December 1st - Special Subjects
You are located on the Special Subjects Page. If you want to go directly to one of our other subjects, just click on the underlined titles below:
You are located on the Family Background Page. If you want to go directly to one of our other subjects, just click on the underlined titles below:
| December 1st Edition Pages | December 1st Edition Pages |
|---|---|
| Travel Page | Internet page |
| Golf Page | Computer Page |
| Bridge Page | Oke Investment Page |
| Family Background Page | Health&Diet Page |
| Special Subjects Page | Contra Costa News Page |
| Oke Investment Lab | Oke Investment Lab |
| Home Page | Home Page |
My URL is home.pacbell.net/califoak/ or search for "Oke Web Page for Seniors"
My E-mail address is califoak@pacbell.net
Commentary - This page was set up to handle special subjects that didn't fit in our other subject areas. For the last few months, I have used this sheet to list new or interesting web sites of interest to readers with an emphasis on senior subject material. With the growing prescence of the Internet in our lives, this still seems like the best service I can give to my readers. I still am amazed most every day at this new form of exchanging information around the world. The world of investment is certainly one area in which the Internet has empowered the individual investor in obtaining the information and data to handle his\her own investments on-line without the need for a broker(in many cases.)I have shown a link to PC World Magazine On-line which reviews the top on-line brokers, and shows you which ones are best in various areas of service. So let's get started with the latest selections below:
| Section Three - Hot New Web Sites - Special Subjects |
|---|
We are continuing showing the lastest new web sites of a general subject area here. Let us know if you have a special web site that would be of interest to our readers.
August Picks
Just what we need.... another search engine. Well this claims to cover higher percentage of web sites than any other free search engine. Give it a try with your own special search requests and decide for yourself:
March Selections
If you like musicals, you will spend some time here:
index.html---musicals 101/ has all the history of Broadway musicals
Heh, You gotta like this one:
Thanks to my "young?" sister Marje for this site:
Automotive Learning On-line - InnerAuto.com
Excite Autos: Take a Test Drive: Used Car Prices
Mark Twain at Large: His Travels Here and Abroad
BabyCenter | Popular Baby Names
February Picks
January Selections
December Picks
PNC Bank - The Twelve Days of Christmas
JobSmart: California Job Search Guide
California Registry: A Senior Housing Information and Referral Service
November Selections
What better way to start off family web sites then: The Home of Sesame Street web site:
CTW Family Workshop - Home of Sesame Street
C*E*A---Centre for the Easily Amused -- Collection of Funny Sites
ValuPage sponsored by SuperMarkets Online
Here's a site to check the lyrics for all your favorite holiday songs:
For our mystery lovers, here is the perfect site to take a short break from all the holiday shopping and planning activities. This is a well designed site with a mystery of the day for you to solve.
Update - October 15 - The number of exciting leading edge web sites are coming at us at a rapid pace. Some of these sites are examples of the new technological approaches to commerce and business in general. I am highlighting one site that only is a minor display of the new trend to on-line shopping centers. This site is confined to clothing only, but demonstrates how we might be shopping in a few years. The message is clear: If you are in business today, whether it be a small business or a national company, you better find out how your business will be effected by the Internet and start the process of opening web sites that will keep up to the latest technology.
Now take a look at the following link that offers on-line shopping for clothes made by the leading manufacturers in the business. Now I don't expect you to start shopping for clothes on the Web, but you should be aware of these new trends. Now click on the underlined title below:
Bluefly--Buy top clothes on-line for 25-75% off
Here is a site with a lot of general interest information on the Bay Area:
The Dollar Stretcher--Weekly with great Archive of previous issues by subject
Now you doesn't like to save a little money here and there. I guarantee that you will save some bucks at this site:
Here is a very interesting web site worth your time:
September - This month Special Subjects will start a new project finding the most interesting new web sites to be found on the Internet. Now, of course, this is an impossible task! The number and variety of web sites is simply overwhelming. On top of that, what's interesting to me is boring to you. But, hopefully, we can come across some sites that are worth your time. Let's start out with a series of sites below:
How about a little gossip?
Here is a definite keeper for many legal and financial matters:
Nolo Home Page
After reading about all that legal stuff, you'll need a little humor:
OK! You have an itch to start a business---check out this location for all the data on starting a small company:
Yahoo Small Business
Good source for finding governmental agencies:
The Resource Directory for Older People
Words, Acronyms, Quotations, and Other Related Subjects
I have run across several web sites relating to the written word. Take some time to check out the following web sites. You might say.....Boring!---- but these sites illustrate the variety of data available on the Internet in just one subject area. Imagine what you can find on the subjects you are particularly interested in? If you have ambitions of writing that great novel, or maybe just a family background that is just sitting in your brain, then check out the last two sites below for some ideas. Now click away on the following web sites:
One Look Dictionary - The Faster Finder
Phrase Finder - Search High and Low
Novel Advice - Devoted
to the craft of writing
Children's Writing Resource Center - Writing for Children
A Look at Bookstores Today and in the Future
This month I thought we would take a look at book stores and what is going on in that retail sector. The SF Chronicle has just completed a three day series(May 5-7) assessing the future of bookselling. The big debate is the battle between online book sellers vs. traditional booksellers (particularly the super bookstores.) Another part of this series looks at the viability of the small independent bookstore in a future dominanted by the biggies.
The big question for us on the web is: What is the future for online bookstores? And what features will they have compared to the traditional superstores. Will we still prefer to roam around Barns&Noble scanning the books we are interested in buying?; or will the online sellers give us special book review to take the place of actually looking at the book on the shelf?
The name of the game on the web is getting the "hits". And like AOL, the book sellers are all scrambling to get the best web sites quickly to establish their leadership on the web. It is a game of "big bucks" with only the larger companies able to compete in providing the resources necessary to draw millions of visitors.
Each of us must make that judgement individually. What we are going to do here is take you directly to each of the websites for the major(and some local)book stores. Then you will be able to compare offerings on the various sites to what you are used to getting at your local bookstore.
So below are the web sites for Barnes&Noble, the largest traditional bookseller; Amazon.com, the largest web site book seller; Borders.com, with a brand new site; and three Bay Area book stores with web sites:
Let's start out with the true pioneer of web site booksellers, Amazon.com. This Seattle based company has a head start on the book business on the web. It is rapidly expanding, while incurring losses along the way. Just click on the underlined title below and check it out:
Amazon.con Books
Now take a look at the largest booktore:
Barnes and Noble
And biting at the heals of the above stores is Borders with ambitious plans for their web site:
Borders Online
Now here are three SF Bay Area Bookstores with web sites:
Cody's Books, Berkeley
There are a lot of other bookstore web sites to check out. Just use your favorite search engine to bring them up and just click on your favorite. One of special interest for me is the following site. This site shows the future of book stores on-line. You will be able to read excerpts or whole books on-line. When you get to the Front Page, click on: Personal Bookshelf and you will be able to pick from lists by category for your choice of books to read or copy online. Please give us your review of this site. Now just click on the underlined title below:
Macmillan Publishing USA--Good source of new technical book info
Macmillan Publishing USA
Update of May 15th
Search Engines-How to Find Subjects on the Internet
Search Engines-How to Find Subjects on the Internet
We will continue this topic and include it each month for the time being. Each month new sites come up with different angles on searching on the web. Here are two more sites well worth your time:
Search Engine Watch: News, Tips and More About Search Engines
This site is dedicated to keeping up with the latest data on search engines. The site is directed toward two type of visitors:
- Webmasters and others involved with creating and promoting web sites
- Search engine users, everyone from researchers, librarians and general web surfers who want to know how to find things better using search engines
Here are some features of this site:
- A Webmaster's Guide to Search Engines
- Search Engines Facts and Fun
- Search Engine Status Reports
- Search Engine Resources
- Search Engine Report Mailing List
Now click on the underlined title below and check this site for your search education:
A Webmaster's Guide to Search Engines
Internet Scout Project Homepage
Now here is a more sophisticated site directed toward the education community. It is sponsored by the National Science Foundation to provide timely information to the education community about valuable Internet resources.
Every day professional librarians, educators, and content specialists filter hundreds of annoucements looking for the most valuable and authoritative resources available online. The best of what is found is then summarized, organized, and provided to the Internet community in various formats. Here are some services provided by this site:
Now just click on the underlined title below and give us a report on you like about this site:
Scout Report - The premier weekly guide to new Internet resources
Update of April 15th - Search Engines
Search Engines-How to Find Subjects on the Internet
This is a continuation of my research on search engines. I started out with the idea of doing my own research in this area; but like most other topics, the research has already been done in a professional manner and published on the Web. So, again, my job becomes finding those sources and pointing them out to my readers. There is a valuable lesson for us here; we don't need to reinvent the wheel, the job of this web site will be finding information sources on the web, not developing new information. Now just click on the following web sites and learn about search engines:
ZDNet Web SearchUser
Here is a site that gets right to the heart of the matter. Here are some of the web site's features:
Now just click on the underlined link below:
ZDNet: Web SearchUser
Search Engine Watch: News, Tips and More About Search Engines
Now this web site is designed for webmasters, as well as for individual surfers, but it has tons of data on search engines and how each one goes about it's searches. Check out the "Search Engine Features Chart" which shows how major engines compare in a variety of areas. I ran my own test to see how the search engines did in finding: Oke Web Page for Seniors. Here are the results:
The major factor in the chart seemed to be the number of pages(in millions) that each web searcher searched. The engines with the larger capacities came up with my home page title(except for AltaVista.) Now click on underlined title below and spend some time at this site:
Search Engine Watch
Now see previous editions below for introduction to finding subjects on the Web.
Mid-March Edition - Special Subjects
Unable to post article this month due to lack of time. Hope to have more info in next edition.
This month we will start an extended look into the process of searching for subjects on the Web. While I have been on the Web for some years now, I still have not taken the time to think about how to go about searching for data in an efficient manner.
The most amazing thing about the Web is the ease of finding general information. For the person new to computers, it only takes a minimum of experience to be on their way on the Web.
Now just think about this, before the Web it took an incredible amount of time to dig up the latest information on most subjects. Now you are just a few "clicks" away from most of the world's public information. I think we fail to appreciate this new technology and the impact it will have on our future, and that of our children. In any case, you can easily get the information you want with a minimum of training.
First you must get on the Web, whether it is at your local library, AOL, your own local access provider or through your university connection. Then you will need a web browser to provide the transportation you need to navigate between web sites, handle your email and provide space to store your favorite web addresses. Most access providers, supply Netscape Navigator or Internet Explorer. Now you have everything you need to navigate the web.
However, there are some other things you will need to efficiently ultilize the web. Those are at the minimum:
Now the only thing missing is your "search engine." Each browser supplies a list of search engines for your use. Here are the most popular:
With these tools you are ready to go! If you are new to the Internet; no problem--just open your browser and type in the word or words in the search dialog box of any of these search engines and press the button shown. You don't even need to type that URL address, that funny sounding name for a web site. Here are some hints at entering word or words in any of the search engines:
Of course, in most cases, it is more efficient to use the URL locator to go to specific URLs. In Netscape Navigator just click on FILE in TOOLBAR at top of page. Then click on Open Location to get to dialog box. Now you should only have to start out with www. and add the URL address without any other preceeding symbols. The normal URL address coding is http://www.name.pacbell./califoak(for my own URL)
Is this case, my address is name.pacbell.net/califoak--the other preceeding symbols are used to issue the command to the browser. Well, actually this doesn't work for my URL for some reason I don't understand. It has something to do with the fact that PacBell is my Web Page generator and my Internet Access Provider. This is just an example of how you have to adjust to new technology. If you can't find what you want one way, try another approach. In the case of my web site, I think the easiest way is to type title into most search engines. I have tested this with the top engines and
my web site popped right up at the top of the list.
What I have gained from experience is that that are more efficient ways to conduct searches, depending on the type of information or data you are seeking. Generally speaking, when you are interested in a broader range of information on any subject, it is better to use specific search engines that use a different approach to finding data. Of course, there are specialized search engines for finding such data as:
Also, there are White and Yellow Pages:
We will continue looking at some of the advanced features of specific search engines. The next article will depend on when I have the time. If you have any questions in this area, drop me a line when you sign the Guestbook just below: or, better yet, send me an email at califoak@pacbell.net.
Sign my guestbook and tell me which subjects you like.
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This page was last updated on December 02, 1999