Winners of the Global Network Navigator 1994 "Best of the Net" awards

1. ArtServe, by Michael Greenhalgh, Australian National University: ArtServe is an art history database consisting of 2,800 images of prints from the 15th century to the end of the 19th century and 2,500 images of classical architecture and architectural sculpture from around the Mediterranean. You can also visit the Canberra School of Art and look at images of contemporary Hong Kong architecture. http://rubens.anu.edu.au/
2. The Currency Converter: A program which converts currency from one denomination to another -- choose the country of interest and you will see the approximate rate of exchange with other countries. http://www.ora.com/cgi-bin/ora/currency
3. Edupage Newsletter: The Edupage newsletter is published three times a week via e-mail, Gopher, and the World Wide Web. It summarizes printed news coverage of interest to the leaders and citizens of the Internet. http://www.educom.edu/
4. International Teletimes: This general-interest magazine is published online from Vancouver, Canada on a shareware model. According to its writer's guidelines, Teletimes "presents informed opinion and observation drawn from the experience of living in a particular place." International Teletimes is a collaboration of many volunteers from around the world, but perhaps most notable is the fact that its editor-in-chief, Ian Wojtowicz, is 16 years old.
5. Internet Underground Music Archive: Billed as the "Net's first free hi-fi music archive," the Internet Underground Music Archive intends to apply the principles of free software to music distribution. Going beyond the limits of what's defined as commercially viable, the Archive seeks to promote obscure and unavailable bands. http://sunsite.unc.edu/ianc
6. New Zealand Information: Want to know about the New Zealand climate, or locate Auckland on a map? Listen to a speech in the native Maori language. Want to know what a tuatara is? You'll also find out that the main difference between Marmite and Vegemite, two types of yeast extract, is that the latter is Australian and tastes awful. http://www.cs.cmu.edu:8001/Web/People/mjw/NZ/MainPage.html
7. The Paleontology Server: The University of California Museum of Paleontology server is an interactive natural history museum available over the Internet. This museum without walls is well organized and makes interesting use of large graphics. You can learn about phylogeny, the "Tree of Life," or examine photographs of great white sharks off the California coast. http://ucmp1.berkeley.edu/welcome.html
8. Science Fiction Resource Guide: Claiming to have "more information on science fiction than any one person can comfortably keep track of," this guide organizes access to books, movies, television, awards, trivia, conventions, and more. There's plenty for trekkies, of course, but you can find a FAQ for Alien in three parts; the nominees and winners of the Hugo awards; a bibliography of Arthurian fiction as well as something called the "Furry list," a collection of GIF images of furry creatures that act like humans. ftp://gandalf.rutgers.edu/pub/sfl/sf-resource.guide.html
9. Taxing Times: Tax time has come and gone, but the Taxing Times is still online. Presented as a public service by Maxwell Labs, Taxing Times is a repository of tax forms, including many IRS publications. On April 14, there were 10,300 document accesses from more than 1,100 hosts. Lots of last-minute lurkers out there! It is perhaps a comfort to some that this server is not operated by the IRS. http://www.scubed.com:8001/tax/tax.html
10. US Census Information Server: The self-proclaimed "Factfinder for the Nation," the Census Bureau has created a model server for government agencies to follow. It organizes information so that citizens can make their own use of it. You can get financial data on state and local governments as well as schools. The Bureau's statistical briefs are PostScript documents describing poverty in the US, analyzing housing changes from 1981-1991, and profiling people of Asian and Pacific Islanders heritage in the American population. The Census Bureau Art Gallery, displays posters used to promote participation in the census. http:/www.census.gov
11. Hypertext USENET FAQs: A FAQ is the first refuge of an Internet user. There are thousands of FAQs on as many different subjects, written by longtime users who grew tired of answering the same questions over and over again. Thomas Fine has helped provide a better answer to the frequently asked question: how can I find the FAQ I need? He has created a hypertext database of FAQs and made them available through Ohio State University. http://www.cis.ohio-state.edu/hypertext/faq/usenet/FAQ-List.html
12. Xerox PARC Map Viewer: From the research labs of the people who make machines that make copies, here's one of the most interactive applications on the Net. MapViewer is an application that dynamically renders a map based on user input. Click on a region and MapViewer will zoom in on it. You can also use a geographic name server to locate a particular location by name. Typing in San Jose, California, we find that it is the county seat, and had a population of 62,000 in 1980. Its location is also given and you can click on it to display a map of the US and a map of Northern California, showing where San Jose is. http://pubweb.parc.xerox.com/map

Copyright © 1994, 1995, 2004 by Kevin Savetz. The information in this book was collected in 1994-1995 and has not been updated since.