By Valerian Mayega
Screen shot of the Internet Shopping Network
In these days, the wave of the future seems to be taking over almost every media and making it accessible by electronic means. In this issue's cyberspace column, three Web sites of the month are being reviewed. The first site is http://shop.internet.net/ and it is about Shopping on the Internet (The Internet Shopping Mall). This feature on the Net is not something new; yet many people are not aware of it. The first requirement to shopping electronically is a major credit card, but other than that, all you need is a connection and you are up and running. The procedure is quite simple. After one opens the Universal Resource Locator (URL) on Mosaic, the Internet Shopping Network's home page will come up. Instructions are easy and simple and a guided tour is also provided. One can order flowers to be delivered as a gift, or purchase a computer on-line. Certainly due to high demand of the system, it can be quite slow at times. But for the amount of neat stuff it is worth the wait. To ensure security and prevent credit card fraud, new users fill out a membership form, whereupon they get a user ID that allows them to shop all they want with their account.
Another Web that we are going to explore is the first Internet Music Archive, more commonly referred to as Underground Music. This Web contains clip songs of artists and music groups that have not yet made it to the top but have found a way of letting the electronic world sample their music. The URL to this Web is http://sunsite.unc.edu/ianc/ . The Web contains artists from companies such as Warner Bros. and Heyday. I am not quite sure if anyone can actually post music but the home page is certainly well done and if you have a color monitor, you can certainly enjoy the Silicon Graphics Workstation rendered graphics that the makers of the page put to use.
Our last Web topic was discovered when a message was released on Usenet earlier in the month of October advertising the new Web server at Cornell University that was mainly aimed at the Engineering Population on the Internet. The Cornell ICE page was interesting although nothing seemed to be completely operational. The items I found most interesting were the listing of other engineering school webs. It was through the browsing of these other webs that I was able to find interesting features. Carnegie Mellon University engineering home page, for example, had graphics that would catch anyone's eye. (http://www.cmu.edu/). This is their home page and from there one can follow the icons to find the interesting items. The Cornell Ice Web, although a good idea, didn't quite do the job, yet it made this issue's WebPage of the month because of its innovative design.
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From pg. 7 of The Moment, 7 Dec. 1994