I (Jed) created this Computer and Communications link page to provide people interested in computer and communications (and others) a convenient starting point for exploring relevant (and irrelevant) material on the World Wide Web. My primary purpose was to make it a convenient "home" page that can be used to have Web browsers point to when started up by people in the organizations that I am involved with. It served this purpose for quite some time. I still use it in that role, but perhaps mostly because I am familiar with its organization. I am no longer very active in the support of this page set. Consequently I no longer recommend this page as an initial page for Mosaic, Netscape, or whatever WWW browser you use to link to when your browser initializes and to "home" to whenever you want to "restart" looking for things (perhaps leaving your page stack for later reference). I still find this page very useful and hope you do also, but there are alternatives being developed in the marketplace. I expect more activity to focus on this area in the relatively near term (e.g. during 1996).
I would recomment looking at Starting Point as an example. I expect to see more such "Starting Points" that eventuly have strong personal customization features that allow you to tailor your own starting point. In the mean time you are welcome to continue to use this page set if you find it convenient, but realize that it is no longer actively supported.
This page complements the Computer and Communications Entry Page in that it links to that entry point (and its first level included pages) conveniently for those more directly interested in Computers and Communications. That page set is still very actively supported - in fact it is now commercialized and self supporting on the basis of advertising revenue. However, this link page also has URLs for a variety of more general purpose and general interest pages. I have thoughtfully optimized this page as a jumping off point, but am not actively supporting it currently in that role. It is intended to be compact both in viewing extent (so paging or scanning down the page is seldom needed) and in time to load (no graphics, relatively small size, etc.).
I will briefly describe the intent of each section:
First is a search form that allows searching the whole page. Simply enter text to look for and hit carriage return. As compact as I have tried to make this page, sometimes it is still most effective to search for something you want to link through. This is a new feature using a Perl script called htgrep. It isn't perfect, but it is pretty good. Give it a try. I will probably work on this more in future.
Second are two lines that contain the "local" information for the two groups that I am currently affiliated with. These lines start from the left with the most locally relevant links and become progressivly more general, stopping just short of world generality. I urge those in the indicated locals to try these links and to become familiar with those that they find useful for convenient every day use. Note: ALL of these URLs are contained in the page of "related" (or "verwandte") links pointed to by the word "links" (or "Links") at the end of the line. In that page the links are described more fully. I reserve the right to change what the links in this first line point to (as suggested by my own use and suggestions of others), BUT none of the links will disappear from the related links page at the end of the line. If your favorite or useful link disappeared from the line, you can be sure that it will still be available with one more click in the "links" page where you can find more complete descriptions about these initial links. More importantly, you will also always be able to find it by searching for an appropriate text string. I recommend becoming familiar with appropriate search strings.
Next come a set of links to pages that I believe may well be of current interest to anyone with an interest in Computers and Communications. These pages reflect my own interests.
Currently this is followed by a section on Other link pages. This includes pages of other URLs and also links to search engines.
Next is a general information section. This includes URLs to high level information like geographic, weather, country, spelling, technology (e.g. Mosaic, etc.), information.
Finally is a section on other interesting links. This is where I put URLs to interesting pages that I happen to run into on the Web. Very interesting links I tend to keep near the top, but even this is not certain. All that is certain is that a working link should never disappear completely (it may go to the retired portion of this section). This means that you will always be able to find this (and any other links you like) by searching using the form at the top. Such searching is the way I recommend finding most of the links in this set of pages.
My intent is to pack this page with initial links that people interested in Computers and Communications will use frequently. I also want to use the Other interesting links section to introduce new interesting links. Every section in this page has an associated "retired" page. If a link in a section has been around for a while and I judge that it is not useful enough to remain on the main link page (taking up valuable space) then it will be moved to the retired page for that section. Because of this policy, one need never fear that a needed page will disappear from this structure. If a page that you want is no longer in the section of the Telecomm link page that you remember it in, you can look for it in the associated "retired" page. However, I recommend that you always search for links of interest. This way links can move (even to "retired" pages) and you will still find them. Links that no longer function, however, will be removed from the structure.
If you have suggestions that will make this link page more helpful to you as a jumping off point for accessing information on the Web, please let me know. In particular, if you find anything out on the Web that you think people might be interested in, please send me the URL in e-mail to <jed@webstart.com>. I'll add it to the page wherever it best fits.
I should note that while this page is not intended for advertising LLNL, ATP, RUS, Csd-BelWu or anything else, it IS intended for general consumption. There shouldn't be anything embarassing or in poor taste pointed to by the links from this page. If you find anything in here that you feel is in poor taste, please let me know and I will remove it (notwithstanding my policy of only retiring links...). If you find anything in poor taste that you would like to find here... put it in your hotlist.
Feel free to give the URL for the Computer and Communication link page to anyone that you think may be interested in it as a jumping off point, but be sure to let them know that it is no longer being actively supported. This page will not go through any review and release process or other blessing procedures (as the ATP "2-pager" and other documents linked through the LLNL home page will). It consists only of links to information already available on the World Wide Web. It is intended to serve as a useful jumping off point with links to useful, up-to-date, and interesting information.
If you got this far, you probably know all about pointing to colored text and clicking to go off to access information "pointed" to by Universal Resource Locators ( URLs). If not, however, you can get more information about the The World Wide Web or the NCSA Mosaic or Netscape or Microsoft browsers by placing your mouse over the preceeding colored text and clicking (usually the left button if it has more than one button).
--Jed