Caught In |  | by Al Massey |
Kudos to Geosystems Global Corp. for bringing us MapQuest, a searchable atlas containing around eighty percent of all the maps published in the United States. Using buttons and scroll bars, users can customize the on-line maps, zooming in and out among street, city, regional and national levels. The maps can be populated with points of interest, from hotels and Thai restaurants to parks and schools according to a user's specifications.
According to Simon Greenman, director of applications and strategic programs, Geosystems has been working with CD-ROM publishers for the past five years and exploring on-line opportunities for their products the past year or so. Tying this kind of mapping technology to the graphics of the Web presents a big win in my opinion. I used MapQuest recently to print out a map, complete with local landmarks including a church, school and restaurant, showing the location of my new home.
MapQuest uses Java applets to speed up MapQuest by shifting some of the work from the Web site to the client's machine. This is a unique application of Java and is just a sample of great things to come. Java downloads the maps and navigational controls to the client machine at the start of a session, thereby reducing the amount of data sent down the line as you redraw maps to reflect updated information. Check it out at http://www.geosys.com/.
Inns & Outs Corp., an Austin, Texas based listing service of some 15,000 bed-and-breakfast establishments in the United States, uses MapQuest to locate and interconnect their customers. Info at: http://www.innsandouts.com/.
CONSUMER ALERT! There is an Internet Service Provider advertising rock bottom rates with unlimited mileage. You have probably seen their ads by now. Call from anywhere in the United States with a 1-800 number for something on the order of $15.95 a month. DO NOT be taken in. This is a SHELL account. Further on down in the ad you will see unlimited plus service for $24.95. Unlimited Plus is dial-up PPP. I have received a number of complaints regarding this provider and they all revolve around customer support. It seems that in order to get support you have to call a 1-900 number where you are placed on hold for periods of up to twenty minuets at a time to the tune of $2.95 a minute. As my daddy used to say, "a penny saved is ridiculous."
For perhaps the best snapshot of American life anywhere glom onto the US Bureau of the Census at http://www.census.gov/. Talk about a webmaster's big time, bad dream. Thirty gigs of Web pages and images, 250 CD-ROM Drives whirring, and over 100 gigs of data in the background compressing and decompressing on the fly. ZOWIE! This thing is all whipped into shape by Webmaster Cary Bean and a staff of three.
The Census's Internet effort started in April of 1994 as a mixture of Web pages, ftp, and gopher sites with the idea of making everything available to everyone, but soon the data and the users outgrew the system so the bureau decided to switch to a straight Web site.
The real problem became the organization of the information so that it could be displayed with the Web tools. Such organization and updating is the bane of anyone who is expected to keep a system current so Bean found a way to put the responsibility for data on the people who produce it.
Using software developed at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, individual departments in the Bureau follow directions posted on their intranet about where and how to link Web pages and updates. This method requires only minimal oversight from Bean and his staff and insures that Web pages are always fresh and current.
I spent a very pleasant afternoon with a group of "Websters" from St. Pius X High School. This group of youngsters is making use of a PPP account supplied by HALNet to advance their skills and I am here to tell you they are doing a great job. Under the direction of their teacher and HAL-PC member Joyce Galiette, with input from HALNet's own world class Webmaster Marilyn Gore, these kids have assembled a good looking set of informative Web Pages. Check out their work at http://www.hal-pc.org/~stpiusx and while you are at it take a look at http://www.riveroaks.hal-pc.org and http://www.hal-pc.org/~fdw to see how River Oaks Elementary and Booker T. Washington High School are making use of their HALNet accounts. HAL-PC's Board of Directors is to be commended for making HALNet resources available for this worthy project.
Peripheral Vision Ltd. of Great Britain has announced the launch of a US subsidiary called PenOp that has developed technology that has significantly advanced the way computers can input and verify signatures. PenOp has developed a technique for measuring not just the what a signature looks like but how it is written, including speed and pauses. A company that uses the technology can build a database of signature "hits" so that the software will measure a just-written signature for authenticity.
In introducing the product Jeremy Newman, president of PenOp, said that "we've developed a signature from the thing that sat on the page to the movement that created it." There are about 40 variables measured by the software when someone writes on a pen-based computer or "digitizer" pad. The signature is encrypted and then sent on its way through the data network.
PenOp hopes to sell the technique as a way for firms to be certain of who is making a purchase over a computer network like the Internet. Among firms testing the new technology is Principal Financial Group. They are using it in a program where some 200 of their sales representatives visit businesses that rely on Principal to run their 401(k) retirement programs. Their customers just sign with a plastic pen-shaped stylus on the screen of the laptop computer. The IRS is testing this new innovation to make tax filing faster and less costly. While folks have been able to send in tax returns from their personal computers for several years now, they still must send in a separate document as authentication of the electronic filing. PenOp will do away with this second step.
Peripheral Vision, based in Somerset, England, established PenOp to drive the technology in the United States, where most advances in personal computing and the Internet have evolved. PenOp will also have a "plug-in" for Netscape Navigator.
The transformation of the `net is taking place on Wall Street where more and more Internet companies are testing the Initial Public Offering (IPO) market. At the present time there is an insatiable demand for Internet stocks and this is making the `net a far better capitalized industry as young companies quickly move beyond the venture startup stage and find themselves suddenly flush with cash.
But the public market enthusiasm for Internet stocks has not be entirely discriminating, and could spell trouble for some investors who have jumped on the Internet bandwagon as well as some companies that might no respond well to the pressures of being public.
Al Massey is a HAL-PC member.
E-mail me at webmaster@hal-pc.org with any comments you have and tell me what you want to see here.
Back to the User Journal Home Page