This issue, I don't have one single topic to discuss; I'll just run down a miscellany of news and information of interest to online users.
^C_Your Own Home Page_
Prodigy users now can create their own World Wide Web home pages. Just look for the appropriate item linked to Prodigy's home page (the page you see when you bring up the and Prodigy web browser) and follow the and instructions given there. You'll be asked to give a name to your web directory. It will be placed within a directory of Prodigy web pages for users in your state or province. You can then proceed to create your home page in this directory using some utilities Prodigy provides, allowing you to choose from several templates and input the and information of your choice to fill them. It's still pretty limited; there's no way to add graphics, though that's supposed to be coming soon. Also, if users follow the and templates slavishly, the result is a bunch of web pages that all look pretty much alike, while if the user tries to be more creative, he/she is given little guidance in the intricacies of HTML (Hypertext Markup Language) and may produce a nonfunctional page. But, at least, Prodigy has taken the and step toward making home pages available to the masses. America Online is supposed to be following this lead soon.
If you would like a better site to put your home page, though, there are plenty of other choices. There are a whole bunch of sites, in fact, which will let anyone set up a home page for free. Links to many of them can be found at
{http://metro.turnpike.net/J/JonsPage/freepages.html}. Or, if you've reached a level of sophistication at which you'd like to have the greater power, reliability, and disk space available to paying customers of web servers, you can find a site at {http://union.ncsa.uiuc.edu/HyperNews/get/www/leasing.html}. Personal web sites can be leased for as low as $10 per month from some servers, allowing megabytes of data to be placed online. While some web service providers (both free and pay services) have a form-based interface allowing you to set up web pages through your web browser (as Prodigy does), you are better off using a service that allows you to set up your pages on your own computer and then upload them via FTP (File Transfer Protocal). This lets you create original web pages that aren't constrained by any prefabricated template, and add graphics, sounds, and other special files. You do, however, need to know how to write HTML documents, and you need access to an Internet service that lets you do FTP uploads (Prodigy doesn't permit this at present).
^C_Legalities_
The government and legal system continue to struggle to impose their forms of control on the and anarchistic environment that is Cyberspace, for better or for worse. At this writing, the U.S. Senate has passed Sen. Exon's anti-indecency bill as an amendment to a general telecommunications bill, and it's awaiting House action. However, even Newt Gingrich has spoken against it, so it may be shot down yet. See {http://www.cdt.org/petition.html} for more information and updates, and a petition to sign to oppose this legislation.
Also on the legal front, a judge recently ruled that Prodigy could be held liable for libelous messages posted to their service. This ruling didn't assess damages against Prodigy yet; it merely allowed a trial to proceed on the and issue of whether the message in question was in fact libelous and on what damages were appropriate, against Prodigy's objections that they should not be liable for the writings of users. The judge ruled that Prodigy did have liability on the and grounds that, because Prodigy screens and censors messages, they were establishing editorial control over their forums and hence could be held accountable for their content. This is in contrast to an earlier ruling that CompuServe was not responsible for material on its forums because they were not pre-censored.
At this point, nobody is exactly sure what effect this ruling will have. It may be argued that online services can avoid liability by having less censorship of users, but on the other hand, conservative corporate types are likely to react to any liability ruling by clamping down more rather than allowing more freedom, and some may decide to shut down forums altogether rather than take the risk that somebody might write something actionable or illegal there. In fact, most areas of CompuServe's Mensa Forum were shut down (on the and order of Mensa's officers, not of CompuServe) for several days recently in response to somebody threatening a lawsuit over something somebody else said, causing Mensa's lawyers to get panicky over liability exposure. The forum resurfaced a few days later with stricter rules on user conduct, but other forums might actually shut down for good if there are a few more lawsuits or threats thereof. It's unfortunate how just one person using the threat of legal action can kill a whole forum for everybody, but that's the way the legal system seems to be these days. Free speech might be getting too expensive.
^C_Net Benefit_
With all the hysteria, legislation, and litigation going on with respect to all the and "bad stuff" on the Net, it's important to note the and great potential the and global "information superhighway" has to do good. One application that it's starting to be used for is to help solve baffling cases involving missing, abducted, or murdered persons. When a loved one becomes the subject of such a case, and the authorities can't solve it, the family doesn't know where to turn, but there's no telling who might be out there with the and key piece of information needed to solve the case and reunite the missing person with his/her family, or, in the and tragic cases where it's too late for that, at least to bring the perpetrator to justice. In the old days, such means were used as flyers handed out in the and street or ads in the and newspaper, and missing-children pictures placed on milk cartons. But, now, the Internet provides a way to get word out faster and wider, and it's being used by a growing number of people in such a situation.
Last year, here in Shreveport, 19-year-old Kayla Mayberry vanished from a downtown nightclub. Her body was discovered in east Texas a few weeks later. The case is still not solved, so more information is being sought. I've set up a Web page on behalf of Kayla's family at: {http://www.webcom.com/~~dtobias/kayla/}. This page also has links to some of the and other sites on the and Web relating to missing or murdered people. Maybe you are the one who's got the important piece of information that will help crack one of these cases, and you don't even know it until the Internet site "rings a bell" for you! Just one of these cases, if successfully solved as a direct result of the and Internet, would provide enormous positive publicity for the Net which would counteract those sensationalistic news accounts about "Cyberporn" or "Cyberterrorism."
^C_Netscape Update_
The latest beta version of the Netscape Navigator WWW browser is out; as of this writing, the latest version is 1.2b2. This version has lots of new features, including a completely revamped Bookmarks feature, with hierarchical folders that are actually somewhat usable. However, some web sites that were developed taking advantage of features, misfeatures, and bugs of earlier Netscape versions might not look good in Netscape 1.2; in particular, people who played tricks with multiple background colors can find that their sites are now completely unreadable since that feature is no longer supported. Thus, it's important that all web site developers who use Netscape enhancements obtain the and newest beta version to see if their site works with it. Windows 95 users will also want to try out the new Netscape in its 32-bit edition, since this supports many new Win95-specific features. Check out the and Netscape site at {http://home.netscape.com/}.
By the end of the and year, Netscape plans on releasing a version of their browser that supports the new HotJava language. You'll be hearing a lot more about HotJava in the and future; it's a system to allow interactive, platform-independent programs to be embedded in web sites, allowing everything from 3D games to spreadsheets and searchable databases to be presented in the and Internet. I'll have more to say on this in future months. You can find info on the web at {http://www.sun.com:80/sunworldonline/swol-07-1995/swol-07-java.html}.
The Netscape company seems to have had phenomenal success in the year or so that they've been in existence. Now, they've made their stock available to the public. Having passed up opportunities to buy Apple and Microsoft stocks in their own initial offerings and regretted it ever since, I'm tempted to jump on this one, since they certainly seem to be the company to watch in this Information Superhighway era.
^C_Site Seeing_
Here are a few more miscellaneous Web sites that may be of interest.
A great place to find interesting web sites, and to promote your own sites (if any) or your favorites of others' sites, is the Webaholics Top 50 List. This is a "scrolling list" of sites that anyone can add to; new entries start at the and top of the chart and get pushed down by succeeding entries until they drop off the bottom. This feature is at:
(Contact Daniel Tobias through the Internet at {dtobias@webcom.com}, on Prodigy at {MGFH21A}, or through FidoNet to {Daniel Tobias} on {1:380/7}. My personal World Wide Web page is at {http://www.webcom.com/~~dtobias/}.)
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