TOURBUS: Tuesday, September 10, 1996

DRIVER: Patrick Crispin

TODAY'S TOURBUS STOP:
CNET (PART ONE)


It seems that my fear of Tuscaloosa's impending "thunder sun" attack caused
me to make a little mistake in last Thursday's bus (GASP!).  To subscribe
to CNET's "News-Dispatch," you should actually send an e-mail letter to

     listserv@dispatch.cnet.com

(note: there is no "e" at the end of "listserv") with the command

     subscribe news-dispatch YOURFIRSTNAME YOURLASTNAME

in the body of your e-mail letter, replacing YOURFIRSTNAME and YOURLASTNAME
with your first and last names.

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reference) ...
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CNET

Trying to describe CNET ("see-net") is a little like trying to describe
United Technologies (that mega-company that owns Pratt & Whitney, Otis
Elevator, Sikorsky Helicopters, Carrier Air Conditioners, the State of
Montana, etc.). CNET: The Computer Network is a content-driven technology
company that offers both television programming and a bunch of really cool
sites on the World Wide Web.

CNET's Web sites include:

   

CNET.COM, one of the best sites on the Web
     for the latest news, product reviews, and information about
     computers and the Internet;

   SHAREWARE.COM, an online software
     library with over 190,000 freeware and shareware programs;

NEWS.COM, the first online service devoted
     entirely to technology news; and

SEARCH.COM, a huge collection of
     pointers to pretty much every search engine on the Net.

Since CNET is so huge -- you could literally spend all day in any one of
their Web sites and still not see everything on that site -- we're going to
break our tour of CNET into several different TOURBUS posts.  Today, we are
going to pull our little bus of Internet happiness into CNET's main Web page.


CNET is a free, advertiser-supported service, but you do have to be a
"subscriber" to be able to access some of CNET's files and services.  The
subscription is free, and you just need to click on the "Join now for FREE"
link in the upper left-hand corner of CNET's page (or go to
http://www.cnet.com/Community/Mservice/registration.html) to subscribe.
You will need a forms-capable browser to do this, though.

CNET's main Web page (http://www.cnet.com) is broken into three sections.
The left-hand side of the page (the yellow part) is a directory of all of
CNET's "departments."  The middle part of the page has links to CNET's
newest or most popular articles and pages.  The far right-hand side of the
page contains links to other stuff.  (CNET updates its pages on an (almost)
daily basis, so it is kind of hard to describe what you are actually going
to find in the middle and right-hand parts of the page).  :)

For now, let's take a quick look at what CNET has to offer by focusing our
attention on the left-hand (yellow) part of CNET's page.  CNET has ten
major departments, and we're going to visit the first three today.

CNET's first major department is NEWS (http://www.news.com/), which has two
sections:

Top stories
CNET Radio

Now that CNET has launched NEWS.COM, clicking on the "Top Stories" link
will take you to NEWS.COM (which we talked about in last Thursday's
TOURBUS).  The CNET radio link takes you to a page that offers three new
technology-based Real Audio "radio" interviews or audio clips each day that
you can play on your browser.

CNET's second major department is REVIEWS
(http://www.cnet.com/Content/Reviews/), and this department alone could
fill a single TOURBUS post.  The REVIEWS department has 6 sections:

Hot list - reviews of the absolute best hardware and software that the folks at CNET have seen.  The Hot List is updated every Friday.
Just in  - the
       latest reviews of the best (and worst) hardware and software.
All comparisons  - comparative reviews (i.e., Netscape vs. Internet Explorer; the best Internet Service Provider; etc.).  Hands-down my favorite part of CNET.  Check it out and you will see why.
CD-ROM central - in-depth reviews of pretty much every CD ROM ever made.
       Before you head out to the computer store, visit this page!
Best of the Web - reviews of the best Web sites on the Net.  CNET only reviews 5 pages a week, so they are pretty exclusive.
       Make sure that you visit both the "new reviews" and the
       archives of the old "Best of the Web" winners.
List all - a collection of reviews from the "Just in" and "All comparisons" pages.

The last CNET department that we are going to visit today is FEATURES.  FEATURES is a little like an online magazine, and it has four sections:

Techno - articles about the latest technology (JAVA, Mbone, Digital satellite TV, etc.)
How to - how-to tips on everything from improving Netscape to upgrading your processor.
Digital life - articles telling you how to take all of this Internet stuff and improve your REAL life (remember that?).
List all - stuff from each of the above sections.

I'm going to end today's tour here (I think I have given you plenty of
pages to check out).  Before I go, though, I do want to say that when I
first started using CNET I found it easier (and a little bit less
confusing) to go directly to each department's sections instead of going to
that department's main homepage.  For example, try going to the FEATURES
department main homepage at http://www.cnet.com/Content/Features/

and then try going to the FEATURES department Techno section at http://www.cnet.com/Content/Features/Techno/

It may be just me, but I think that the sections are a little easier to
understand :)
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