Last Month, we compared having a direct Internet connection using an Internet Provider vs. using a major Online service, such as America Online. People who spend 12 hours or more online per month using a major Online service had a bill that was higher than the fee an Internet Provider would charge for Unlimited Internet access. So if you find your Online expenses increasing, upgrading to a dial up PPP account with an Internet Provider could save you a substantial amount of money and give you an unlimited on-line experience. The World Wide Web is also quickly becoming more graphically friendly and will make expensive online services obsolete.
Another benefit of having an account with an Internet Provider is the storage space they allow you to use on their machine for your own Web page or Home page. The monthly fee for Internet access usually includes 5 to 10 mb’s of disc space. So the only thing you have left to worry about is designing your home page.
Your home page can contain anything you like. You can have your picture on it, or your life story, special Interests and hobbies, or even links to other Web sites. Do you have your own company? If so you can easily put your company on the Web for instant access to the rest of the world.
HTML is the language used to develop your home page. HTML is extremely easy to master and there are lots of programs out there that make building your home page even easier. Web Weaver 2.5.2. is a good example and is available for download from many places on the Internet. For an excellent tutorial on how to create a Web page of your own take a look at the Maricopa “Writing HTML”, a tutorial for writing WWW pages, at:
http://www.mcli.dist.maricopa.edu/tut/index.html.
Or Yale University’s World Wide Web Authoring Manual at:
http://info.med.yale.edu/caim/StyleManual_Top.HTML.
Take some time to read these tutorials about HTML. Practice writing HTML pages and then viewing them using your Web browser. Then the next step is to decide what the content of your Web page will be. What do you want the world to be able to see. More on this next month.
Here are some other interesting Web sites I hope you will enjoy.
MacWeek has a terrific Web site with everything you could ever ask for about Mac’s, software, tip’s, reviews, and much more. Of course it’s no My Mac, but for a look at the second best just look to:
http://www.zdnet.com/~macweek/
Are you interested in news and gossip magazines, Time Warner has an excellent site called “Pathfinder”. Here you can peruse all the latest magazines like People, Time, Money, Fortune, and many more. Lots of graphics, a nice site unless you have a slow modem. Pathfinder is at:
“The Spot” is an Episodic Web site. I’ve heard about it from many different people so I thought I would check it out. Here you have a well financed project that seems to be a mix between MTV’s “The Real World” and “Melrose Place”. If your curious what these California folks are up to look them up at:
Let me know what you think of it!
Where are you today. How is the weather there. Would you like to see what the weather is like right now on the beach in Santa Cruz, California. Just head over to:
http://sapphire.cse.ucsc.edu/SlugVideo/dream-inn.html
where the University of California has a camera aimed right at the beach. The Picture is updated about every five minutes and they have a variety of angles to choose from. Some more live Cam’s around the world here:
http://www.dataplace.nl/dp/pages/foto.htm
…will bring you to the beach at Zandvoort, the Netherlands! Have you ever been to Boston, MA. For an excellent view of the Boston’s Beacon Hill go to:
http://www-1.openmarket.com/boscam/boscam/index.htm
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The bridge you see is the Longfellow bridge and the cam is in Cambridge. OK, one more, have you been to the Berlin zoo in Germany. Well here is a cool view of the Berlin Railroad Station at the Zoologischer Garten, with Hardenbergplatz bus terminal in front at:
http://www.fokus.gmd.de/step/view.html
Ok so it’s not the actual zoo, but it is in Germany and the pictures updated every few minutes.
Have you heard of a guy named Gates. You know the one that wishes his company was as good as Apple. Well some folks over at MorseMcfadden PR have this page called Walls’ 96. Here you can see the progress of Bill’s mansion on lake Washington. Get a load of what’s inside and soon participate in a contest to guess how many Windows there are! For a glimpse of this amazing lakefront getaway go to:
http://www.morsepr.com/mmdocs/bill.html .
Do you have a home page of your own or a favorite site you would like to see here in this column. Let me know at:
orchard@wn.net or at Evz1@aol.com.
If you have any questions or comments let me have em, and I’ll include them with next month’s column.
Also next month, how exactly do you put your home page on the Internet. Straight from your Mac to the Web. We’ll look at simple Web page construction and some extra features such as background images and colors. We’ll also look at how to make sure the search engines, like Yahoo, have your Web page in their database. This way, people all around the world will be able to access your page. If your interests include something like stamp collecting, and someone in Australia does a search for stamp collectors, they will be led right to your page.
There is one thing I did not mention last month that I feel is extremely important. If you are using AOL or e-world, and you do not have Art Valve installed on your computer, than you are wasting time and money waiting to download useless icon artwork. Art Valve fools AOL into thinking that you already have the artwork and instead of the fancy Icons that you usually have to wait for, you instantly get a nice quick black and white AOL Icon. You can read a great review of Art Valve in MyMac #6. My humble opinion is that the Online companies use the download time as a tool to get our bills a little higher. They should provide a way for us to select whether or not we want to see their expensive art work. In any case, if you don’t have Art Valve, get it!
Happy New Year !
Ev_
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