The Cutting Edge: COMPUTING / TECHNOLOGY / INNOVATION : World Wide Web Browsing for the Haves and Have-Nots
If you really want to understand what all the hubbub is about when people talk about the information superhighway, find someone whose computer is connected directly to the Internet--at a university or corporate site, perhaps--and ask to see Mosaic.
This is the software that makes it possible to browse the wonders of the Internet’s World Wide Web, complete with text, pictures and sound. Mosaic means virtually instant access to an ever-expanding world of information, including even video, whenever you want it. It’s awesome.
The trouble is, most of us can’t use Mosaic. We access the Internet by dialing it via modem, without the high-powered connection needed for Mosaic, and must content ourselves with browsing the Web via a text-based system known as Lynx.
Indeed, the Internet is fast becoming a land of haves and have-nots in this department, a Calvinistic universe in which the elect flit from site to site all over the world, tasting the sights and sounds in full color and casually following information links wherever they might lead. The unlucky rest are left to make do with text and arcane commands. (The really unlucky, who don’t know how to use the Internet at all, are forced instead to spend time with their families, read books and do God knows what else with their time.)
Sooner or later there’ll be enough bandwidth to bring something like Mosaic to everybody’s screen, but frankly, I can’t wait. Thus, from time to time in this space we’ll test some of the ways Internet access vendors, software makers and others are trying to make the Internet easier to use via something like Mosaic.
Consider, for example, NetCruiser, the new Internet access software supplied by Netcom to work with its special NetCruiser dial-up accounts.
Netcom is the Internet access service that many on the ‘net love to hate. The company has grown fast by offering complete Internet access with no time charges for the rock-bottom price of $17.50 a month. But there are whole newsgroups practically filled with complaints about Netcom--busy signals, overburdened servers, poor technical support and so forth. These problems are real, but I think Netcom has improved a good deal in the past year, and if you don’t need a lot of hand-holding it offers full Internet access at a bargain.
NetCruiser is a Windows package intended to make the Net accessible to users who can’t handle the command line interface from which the Internet is typically accessed. It puts a pretty face on gopher, Pine, telnet, ftp and all the other stuff familiar to Internet users. Perhaps most important, it is a full World Wide Web browser, sort of like Mosaic.
So far, unfortunately, NetCruiser leaves a lot to be desired. In handling mail, for example, it doesn’t let you read or write messages off line--a valuable feature of the Windows interfaces offered by CompuServe and America Online. I didn’t like the way it handles Internet newsgroups, either. The reader it uses is unthreaded, meaning a series of messages on the same topic are not automatically pulled together. Furthermore, it’s slow.
It’s greased lightning next to the Web browser, though. I mean, I could practically hear my beard growing as I waited for some of those screens to come in. Netcom says this is due to NetCruiser itself, which it hopes to speed up; the bottleneck posed by 14,400 bps modems and regular phone lines and the tendency of various computers on the Internet to be busy.
As a hopeful user, I found these reasons cold comfort, especially since a NetCruiser account costs more. NetCruiser was just too slow for me at 14,400 bps. Netcom promises 28,800 bps in the New Year and if Santa does his part, I’ll have the hardware to try it out at that speed. Meanwhile, I’m keeping my conventional Netcom account.
Windows users who have dial-up accounts should try a share ware package called SlipKnot, which functions as a rudimentary terminal program with a built-in Web browser. It’s rather amazing that it works at all, and in fact it works pretty well. I used it to take a World Wide Web tour of the Kremlin, starting with a map and following up with a visit to Red Square.
SlipKnot wisely avoids taking over the functions of gopher, Pine, etc., all of which are easy-to-use, text-based applications that work beautifully just as they are. Nor does it require you to get some other kind of Internet account. Be forewarned, though: SlipKnot too is agonizingly slow, too slow for everyday use at 14,400 bps. But it’s a nice way to see what you’re missing out there on the Internet--and to sample what inevitably lies ahead.
BTW: On the subject of digital cash, covered in a recent column, USC’s Information Sciences Institute has released for testing its own NetCheque payment system. Developed by ISI scientist Clifford Neuman, it is designed to bring the equivalent of secure “bank checks” to the Internet. ISI also has its own version of NetCash in the works. For information, e-mail netcheque@isi.edu.
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Getting the Programs
NetCruiser can be obtained by mailing crz4me@ix.netcom.com. A NetCruiser account is $19.95 for 40 “prime” hours per month plus unlimited access from midnight to 9 a.m. Monday through Friday, and all day Saturday and Sunday. Prime hours after the first 40 are $2.00 each.
For more information about SlipKnot, by MicroMind Inc., e-mail slipknot@micromind.com. The program is available by anonymous ftp from ftp.netcom.com (get slnot100.zip in pub/pbrooks/slipknot subdirectory).
