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By John Hunter

Last month’s column focused on practical (read useful) websites. Mohawk Valley PC club members are used to surfing the net, diagnosing and repairing hardware/software problems and are not easily intimidated by the new, the different, the unexpected. Club members also have an interest in computer network systems and enjoy finding out how things work (a website with the same name appeared last month in this column).

Club members also Google, Metacrawl, Yahoo and Dogpile. This month I will start with an amazing site. The site is called www.warriorsofthe.net/movie/html. This site presents a graphic visualization of the Internet in movie format. You can download a good version of 73 MBs or a high quality version at 121 MB. The movie uses RealPlalyer and, with a broadband connection, takes about five minutes to download. For those of you who have not really considered how a local area network functions, independently or with the World Wide Web, then this thirteen-minute movie is just for you.

I downloaded the good quality version and found the graphics excellent. For those of you who are linguists, you can also download this animated explanation in German, French, Dutch, Hebrew or Swedish. The movie is free for private use and can be purchased for commercial purposes.

Another site that uses visualizations is the Atlas of Cyberspace. If you use Google, you can access this site easily. The Atlas of Cyberspace uses cartographic maps to picture Internet connections. Some of the maps use familiar cartographic images. Other maps are more abstract. You can find information under topic headings such as Conceptual, Artistic, Geographic, Topology, Info Spaces, ISP maps as well as many others. I encourage you to visit this site.

Still another site to visit is www.kartoo.com. You can go directly to this site or click on the site link when you visit the Atlas of Cyberspace. Kartoo.com functions as a search engine just like Google or Yahoo. Instead of finding lists of topics, Kartoo provides a map-style graphic with hits appearing as balls of various sizes on a map-like background. Larger balls signify more relevant sites. Move your mouse over a ball, and a summary of the site appears to the left of the screen.

Since I am writing this article before St. Patrick’s Day, I decided to type in Ireland. The graphic presented indicates 10 information nodes. These nodes include wheretostay.net, Dublin.city-centre-hotels.com, Ireland.travel.ie and so on. At the left of the screen, a list of topics appears such as government, information, hotels, tour, local town or suburb. Clicking on any of these topics generates further info links. The site takes getting used to, but after a while you get the hang of things.
Going to these sites should keep you busy for a few days. Until next month . . .

John M. Hunter

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