Volume 10

April 1994

Drop in to a virtual coffeehouse; the new bulletin board system offered by Border's Book Shop serves up book information and discussions. Dial 215/568-7472 using communications settings of N-8-1 at speeds up to 14.4 bps.

Pico navigation: To move to the start of a line in the Pico editor used by most Elm mailers, type Control-A; to move to the end of a line, type Control-E.

Spelling impaired? Do you consistently fail to log into anonymous FTP sites because you misspell anonymous? Try ftp instead. Most sites accept ftp as an alternative login name.

Insert different bullet and numbering styles in WordPerfect for Windows 6.0 by selecting Bullets & Numbers from the Insert menu. Options include bullets, squares, triangles, and upper- and lower-case Roman numerals.

Close your windows! A shortcut for closing multiple open windows on a Macintosh is to press the Option key and then click any window's close box.

To delete locked files from a Macintosh, press the Option key when choosing Empty Trash from the Special menu.

Neat freaks who want their Macintosh desktop icons arranged in alphabetical order can press the Option key and then select the Clean Up All option from the Special menu. To al-phabetically arrange icons in a window, press the Option key and then select the Clean Up by Name option from the Special menu.

A sign language CD-ROM dictionary containing over 2,500 signs is expected from HarperCollins Publishers in September.

Connectix's RamDoubler software on a 68030 or better Macintosh effectively doubles the amount of RAM available for applications by adjusting how memory is used in real time.

Hewlett-Packard has upped the ante in desktop inkjet printer technology by increasing resolution to 600 by 300 dots per inch. There will be four new machines designed to work with either Macintosh or IBM PC/compatibles.

Apple announced a $749 digital color camera dubbed the QuickTake 100 for Macintosh and MS-Windows computers that allows the user, within seconds of taking a picture, to download images for use in a variety of documents or presentations.

Get serious about karaoke with sing-along CD-ROMs from Sirius Publishing (800/247-0307). Titles include Elvis! The King, Broadway's Best, and Livin' In The Sixties.

What's in a name? Motorola's 68000 processor got its name for having approximately 68,000 transistors. In case you're wondering, the 68030 has over 300,000, and the 68040 has over 1.2 million transistors.

Fun, fun, fun on the Infobahn? The information cognoscenti are trying to replace the long-winded "information superhighway" with "Infobahn," recalling the high-speed German Autobahn -- a place where the speed limit is definitely not 55 mph!

The Doublespace compression technology was removed from the latest release of MS-DOS after Microsoft lost a patent infringement suit filed by Stac Electronics; Microsoft was directed to pay Stac $120 million in damages.

Rock and rollers Peter Gabriel, Todd Rundgren, and David Bowie offer both audio and computer-based CDs

Worldwide sales of CD-ROM titles and readers swelled to more than $12 billion in 1993; projections are that this figure will increase to $144 billion by 1999. The installed base of CD-ROM readers is expected to increase from 4.5 million units in 1992 to over 11 million units in 1993.

IBM's Power PC products are due late in 1994; all systems will reportedly have CD-ROM drives and speech recognition as standard components.

The much maligned metaphor, "information superhighway," apparently still has some life left in it -- the American Dialect Society voted the phrase Word of the Year for 1993.

What is 225 years old, conservative, reliable, and going online? The Encyclopedia Britannica . An electronic version of the encyclopedia will reportedly be offered in the fall, on a subscription basis, to colleges and universities, where it can be accessed by Internet users. In contrast, Compton's, Grolier's, and Microsoft's Encarta encylopedias are offered on CD-ROM.

Stop! Don't copy those files! WordPerfect 6.0 for DOS files are compressed. To copy the program (or parts of the program), type a:install (or b:install) and press Enter to decompress and copy files to the hard drive.

Not just for dummies. One of the best books in the latest crop of Internet offerings, The Internet for Dummies by John R. Levine and Carol Baroudi, has reportedly been avoided by network navigators who don't want the title prominently displayed on their bookshelves.

The URL (Uniform Resource Locator) for Penn's home page on the World-Wide Web (WWW) is http://www.upenn.edu/.

Summer cleanup: Faculty and students leaving campus for the summer are reminded to sign off from listserv discussion groups; otherwise your inbox could overflow, causing e-mail to be lost.

A free electronic newsletter featuring article summaries and information about emerging and established electronic technologies, HOTT (Hot Off The Tree), will publish its first issue on April 25. To subscribe, send e-mail to listserv@ucsd.edu and include SUBSCRIBE HOTT-LIST as the only line in your message. If you don't want to subscribe via e-mail, you can wait a bit -- it will be available in the newsgroup bit.magazines.computing.

NetNews statistics at Penn: The number of news articles read in one week topped 4.1 million -- an average of more than 7 articles every second. The number of hosts reading news on campus is now over 800, and the most popular upenn group is still upenn.forsale.

Advanced Neurotechnologies Inc. (ANI) claims to have developed a "direct" brain-wave-to-computer interface, called Brainlink, which is capable of rudimentary computer control.

Limit Current Contents searches to book, CD, or movie reviews; editorials; poetry; fiction; etc. by using the publication type label (.pt.) For example k=book review .pt. and greece. For a list of all publication types used in Current Contents look at the explain keyword screens (exp=k).

The PennNet modem pool has expanded again. There are now 240 modems available -- double the number available 5 months ago. Dial 898-0834 for access.

To check your listing in the online directory, telnet to whois.upenn.edu. Faculty and staff with Network IDs can also update their online directory entries.

PennNet PassPort, a 44-page directory of PennNet and Internet resources and instructions, is available from Wharton Reprographics, 400 SH-DH, for $2. [It is also available in PennInfo]

Although Eudora 1.4 is MIME compliant, be careful about sending such mail to non-MIME-mail systems. If you do, turn off the QP (quoted printables) button at the top of your message window.

Eliminate false hits in PennData searching by limiting searches to subject, author, etc. For example, a search for books about Philadelphia and Boston will work better if limited to subject (k=philadelphia.su. and boston.su. ) because this cuts out place of publication keywords, etc. Tips on using keywords can be found by typing exp=k in any database.

"Futzing" means playing around with your computer and trying to do things for which you are not trained.

March 1994

According to Online Access magazine, the White House receives between 1,000 and 6,000 e-mail messages every day. Makes you wonder how much of that mail is for Socks!

Booting from a CD-ROM works fine on some CD-equipped Macintosh models but not on others. If it you have trouble, try holding down the Command, Shift, Option, and Delete keys when starting up.

Apple's still on top! Once again Apple has been ranked the top vendor of personal computers in the United States. According to market research firm Dataquest, Apple sold the largest number of personal computers in the country in 1993--the second consecutive year it has achieved this leading position.

Unresolved limitations to the emerging electronic superhighway were apparent when Al Gore held a live online chat with about 900 people. Problems ranged from delays typing comments, to a home data line which was disconnected when a participant's father picked up a telephone extension.

Lease a Newton! Apple Computer, and MobileComm, a subsidiary of BellSouth Corp. plan to offer a lease option that will include a Newton MessagePad, a PCMCIA paging card, and the Newton Messaging Service for local or nationwide coverage. MobileComm can be reached at 800/474- 6374.

Although Veronica searches of gopherspace are estimated to total about a million per month, fewer than five percent produce useful results. If you want to learn how to compose better searches, see the document "How to compose veronica queries" under the Veronica topic in the central Penn Gopher.

A sampling of Internet statistics from The Internet Index--number of newspaper and magazine articles about the Internet during the first nine months of 1993: more than 2,300; average time between new hookups to the Internet: 10 minutes; number of Internet hosts in July 1993: 1,776,000; number of countries reachable by e-mail: 137; number of countries not on e-mail: 99.

Firewire--a name you'll be hearing more about in the near future. It's a new high-performance universal serial bus that may replace all current parallel, video, audio, serial, power, keyboard, and SCSI ports. It reportedly is 10 to 40 times faster than existing bus structures.

Apple will make PowerPC upgrades available for the LC 520, 550, and 575, as well as the Performa 550, LC 475, and Quadra 605.

Speed bump on the information highway: The National Writer's Union has announced plans to file suit in federal court against some of the nation's newspapers and online information services. At issue is whether or not writers should be compensated when their stories are read or reproduced electronically.

For technical and policy "wonks" the U.S. budget is available on CD-ROM. The cost is approximately $30. Call 800/782-8872 for more information.

Insignia's new SoftWindows PC-compatible software will be included on selected configurations of Apple's new PowerPCs.

The trend toward working at home (supported by computers, modems, fax machines, and cellular phones) reportedly accounted for 45 percent of all new jobs from 1987 to 1992. It seems to have also had an unexpected effect on the men's clothing industry--suit sales have plummeted as men increasingly "dress down" for the home office.

WordPerfect 6.0b, a maintenance release, improves performance, speeds up screen regeneration time, and includes 25 new commands for creating more powerful macros.

Use of Penn's online directory, Whois, has increased by about 500 percent, and the "hit rate" has increased from 40 to 45 percent. Both increases are the likely result of the recent addition of thousands of student records to the directory.

Pentium-based PCs are expected to be available for under $2,000 before the end of 1994.

February 1994

Chips in orbit? An experimental project for the next space shuttle flight will be looking into growing semiconductor wafers of ultrapure gallium arsenide--a compound that is eight times faster than silicon but consumes only 1/10 the power.

Microsoft DOS 6.2 places commas in file sizes and in the output from commands such as CHKDSK, MEM, and DIR in order to make the output easier to read.

The full text of feature and editorial articles from many popular magazines such as The New Yorker and The National Review are available via the Electronic Newsstand's Gopher. To access, Telnet to gopher.enews.com and type gopher at the login prompt.

According to InternetWorld magazine, if the Internet continues to grow at its current rate, by the year 2005 the number of users will equal the current world population.

The USENET Oracle has the answers to tough questions such as, Does chewing gum lose its flavor on the bedpost overnight? Send a question to oracle@cs.indiana.edu and include the words "tell me" in the subject line.

Bad word-of-mouth travels faster and farther over electronic bulletin boards and may require that businesses rethink the old rule-of-thumb that an unhappy customer tells only 5-10 people about poor service experiences.

The GRE (Graduate Record Exam) is expected to be phased out by 1997 and replaced by computerized adaptive tests (CATs).

Alvin Toffler predicts rise of infoterrorism--quoting a senior intelligence official who claimed, "Give me $1 billion and 20 people and I'll shut America down. I'll shut down the Federal Reserve, all the ATMs; I'll desynchronize every computer in the country." Toffler said, "We are in fact going to see infoterrorism, not just hackers playing games."

The new South African-made "Supertag" chip can scan a shopping-cart full of groceries in seconds--identifying, pricing, and adding the total in less time than it takes you to reach for your checkbook.

Acronym watch! SOHO isn't just the name of a neighborhood in New York! It also stands for Small Office Home Office. It was coined to to refer to people working from home; it applies both to the self employed and to employees who bring work home from the office. The domain name system (DNS) used for e-mail addressing on the Internet is the latest status symbol; it's appearing on NBC nightly news, in magazines, on business cards, and in the mainstream press.

Historians are turning to electronic means of compilating, manipulating, discussing and preserving historic data. The H-Net project at the University of Illinois has set up 20 e-mail lists on the Internet for historians to peruse. Send mail to listserv@uicvm.uic.edu with the commands help and list (on separate lines) in the body of your message.

PennInfo browsers made 1,690 requests to view Penn Printout articles last December. The most popular article (94 requests) was "SLIP--Dial up access to the Internet."

Nominate your favorite net personality for inclusion in Who's Who on the Internet. Nominations must be e-mailed to whoswho@hobbes.mitre.org by March 1, 1994. Include the name, the e-mail address, and the Internet claim to fame of the person you are nominating--and yes, you may nominate yourself!

Penn's most popular newsgroup continues to be upenn.forsale.

John Sculley's severance package from Apple included: A million dollars, plus $1.5 million in salary and bonuses for 1993; a one-year consulting job paying $750,000; the purchase of his upscale Woodside home and his Lear 55 jet; and paying moving costs back to Greenwich, Connecticut. Apple also agreed to let Sculley exercise his stock options valued at $2.42 million.

November 1993

Yet another reason to not use the DOS 6.0 antiviral utility: When you install it, it does not check the hard drive or memory for a pre- existing virus infection.

Lotus 123's WYSIWYG feature provides a different menu in addition to the normal Lotus menu. The normal Lotus menu is activated with the slash (/) key and displays the word MENU in the upper right corner. The WYSIWYG menu is activated with a colon (:) and displays the word WYSIWYG.

Software for Apple's Newton MessagePad includes Fodor's 94 Travel Manager: top U.S. Cities, the Fortune 500 Guide to America Business, Dell Crossword Puzzles and Other Games, Money Magazine Financial Assistant, and Columbo's Mystery Capers.

Toner Tuner, a $39.95 Macintosh system extension from Working Software (800/522-5939), adds a darkness dial in the print dialog box that allows you to set print density and save toner. The software works with laser and ink-jet printers.

The Electronic Newsstand is offering a magazine subscription service for the Internet community. Participating magazines contribute their table of contents and a sample article. Access is via Gopher (gopher.netsys.com port 2100) or telnet to gopher.netsys.com and log in as "enews."

On a Mac running System 7.x: To hide the windows of the application you're using without "mousing" to Hide <application name> on the Applications menu, hold down the option key and click in another program's window or on the desktop. All the open windows of the first application will close and the application will run "hidden." To find out about your PC's hardware and software (memory, hard disk size, network type, and version) without buying a separate diagnostic software utility, use the MSD.EXE utility, which is included with Microsoft Windows 3.1 and Microsoft DOS 6.0.

Use the Hook to Holdings in Franklin/PennData to save yourself time. The PennData journal article files are linked to Franklin, the online catalog. When a journal cited in PennData is located in one of the Penn Libraries you'll see the note "Held by Library, type HOL for holdings." When you type HOL you'll see the location, call number, and full record of issues bound and received here at Penn.

DELTREE, a new DOS 6 command, will delete a directory and any associated subdirectories and files. Use it carefully!

Microsoft has created a 24-hour, toll-free automated support line for its operating system products. Call 800/936-4200 for recorded answers to frequently asked questions and information via fax on Windows 3.0 and 3.1, MS-DOS 5.0 and 6.0, and Windows for Workgroups.

A signature is an electronic business card containing lines of text, such as your name, e-mail address, and affiliation, appended to the bottom of an e-mail message. Most mail packages provide a method for automatically attaching your signature to each message you send.

The spelling checker in WordPerfect 6.0 for DOS does not flag words with unusual capitalization patterns that have been added to the dictionary, such as the name diSantis. Earlier versions of WordPerfect flag these words for capitalization errors.

If you take your modem overseas, you may be dismayed to discover that the country you are traveling to doesn't use the standard U.S. RJ-11 telephone plug. Never fear--a company named TeleAdapt sells plugs that allow you to connect your modem's RJ-11 plug to plugs used in other countries. These plugs are available for more than 70 countries and are sold either in sets or individually. Contact TeleAdapt at 408/370-5105 for more information.

Acronym trivia: PowerPC stands for Performance Optimized with Enhanced RISC Personal Computer.

SEPTA rail schedules are now in PennInfo. Search using the keyword "SEPTA," or use the name of the route (e.g., Chestnut Hill East) or its number (e.g., R7) to go directly to the desired schedule.

September 1993

How fast is fast? On May 7, Penn researchers sent data to Morristown, NJ, at the record-setting speed of 2.4 billion bits per second-fast enough to send the Encyclopadia Britannica from Philadelphia to Boston in a quarter of a second.

The Penn Library Gopher will debut in early September. Its goal is to provide subject-organized access to Internet resources and to minimize some common Gopher weaknesses: blind alleys, inaccurate data, confusing menus. It will provide easy access to RLIN/Eureka, Franklin, and other library catalogs in the Philadelphia area and worldwide. Most resources will be accompanied by source and location information, making them easier to find again and/or to cite. You can access the gopher by telnet or with a gopher client at gopher.library.upenn.edu.

For data recovery, Chris Heister of SAS Humanities Computing highly recommends Computer Shoppe (619/384-4500) for price, speed, and quality of service.

Planning to trade in your old Mac? MacWorld publishes the weekly average sale price of used Macs. Their information comes from the American Computer Exchange of Atlanta, GA (800/786-0717).

Stacker for the Macintosh has been released by Stac Electronics Inc., makers of one the most popular disk compression applications for DOS- based machines. It works on a full disk at one time, not file by file.

Turn it off! According to PC World, the EPA estimates that 30 to 40 percent of all PC equipment is left running 24 hours a day, seven days a week. The energy consumed is enough to keep at least 12 power plants running year-round.

The AV series of desktop Macintoshes features telecommunications, video, and speech capabilities. Users can access voice mail, e-mail, and faxes; videoconference; use speech to control, command, and navigate; and use the Mac as a hands-free speaker phone and answering machine.

To limit your Current Contents search to the most recent articles or journal titles in the database, use the entry week label with your keyword search, e.g., k=9320.ew. and hyperactivity. The latest entry week is listed at the top right of the CTOC (Table of Contents) and CART (journal articles) introductory screens.

WordPerfect 6.0 lets you superimpose text over a graphic. This will allow for the watermark effect you see on some professionally designed letterheads.

PennNet's modem pool can be reached by dialing 898-0834. Data rates of 300-14,400 bps, error correction (v.42), and compression (v.42bis) are supported. Note that dial-up access requires a PAS ID (see page 19).

Computer security devices approved for campus use by the Office of Risk Management are listed in PennInfo under Computing/Site Licenses and other Vendor Relationships/University-Approved Vendors for Hardware Security.

Academe This Week, an electronic service of The Chronicle of Higher Education, offers portions of the paper's editorial contents along with extensive listings of job openings. Published each Tuesday at noon, it is available on many Gopher servers under "All the Gopher Servers in the World." or by pointing your Gopher client to chronicle.merit.edu.

No. That's not my credit card-that's War and Peace. Franklin Electronic Publishers has introduced the Franklin Digital Book System, a 4.6 ounce palmtop computer that accepts .4-ounce credit card-sized "books." Contact Franklin at 609/261-4800.

Current FAA regulations don't allow you to use a notebook computer while airborne at altitudes below 10,000 feet. The computers may interfere with airplane electronics.

Newton Intelligence, the technology underlying Apple's innovative Newton MessagePad digital assistant, reportedly "learns" and implements users' work habits and patterns. For example, it can learn to print a letter in an accustomed format or format a fax, add a cover page, and place the fax in the system's outbox.