May 1997
Searching, Crawling, Indexing
Crawling Towards Eternity
By Mike Burner
In creating what might be considered a digital time capsule, the Internet Archive is, in effect, backing up the entire public portion of the Web. Mike describes the Archive's crawler design and explains some of the early problems they ran into. Z Smith shares some interesting facts they discovered while crawling the Web.
Searching, Browsing, and Metasearching with Sensemaker
By Michelle Q. Wang Baldonado
While commercial search engines blur the distinction between searching and browsing, metasearchers outsource their queries to existing search engines and integrate the results. Michelle describes SenseMaker, a prototype interface developed as part of the Stanford University Digital Libraries Project, which allows user control over searching, browsing, and metasearching.
Searching with Isearch
By Nassib Nassar
In its mission to support freeWAIS, the Center for Networked Information Discovery and Retrieval needed a new model that would not become obsolete after a few months. So, they developed Isearch. Nassib shows you how to get up and running with this freely available search tool.
An Internet Chat Server
By Andrew Davison
Andrew presents a complete telnet-based chat server written in C, and provides some insights into network programming.
C O L U M N S :
Webmaster's Domain
According to Lincoln D. Stein, there are two types of sites: link rich and information rich. To find the right type of site, Lincoln proposes the Information Index, a rating system that distinguishes between the two.
Doing Justice to the Web
This February, the International Ad Hoc Committee announced plans to overhaul the Internet domain-name registration system. The system provides new domain types while allowing more companies into the domain-name registration business. Catherine Sansum Kirkman covers the controversy.
HTML Coding
In her farewell column, Laura Lemay looks at how WebTV differs from traditional browsers in displaying Web pages and shows how you can use some simple HTML extensions to improve the look of your site in this new medium.
Virtual Worlds
As an example of VRML animation, Andrea L. Ames looks at Floops, the animated character from Silicon Graphics, then shows how you can send and receive events between VRML nodes.
Programming with Perl
Randal L. Schwartz's dislike for visitor counters comes through loud and clear as he presents his nonvisitor counter, which uses Thomas Boutell's GD library to display random text images.
Java Alley
This month, Bruce Eckel continues his discussion of the clone() method, showing how you can clone objects further down in a class hierarchy.
D E P A R T M E N T S :
Lab Notes
DeBabelizer, well known for its ability to translate and manipulate images, has been a staple for Macintosh graphic designers. Now, Windows users can get a step ahead with this new release from Equilibrium. R. Shamms Mortier shows you how.
Script Junkie
Gleaning data from HTML-based forms often requires lengthy CGI scripts to parse the information before processing it. But, as Reaz Hoque shows, many of the same tasks can be accomplished with a few lines of JavaScript code.
The Home Page
Editor-in-Chief Michael Floyd talks about "Bugs and Bills."
News & Notes
Java-Based Searching; Vector Graphics on the Web.
The Last Page
Michael Swaine tells you why "I Can't Sit Down."
