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Current Cities Volume 05 Number 05
_Current_Cites_
Volume 5, no. 5
May 1994
Information Systems Instruction & Support
The Library
University of California, Berkeley
Edited by Teri Andrews Rinne
ISSN: 1060-2356
Contributors:
John Ober, Margaret Phillips, David Rez, Richard Rinehart,
Teri Rinne, Roy Tennant
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Hypermedia and Multimedia
Lamont, Judith. "Career Corner: Multimedia Training Opportunities"
Sigcat DISCourse 8(3) (March/April 1994):1,8-10. -- Multimedia
once belonged to a rarefied world limited by exotic and expensive
hardware, a dearth of real-world uses, and few experts. This has
been changing, and as it does, so do the opportunities for growth
in this field of the computing industry. In the private sector,
workers are needed in the field of creating and marketing commercial
multimedia titles on CD-ROM and in the entertainment industry. In
the public sphere, expertise is needed in evaluation, implementation,
and support for multimedia endeavors, often in an educational setting.
This article gives useful hints on what to look for in multimedia
training, such as selecting a program with connections to industry and
government to develop professional contacts as well as gain technical
skills. Just as useful is the guide to 12 multimedia training programs
across the country with brief descriptions of the programs, and
addresses. -- RR
Millison, Doug. "The 800-Pound Gorilla" Computer Currents 11(24):80-82.
-- They've been called IBM-clones, until IBM was the one doing the
cloning. They've been called DOS machines, until Windows. Now Intel is
hoping you'll just call them Intel PC's. One strategy Intel is taking
to position themselves centrally to PC architecture is to begin
designing more than chips; in fact they are now creating some very
useful hardware-independent multimedia standards, some of them free.
Intel Architecture Labs (IAL) has teams around the world trying to make
the PC more user-friendly by creating standards for multimedia, and in
doing so also hopes to make PC's painless enough to become the consumer
electronic device of choice in the wired home of the future, contrary
to predictions of set top boxes and powered-up game boys. Intel has made
progress in speeding up the bottleneck of old ISA architecture, and much
easier addition of peripherals and add-ons via Plug and Play. Specifically,
Intel's contributions to multimedia include Indeo, a system-level video
compression/decompression technology, parallel to Quicktime, that would
come free with every PC. This software-only solution will be able to access
color conversion and graphics acceleration found even on cheap Super VGA
cards, and will also allow 3-D graphics capabilities. One of the main
hindrances to adoption of multimedia software and content has been lack of
standards, so if Intel's multimedia architectures are well-conceived
everyone stands to benefit. -- RR
NETWORKS AND NETWORKING
Dearth, Jeffrey L. and Paul J. Vizza. "Browser's Paradise: How the
Electronic Newsstand is Redefining the Art of Magazine Marketing"
EDUCOM Review 29(3) (May/June 1994):12-15. -- Two key staffers at
The New Republic recount how they created the Electronic Newsstand
-- the Internet equivalent of the corner magazine and newspaper hut.
Originally created to attract new subscribers to The New Republic,
it has since grown to include the tables of contents, selected articles,
and general information about more than eighty magazines, including the
New Yorker, Discover, National Review, Outside, American Demographics,
Yoga Journal and others. This article is a brief and interesting case
history of a commercial use of the Internet that avoids mass-distributed
advertising. -- RT
Hahn, Harley and Rick Stout. _The Internet Yellow Pages_ Berkeley:
Osborne McGraw-Hill, 1994. -- Harley and Stout have created what is
already becoming one of the most popular references to Internet
resources. Their _Yellow Pages_ has a comprehensive table of contents
and index and follows the general model of yellow pages with alphabetic
subject entries. In addition to lists of Newsgroups and Discussion lists,
which are available in many other resource guides, the authors have made
this guide enjoyable to browse. There are sample images with their ftp
sites, excerpts from discussion lists, Frequently Asked Question documents,
and other tidbits scattered throughout. Though no guide can be truly
comprehensive, this one comes close and will work as a starting point for
some time. Note that there is virtually no instructional information here,
only pointers to resources. -- JLO
Hawkins, Brian L. "Planning for the National Electronic Library." EDUCOM
Review 29(3) (May/June 1994):19-29. -- Hawkins' well-written analysis points
out that the Library and Academic Communities at large have no
well-articulated plan to create the global electronic library of the
future. The historical and organizational reasons for this are described
but the focus of the article is on examining the range of possible
structural and organizational models that could be adopted to move toward
the large-scale electronic library. While not everyone may agree with the
author's endorsement of a nonprofit corporation model, his call for careful
thinking of the constraints and opportunities facing academic and library
use of new technology is worth the time. -- JLO
Jaffe, Lee David. _Introducing the Internet: A Trainer's Workshop_
Berkeley: Library Solutions Press, 1994. The first in the new Library
Solutions Press "Internet Workshop Series," this work will be particularly
useful for those already familiar with the Internet who must now
teach what they know to others. The book provides a textual overview of
what a trainer might want to cover in an introductory Internet class in
addition to guidelines on how to structure the class and advice on how to
deal with tricky segments. The book also provides supporting material in
the form of sample handouts including a glossary, a bibliography, e-mail
guidelines, and a list of selected telnet and FTP sites. Among the more
valuable aspect of this workbook are the sample presentation slides that
are included. Users are encouraged to make overheads from these simple,
graphically effective slides; the PLUS edition of _Introducing the
Internet_, includes diskettes (viewable on either Mac or DOS-based
computers) containing a PowerPoint presentation of the slides which users
can adapt to their own personal style or to a specific teaching situation.
The instructional infrastructure provided by Jaffe's book will save anyone
new to teaching the Internet hours of time and stress. -- MP
Kelley, Brian. "Publishing Information Globally: Becoming an Information
Provider on the World Wide Web." Available via World Wide Web at
[http://www.leeds.ac.uk/ucs/people/BKelly/aberdeen_paper.html] in postscript
and rich text (RTF) format. -- Kelley has taken his experience from the
University of Leeds and produced a paper that not only describes their
experiences in mounting World Wide Web information, but also provides an
overview of the technology and of the issues involved. With figures and
reasonable section headings, this material could be adapted to help explain
the Web to others or to plan the development of a Web server. -- JLO
King, Kenneth M. "BITNET III: The Spirit of Cooperation Continues," EDUCOM
Review 29(3) (May/June 1994):41-43. -- In this brief piece, the executive
director of the Corporation for Research and Educational Networking (CREN)
outlines plans for the third major stage of BITNET development. Included is
a project to build a "global dial-up networking infrastructure" that will
enable traveling faculty, students, staff, and alumni to dial into their home
institution with full Internet connectivity through a local phone call. -- RT
Krol, Ed. _The Whole Internet: User's Guide & Catalog_ 2nd ed. Sebastopol, CA:
O'Reilly & Associates, 1994. The second edition of Krol's very popular book
continues to be a valuable Internet reference tool for the beginning or
intermediate user. This edition is more substantial (a third larger) and
even more useful than his first. In it Krol has answered one of the only
criticisms of his first edition by including an appendix called "UNIX Primer"
designed to be used as a tutorial for those not familiar with the UNIX
operating system. Krol has also added a section in the chapter on electronic
mail about Multi-purpose Internet Mail Extensions (MIME) which enable one to
attach non-text files to e-mail messages. The MIME example given uses the
popular e-mail program pine. The entries in the catalog have been updated and
have almost doubled in number and include telnet, ftp and www sites for
everything from aeronautics to the Internet white pages. -- DR
Robison, David F.W. _All About Internet FTP: Learning and Teaching to
Transfer Files on the Internet_ Berkeley, Library Solutions Press, 1994.
Another in the "Internet Workshop Series," this volume, designed as both a
textbook for students as well as a manual for teachers, offers a lucid
overview of Internet FTP. As a tool for students, the workbook includes a
description of FTP, a series of exercises, sample FTP sessions as well as
a glossary, a list of commands, and a list to archie sites. For the
instructor, the text of the book can serve as a guide for what to cover in
a classroom lecture and the glossary and other lists can be used as
handouts. The section of sample presentation slides are designed to be
copied onto transparencies and presented during the lecture; the PLUS
edition of the book includes a PowerPoint version of the slide
presentation on disk (for either Mac or DOS-based computers) and
instructors are encouraged to adapt the slides. Also valuable is a
section that provides tips for trainers and a lesson plan, divided into
modules that allow instructors to pick and choose according to their own
needs. Robison notes that FTP tends to be one of the more difficult
aspects of the Internet for students to understand; his book, however,
provides a clear and accessible explanation of this sometimes
overwhelming topic. - MP
OPTICAL DISC TECHNOLOGIES
Breeding, Marshall. "The Lay of the LAN" CD-ROM World 9(5) (May 1994):
54-57. -- CD-ROM networking expert Breeding discusses the plethora of
networking options for CD-ROMs, seeking to match capabilities and
features with performance expectations, organizational requirements,
existing networks and budget considerations. Included is a fact-filled
sidebar outlining 'notable networking products.' -- TR
Hyon, Jason. "A Standard for Writing Recordable CDs" Sigcat DISCourse
8(3) (March/April 1994):1, 3-7. -- Typical of nearly any discussion
of standards, this article is a fairly technical description of the
international standard which allows updates to recordable CDs while
maintaining cross-platform data exchange. The existing standard for
CD-ROM (ISO 9660) does not support the feature to incrementally add
information to a CD-ROM disc, generally known as multisession capa-
bility. This limitation has been a major problem since the advent of
Kodak Photo CDs, which allows one to add a new set of images to an
existing disc. CD-R systems only would allow companies to produce
limited-run CDs of specialized information. The desirability to simply
update existing CDs with new information, rather than having to scrap
the lot each and every time, provided the impetus for this new
standard. -- TR
Sengstack, Jeff. "On a Roll" CD-ROM World 9(5) (May 1994):42-47.
-- Sengstack sings the praises of CD-Recordable capabilities,
encouraging readers to become electronic publishers with CD-R
systems retailing for less than $4000. This article provides six
reasons why CD-Recorder systems make sense: for archiving purposes,
recording music, multimedia training, storing photographs, software
testing, and replication service purposes. -- TR
EMERGING TECHNOLOGIES
Gibbs, W. Wayt. "Gray Matter" Scientific American 270(5) (May 1994):114.
-- With the progress of the digital age, paper is seen as still
important for its ease of use and portability (all the hard- and
software needed for decoding is kept tidily in the human head); but
paper is also seen as merely the messy debris left in the trails blazed
by digital authoring tools. Paper is given form by digital media, but
can give nothing back....or so it seemed until Xerox PARC looked into
the issue. Xerox PARC has introduced "self-clocking glyph code". Glyph
code is a way of printing tiny slashes so that they encode data in a
binary fashion, just as digital electronic media. The pattern of forward
slashes, back slashes, and spaces form a fine gray patch and can encode
any dat recordable on a diskette, even in encrypted or compressed form.
With error correction written in, a paper's information could be
reconstructed even after shredding. Scanners are used to get the
information back into digital form. Proffered uses for glyph coding range
from new shipping dockets and invoices rich in information, and sparse
in errors, to chart printouts that retain all detail of numerical data
in gray shades. Xerox and Microsoft are working to see if glyph codes may
help to integrate fax, printer, computer, and copying technology. -- RR
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Current Cites 5(5) (May 1994) ISSN: 1060-2356
Copyright (C) 1994 by the Library, University of
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