa bill, perhaps I am not the best person to comment on the accuracy and usefulness of the articles in this newsletter which are fairly brief and cover such topics as online business practices and electronic security - the latter being the sort of subject which will run and run in this type of publication.

The news items mostly cover reports from conferences (CBI Annual Conference, Business Links National Conference, Electronic Commercie 96), reports about UK Government announcements on relevant topics, and other specialist subjects. The statistics section, to me, seems the weakest. It shows a graph detailing estimated e-cash in circulation - $0 in 1966 up to $9,000,000,000 in 2006. To understand any of this it would be necessary to read the related report published by OVUM.

The Internet Directory lists Web sites for accountants, banks, UK Government, US Government, and various financial magazines, several of which are new to me.

Summary: A specialist publication which shows promise.

Roddy MacLeod

Digital Publishing Strategies

Publisher: Learned Information Europe Ltd., Woodside, Hinksey Hill, Oxford, OX1 5BE
Frequency: Monthly
Subscription: £175 p.a.
Email: subscriptions@learned.co.uk
Web: http://www.learned.co.uk/li/

I have the 3rd issue (November 1996) of this Newsletter, which is 16 pages long, to hand. At £175 per annum for a monthly publication, that works out at almost £1 per page, but as the prospective audience includes those who would like to profit or who are already profiting from from publishing new media, I suppose that is a reasonable price.

Looking through the News section I notice various items which have appeared elsewhere, and I can't help wondering if the market for Digital Strategies is not exactly the same as that for Information World Review, which is also published by Learned Information. The list of companies mentioned in the News section includes Frost & Sullivan, AOL, Wired Inc., Dow Jones, Microinfo, Reader's Digest, Cable and Wireless, Emap, SilverPlatter, and MS. The News section is followed by short articles about the UK Internet market, Web site design, and a case study of the Chicago Sun-Times. Apart from a couple of other items and some basic data about five electronic journals, thats about it.

Digital Publishing Strategies is focussed, well-informed, and expensive.

Roddy MacLeod

universal net.Connect

Publisher: netConnections Ltd, Cromwell House, 14 Fulwood Place, London WC1V 6HZ
Frequency: Monthly
Subscription: £175 (12 issues)
Email: Publisher@netConnections.co.uk

This is a monthly publication which is available in print and electronic format (as a Lotus Notes database or on the Internet) in English, French, and Spanish. The issue I have is number 2 dated Nov/Dec 1996. It is almost entirely dedicated to Lotus software, and as such is of interest to those with an involvement in groupware. It contains assurances that JavaSoft is supported by Lotus Components, plus articles about modems, and the M.A.I.D. online business information system.

Roddy MacLeod

Computimes

Publisher: Computimes, IT Publications, Balai Berita, 31 Jalan Riong, 59100 Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
Frequency: twice weekly
Email: itp@pop.jaring.my

This is a supplement to the New Straits Times and is published every Monday and Thursday. It stretches to over 50 pages of informative computer and network news. The emphasis is on computer business news from this very wired part of the world, but it also includes items of relevance to the Internet user. WebTV, the breakdown of the Internet, AOL, E-mail VirusWall, Internet access rates in Malaysia, on-line marketing, home-page creation, and other topics are covered in the October 24 issue being reviewed. It is nice to see subject being tackled from a non-US or UK perspective.

Roddy MacLeod

Internet Know How

Publisher: Future Publishing Ltd., 30 Monmouth Street, Bqath, North Somerset, BA1 2BW
Frequency: ?
Subscription: £2.50 per issue
Email: nmerritt@futurenet.co.uk (editor)
Web: http://www.futurenet.co.uk/

IKH is a perfectly reasonable publication from the same people who produce .net. It is subtitled 'The Internet magazine for beginners' which suggests that it is aimed at casual purchasers rather than subscribers, who surely would not remain beginners indefinitely. The first issue became available in December 1996, and does what it aims to do by providing a more or less jargon free introduction to the Internet.

I am not altogether happy with the reasons given for someone wanting to connect to the Internet, which are stated as including swapping jokes, sending business letters, exchanging cookery recipes, booking holidays, and catching up on gossip. I hope that there is more to it than that, but perhaps those reasons will attract people who may go on the appreciate other aspects of the net. As far as IKH is concerned, it is necessary to spend at least £1500 on a PC loaded with Windows 95 and a further £200 on a suitable modem in order to get connected, and one article shows exactly what sockets at the back of a PC to plug all of the spagetti into. Another section deals with access providers - four are analysed (AOL, U-Net, Compuserve, and MSN) and then there is an extensive set of pages about the Web.

The ten 'first places to visit' are Futurenet (the publishers of IKH), Planet Internet who provide the CD-ROM disc which comes with Issue 1, the Free software page from Microsoft, Internet Welcome for an introduction to the net, Netscape, Yahoo (nice to see the UK site listed), the Press Association, Events Online for cinema, music, and TV listings, Moneywise for personal finance advice, and Netmart for window shopping. Yahoo and Alta Vista are the chosen Internet indexes.

If anything, IKH goes a little too far for beginners, including as it does information about FTPing free software, getting rid of adverts using Fast Forward, and the Data Protection Act, however the reviews of censor software will be welcome to those home users who are worried about access to unsuitable material by children.

I was pleased to see that Heriot-Watt University received a mention in the Educational section through its connection with the Electronic University Network where it offers the Master of Business Administration (MBA) course.

IKH is a good publication for those with little knowledge of the Internet who want to connect from their homes.

Roddy MacLeod

World Wide Web Journal

Publisher: O'Rielley & Associates, 101 Morris St., Sebastopol, CA 95472
Frequency: Quarterly
Subscription: $105 (Europe), $75 (USA)
ISSN: 1085-2301
Email: sara@ora.com
Web: http://www.ora.com/

One advantage of editing the Internet Resources Newsletter is that I can request review copies of Internet-related journals from publishers and very often they arrive promptly in the post. A slight disadvantage is when these journals turn out to be so lengthy that to do them justice would require more time than I have available.

Volume 1 Issue 1 of the World Wide Web Journal is a special issue, published at the end of 1995, which extends to over 700 pages. It consists of the Conference Proceedings of the Fourth International World Wide Web Conference, held in Boston, Massachusetts, from December 11-14, 1995. The Conference was attended by over 1200 delegates from 37 countries and was obviously a major event. Available here is the text of 57 papers plus two papers from regional conferences.

The papers cover a lot of interesting topics, from Web security, electronic commerce, HTML authoring, intelligent agents, resource discovery, to caching and IAFA templates. Many of the authors are well known internationally, and the UK is well represented with contributions from Owen Rees of the ANSA Project, Cambridge, David Ingham, University of Newcastle upon Tyne, David Beckett, University of Kent, Andrew Hunter, University of Sunderland, Chris Lilley, University of Manchester, John Davies, BT Laboratories, and Leslie Carr, University of Southampton.

This journal is a technical publication which is aimed especially at webmasters, but it is also of interest to programmers, information managers, computer scientists, and those concerned with the present and future direction of the Internet. It is the mouthpiece of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) and is published by O'Reilly & Associates who have rapidly become responsible for the production of an extremely impressive collection of books about the Internet.

Archives of back issues are available at the Web site for the Journal, and here can be found the full text of a large number of very valuable papers.

.....Return to Table of Contents

Network News

BIDS News

The Latest BIDS News Bulletin (Christmas 1996) is available at:

URL: http://www.bids.ac.uk/news.html

NISS News

A week-by-week listing of new information resources on the NISS (National Information Services and Systems) Information Gateway selected by experts in the subject area is available at:

URL: http://www.niss.ac.uk/welcome/whatsnew.html

BUBL News

BUBL has retained a strong library element, but now provides a subject-based service to the academic and research community more generally, this via the BUBL Subject Tree. The latest news from BUBL is available at:

URL: http://www.bubl.bath.ac.uk/BUBL/Newnews.html

EEVL News

The latest Additions to EEVL (Edinburgh Engineering Virtual Library) covering the period 13 Nov - 11 Dec 1996 are available at:

URL: http://www.mailbase.ac.uk/lists/eevl/1996-12/0000.html

SOSIG News

The latest additions to SOSIG (Social Science Information Gateway) are available at:

URL: http://sosig.esrc.bris.ac.uk/Subjects/new.html

CHEST News

CHEST aims to obtain quality commercial software, datasets, training materials and other IT products for the Education and Research Community at low prices and attractive licence terms. The latest news from CHEST is available at:

URL: http://www.chest.ac.uk/news.html

.....Return to Table of Contents

Using Mailing Lists

There was a discussion recently on one of the Mailbase mailing lists about existing documentation on using mailing lists. Mailing lists can be very useful sources of information, but how do you go about joining, and how do they work? The following resources have been produced by various organisations to help you.

Introduction to Mailing Lists

Written by Duncan Branley, of Goldsmiths Computer Services

URL: http://www.gold.ac.uk/guides/c701.html

Discussion Lists: Mail List Manager Commands

By James Milles of Saint Louis University Law Library.

URL: http://www.usq.edu.au/library/pubsexms/elecinfo/mailser.htm

Electronic Mail Discussion Lists

By Paul Hollands - Internet Information Officer - Loughborough University

URL: http://www.lboro.ac.uk/info/training/email_lists.htm

Electronic mailing lists

From UCL Library

URL: http://www.ucl.ac.uk/Library/E_maillists.html

How to ... be a Mailbase user

From Newcastle University Computing Service.

URL: http://www.ncl.ac.uk/ucs/docs/G5.html

Email Discussion List and Usenet News information

Also from Loughborough University.

URL: http://www.lboro.ac.uk/info/lists.htm

Some useful links are also available from: http://www.hw.ac.uk/libWWW/faculty/internet.html#ab5

.....Return to Table of Contents

Recent Internet Books in Heriot-Watt University Library

Quick Reference
011.05 DIR
Directory of electronic journals, newsletters and discussion lists
6th ed., Compiled by Dru Mogge and Diane Kovaks
Association of Research Libraries
1996

001.66 SHI
Culture of Internet
edited by Rob Shields
Sage publications, 1996

.....Return to Table of Contents

Get a life ! Leisure Time

Pick 'N Save, Edinburgh

URL: http://members.aol.com/amritpals/picknsave/index.htm

Views of Scotland & the West Highland Way

URL: http://www.burns-harris.co.uk/whway/

The Stone of Destiny

URL: http://www.scotborders.co.uk/holidaynet/stone/destiny.html

E_Pages

Edinburgh & Lothian's Scotland UK directory

URL: http://www.cybersurf.co.uk/e_pages

Welcome to Scotland

An official Scottish Tourist Board site

URL: http://www.autumn.scotland.net

Some pages about The Big Yin

URL: http://dspace.dial.pipex.com/town/place/xaa93/

Wet Wet Wet

URL: http://www.dcs.gla.ac.uk/~cassidyc/Wet

Scottish Tiddlywinks Association

URL: http://www-groups.dcs.st-and.ac.uk./~ben/tiddlywinks/

British beer links

URL: http://www.compulink.co.uk/~dalecu/

Scottish Rugby Magazine

URL: http://www.webadvertising.co.uk/scottishrugby/

Deadhead Comics, Edinburgh

URL: http://www.compura.com/deadhead/index.htm

UK-GOLF's Scottish Menu

URL: http://www.uk-golf.com/scotland/

Feedback

Student magazine from Leeds University

URL: http://www.feedback.org.uk/

Edinburgh Pub Tour

URL: http://www.electrum.co.uk/pubs

Sportsman's Association of Great Britain & Northern Ireland

URL: http://www.sagbni.org

Roddy MacLeod

.....Return to Table of Contents

STOP PRESS! UK Engineering Search Engine

URL: http://www.eevl.ac.uk/uksearch.html

An extremely useful new service has been made available by EEVL: the Edinburgh Engineering Virtual Library. It is called the UK Engineering Search Engine, and basically it is a searchable index of every word from the Web pages of almost all of the UK engineering resources included in the EEVL database. Sites such as Mailbase and NISS are not included (these have their own indexes anyway) but several hundred other Web sites are included. The Search Engine is a Harvest index of the home pages plus those pages linked to from the home-pages, plus pages linked to from those pages, up to a maximum of 250 pages per site.

What this means is that there is now a convenient, quick, and easy way to search for specialised Engineering information on the Internet in the UK. The UK Engineering Search Engine is similar in concept to Alta Vista and HotBot, except that it is much more focused than those all-encompassing indexes and the results of a search for engineering information are likely to be far more relevant. Search for any specific engineering topic and if there are any Web pages at UK Internet sites then you are likely to locate them. The UK Engineering Search Engine also supports phrase searching and Boolean logic (using And or Or).

.....Return to Table of Contents

End of Internet Resources Newsletter Issue 28 - January 1997

.....Return to Table of Contents

.....Previous Section