CyberGuide

Dr. Tim Rhodus
Department of Horticulture and Crop Science
The Ohio State University
e-mail: Rhodus.1@osu.edu

It's the trendy communication medium in the business industry -- electronic communication. From magazines to commercials to billboards, Internet addresses (http://...) displayed as another source for additional information. Companies are using the Internet as both a marketing and information tool. With the Web user population more than 10 million and users accessing approximately five million hypertext documents, an amount that doubles every six months (Business Wire 9/27/95), ease of access is essential. Just as the telephone industry has the yellow pages, the Internet arena has several useful search resources as well. One resource to take note of is TOURBUS. TOURBUS, a bi-weekly e-mail distribution list created by Patrick Douglas Crispen, author of the popular Roadmap workshop, and "Doctor Bob" Rankin, columnist for Boardwatch Magazine and author of "Accessing the Internet by E- mail," is a text-based tour of interesting sites on the Internet. It not only provides url addresses but also gives an inside look at what to expect when visiting that site. Subscribers can expect two e-mail letters a week introducing a new Internet site or tool, as well as inside tricks on using a site or tool to its fullest potential. And, best of all, TOURBUS is absolutely free. What if you do not have Internet access? You can access the Web using e- mail alone. Rankin's free guide, "Accessing the Internet by E-mail," will show you how. To find out how to get the guide, send an e-mail letter to LISTSERV@UA1VM.UA.EDU with the command GET NEWUSER PACKAGE F=MAIL in the body of your e-mail letter. If that doesn't work, drop the F=MAIL part and try again. You can access almost any Internet resource using simple e-mail commands.

Two sites that were part of a TOURBUS stop and considered by the TOURBUS guides as being in the top five of essential Internet resources, are Yahoo! and New-List. Yahoo!, created by two electrical engineering graduate students at Stanford who had an interest in cataloging Web sites, has links to well over 40,000 Web pages with more than 300,000 users accessing those pages every day. It's a subject oriented guide to all Web pages. For example, all Web pages relating to horticulture are grouped together. Marty Hoag's New-List is also a useful resource in that it is a way of finding out about new e-mail discussion or distribution lists that are of interest. Not only are names of lists posted, but a one or two paragraph summary telling about each list is included, as well as how to subscribe. To subscribe to New-List, send e-mail to LISTSERV@VM1.NODAK.EDU with the command SUBSCRIBE NEW-LIST YOURFIRSTNAME YOURLASTNAME in the body of your e-mail letter, replacing YOURFIRSTNAME and YOURLASTNAME with your first and last names. TOURBUS is a useful Internet resource for those who have e-mail access but do not have Internet access. To subscribe to TOURBUS, send an e-mail letter to LISTSERV@LISTSERV.AOL.COM which says SUBSCRIBE TOURBUS yourfirstname yourlastname in the body of your e-mail letter, replacing yourfirstname and yourlastname with your first and last names.

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