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Copyright Skip Ploss and Acorn Press Newspapers.
SOMEWHERE THAT'S WARM
Well it's snowing at three inches an hour, we're due for between
24 and 36 inches, the airports are all closed and I want to
be somewhere else. It may seem a small consolation, but fortunately
there is web travel.
There are two ways to go in a situation like this. The obvious,
of course, is to type in a warm and sunny URL (Universal Resource
Locator, an Internet address), like " http://www.antilnet.com"
a URL for Bonaire in
the Netherlands Antilles, and then sit back, crank up the
heat, put UB40 on the CD player and enjoy the scenery. Most
Caribbean Islands have information pages on the Internet.
Either general information as in names of hotels and ways
to get there or full sites complete with "online photo albums"
as in the Bonaire site mentioned above. Ah, strolling down
the Main Street of Kralendijk, past the Market Place and out
the road toward Washington National Park.
The other direction one could travel would be in a northerly
direction. Somewhere colder and more desolate, which at the
moment hardly seems possible. I hate snow.
Siberia, that's it. Nothing conjures up images that have
to be worse than here then the word Siberia.
The cold, deep snow, the driving winds...anyway, as I was
saying, Siberia. Pictures of said region can be found at "http://www.cs.toronto.edu/~mes/russia/photo.html".
I feel warmer already.
Search Engines
Which ever Internet road you choose to travel there are many
"travel agents" waiting to serve you. They are called "Search
Engines". These currently fall into two types.
One type are "catalogs" of Websites, as is the case with
Yahoo [http://www.yahoo.com].
These are sites which allow website maintainers (called "webmasters")
to register their site into specific categories. For instance,
to get to Bonaire I typed in Yahoo's URL and upon reaching
their site was presented with a list of different areas. I
selected "Regional". I was then given another list, which
I used to get to the Caribbean. At the Caribbean area I chose
"Netherlands Antilles" and then "Bonaire" from the final list.
This is like working through an outline. You can usually proceed
to the subject you wish in a fairly logical, user-friendly
manner.
I, Web robot
Another type of Search Engine is sort of a self-fulfilling
catalog. These have software "robots" that constantly surf
the net looking for, reading and then categorizing websites.
These also allow webmasters to ask the "robot" to look at
their websites and then categorize them accordingly. These
include Webcrawler
[http://www.webcrawler.com] and Lycos
[http://www.lycos.com]. An added utility these Search Engines
have is the ability for the user to search for an item using
"keywords".
Let's say you're looking for "islands". You would type "island"
into the area provided at Lycos, for example, hit the "search"
button and be presented with a list of sites having something
to do with the specified subject. It's easier than it sounds,
really.
Finally a few words about URL's. In the interest of making
things easier for those dedicated professionals who lay out
this paper you should know that URLs contain no spaces. When
you see a URL that is split by a column break, treat it as
if it was one continuous word, no spaces. There won't be any
hyphen just keep typing, these can get kind of long.
Well, I have to turn the heat up, this time I think a little
James Buffet is in order, my travel agent has informed me
that I can catch the next URL to
Tahiti [http://www.tahiti-explorer.com/].
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