Internet Tools Summary

John December (decemj@rpi.edu)

Copyright © 1995 John December (decemj@rpi.edu). You can use this document for educational, personal, or non-profit purpose. For-profit distribution requires my permission. Provided "as is" without expressed or implied warranty.

PURPOSE

The purpose of this document is to list tools available on the Internet that are used for network information retrieval (NIR) and Computer-Mediated Communication (CMC). This is not meant to be a strict categorization or an exhaustive list, rather a reference catalog. I certainly would welcome comments and suggestions.

AUDIENCE

those getting started in understanding what you can do on the Internet in NIR and CMC; for those experienced, it collects and summarizes sources of information.

ASSUMPTION

You have access to and know how to use finger, ftp, gopher, http, telnet, email, or Usenet newsgroups.

REFERENCES

The references listed at the end of this document are very useful guides to these tools.

ACTION

The Action notation that I had previously described in this document is in the file internet-tools.tax.

NOTES

1. Respect your access privileges to these tools.
2. This information changes; Additions/comments welcome.
3. For demo purposes, I have used Unix commands; certainly Unix is not the only operating system required for these tools and forums. Apologies to those who don't have Unix.
4. On the classification (NIR v. CMC): some tools could be used for either, such as telnet and email. I've placed them in what I feel are "principle use" categories, e.g., telnet is used mostly for NIR, and email is commonly used for CMC (although both have applications in the other category).
5. Many of these tools have applicability off the Internet. Usenet, for example, is not confined to the Internet, and Internet email (and thus LISTSERV files) can be exchanged with communication systems off the Internet (BITNET, fidonet, commercial services.) So this list is not Internet (only) tools, but tools that can be used on the Internet.
6. A $ sign indicates a non-public domain tool or interface.

How to Use this segmented hypertext version

1. The top of every page has a title bar with these options:
   • Internet Tools Summary Takes you to the page you are reading now
   • Table of contents:
     • 1-level This shows the headers for just the sections; clicking on a section titles will bring up a page with all the text for that section.
     • 2-level This shows the headers for the sections and sub-sections; clicking on of the sub-section titles will bring up a page with only the text for that sub-section. In this same list, the section titles are available, which will give you all the text for the entire section.
     • 3-level This shows the headers for sections, sub-sections, and sub-sub-sections. Clicking on a sub-sub-section title will bring up a page with only the text for that sub-sub-section. In this list, the sub-section and section titles are available, and work just as described above.
   • Form to search the database.
   • Form to add items to the database.
2. More information on other formats and supporting documents for this information is in the About this Information section.
3. As a "front door" to this list, I think the 2-level table of contents works well, giving enough information, but not too long of a list.
4. The footer of every page has the last date this information was updated and the release number.
5. If you want to, you can go to the whole list in one file.