Homeowners are logging on to solve their household problems. They check into conferences, forums, newsgroups, and mailing lists for feedback from contractors, architects, and fix-it experts on anything from broken ceiling fans and whistling dryers to rotting decks and other annoyances. They're seeking advice on anything related to house, garden, and finances.
The CHIMNEYS-L mailing list is about chimney maintenance. Topics of interest include fire prevention, safety issues, new products, trouble shooting, cleaning technics, and anything you can think of about the chimney cleaning industry. To subscribe, send an email to
LISTSERV@HOME.EASE.LSOFT.COM
Put SUBSCRIBE in the subject line. Put your full name, name of your company for affiliation, state and/or country in the body of the message.
The newsgroup misc.consumers.house on Usenet is where you can discuss anything related to owning and maintaining a house. For antiques, join a newsgroup in the rec.antiques hierarchy. First, check out the FAQ file at http://www.calweb.com/~smccrory/recantfaq.html.
Several software libraries offer shareware and public domain programs to help you plan and maintain your house.
There are also personal inventory programs (to help you keep track of belongings), and programs to help you plan allocation of the space in your home. . .
Other programs will help you prepare tax return forms, plan next year's taxes, calculate interests and down-payments on your loans, and do double- entry money-management (personal book-keeping and checkbook balancing).
To succeed as a private investor, the experts say, you must have a strategy that is appropriate to your unique circumstances, resources for keeping up to date on investment options, and tools for managing the process of investing. It sure is an information-intensive activity and a constant learning process that requires the up-to-date, exhaustive, and anecdotal information that online services are perfectly suited to meet.
Usenet has several newsgroups under the misc.invest hierarchy. Browse them at DejaNews: http://www.dejanews.com/info/toplevel.shtml.
House is also home. To bring more "life" into life, some devote themselves to fashion. For links to fashion-related Usenet newsgroups and mailing lists, visit http://members.tripod.com/~cjlutz/Usenet.html.
Others consider adopting a child. For information and experiences, check out the ADOPTION mailing list on LISTSERV@MAELSTROM.STJOHNS.EDU. The National Issues Forum on CompuServe has a message section called "Adoption Today."
Then there is television. The Interactive Satellite Chart covers all satellite TV channels worldwide with links to broadcasters' home pages. URL: http://www.satcodx.org/
Select your region of world for a list of reachable satellites. The regions are (1) Europe, Africa and Middle East, (2) North and South America, (3) Asia and South Pacific. Click on a satellite, like Hispasat at 30 degrees W, for a list of TV channels with frequencies, Web links, encoding schemes (if any), sound frequencies, and TV text information.
Some sample Web addresses for TV stations:
You will find "Die Tages-uebersicht aller Sender nach Genre" for European TV channels at Pro Sieben Online at http://www.pro-sieben.de/. Categories include Spielfilm, Information, Unterhaltung, Sport, Serie, Musik.
For links to your favorite TV show's home page and information, check http://www.ultimatetv.com/. They want to be "your starting point for television-related hot spots across Cyberspace and world-wide." Their Ultimate TV List has thousands of links to popular programmes, most of them made in the US.
Some sample links:
The Jeopardy Quiz Show - http://www.spe.sony.com/tv/shows/jeopardy
Late Show with David Letterman - http://www.cbs.com/latenight/
The Internet Movie Database is at http://www.imdb.com/. Addicted TV- viewers can follow alt.tv.muppets on Usenet, or some of the many other offerings in the alt.tv hierarchy of newsgroups. Read about how to get that book in Chapter 10 if you would rather read mystery novels by the fire place. . .
If you are interested in traditional Turkish cinema, check out the Web page at http://www.art.bilkent.edu.tr/studies/cinstd.html. There's a Russian movie database at http://www.serve.com/andrey/russian/movie/.
WebMuseum features online exhibits at the world-famous art museum Louvre in Paris, France (http://sunsite.doc.ic.ac.uk/wm/).
When we "visited," they offered French medieval art, a collection of well- known paintings from famous artists, and a tour around Paris, the Eiffel Tower and Champs-Elysees. There are also pointers to museums in other countries around the world.
Many of the pictures are large. "The Cry" by Norwegian painter and printmaker Edvard Munch was 110 KB in size, so if you have a dial-up connection and a slow modem to the Internet, it will take a while.
The French government has made its JOCONDE database of more than 130,000 paintings, prints, drawings, photographs, sculptures, and other pieces of art kept in over 60 museums throughout France available at
http://mistral.culture.fr/cgi-bin/mistral/joconde
The art database can searched by topic, artist, location, century, etc.
There are even offerings for "the perfect house wife." Personally, I can think of no better pastime than origami, the traditional Japanese art of folding paper. Try alt.arts.origami. For images showing folded paper procedures/products, check out alt.binaries.pictures.origami.
Oh, I almost forgot: The Internet BONSAI Club: http://www.bonsai-bci.com/. They have a mailing list is on listserv@home.ease.lsoft.com. Bonsai is the Oriental Art of miniaturizing trees and plants into forms that mimic nature. This conference is for the discussion of the art and craft of Bonsai and related art forms. On Usenet, try rec.arts.bonsai. A FAQ on Bonsai is also available through the nets.
FidoNet has several interesting conferences:
HOME-N-GRDN - Home and Garden Questions HOMEAUT - Home Automation HOME_IMP - Improvements around the house. HOME_REPAIR - Home Repair and Remodelling
The Exec-PC BBS has "Home Repair," Brainwave for NewsNet The FUTUREHOME TECHNOLOGY NEWS newsletter, and ILINK the HOMEGARDEN conference. On the Well, check out "Homeowners."
Join CompuServe's Investors Forum to learn how to play the stock and money markets, and other moneymaking 'instruments'. Discuss investment techniques with others, read reports about economical trends, and retrieve useful programs to use on your personal computer.
CompuServe also has the Gardening Forum. It is operated by the National Gardening Association (U.S.A.).
Ziff-Davis' Magazine Database Plus lets you search and read full-text articles from the Good Housekeeping Magazine. You'll find it on CompuServe and other services.
Each month, tons of articles comparing computers, modems, software and gadgets are being published. The good news is that you can find much such information on the Web. Internet's largest collection of free test reports are available through Ziff-Davis' ZD Net search engine. Here, you can search all Ziff-Davis publications in one operation: Anchordesk, Computer Life, Computer Shopper, FamilyPC, Inter@ctive Week, MacUser, MacWeek, PC Computing, PC Magazine, Underground Online, Windows Sources, ZD 3D, ZD Internet Magazine, and Yahoo Internet Life. (At http://home.zdnet.com/findit/search.html).
A search using the term "seagate" (the hard disk manufacturer) found 320 documents (September 1996). All articles were available in full text. A search using "storage technology" found 9,786 documents. I expanded the term with
"storage technology" and prices
This means that the two first words are to be adjacent, and that the word "prices" is also required in found documents. This gave 4,672 documents. Finally, I narrowed the query down to
"storage technology" and prices and comparative
The result was 2,155 documents. If you are interested in a specific product, add the name to the list to narrow the query further.
ZD Net's hit report lists the most relevant articles first. Ranging is reported as a percentage after the date. The report started like this:
Magazine Date Title PC Magazine 03-26-96 100 PC Magazine: Server Power (03/26/96) Computer Shopper 07-00-96 100 Pro Business Computer Shopper 06-00-96 100 Shopper's Guide to Hard Drives: Room to Spare Computer Shopper 06-00-96 100 Certified to Plug & Play Computer Shopper 09-22-96 100 Disk Jockeys
At http://www.pview.com, ZD Net also offers a free, personalized news service tailored to include only your favorite topics. Here, you can track information on several subjects, issues, or companies, get relevant news and press releases from over 650 worldwide sources, get links to the most recent ZD Net articles on your favorite topics, and more.
You may also find the Index to Multimedia Information Sources interesting (http://viswiz.gmd.de/MultimediaInfo/), and there is usually interesting things to be found in Usenet's FAQ texts. Search the contents of Web FAQ texts at Planetweb Galactic (http://www.jtr.com/search.htm).
There's a list of hardware-oriented newsgroups sorted by categories at http://www.landfield.com/faqs/finding-groups/pc-hardware/. Its categories include:
Networking/networks, PC Networking hardware/cards/cables, Home-built personal computers, Laptops & notebooks, Palmtops, Servers, Modems, Printers, SCSI devices, Other peripherals, PCMCIA devices, Acer, Dell, Gateway, Micron, Zenith, Zeos, Technical topics on PC soundcards, Discussion of forsale items (also Macintosh), Monitors/video cards, Modems/fax cards/communication, Hard/floppy/tape drives & media, CD-ROM drives & interfaces, Computer vendors & specific systems, System chips/RAM chips/cache, and Other hardware questions.
The Boston Computer Exchange (http://www.bocoex.com) is interesting if considering to sell or buy used computers. While those living outside the US may not be prepared to buy from them, it can help find price levels for use in local negotiations.
ZiffNet offers Computer Buyers' Guide through CompuServe. The service is an online encyclopedia with specifications for more than 70,000 hardware and software products (1996). You can also get detailed information about each product's manufacturer.
In some countries, computer prices are high while import duties are low. If this is the case for you, then there may be money to be saved by importing directly from the United States. My experiences are good.
Here are some Internet stores to check out:
Use of modem is opening new worlds of opportunities for students, teachers, and institutions alike at all levels. The list of conferences, forums, clubs, and services focusing on education - in its broadest meaning of the word - is long.
No longer is it hard to find information about educational offerings. On the Web, one starting point is the international College and University Home Pages (http://www.mit.edu:8001/people/cdemello/univ.html). In March 1996, it listed 2500 links to universities in 73 countries. Mainly text. You can search by country or name.
The Study Abroad Programs (http://www.studyabroad.com/) lists programs from over 725 institutions in 110 countries.
There are online courses, workshops, and seminars for students of all ages, databases to help you select a school for yourself or your kids, and all kinds of discussion forums for educators.
For examples, check the online distance education catalog of The British Open University (http://cszx.open.ac.uk/zx/). It offers undergraduate and post-graduate courses (some leading to M.Sc.) for study via the Internet.
There's a British "Internet Learning Resources Directory " Web page at http://www.rgu.ac.uk/~sim/research/netlearn/callist.htm with special interest lists for the visually handicapped, foreign language resources, Internet demographics, and current awareness.
Usenet, BITNET, Internet, and UUCP have long traditions in education. There are offerings for teachers within all subject areas, from finance and accounting, through history, languages and geography to technical subjects on all levels.
The KIDSPHERE mailing list (originally known as KIDSNET) was set up in May, 1989. Its purpose is "to stimulate the development of an international computer network for the use of children and their teachers." Subscribers include teachers, administrators, scientists, developers of software and hardware and officials of relevant funding agencies. Topics of continuing interest include:
Send your subscription request to kidsphere-request@vms.cis.pitt.edu.
This is a selection of other mailing lists to suggest the span of topics:
Here are some Usenet conferences:
The HOME-ED mailing list (majordomo@world.std.com) is for discussion of all aspects of home education. This includes reasons for homeschooling, how to help a child learn to read, learning experiences of homeschooling families, and how to design or select a homeschooling curriculum. There's a home schooling resource page at http://www.midnightbeach.com/hs/.
The EDUPAGE newsletter is a twice-weekly summary of news items on information technology, provided by a consortium of colleges and universities "seeking to transform education through the use of information technology." Compact and informative. I like it! Typical example:
FROM CYBERSPACE TO OUTER SPACE Internet users can now reach out and touch the Endeavour space shuttle, through NASA's Web site: http://astro-2.msfc.nasa.gov. Information available includes Endeavour's exact location over Earth, stellar observations by Astro telescopes and sky charts, crew and ground control team photos, snapshots of the cockpit, and taped conversations from four of the astronauts. More than 350,000 requests for shuttle information have poured in since Endeavour's lift-off last Thursday. (St. Petersburg Times 3/6/95 A1)
Subscribe by email to listproc@educom.unc.edu. Use the following text: Sub EDUPAGE yourfirstname yourlastname. The reports are translated into several languages, including French, German, Hebrew, Italian, Hungarian, and Portuguese. See http://www.educom.edu/ for translations and back issues.
Here are some other interesting links:
You will find many similar offerings on the commercial services and free bulletin boards.
K12Net is a decentralized network for schools on FidoNet. For information, write to braultr@csmanoirs.qc.ca.
Many online services (including schools and universities) offer students accredited courses by modem. Connected Education at the New School for Social Research in the United States is one example. Ask in CompuServe's Education Forum for more information. The University of Phoenix (U.S.A.) offers accredited degrees, master's and bachelor's in business and management through courses conducted online. (GO UP on CompuServe.)
CompuServe's occupational oriented forums include Communications Industry Forum, Legal SIG, Environmental Forum, Industrial Hygiene Forum, Firenet (for volunteer fire brigades), AAMSI Medical Forum, ASCMD Forum, HealthNet, OP-Net Forum, the MICRO MD Network, Aviation SIG, CB Society, and CEMSIG (computers and electronics).
There are many private conferences in the online world. All conferences referred to in this book are open for anybody to join, unless explicitly told to be private.
These are some special language conferences and services are available through the Internet:
BASQUE-L -- Basque, Spanish, French, and English
Dissemination and exchange of information on Basque culture. Subscribe by email to listserv@cunyvm.cuny.edu.BASQUE -- Basque, Spanish, French, and English
Moderated discussion about Basque Culture and related topics. Subscribe to listserv@listserv.rediris.es. The list is mirrored to the soc.culture.basque newsgroup.The Vocabulary Builder (at http://home.earthlink.net/~mikcar/) will help you to increase your Spanish Vocabulary. Select a group. Click at each picture to hear the Spanish word. All sound files are in the WAVE format. Categories include: Food, Transportation, Sports, Animals, Verbs, Days, Months, Clothing, Weather, Numbers, and Telling Time.
CAUSERIE -- French
Subscribe by email to listserv@inrs-urb.uquebec.caFor more in French, why not check out these North African links:
The Algerian Scientific and Technical Information Research Center (CERIST) at http://www.cerist.dz/esrs/cerist/home.htmLEARN-CHINESE
Email to listproc@ucdavis.eduGAELIC-L -- Irish, Scottish, and Manx Gaelic.
Subscribe by email to listserv@listserv.hea.ieGAKUSEI-L -- Beginning Students of Japanese
Subscribe by email to listproc@hawaii.eduNIHONGO -- Japanese
Subscribe by email to listserv@utkvm1.utk.eduLANGIT -- Italian
Subscribe by email to listserv@icineca.cineca.itBTW-L -- Italian
Subscribe by email to majordomo@inet.it. This is a "distribution-only" mailing-list for ByTheWIRE, a biweekly newsletter written entirely in ITALIAN that covers topics related to the global Internet. You can also read it on the Web address http://www.inet.it/btw/home.html.UN INDICE suddiviso per soggetto dello spazio Web italiano. Italian.
On http://www.mi.cnr.it/IGSTSWAHILI-L -- The African language Kiswahili (Swahili).
Write kuntz@macc.wisc.edu to get onto the mailing list.TAMIL-L -- Tamil
Subscribe by email to listserv@vm.urz.uni-heidelberg.deTAMIL -- Tamil Language & Culture Discussion List
Subscribe by email to majordomo@tamil.netThe Spanish Language Page (at http://www.el-castellano.com)
Information on dictionaries, grammar, translation, forums, literature, conferences, Spanglish, etc.WELSH-L -- Welsh (also Breton, Cornish)
Subscribe by email to listserv@listserv.hea.ie.
If English is a foreign language to you, reading interesting things online is in itself a great master. Learning how to write the language is not that easy. Often, you may find yourself trying to find a word that properly expresses your meaning.
The English as a Second Language page (http://www.usd.edu/engl/ESL.html) is an interesting place worth your visit. It has links to help on grammar, idioms, dictionaries, online conversation practice, listening training, and more. For more on English grammar, see http://www.edunet.com/english/grammar/index.html.
Casey's Snow Day Reverse Dictionary may not be able to help in such cases, but it is worth a try. The service tries to determine matches between a query (the definition that you type in) and definitions in the dictionary. At http://www.c3.lanl.gov:8064/.
For a starting point for resources of foreign languages to English, try http://central.itp.berkeley.edu/~thorne/HumanResources.html. Languages covered include Arabic, Chinese, Czech, French, German, Hebrew, Italian, Latin, Middle English, Portuguese, Russian, Scandinavian Languages, South Asian Languages, Spanish, Swahili, Tagalog, Turkish, Yiddish, as well as links to other "foreign" language learning resources and home pages.
MeanBiz.HispanoNet is a Spanish language mailing list where issues related to the Internet and how it can influence the life and businesses of Hispanics from all over the world are being discussed. Subscribe by email to Lista-MeanBiz.HispanoNet at vallejor@gate.net. For lists of Spanish language Web servers and Internet resources, try these pages
http://mel.lib.mi.us/humanities/language/LANG-spanish.html http://www2.mmlc.nwu.edu/mmlc/language/spanish/
ITINET en Espa¤ol is a commercial Spanish language online service offering news, conferences, fax and telex. Free demo at telnet://itinet.net. At the prompt Usuario: answer ITINET.
The WWW Human-Languages Page is a super resource for anyone interested in foreign languages. Their database contains links to over 1.700 Internet resources about more than 100 different languages (1998).
It lists regional databases across the world where information about foreign language Web pages, mailing lists, and newsgroups is stored. It has links to Schools and Institutions, Linguistics Resources, Text & Book Archives, Languages and Literature, Commercial Resources. Web address: http://www.june29.com/HLP/.
Offerings include dictionaries (like "English-German Dictionary"), tutorials (like "Let's Learn Arabic," and "Travelers' Japanese Tutorial"), literature, other references and resources.
Languages covered include Aboriginal languages, Afrikaans, African, Arabic, Bulgarian, Catalan, Chinese, Croatian, Danish, Dutch, English, Esperanto, Estonian, French, Gaelic, German, Greek, Hawaiian, Hebrew, Indonesian, Hindi, Italian, Japanese, Klingon, Kurdish, Latin, Lojban, Mongolian, Maori, Native american languages, Nepali, Persian, Philippine, Polish, Portuguese, Rasta/patois, Romanian, Russian/eastern european, Sardinian, Scandinavian, Serbian, Slovak, Slovene, Spanish, Swahili, Swedish, Tagalog, Tamil, Thai, Tibetan, Turkish, Urdu, Viennese, Vietnamese, and Welsh.
For a competitor's offerings, check the Language and Translation links at http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Acropolis/3137/. You may also find the world's largest, free dictionary interesting (at http://www.logos.it).
Also, make a note about The Ethnologue (http://www.sil.org/ethnologue/) for the languages of the world. This is a catalogue of more than 6,700 languages spoken in 228 countries. Its Name Index lists over 39,000 language names, dialect names, and alternative names.
There are Chinese language-related information pages at
http://www.webcom.com/~bamboo/chinese/chinese.html
http://www.cnd.org:8022/WWW-HZ/WWWChinese.html
They point to Chinese-language-related resources, has links to viewing and listening to Chinese on the WWW, language study courses, educational and viewer software, FTP sites, and more.
There's a Teach Yourself Russian Web page (requires installation of KOI-8 fonts) at http://www.bucknell.edu/departments/russian/language/. The Russian Dictionary With Sounds and Images page has pictures of animals and food paired with Cyrillic text and recordings of a native speaker pronouncing the words. It's World Wide Web address is: http://www.wavefront.com/~swithee/dictionary/welcome.html
If you understand French, and take an interest in "de la Francophonie," check out the Web pages of l' Agence de Coopiration Culturelle et Technique (ACCT) in Paris, at http://www.francophonie.org/.
Try http://stp.ling.uu.se/call/french/ for an online course in French.
Even if you're not in secondary school, you may enjoy the Latin America Data Base. This resources for educators has several databases of lesson plans, resource materials, teacher partners, a photo archive of images of Latin America and the Caribbean, lists of links to embassies, and 100 other Internet sites dealing with Latin America or teacher materials. It covers various subjects, including Spanish, Social Studies, Science, Mathematics, Art and Language Arts. At: http://ladb.unm.edu/www/retanet.
CompuServe's Foreign Language Forum has the following sections Latin/Greek, French, Spanish/Portuguese, German/Germanic, Slavic/E. European, English, East Asian, Esperanto, Potpourri/Polyglot, FL Education, Translators, Computers/CAI-CALL, The Directory, Others, Jobs/Careers, New Uploads and Using the Forum.
takes different forms in different programs. In some, students simply read lecture notes and readings, and interact with their professors via email. In others, especially at the graduate level, the exchange of comments among students is the highlight of the learning experience.
Unlike students in face-to-face classes, online students usually have ample time to review "class discussion" and ponder their contribution before entering it. The result is often a high quality of interaction.
Many parents and teachers regard the online world as a learning opportunity for their kids. Some of them turn to KIDLINK, a global service for children through 15 years of age. This free service is operated by a grassroots network of volunteers.
The aim is to get as many children as possible involved in a global dialog. To help the kids build a global personal network.
Before joining the discussion, each youth must respond to the following four questions:
The kids can write in any language, and submit them at the following Web page: http://www.kidlink.org/RESPONSE/. They can also send them by email to response@listserv.nodak.edu.
Once they have submitted their responses, they are invited to 'meet' the others in one of the many KIDCAFE forums. There, they can discuss anything from pop music to how it is to live in other countries. The cafes are split up by language. There are cafes in English, Portuguese, Japanese, Spanish, Icelandic, and Scandinavian. Click here for a glance at the action:
English: http://listserv.nodak.edu/archives/kidcafe-individual.html
Portuguese: http://listserv.nodak.edu/archives/kidcafe-portuguese.html
The service also has forums for collaborate projects between schools, a private "chat" network (IRC), an art gallery, and support forums for educators. Schools all over the globe integrate it with their classes in languages, geography, other cultures, history, environment, art, etc.
Kidlink grew from an idea in 1990 to over 110,000 participating children in 123 countries (by October 1998). The work is supported by over 65 public mailing lists in 14 main languages.
Visit The United Nation Publications's CyberSchoolBus site at http://www.un.org/Pubs/CyberSchoolBus. Imagine the United Nations as a vast land of resources you can travel through. You can stop on the way and pick up information on water pollution or on housing and urban problems, you can drop in at any one of the four major UN conferences, say the one on population held in Cairo, or you can visit all of the peace-keeping sites around the world. You can also take a tour of the UN and then stop by the bookstore to order instructional materials, charts and posters.
Exploring Ancient World Cultures (at http://eawc.evansville.edu/index.htm) is interesting to students of all ages. This introductory, online, college- level 'textbook' of ancient world cultures is constructed around a series of pages consisting of: The Ancient Near East, Ancient India, Ancient Egypt, Ancient China, Ancient Greece, Ancient Rome, Early Islam, and Medieval Europe.
The home pages contain essays by subject specialists, an anthology of readings from the period, a chronology, bibliographic resources, hypertext links to related sites, and computer graded quizzes.
You can also navigate the site by topic across cultures. You can click on a year and culture, and then another culture, to compare cross-cultural developments of the same period.
We dived into Ancient China, retrieved the chronology of rulers, and got lost in pictures of the Great Wall. Did you know that it is over 5,000 kilometers long?
The Gateway to World History page has links to documentary archives, and online resources. You can search for resources by keyword or by subject. At http://www.hartford-hwp.com/gateway/. Here are some other places to try:
http://argos.evansville.edu [Ancient history search engine]
http://www.msstate.edu/Archives/History/
Questacon, a hands-on science centre in Canberra, Australia, is at http://sunsite.anu.edu.au/Questacon/. Discovery Channel Online is at http://www.discovery.com.
The misc.kids newsgroup is for parents, soon-to-be parents, and others interested in children. They discuss issues about pregnancy and child rearing, ask for advice from others on many parenting concerns, and seek and provide support and encouragement about raising kids. Check the Kids FAQ out at
http://www.cis.ohio-state.edu/hypertext/faq/usenet/
The alt.parents-teens newsgroup is for parent-teenager relationships. The commercial clari.news.children brings stories related to children and parenting. (Validation required for access to Clarinet.)
TWINS is a mailing lists for issues related to twins, triplets, etc. To be added to the list, send a message to twins-request@cup.hp.com with the word "subscribe" in the text of your mail. For more information, visit this Web page: http://www.LND.com/twins/.
CompuServe's Education Forum as a Child Dev/Parenting section. The Issues Forum has a Parent Connection section, and the Seniors Forum a "Grandparenting" section.
Network is a word with many meanings. It can be a system set up to transport data from one computer to another. It can be an online service with many conferences, and a friendly connection between people (like in "old boys' network"). Here, we use it in the latter meaning of the word.
We use our personal networks more than most of us think. We have a chain of people who we call on to ask for advice, help, and invite to participate in projects or parties. When they ask us for help, we lend a hand.
The online world has some interesting characteristics. One is that most participants in online conferences already have received so much help from others that they feel obliged to pay back. They do this by helping others.
Those who help, know that helping others will be rewarded. The reward, however, may not come from the persons that they help. The contributions help maintain and develop the online world as one giant personal network.
A typical example: In CompuServe's Toshiba Forum, I read an open message from a user who had bought a 425 megabyte hard disk for his laptop computer. I also wanted one, but before placing an order, I wrote to check if he was still satisfied with the unit.
The happy user did more than reply. He told about other vendors and offered to help return my computer after the upgrade. He made it clear that he had no financial interest in the companies selling the upgrade. By the way, we had never been in touch with each others before that date.
The online world is full of such examples. The list of what people do to help others is indeed very long.
In most conferences and forums you'll get help. Just like that. There is always someone prepared to help. Still, it is wise to invest to increase the odds of getting quality help when you really need it. This is what to consider:
Your best long range strategy is to be visually present in conferences that matter to you. 'Being visually present' means that you should contribute in discussions and help others as much as you can. You see, positive contributors get a lot more friends and a disproportional amount of help from others.
For example, you may contribute by telling others about your interesting finds in the online world. Keep that up over a stream of weeks or months, and you may find that others start sending you things, quite unprovoked.
Helping others is what it takes to build a personal network. One day you may need it. It will give you an incredible advantage! I have seen people get jobs, partners and clients through such contacts. The online world is full of opportunities.
Written communications are deprived of the body language and tone of voice that convey so much in face-to-face meetings and even in telephone conversations. Therefore, it makes sense to work harder to build in humor, sarcasm, or disagreement to avoid that your words come across as stupidity, rudeness, or aggressiveness.
One way of defusing misunderstanding is to include cues as to your emotional state. One technique is to use keyboard symbols like :-). We call them emoticons (Emotional icons. Pictorial representations of the emotions of the moment).
What :-) means? Tilt your head to the left and look again. Yes, it is a smiling face.
Here are some other examples to challenge your imagination: ;-) (Winking Smiley), :-( (Sad), 8-) (User wears glasses), :-o (Shocked or surprised), and :-> (Hey, hey).
A bracketed <g> is shorthand for grin, and <g,d&r> means grinning, ducking, and running. Some people prefer to write their emotional state in full text, like in these two examples: *grin* and *evil smile*.
Do not misunderstand. You still should not allow yourself to write the most appallingly insulting things to other people, and then try to shrug it off with a <smile>.
Watch your words. They are so easy to store on a hard disk.
Usenet offers
soc.culture.jewish Jewish culture & religion.
soc.religion.christian Christianity and related topics.
soc.religion.eastern Discussions of Eastern religions.
soc.religion.islam Discussions of the Islamic faith.
talk.religion.misc Religious, ethical, & moral implications.
alt.pagan Discussions about paganism & religion.
alt.religion.computers People who believe computing is
"real life."
clari.news.religion Religion, religious leaders,
televangelists. (Validation required for access
to Clarinet.)
The MUSLIMS mailing list carries The Islamic Information & News Net (on listserv@asuvm.inre.asu.edu). ISLAM-L ( listserv@ulkyvm.louisville.edu) is a non-sectarian forum for discussion, debate, and the exchange of information by students and scholars of the history of Islam, while ISLAM MAIL's purpose is "to give the message of ISLAM to people best way possible." (To subscribe, send a blank mail to islam-on@mail-list.com).
The Islamic Computer Resource Guide of the American Arab Scientific Society documents bulletin board systems, software, FTP archives, and network resources such as online academic conferences and newsgroups related to Islamic topics. At: ftp://cs-ftp.bu.edu/amass/home.html. For more, check out http://www.islamicity.org/.
BUDDHA-L (on listserv@ulkyvm.louisville.edu) provides a means for those interested in Buddhist Studies to exchange information and views. BUDDHIST (on listserv@vm1.mcgill.ca) is a forum for Indian and Buddhist studies.
The Buddhist Studies WWW Virtual Library is a comprehensive directory of Buddhism on the Internet (http://www.ciolek.com/WWWVL-Buddhism.html). It has links to sources of information about Buddhist studies networked resources, major Buddhism WWW sites, Buddhist texts and translations, databases, newsletters and journals, organizations, art, and more.
The Catholic Kiosk page is devoted to cataloging Catholic resources on the Web. Links include parish and diocese information, educational and research resources, prolife pointers, and subject menus on various Catholic subjects. At http://www.aquinas-multimedia.com/arch/.
BAPTIST (listserv@lsv.uky.edu) is the Open Baptist Discussion List, and for Scientology , try http://www.scientology.org/.
BELIEF-L (on listserv@listserv.aol.com) is where personal ideologies can be discussed, examined, and analyzed. PAGAN-HOME (majordomo@daft.com) is for those wanting to explore paganism and neo-paganism. Subscriptions: http://members.Xoom.com/Pagan_Home.
Several sacred texts and primary texts of religious interest are available by anonymous FTP or LISTSERV. The Bible, the Book of Mormon and the Koran (also spelled Quran) are available many places, and in a variety of file formats.
M.H. Shakir's full text translation of the Koran (the Holy Qur'an) are at
http://wiretap.spies.com/Gopher/Library/Religion/Quran/
Here, you will also find the full text of the Bible (King James Version), the Book of Mormon, and a "Search the Bible" feature. The WWW Bible Gateway (http://bible.gospelcom.net/) offers seven translations of the book in six languages, and a contents search service.
A short file of quotes from the Koran is available from the archives of listserv@asuvm.inre.asu.edu. File name: PAKISTAN AL_QURAN.
You will find an interesting collection of Sanskrit texts at
ftp://bombay.oriental.cam.ac.uk/pub/john/text
You can search the Book of Mormon, the Quran, King James' Bible, the BUDDHA-L mailing list, and other religious resources at
http://www.ub2.lu.se/auto_new/auto_39.html
Use Archie (see Appendix 6) to find other religious texts available through the Internet. On FidoNet, check out JVArcServ.
On CompuServe's Religion Forum (GO RELIGION) you can get into serious discussion about topics ranging from Christianity, Judaism, Eastern Religions, Islam, Interfaith Dialog, Limbo, Pagan/Occult, to Religion and Science, Liturgical Churches, Mormonism, Ethics and Values, and more. You may also want to check out the New Age Forum.
Check http://www-personal.monash.edu.au/~sab/index_old.htm for The Chinese Philosophy Page. For more links to Su Tzu, Kong Fu Zi - Confucius, Tao, Lao Tze, Chinese Classics, and other old Chinese masters, take a look at http://www.gac.edu/Academics/philosophy/lchinese.html.
The PHILCOMM (listserv@vm.its.rpi.edu) discussion list is where you debate the philosophy of communication.
The talk.religion.newage newsgroup focuses on esoteric and minority religions & philosophies.
The YOGA mailing list (on majordomo@inet.it) has Italian language discussion about yoga.
If you know what the term New Age is about, then try The New Age Directory (on http://www.wholarts.com/psychic/misc.html) for a long list of links.
Unemployment is a global problem, and losing a job is usually a bad experience. Job-hunting is the solution. If you have a job, you may be looking for something better.
There are many forums and conferences devoted to job-hunting. FidoNet has the JOBS conference, for those with plenty of time, and JOBS-NOW (Job & Employment offerings/listings) for those who cannot wait.
On Bergen By Byte, it is called 'Job_market', and on ILINK CAREER. In many countries there are local bulletin boards operated by public employment agencies.
If your potential employers have an email address, you can send dozens of job resumes - while reading the newspaper!
On Usenet, check out misc.entrepreneur and alt.business.misc. The Web service at http://www.discribe.ca/yourhbiz/howto/helphint.htm offers "Helpful Hints for Home Businesses." You may also find these Web resources interesting:
http://www.overseasjobs.com/resources/ http://www.dbm.com/jobguide/ http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-adv/classifieds/careerpost/parachute/parafram2.htm
CompuServe's Working-From-Home Forum is moderated by online gurus Paul and Sarah Edwards. Here, home-based business people gather informally to offer contacts and political clout. The file library contains back issues of the "Making It on Your Own" electronic magazine. The IDEAS.BIZ file in Library 2 is a list of 101 home-based businesses you can operate with a computer.
Home based business opportunities may exist within areas such as desktop publishing, desktop video, high-tech equipment repair, import and export management, and professional practice management. Learn from others in forums or conferences on related topics.
For some, the biggest challenges of being out of work is losing that day- to-day contact with the people in their industry. The online world is an excellent way to stay in touch. Whatever your industry, there are places online to hang out, learn the latest developments and stay connected.
Being a member of an online forum does not mean that you are overtly looking for a job - an activity that your current employer may not appreciate. By being there, however, you have put yourself out there to be discovered. The discovered candidate is always more interesting than one who sends in his resume along with 300 other applicants' resumes.
The good news is that many organizations are also having problems finding qualified candidates for their vacant positions, and that some of them are turning to the online world for help. This is what one of them did (from an online announcement):
Because it is difficult to locate qualified candidates for positions in special libraries and information centers, and to help special librarians and information specialists to locate positions, the student chapter of the Special Libraries Association at Indiana University has formed a LISTSERV, SLAJOB, in connection with the Indiana Center for Database Systems.The LISTSERV, available on both the Internet and Bitnet, will help special libraries and information centers in the sciences, industry, the arts and within public and academic libraries to have a central location for announcing special library and information science positions.
The LISTSERV is available to individuals or organizations that have an Internet or Bitnet network connection. For those on the network, subscribe by sending an email message to:
listserv@iubvm.ucs.indiana.eduLeave the subject line blank and then type the following in the message of the text:
subscribe SLAJOB [firstname] [lastname]