TOURBUS: Thursday, July 11, 1996

DRIVER: Patrick Crispen

TODAY'S TOURBUS STOP:
MY YAHOO!


Howdy, y'all!

Before we take our little bus of Internet happiness out for a drive 
today, I wanted to share an item from the "quote of the year" file.
Courtesy of Peter Langston's Fun People list, here are some excerpts
from a review of the Marin County Fair (vaguely northeast of San 
Francisco), which appeared in the July 4 San Francisco Chronicle.  
The article starts out with a paragraph describing how kids attending
the fair were more interested in playing the video games than looking
at the farm animals.
    "Animals don't do much," said Darren Gutenberg, 11.  "Cows just
    walk around.  The world is getting too high tech to spend time
    looking at cows."

    Lisa Lavagetto, pig owner: "Kids have lost the ability to deal
    with creatures.  A pig is a living and breathing animal.  A lot of
    these kids have never seen a pig.  All they know is computers.
    There's nothing wrong with computers, but they aren't pigs."


MY YAHOO!

It looks like the folks at Yahoo! are at it again.  If you are one of the
millions of Web travelers who visit "Yahoo!" every day, you might want to take a look at Yahoo's new service at http://my.yahoo.com/

My Yahoo! is a completely customizable version of "Yahoo!"  My Yahoo! is
still in the beta test stage -- the official roll-out is still a few days
away -- but I figured that everyone on the Bus would appreciate a "sneak
peek" at this new service.  BTW, you need Netscape Navigator 1.1 (or newer)
or Microsoft Internet Explorer 2.0 (or newer) to be able to use My Yahoo!

My Yahoo! is completely free, but you do have to "register" to be able to
use the service.  Now, before y'all panic, let me assure you that the
information that you give My Yahoo! will stay with My Yahoo! -- they aren't
going to sell your e-mail address to some spammer.  The registration
process just helps the folks at My Yahoo! remember you and your settings
the next time you return to their site.

Actually, My Yahoo's registration could not be easier.  On the My Yahoo!
page (http://my.yahoo.com/) just click on the words "Click Here to
Register" (down near the bottom right half of the page).  From there, pick
your own My Yahoo! login name and password, and type in a few other pieces
of general information.

Once you have given My Yahoo! a login name and password, "personalizing" My
Yahoo! is a lot like personalizing InfoSeek Personal (TOURBUS - 23 MAY
1996).  You are given a screen-full of categories and topics like

    N E W S

    
    Business
       
 Current Events
        
Health
       
 Investing
       
 Politics
       
 Technology

and you tell My Yahoo! what you are interested in by clicking on the boxes
next to the various categories and topics.

After you submit this information, My Yahoo! will take you to a screen that
will show you your My Yahoo! login name as well as what all of the various
My Yahoo! icons mean (and I *still* think that My Yahoo's "Internet" icon
looks like the Minesweeper icon from Windows).  I would strongly recommend
that you print this page and save it.

After you have registered with My Yahoo!, you can login from either this
icon page (just click on the "Take Me to My Yahoo!" button) or from the My
Yahoo! main homepage at http://my.yahoo.com/
Once you login, My Yahoo! drops you into the News menu.  Notice all of the
"edit" buttons on the page?  As I said earlier, My Yahoo! is completely
customizable.  YOU get to decide what is going to be on the page!

By the way, if you want to see something that will make your jaw drop, look
at the Weather forecast at the bottom left hand side of the News screen.
My Yahoo! reads your machine's Internet (IP) address and gives the weather
forecast for the city that corresponds to that IP address.  By the way, if
the forecast listed isn't for your city, just click on the "edit" button
and change the city!  It is just that simple!  :)  My Yahoo! also has a
completely customizable "Internet" page (just click on the Minesweeper
icon), and a really cool "Contacts" page that lets you look up people's
e-mail addresses.

It is not too often that I find a site that actually beats the "old" Yahoo!
-- there's nothing wrong with computers, but they aren't pigs -- but I can
actually see My Yahoo! soon becoming my favorite resource on the Net. :)

---------------------------------

TODAY'S SOUTHERN WORDS OF THE DAY

---------------------------------


BAR - Noun. Largest land-living carnivore.

KILT - Verb. Past tense of exterminate.


Usage: "Davey Crockett kilt a bar wen he was only three."


(Special thanks goes to Ezra Bob Tanenbaum for today's wurds)


YOU CAN FIND ALL OF THE OLD SOUTHERN WORDS OF THE DAY ON THE SOUTHERN WORD
HOMEPAGE AT http://www.ua.edu/~crispen/word.html