Re: organization of internet material

Steve Mynott (steve@tightrope.demon.co.uk)
Wed, 1 Jul 1998 10:10:09 +0100

The problem with the internet (web, email, netnews, irc) is the bulk of material you have to read on your screen everyday and the difficulty of reading words on the computer screen.

I think short paragraphs and whitespace and being brief helps.

On Fri, Jun 26, 1998 at 09:44:14PM -0600, Michael Nielsen wrote:

> What are your most effective sources of information on the internet?

  1. web - high quality
  2. email lists - low quality of info
  3. netnews - even lower quality of info
  4. irc - the lowest of the low :)

> How did you find those sources?

by browsing :-)

I tried the Alexa thing which was OK, Netscape will build this in to 4.5 I think.

> How do you make use of those sources?

I have a large number of bookmarks, which I now try to keep organised. Netscape has good features for doing this.

I browse certain sites daily (eg. http://www.wired.com), since these are often good overviews. Few sites are actually updated this frequently.

> Do you use filters or robots as an aid to processing material obtained
> from the internet?

Not generally. I trust people more than robots and the software I tried didn't seem to work very well.

I use filters in slrn to autoselect people's postings on netnews by name (people with good reputation that write well - rare). Netnews is now pretty useless except through http://www.dejanews.com/

-- 
pub  1024/D9C69DF9 1997/10/14 Steve Mynott <steve@tightrope.demon.co.uk>