these are links I collected from 1994 to about 1995 or 1996. So if they actually work, well, woah!

net.news

Sometimes current events and news manage to penetrate the veil of the computer-induced haze surrounding the net.

For the latest on the law, try the Legal Beat
Dispatches from the Cyberfront - where to find the latest from the frontlines of the digital revolution
Online News Feeds - the news man, just the latest
Historical and events and cultural Overviews
Past and Current Events - sites devoted to coverage of a single event, or a single series of events

Latest news from the front lines of the Digital Revolution

Guess what awaits you at the online service industry weekly updates page? This guy writes his newsy opinion pieces chronicling the goings on "In, Around and Online". If this is interesting to you, it makes a pretty good skim, if you have the time, it might even be worth reading. He follows up each of his weekly columns with interesting short takes - little blurbs of scuttlebutt about the online industry. This guy obviously has his ear to the web - and we can only stand to gain - he publishes this for free!
To get an acerbicly tinged view of CyberSpace, try CyberWire Dispatch by Brock N. Meeks. With a nose for news and a pitbulls disposition, he offers a view of the computer world important for its irreverance.
The site is finally up, but there's no news (2/13). Two cyberspace commentators, Brock Meeks and John Makulowich, have collaborated to create Scoop! The Cyberspace Tip Sheet. Check in here for daily updates of the news in net land - who's buying whom, who's publishing what. From their glowing description of their service, I would have expected some late-breaking links and sweet sites, but there's little HTML, and no links, to be found here. Just the facts, ma'am.
Reuters online? Not quite. Some people calling themselves the global internet news agency have set up a web page posting press releases and other official company propoganda. This place doesn't really seem to be much of a filter, or a reporting outlet, rather, it seems to be simply a dumping ground for announcements and status reports.

Online News Feeds

'merican Media Monolith The New York Times has gotten hip to the web - with Adobe Acrobat files. Get the same daily 8 page news summary fax they distribute overseas. But make no mistake - there is no NYTimes content online here, just Acrobat files for your download and perusal. Hopefully this foreshadows a greater commitment, but they are taking it slow. With all the hype surrounding web publishing, you'd think they couldn't stay away, but the Gray Lady probably wants a comfortable and well paying place to sit online. Not that I'm ungrateful, I enjoy the news as I can get it. The news is so transient these days though, dealing with acrobat files probably won't be worth it.
California is the most wired place I have ever lived. Accordingly, you can find information online about the flooding. There's both gopher and web sites listed from this front page - the latest precipitation, water levels, weather reports, satellite imagery, as well as highway reports. All this provided by the California Environmental Resources Evaluation System, a state level agency.
Who watches the watchmen? The American media monolith has a self-appointed watchdog group: FAIR - Fairness and Accuracy In Reporting. Their magazine Extra! is online, with the latest gaffes, guffaws, grimaces and hijinks from the reporting, corporate and political scenes. Real iconoclasm here - and it's thoughtful to boot! Beware, your faith in even the most respected institutions is subject to disillusionment and dissention.
For a wonderful webbed news feed, check out Amdahl's Hot Topics. They have put up pages with brief information about current events, followed by extensive related links. An interesting way to present news - it makes it possible to present first hand sources in a meaningful context. Hopefully, this foreshadows the future: more first hand info, so that you can form your own opinion, as opposed to being spoon fed.
For your athletic fix, try Satchel Sports, with the latest news and scores for all of America's professional sports leagues.
Claiming "all the news thats bits we print," Nando times has a daily newspaper feeling feed of the daily diggings from the world and the web.
For transcripts of talk shows that cover all those covert cover-ups, comb the Conspiracy Nation Archives
Get the latest update on the situation at the South Pole from the New South Polar Times
The subject may be morbid, but the presentation is straightforward: the Obituary Page has a person by person list of the recently dead.

Overviews

Wow! I love this site! The Library of Congress has set up an incredible online exhibit called American Memory. They have begun pulling some of their superior special collections and digitizing them for free online browsing. Here you'll find unbelievable quantities of photographs by that moving chronicler of the Civil War Matthew Brady, black and white "portraits of literary figures, artists, and celebrities" by Carl Van Vechten, 59 sound clips of speeches circa WWI and the election of 1920, and colour photos of "rural and small town America" circa the late 1930s and the buildup for WWII through 1944. What can I say, This Site Is Rich. There's real content here! Lots of Eye Candy! Living History! Fascinating tidbits of our past! And all of it looks well produced, and considering the volumes of information, it is well presented, with full listing options and searchable indices. And they say there's more to come! Holy Shit! YeeHah! I love this site! It made me fall back in love with the web!
Judith Goldsmith provides a gophered TimeLine of Counter-Culture. Her hippy perspective and selection of events from 1095 to 1990 proves pretty interesting reading.

Past and Current Events

Pages that have devoted themselves to the coverage of a single event, or series of events, arranged in reverse chronological order.

From July 17 to the 30, Jupiter (a planet I feel very close to) was bombarded by comet fragments. The hoopla on the net was unprecedented, and can be tracked from the Comet Shoemaker-Levy Collision with Jupiter page at NASA. This site features pictures from the Hubble Space Telescope, and a whole mess of mpegs, jpegs, information, access statistics, and links to other related sites. A clearing house for comet communications.
In July 1994, a robot was sent down into a volcano in Alaska. The voyage of Dante II is chronicled on this web page. Available here are mpegs, jpegs, as well ascomputer renderings of the droid.
There is a page devoted to coverage of the Crisis in Rwanda
Because we should never forget, there is a Holocaust Index and an Anne Frank WWW site
Recently, the world remembered D-Day. So did some students and faculty at Patch High School (in Germany), and their materials, along with quicktimes and mpegs of government news reel footage, a few sound clips from Army and Navy sources, text from Stars and Stripes newspaper, and maps and battle plans are all online at this site. A full multimedia exhibition blow-out exploration of D-Day.
There is a cool multimedia exhibition on the Fall of Singapore - when Japan invaded this British colony and beat the pants off the British. Includes background historical information, as well as funky recordings of radio broadcasts from the invasion period, and black and white photographs of the events. Includes a photograph entitled "Japanese Hell's Angels?"
For the online lowdown on the Civil War, look no further than this site. While there isn't really any original content here, it will link you out where you can go to find information and documentation.
One of the early multimedia exhibitions on the web was 1492: An Ongoing Voyage. This Library of Congress timely tribute to multiculturalism boasts few graphics, and little profound knowledge. Look here for an overview of the existing cultures, and an attempted reevaluation of an event that used to be an orgy of patriotism and Manifest Destiny affirmation, but now stands as a memorial to over-weaning white people.
Billing itself as a "global information network for Medieval Studies," Labyrinth is the only source for that kind of info I've seen online. They've linked up to all the online luscious Latin tomes, as well as Middle English stuff. Warning, don't expect to be able to read that stuff, unless you understand it (you'd be surprised).

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Yer Mama Net Productions / Justin Hall / <[email protected]>