Internet Digest for 19-Aug-96

Internet News

Navigator 3.0 browser ready
Netscape's Navigator 3.0 offers five months of free access to the New York Times Personal Edition, SportsLine USA and other online services. Microsoft's package includes the Wall Street Journal's online edition and ESPNET SportsZone.
Netscape Navigator 3.0 is free for a 90-day trial and then costs $49.95 for a license to use it. Users in educational or non-profit organizations can continue to use it free.

NSF announces grants to improve the Internet
National Science Foundation has announced 13 grants. to U.S. universities for the development of new technologies that could dramatically improve the Internet of the future. Each of the 13 schools will get $350,000 for research projects and access to NSF's super quick computer network, the very high speed Backbone Network Service or vBNS.
The vBNS system can theoretically transfer data at a rate of 155 million bits per second, compared to 45 million bits on the Internet's major routes or a home modem's speed of just 28,800 bits per second.At, 28,800 bits per second, a modem could transmit a 10 page single-spaced letter in 12 seconds. At the end of the year, vBNS will be upgraded to 622 million bits and to 2.2 trillion bits in another few years.

Nielsen Survey Finds Internet Growth
http://www.nielsenmedia.com/commercenet/exec.html
The survey found that nearly a quarter of North Americans over the age of 16 have some form of Internet access, and that more women are now on the Net. Internet access in the U.S. and Canada grew by 50% from September 1995 through April 1996, according to a new study from Nielsen Media Research and CommerceNet.
The study said 24 percent of people 16 years or older in the United States and Canada now have access to the Internet. Women accounted for 40% of new users, versus 33% of long-term users. The survey also reported that fewer new users are computer professionals, typical "early adopters" of new technology. Only 11% of new users consider themselves computer professionals, against 23% of long-term users.

U.K. banning newsgroups
The Metropolitan Police Service this week sent a letter to U.K.-based Internet service providers demanding that they block 133 Usenet newsgroups devoted to subjects ranging from homosexuality to child pornography. The newsgroups, most of which contain pornographic material, fall under such categories as alt.binaries, alt.sex, and alt.magazines. The decision to close them stems from discussions at Scotland Yard between law enforcement authorities and the Internet Service Provider's Association, which was formed last year as a lobbying group for ISPs in the United Kingdom.

Delays, for Microsoft's Browser
The company estimates some 32,000 users tried to download the browser from Microsoft's Web site at http://www.microsoft.com/ie when it was released at midnight on Aug. 12. Although Microsoft thought it was ready to handle thousands of downloads at a time, some users trying to retrieve the program found themselves with estimated download times of eight hours or more during the day Tuesday. Even those who did manage to download the program were having trouble. On Thursday, Microsoft acknowledged a bug in the new browser that forces users to keep entering registration and password information for some sites that require it.

Sprint Offers Internet Access
Sprint licensed Netscape Communications Corp.'s Internet browsing software - used to navigate the global computer network - to offer to its customers.Sprint is phasing in the rollout in steps, attempting to avoid the technical and network problems that dogged some Internet access providers, including AT&T. After its launch in March, AT&T was unable to fill software demand, leading to delays of up to two months in signing up customers. Customer support services also were initially insufficient, tarnishing the service's reputation.
Sprint began offering a test version of the service, called Sprint Internet Passport, to 200,000 current Sprint customers. The test service is aimed at giving the company a chance to a work out any kinks in the network and customer support and avoid software delays. Later this fall, Sprint will make the service available to the general market through two price plans. The first, at $19.95 a month for unlimited access, is on par with competitor's offers. The other, at $1.50 an hour, is lower than the typical $2.50 an hour after a certain amount of free time other companies charge.

Hackers Deface U.S. Dept. of Justice Web Site
Hackers broke into the U.S. Department of Justice's Web site, desecrating it with swastikas, obscene pictures, and other derogatory statements in protest of the federal government's support of the Communications Decency Act (CDA). Hackers changed the site to the U.S. Department of Injustice and added pornographic pictures. The hackers also added links to Web sites criticizing Bill Clinton, Bob Dole, and Pat Buchanan. The break-in was discovered Saturday morning and consequently the Web site was shut down for the day.

Articles

Sprint to Offer Internet Access
http://nytsyn.com/live/Latest_columns/233_082096_144116_11852.html

MS Says 1 Million Downloaded Its Browser
http://nytsyn.com/live/Latest_columns/233_082096_144008_11586.html

Microsoft Browser Catches a Tailwind
http://www.webweek.com/96Aug19/news/microsoft.html

GTE, Microsoft Test High-Speed Internet Access
http://www.webweek.com/ww-online/96Aug19/news/gte.html

Best Sites of the Week

Comedy Central
http://www.comcentral.com
Comedy Central executives have heralded the use of audio clips,rather than video clips, as key to the site's growth.

Hollywood on Hand
http://www.hollywood.com

Dad's In the Kitchen.
http://www.dinersgrapevine.com

Digital Infamy
http://www.american-photo.com
Where you can click on and download photos of your favorite movie stars.

Supercars Past and Present
http://www.bc1.com/users/owen/supercars/

High-tech Jobs
http://job.sid.net/

HTML CGI and Programming Help

Chuck's GIF Animation Site
http://www.cswnet.com/~ozarksof

Solaris Support Guide
http://www.lafayette.edu/~mulligaj/Solaris.html

PigMail - a new kind of tool, a people browser.
http://www.cyberpuppy.com/pminfo.html

Help Yourself - Gifs, backgrounds, and horizontal rules.
http://garnet.acns.fsu.edu/~jjc6370/gifs.html

Index - Clipart Directory
http://www.clipart.com/

VRMLSite Magazine - VRML/Java news, tutorials, articles and links.
http://www.vrmlsite.com/

Animated Gif Collection [bulgarianet.com]
http://www.bulgarianet.com/animation/index.html

Page Creation Tips
http://www.killeen.com/home/jpost/web.html

Top Ten Mistakes in Web Design - from Jakob Nielsen's Alert Box.
http://www.sun.com/960416/columns/alertbox/index.html

Marketing Articles and Sites

A field of nightmares on the Net
http://www.yahoo.com/headlines/960819/tech/stories/plugged_1.html

Plugged In: A Busier Web?
http://www.yahoo.com/headlines/960812/tech/stories/plugged_1.html

Milking money out of the Net
http://www.cnet.com/Content/News/Files/0,16,2158,00.html

Rift Over Terminology: Is It a Hit, Visit or Page View?
http://www.webweek.com/ww-online/96Aug19/marketing/rift.html

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About the Author: Harold Carey is the president of IBIC Internet Services now (a Magellan "3-Star" site) . He is an International known Author, and Consultant to many Business such as Coca-Cola, McDonnell Information Systems, and States of Utah, and California. He has been interviewed on Radio and Television and has been a newspaper columnist for the Utah County Journal

He created, hosts and maintains over 300 WWW pages and Web sites the latest being the Home Business Center. http://www.homebusiness.com.
. His site at http://www.ibic.com get thousands of accesses a day and email comments and questions from all over the world.

His most popular sites are:
Netscape Enhancement Index - http://www.ibic.com/Program/NScapeHome.html
Programming Netscape 2.0 - http://www.ibic.com/NIndex/NSIHome.html
Top of the Web - http://www.ibic.com/IBIC/TopIntro.html

About our Company: IBIC Internet Services sells low cost full function giving you all the advantages of having you own server with a T3 45mps connection to the internet backbone.

WebDesign by Harold Carey Jr.

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