OFF THE NET

AUTUMN 1996

TABLE OF CONTENTS
  • Knockout!
  • TKO
  • Split Decision

  • commercial quality

    i just got back from the agenda conference. an interesting experience. scottsdale arizona is a strange place.

    agenda is a conference for the pc industry. it's not a web conference. on the other hand - the web (and the internet in general) permeated every aspect of agenda. most of the speakers were from "web companies" - and those that were not either talked about what they were doing in relation to the net or had to defend what they were not doing.

    i would have predicted that this would have been a great chance for me to gloat. and i did get a fair amount of "i told you so" practice in. but in the end the feeling i came away with was dread. the pc industry is not the web industry. i know few people who work on the web who want to be dealing with the social, political or lifestyle problems that being a worker bee for the pc industry entails. on the other hand, i have to say that the pc industry is dominated by companies and people who truly show up the web industry types as the novices they are. companies like oracle or microsoft (and now netscape) have a very different take on the world, the web, and business. they take it all very seriously.

    so here's my fear: that the web, as an industry in and of itself, is going to get sucked into the existing pc and IS industries. it will not be what it once was.

    get ready.


    KNOCKOUT!

    VOSAIC
    i mentioned this back when it was a cool research project at NSCA. now it's a startup with a cool cross platform (even Unix) plugin. i still question the way folks are thinking about streaming media on the web, but these people do good tech.
    INTERNET FOUNDATION CLASSES
    java classes for internet development from netscape.
    EXPLODER
    an excellent example of why ActiveX is so scary. if you don't get it, you don't understand what this could do.
    SERVER PROGRAMMING OPTIONS
    white paper on CGI, APIs, etc - and how to pick which one works for you.
    HABANERO
    NCSA brings us a collection of java-based collaborative tools - with a real development API!! a must check out for sure.


    TKO

    CGI COLLECTION
    another collection of CGI scripts. this one has a lot of stuff that's already on other sites - but at least it's centralized.
    XPOUND
    commercial web-based threaded posting system. seems like it might actually scale (unlike a lot of other options).
    ZIP2
    a brilliant site. perfect example of how to do high-end database integration on the web the right way.
    FRAY
    once upon a time there was a lot of talk about the web being the next great content environment. "hyper-fiction," even "hyper-poetry," were discussed. finally we have a site that actually has decent content (hyper or not) for this medium.
    ADBOUNCE
    collection of perl scripts to track users clicking on banner ads on your site - and report on them.
    JEMTEK CGI LIBRARY
    cgi library for c programmers. includes source, docs and demos.
    SITE SCOPE
    great commercial site monitoring software. now you can get paged every time your ISP changes their routing tables.


    Split Decision

    BUGNET
    so living with software bugs is part of life. but it's not something you shouldn't try to avoid. here's stacks of info about software bugs. okay, so the site is ugly as all hell. it's still great for the next time someone says, "so what was that POST bug in MSIE3.0?"
    HYPERWIRE
    kind of cool seeming 3d java authoring tool. windows only.
    WEBTUNE
    yet another logfile analysis product.
    STRESS TEST
    WebART is a stress tester for your server.

    | start over |

    well ... that's it for this month. if you have any suggestions for how i might make this better or different, please get in touch. until next time, this is me, signing off.

    and remember, if you know of any cool tricks or tools - or new stuff that I might think is hot, just tell me.


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