January 1997 € Volume 7 € Number 1
More Interesting Sites On The Net
By Kenneth S. Moser, CNA, CNSA
It's been a while since we discussed other new sites and services on the World Wide Web, so let's start the new year by taking some time to explore a bit.
First of all, you should check out all of the APICS chapters that have recently built web sites. APICS lists new chapter sites on its home page (http://www.apics.org) under the Index to Other Manufacturing Sites section, and we are featuring several new sites here:
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Tucson Chapter | |
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APICS Region 8 | |
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Atlanta Chapter | |
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Cleveland Chapter | |
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Northern Colorado | |
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Erie, Pa. | |
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Hartford Chapter | |
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Chicago North Branch |
The APICS home page will feature even more sites by the time you read this. Meanwhile, older chapter sites are listed in the chapter listing -- see Chapters Near You, under About APICS. Check them out!
You also may want to check out some of the sites we list in other sections of the index. APICS tries to avoid posting purely commercial sites, but you will find a wide range of resources here. For example, APICS lists the Society of Manufacturing Engineers, the National Association of Manufacturers and the National Association of Purchasing Managers. Many of these sites offer services and information that can help you with various aspects of your job and your education.
If you are new to the Net or are involved in training other people who are trying to grasp it all, you should check out a series of presentations sponsored by the InterNIC and the American Library and Information Technology Association. Each presentation is designed as a module unto itself, for delivery in 15 minutes or less. More than a dozen topics are addressed, including: What is a browser? What is electronic mail? What is ftp? What is a HTTP? What is the Internet?
Both Microsoft PowerPoint and HTML formats are provided, and files are available via both the Web and anonymous ftp at http://rs.internic.net/nic-support/15min/ and ftp://rs.internic.net/NIC-support/15min/.
Next, if you're on the web much or work with computers all day as I do, many of your friends probably ask for your advice on PCs. If this is the case, take 10 minutes or so to print out "An Introduction to PC Hardware," by H. Gilbert. This is one of several tutorial documents hosted on the PC Lube and Tune site, which is located at http://pclt.cis.yale.edu/pclt. This article provides a very good explanation of PC options at a nuts-and-bolts level without talking down to the reader. Other articles hosted at this site include topics such as Distributed Applications and the Web, Learning Java, Surviving the Next OS and more.
Did Santa leave you a new PC? If so, you may want to check the DOWNLOAD.COM site for various commercial demos, drivers, patches, shareware, and other goodies that no PC addict can live without. Software is arranged by category and type. The site can be found at http://www.download.com and also features tutorials and profiles of notable shareware and freeware authors. While this site is not as comprehensive as SHAREWARE.COM, it is considerably easier to use.
If you have children, check out Berit's Best Sites for Children. This site is maintained by Berit Erickson for Chochran Interactive and contains more than 400 links that are immensely suitable for young children. Sites are grouped by subjects such as Just for Fun, Kids on the Net, Creatures Great and Small, Serious Stuff and more. Each listing includes a brief annotation and is rated on a five-point scale. You will find this site at http://www.cochran.com/theosite/KSites.html.
If Berit's site is busy, children may want to visit The Internet Kids Yellow Pages web site, located at http://www.well.com/user/polly. Produced by librarian Jean Armour Polly, this page also features a wide range of well-researched links to other sites designed for children. Meanwhile, if you are in the market for a new car or want to know what your pre-owned vehicle is worth now that you've driven it off the lot, look it up in the Kelley Blue Book Used Car Guide. This well-organized site contains pricing information on all major vehicles as far back as 1976, plus pricing, options, standard equipment, and pictures for many new cars. The site also features links to a wide range of other sites that allow you to order new cars, search for dealers near you, and review classified ads. Look it up at http://www.kbb.com/.
Making any New Year's resolutions to save more? If so, you may want to review The NASDAQ Stock Market online, located at http://www.nasdaq.com/. You can look up companies by name or symbol and receive 15-minute delayed stock quotes, with options for a full quote that includes best bid, best asked, today's high, low, last sale, previous day's close, net change and share volume. You may also obtain multiple quotes for up to five companies at once, the NASDAQ 100 Index, a most active list, and more. Company stock information is accompanied by a hypertext connection to that company's page, as well as a connection to the SEC EDGAR database.
If your resolutions include starting or finishing a college degree program, you may want to check out The Internet University located at http://www.caso.com/. This site is maintained by Cape Software and features an annotated list of more than 300 college and university distance-learning courses available via the Internet. Course information is arranged by subject and includes information about the institution offering the course, tuition and fees and contact information. Other sections organize information by college or university and provide links to sites featuring information about college and university study resources.
These sites should keep you busy for a month or so. Meanwhile, I have an update on the survey results reported in last month's column. Over the past month, many APICS members began visiting our site (I'm writing this in mid-November). Wouldn't you know it? You all dropped in just as we were trying to recover from conference and struggling to bring our catalog online, plus the holidays kicked in with a vengeance. Consequently, as many of you have noted, we've been a bit behind on updates. APICS is aware of the problem and is doing everything possible to address the issue. Sometimes it's necessary to fall back a few steps in order to jump far ahead. Taking a few steps back is essentially what APICS is doing. If everything works out as planned, I think you will like the results. More on this in a future column.
In general, most of you also report that you are spending much less time online. In our busy lives, time is at a premium, but even so, only 54 percent of you report using the Quick Index. This doesn't make sense. The Quick Index is the fastest way to navigate the APICS site and find what you want, and it is much improved over previous months. I don't know how else to get the word out, so let me explain again.
The Quick Index gives you a snapshot of the entire site and lists all of the major pages and services accessible by page title. In essence, it is nothing more than a long list of links that take you directly to the page(s) you want. The Quick Index also shows you when the site was last updated and which specific pages have been added or changed. You may access the index from the top of every page on the site. If you have not used the index yet, please give it a try; if you are using it, show it to a friend.
In closing, I must give credit to the Scout Report by Susan Calcari for the discovery of many of these sites. The Scout Report is a weekly publication offering a selection of new and newly discovered Internet resources of interest to researchers and educators. However, everyone is welcome to subscribe to one of the mailing lists or read it on the Web at http://www.cs.wisc.edu/scout/report/.
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