TODAY'S TOURBUS TOPIC: RIDER'S REVENGE #21

Hi all... it's time for another Rider's Revenge issue, where I share sites that your fellow Tourbus riders think are useful, fun, cool or otherwise worthy of attention. If you have a favorite site that's of interest to an international audience, send it along for the next Rider's Revenge!

Please visit our wonderful sponsors, buy lots of stuff and tell them thanks for keeping the Bus rolling, okay? :-)

DEJA VU ALL OVER AGAIN

Dinesh from India writes:

"I saw your tip on how to retrieve dead links from Google's cached pages. Can't help but chime in to say that The Internet Archive is the best way (as far as I know) to retrive dead sites/links."

http://www.archive.org

Editor's Note: The Internet Archive's Wayback Machine makes it possible to surf the past. Want to see what the AltaVista search engine looked like in October 1996? The early days of the web are just a few clicks away.

WHEN 300 BAUD WAS COOL

Krixtyn, floating about in cyberspace, had this to say:

"The Internet had a HUGE impact on the home computing community. For better it opened up a LOT of things for everyone. For worse, it seems we lost that small community where everyone knew everyone else on the BBS boards.

I would like to suggest that maybe you do a feature on the old BBSs and how they started up. It was a great time back then and one I often wish I could somehow go back to."

Editor's Note: I'm no expert on the pre-Internet days of electronic communications, but Krixtyn himself gave me some pretty good links for further investigation:

> The TEXTFILES.COM BBS Timeline - Read about the computers, people
> and protocols that were used in the BBS era - from 1876 to 2001!

http://timeline.textfiles.com

> BBS Networks - the world's largest BBS and still going strong.
> Includes a JAVA telnet client where you can see the old-style
> ANSI BBS in action even today!

http://www.bbsnets.com/public/default.htm

> The FidoNet Showcase Project - Another BBS history timeline.
> Still very much a work in progress, but there's some
> interesting stuff about the early days of FidoNet.

http://winramturbo.com/fnsp

LET'S GET TOPICAL

Megan Hamilton from London, England writes:

"The Turbo10 Metasearch Engine helps searchers to quickly home in on a relevant topic cluster and find a result quicker. Topics are generated for each search and are listed in a pull down menu at the top of the search results to help users refine their search."

http://turbo10.com

Editor's Note: This is pretty cool. You can search on 'salsa' and Turbo10 will identify 'dance', 'music' and 'recipes' as distinct topics. And the Search-o-Meter helps you move quickly through the result pages without scrolling. Try it out!

TEACHER FOCUS

Lucy Vaysman from Michigan earnestly opined:

"In my work as a high school teacher and college professor, I have found that outside of conferences there was relatively little opportunity for those working in our profession to communicate and share information and experience. I also felt that there is a real gap in the utilization of the resources that the Internet offers to my colleagues.

With that in mind, I have set up an online community where educators can easily communicate with each other through online discussions. Our site gives teachers a place to put their ideas and questions to be discussed and answered by other educators just like them through a friendly web interface. Please take a moment to visit the site:

http://www.teacherfocus.com

IT COULD HAPPEN TO YOU!

From deep in the heart of Texas, Don Crowder spoke:

"For almost three years I've been collecting and sorting links to educational resources on the web. My criteria for selection are simply that they must have free resources available to visitors. I've tried very hard to avoid listing sites that only contain links. It's a frustrating merry-go-round finding links to links, to still more links without ever getting to the goodies."

Your publication is prestigious enough that I feel a little intimidated about even mentioning my pages, but "nothing ventured" etc. I hope you'll have a look at them.

http://www.maxpatch.com/educational.html

Editor's Note: Please don't hesitate to send me your items for consideration in Rider's Revenge. If I like them, you'll get your 15 nanoseconds of fame. If not, a powerful laser beam from an orbiting satellite will vaporize you. I'm told it doesn't hurt, so keep those suggestions coming.

That's all for now, I'll see you next time! --Bob Rankin