Dave's Web Articles
Articles I have written for NZ Roadmarking News, by theme and date:
• Favourite Sites (Feb 00)
• Popular Sites (Nov 99)
• Trends (Aug 99)
• Discussion Groups (Jun 99)
• Computing and Computers (Apr
99)
• Music and Movies (Feb 99)
• Shopping (Dec 98)
• Travel (Oct 98)
• Databases (Aug 98)
• NZ Sites and Humour (Jun 98)
• Searches (Apr 98)
• Email Lists and Humour (Feb 98)
• Emerging Trends (Oct 97)*
• NZ Business and News (Aug 97)*
• NZ News and Information (Jun 97)*
• Transport and Dilbert (Apr 97)*
* with minor updates.
Happy new millennium! Its an appropriate time for me to list some of my favourite sites:
Search sites and portals are essential for finding information
on the net:
www.hotbot.com – my longtime favourite
– fast, efficient, effective
www.northernlight.com –
handily puts the results into folders, making the long list of hits much
more manageable.
www.google.com – the search engine
currently with the most hype. Pages are ranked on relevancy based
on the number of web sites linked to that site.
www.altavista.com – numerous
hits, and now you can merely type in a question
www.yahoo.com – the most popular
portal, and its link directory is still compiled by real people.
www.about.com – extends the yahoo
philosophy by providing humans as guides for almost any topic on the net.
Transportation
http://dragon.princeton.edu/~dhb/
- the Princeton site is the most comprehensive transportation resource
list.
http://members.tripod.com/~ipenztg/-
the IPENZ Transportation Group.
www.ite.org - the closest US equivalent
of the IPENZ Transportation Group. Has links to good traffic discussion
groups.
Engineering
www.dilbert.com – still our favourite
engineer – check out the list of the day.
www.zdnet.com – home of PC Magazine
and other related technology information.
www.cnet.com – a great information
technology resource.
Communications
www.icq.com – there’s a real battle
going on in the fast-growing market for Instant Messenging (think of them
as net pagers). ICQ is the most comprehensive, has a good history
and a very large user base.
www.palm.com – I’ve recently joined
the 3com bandwagon, and now won’t go anywhere without my Palm V !
eCommerce
www.amazon.com – the net’s biggest
store, now selling much more than books. Provides excellent customer
service, and good customer reviews.
www.ebay.com – pioneered the concept
of web auctions, and is still by far the most popular.
www.pricescan.com – comparison
shop and check out trends.
www.gomez.com – the.com that rates
the.coms. An excellent place to start your ecommerce experience.
Leisure
www.imdb.com – by far the best movie
resource on the net.
http://oth.net/ - a simple, efficient
search site for downloading MP3 music files (By the way, MP3 is the second
most searched word on the net).
www.sky.co.uk/sports – together
with cable, it’s the best way to keep abreast of the UK sporting scene.
www.thecharlatans.com –
the recently launched official site for my favourite band.
www.liverpoolfc.net – ditto
for the best soccer team in the universe!
www.angelfire.com/ok/Muttpage
– my favourite personal home page, infamous for being banned at my former
workplace!
Happy surfing
davewt@engineer.com
According to www.mediametrix.com, the most visited sites among web
surfers are:1. Yahoo.com (with 33 million unique visitors in August 99)
2. Aol.com (29)
3. Msn.com (28)
4. Geocities.com (21)
5. Netscape.com (20)
6. Go.com (18)
7. Microsoft.com (18)
8. Lycos.com (15)
9. Excite.com (14)
10. Hotmail.com (14)Mediametrix also has ranked categories of news, shopping, travel,
directories, search, and government sites. It's a good insight into
where the world is surfing.You can also find out more about the sites you specifically surf by
downloading and installing a program from www.alexa.com. As you surf,
site statistics and related links are displayed. Its a great way to
find similar sites suited to your interests.I occasionally visit www.learn2.com as it has "thousands of free
2torials and answers to everyday problems". Their most popular are how
to shave, juggle, improve your gas mileage, and wash your car (not all
at the same time!)Happy surfing
davewt@engineer.com
Well I've been living in San Jose, in the heart of Silicon Valley, for 2 months now, and there is certainly a high-tech air to the place.
I found an apartment with the help of www.allapartments.com (now renamed as www.springstreet.com) and mercurynews.com, which is the metropolitan newspaper here. It has all classifieds online. The convenience of searching and sorting by, say, price, features, location, etc is very appealing.
I've just bought myself a car with the help of the internet too. There are numerous car sites with listings. Again, the local paper's one, conveniently named cars.com was the most comprehensive. Many sites give market or trade prices for vehicles, with detailed adjustments for options, mileage, etc. I even got an instant online detailed car ownership/transfer/event history after typing in its VIN at carfax.com.
Zip codes are frequently used to locate the nearest chain stores or features such as movie theatres, Post Offices, etc. Just type in a Zip and often a map will be generated, sometimes with driving instructions and distance. I use www.MapsOnUs.com a lot.
Other growing trends, most of which are free:
Free PCs are becoming even more popular here now, with Microsoft,
Compaq and HP now in the market. A common approach is that the buyer
has to commit to using a specific Internet Service Provider (ISP) for about
3 years, effectively getting a rebate based on that commitment.
Another trend is free ISP, eg www.NetZero.com,
where if you can tolerate an onscreen advertising banner, you have free
unlimited access.
Even further, several sites now pay you to surf! eg www.alladvantage.com
(which has 2 million subscribers after a few months of operating) and www.GoToWorld.com.
Happy surfing
davewt@engineer.com
This month’s focus is on discussion groups
Many sites now have web discussion groups or message boards (where
posts are indexed on the site and available to the public) and email
discussion groups (alo known as listservs, where posts are emailed
to
subscribed members). These are a great way to exchange and share
information on a speicific topic.
www.aspaci.org.au - Australasian
& South Pacific Association of
Collision Investigators Inc. has a web discussion group.
www.ohs.fhwa.dot.gov/rumblestrips/
is a good site on rumble strips
and
has a discussion group.
www.ite.org/library/listserv.htm
contains the ITE's email discussion
groups, where you can join, amongst others, the Traffic Engineering
and Transportation Safety groups. There is a searchable archive
of
all past Traffic posts at
http://foxtrot.pti.psu.edu/PTI/students/ITE/index1.asp
To join the UTSG (Universities Transport Study Group) email group,
for
researchers in the field of transport, email mailbase@mailbase.ac.uk
with "subscribe UTSG <your name>" as the text of your message.
Off the topic, my current favourite is www.prolaunch.com,
where
every visit you can be launched to a different site on a topic of your
choice. It's a great way to discover new and interesting sites.
A
bit like an Ansett Mystery Destination!
Happy surfing
davewt@engineer.com
This month’s focus is on computing and computers.
US magazines online are comprehensive, with good archives and search facilities:
NZ magazines, not nearly as extensive, but with local info:
US portals are generally excellent:
US TV programs that I enjoy watching, have websites:
NZ computer stores:
The IPENZ Transportation Group is now online, temporarily at http://members.tripod.com/ipenztg/
until we find a more permanent home.
Happy surfing
davewt@engineer.com
This week's theme is music and movies.
The most comprehensive starting point for your favourite band or singer
is the Ultimate Band List at www.ubl.com.
It provides numerous links to
web sites, which can also contain discography, lyrics and tabs, and
music.
Music on the net can take several forms. The most common are midi
and
wav files. The MP3 format is the hottest thing on the net music scene,
being CD quality sound and fairly compact. Try www.mp3.com
or
www.mp3now.com.
www.nme.com is the net version of the
world's largest selling rock
weekly, and essential for those into alternative music.
Streaming audio, which is where you can listen to music in real time,
has come of age. There are numerous RealAudio
(www.real.com) radio
stations on the net, from www.95bfm.co.nz,
www.channelz.co.nz,
to
www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/.
The RealPlayer also streams many video/tv
channels, eg CNN, Comedy Central, Bloomberg, LiveConcerts.
The Internet Movie Database at www.imdb.com
is the best movie site on
the net - extremely comprehensive, with numerous review links and
ratings features. And you'll find viewable trailers of the upcoming
Star Wars, Austin Powers and South Park movies (due for May/June US
releases) at the Movie-List
(movielist.simplenet.com) and the Trailer
Park (www.movie-trailers.com).
Closer to home, visit the recently formed Central
Film Club at
members.tripod.com/centralfilmclub.
For Hollywood movie and music news and gossip, go to E!
Online
(www.eonline.com.), Entertainment
Weekly (www.ew.com) or Mr Showbiz
(www.mrshowbiz.com).
I have compiled all my previous articles onto a web page at
http://crash.ihug.co.nz/~dong/articles.html.
Happy listening/viewing
davewt@engineer.com
This month's theme is online shopping. Three years ago my brother
in
the US found from a website the house he eventually bought. The
emphasis, however, is still more on commodity items such as books,
music, clothes
and software. I have bought books, CDs, Zip disks, flights, prints
and even a
camera online. Even if you don't buy, the web is a good place
to do
price and feature comparisons. Security of your credit card details
is
still an issue, not so much with your details being intercepted while
in
cyberspace (many sites guarantee encryption), but at the vendor end
where you have no assurance that appropriate security measures are
in
place or even that the entire business is legitimate.
The leader in the online book selling field has always been
www.amazon.com. You can even
submit reviews of books you've read.
Closer to home, try www.whitcoulls.co.nz.
www.CDnow.com and Music
Boulevard at www.musicblvd.com are two good
sites for buying music.
www.reel.com gained much publicity
for its US$9.95 Titanic video marketing
campaign.
A good place to find software is www.chumbo.com.
The trendsetter in online auction sites is www.ebay.com.
There are
about 250,000 items for sale.
For local 2ndhand goods start with www.trade-exchange.co.nz.
A shopping agent or robot can help when you know what you are looking
for. These agents search the net to find the most competitive
prices
offered by the various sites. Try www.mysimon.com
or
www.netmarket.com. I also
like www.roboshopper.com.
If you're not exactly sure what you're looking for, www.comparenet.com
guides you through the shopping process by providing tips on how and
what to buy and also has search tools.
Happy surfing
davewt@engineer.com
Since my last column, I have left Transit New Zealand and I'm currently
vacationing in the US. I was able to get to the Institute of Transportation
Engineers (ITE) Annual Meeting (ie Conference) in Toronto, which had about
2000 attendees. There were eight concurrent sessions, and from what
I gathered, both the Traffic & Safety and Livable Communities "tracks"
(including traffic calming) were very popular as these topics are becoming
increasingly important in the US.
www.ITE.org has a list of the papers
presented, as well as the ITE's publications catalog and details of their
other activities.
If you are travelling either to/around the US, NZ or other countries,
check out web sites that assist you by providing travel planners, maps
(some even have door to door routes to/from anywhere in the US), online
booking of flights and accomodation, listings of local attractions, weather,
currency exchange and travel hints.
www.travelocity.com, www.previewtravel.com
and Microsoft's www.expedia.com are
particularly strong in most of the above features.
Closer to home, you can check flights at www.ansett.co.nz
and www.airnz.co.nz.
Another popular web trend is the all-in-one homepage or web "portal". These are starting points with content, community, communications and core services. They provide news, searches, chat rooms, web-based email, free home pages, shopping, classifieds, games, software, and more. www.excite.com and www.yahoo.com are good examples of portals.
Happy surfing
davewt@engineer.com
A real benefit of using the internet for research is that someone
else has already put together the extremely large databases of what
is on
the net. You can make use of those databases for free.
www.nzpages.co.nz is another
searchable database of NZ sites,
similar to www.accessnz.co.nz.
The UK Electronic Libraries programme, with gateways to 15,000
other sites, has a link at www.eevl.ac.uk
for engineering sites.
www.downtown.co.nz/nzs/
is a site primarily aimed at students, but
it has links to NZ's 7 major universities' research centres, and to
www.knowledge-basket.co.nz,
which has subscription options to
several local online databases.
There is still some online discussion about road reform at
www.roading.govt.nz.
Check out www.consult.co.nz for
summary results of the recent NZ
internet users survey.
Considering a change of job or career? Try www.careers.co.nz,
www.career.co.nz, and www.nzjobs.co.nz.
To be automatically
notified by email of new engineering-related jobs, join the IPENZ email
joblist at www.ipenz.org.nz.
To add to the wealth of information on the net, why not create
your own site? An example of a personal home page that is worth
a visit is
www.angelfire.com/ok/Muttpage.
Before visiting sites that are not
restricted to roading info, it might pay to check your company's
policy on web browsing first, your IT staff might have different opinions
on
what is considered objectionable.
Happy surfing
www.Roadsource.com has recently been set up by Chris Bennett in Auckland. It is designed to be a one stop site for highway, traffic and transportation engineers.
For a good site for finding NZ organisations on the net, especially recent additions, go to webpages.netlink.co.nz/~mark/netsites.html.
I mentioned the convenience of automated email lists a few months ago. You can set up your own by going to www.onelist.com.
In case you haven't visited them yet, www.microsoft.co.nz provide useful hints and software for Windows and Office. There are also free or trial downloads of Project 98, Publisher 98, Outlook 98, and many more.
The Transit website is up at www.transit.govt.nz.
For more light relief, try www.southpark.simplenet.com, where all episodes are available in various online video/movie formats. Most popular TV programs now have sites somewhere on the net.
This month I'll focus on searches.
Finding the right sites on the net has always been a problem as
there's just so many out there. There are many search engines
on the net
and it often pays to not just click the search button and get your
browser's default search engine.
I highly recommend Hot Bot (www.hotbot.com)
as its both simple to
use and comprehensive.
Alta Vista (altavista.digital.com)
is almost certain to return the
most hits, but its rather cumbersome for complex searches.
Each search engine has its own rules, so returns different results
in a different order for any given request. Nearly all search
engines
have options for refining your search - just follow the appropriate
links.
Metasearches
Or try a metasearch, that's where your search is simultaneously
submitted to several search engines.
Metacrawler (www.metacrawler.com)
was one of the first, and submits
to 9 major sites.
411 (www.cyber411.com) and Dogpile
(www.dogpile.com) search over a
dozen search engines respectively.
Inference (www.inference.com/infind)
conveniently groups the
findings by site location and type.
Other Searches
Its been called the single best way to find companies worldwide -
World Pages at www.worldpages.com.
Four11 (www.four11.com) is the net's
largest email directory
service.
New Zealand Sites
Locally, we have Search NZ (www.searchnz.co.nz)
and Access New
Zealand (www.accessnz.co.nz),
which is a tidily laid out directory, and
now has 3300 sites.
Telecom's White and Yellow Pages (www.whitepages.co.nz
and
www.yellowpages.co.nz) also
have links to overseas directories. I
found 61 Road Marking Contractors.
And finally, if you have a web site and want to run some
diagnostic tests (for load time, dead links, spelling, design, etc)
and get advice,
go to www.websitegarage.com.
Happy searching
Clear's award-winning web site at www.clear.net.nz
is a great
place to start for news or information.
A good selection of business books can be found at the online NZIM
bookshop (www.aklnzim.co.nz).
Email lists are becoming more popular. They're an alternative
to
sharing information and requests via bulletin boards and
newsgroups, with all the convenience and simplicity of email.
An email
sent to a single address is automatically forwarded to all list recipients.
I'm on several, including the ITE traffic and safety lists. Unfortunately
I'm
not aware of any specific roadmarking lists.
And stand by for Transit's web site which is currently under
construction.
For anyone wanting a quick and simple way of getting photo images
onto your web site or into a report, consider the ever-increasing range
of digital cameras on the market. The Casio range is particularly
featureladen and affordable.
Need a humorous break from office tedium? Try Dilbert
3D
(www.dilbert.com/comics/dilbert/vrml)
for sound and animation (you'll need
to download a few plug-ins), or check out the daily comic strips at
the Matt
site (via www.telegraph.co.uk)
or the Dave site (www.davetoon.com).
Happy surfing
This month's theme is emerging internet trends, particularly those
useful for smaller businesses or personal users.
Web-based email has the convenience of total portability. Your
email account, messages and the software are all stored on the web.
Visit http://www.hotmail.com and
join 4 million [28 million as at Dec 98]
others for your free email address. This is a useful alternative
if your current email
provider is either down or unreliable.
Try http://www.IName.com for a convenient,
free for life, email
redirection service, which retains your existing email address but
allows you
to choose a more personalised one. Rather than, say,
mjj@lt-wgtn.ltsa.postie.synet.net.nz, why not
mike@technologist.com? or alister@engineer.com?
Thinking about your own domain name and setting up a web page?
Why not first try a free home page at
http://www.geocities.com, joining 1
million [3 million as at Jan 99] others who have discovered the geocities
communities.
One of the first large cyberstores was the Amazon
bookstore
(http://www.amazon.com), now with
2.5 million [3 million as at Jan99] titles.
And a great place to download shareware is from
http://www.shareware.com.
Feel free to email me at davewt@hotmail.com or dong@surferdude.com
or visit my home page at http://www.geocities.com/Hollywood/8688.
Happy surfing
Wanting to find out more about the Internet? Get a subscription to the
excellent NZ
NetGuide magazine.
A few more NZ business sites worth visiting are:
NZ Government online at www.govt.nz,
which is an index to all
online Government resources, with over 220MB of data.
Access New Zealand at www.accessnz.co.nz
is a tidily laid out
directory to over 2000 sites.
The massive NBR site at www.nbr.co.nz
provides a wealth of
business information, although a subscription is required for access
to
some areas.
Two much-heralded news sites are the Christchurch
Press
(www.press.co.nz) and NewsRoom
(www.newsroom.co.nz), but I found
the news was generally dated in the former (what's the use of a
day-old newspaper?) and rather sparse albeit timely in the latter.
And just a brief update - the popular Dilbert Zone can now be
accessed directly at www.dilbert.com.
Don't forget to check that regularly
visiting the page is OK with your boss!
Happy surfing
This month the emphasis is on New Zealand, news and information.
Try www.7am.co.nz for New Zealand's own concise electronic newspaper. It also has links to several other more detailed NZ news sites.
There is a New Zealand-specific fuzzy search engine at www.searchnz.co.nz.
The best NZ web sites are compiled at Wammo (www.wammo.co.nz) and SODA (Site of the Day Award) at www.SODA.co.nz. The SODA site has a different theme each week.
Stuck trying to work out that answer to a tricky question? Go to www.answers.com, type in your question, and you'll either get an immediate reply if the question has been asked before, or a subsequent email response. You can also browse related questions and answers.
Happy surfing
The most comprehensive list of transport-related site on the web is the Princeton one at http://dragon.Princeton.EDU:80/~dhb. Links to everything from, road, rail, universities, government and private organisations, seminars and conferences, and an address book.
For a humorous cubicle eye's view of bosses, meetings, management fads and their workplace afflictions, visit the Dilbert Zone at www.dilbert.com. Apparently this popular page gets millions of hits every week.
ARRB Transport Research recently launched their site at www.arrb.org.au. It contains news, products, services publications, research and numerous contacts.
Consultants Traffic Design Group have updated their pages at www.tdg.co.nz. The site links to various traffic/transport-related sites, and information on software and staff profiles.
Happy surfing