FYS 101B: The Internet and the Humanities

Some No Longer Useful Web Resources

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Last updated: August 7, 2005

Here are some online resources that were once useful. I put them together for a freshman seminar that I last taught in Spring 2003.
NOTE: I no longer teach this course; I have kept this page up merely because it was part of the old course materials that some people have found interesting. Please do NOT write to tell me about broken links or new links. Thank you.

Back in 2003, I arranged the resources into the following categories:

E-Mail Information

Email with Netscape or, if Need Be, Webmail

Setting Up Netscape to Handle Email (OIT)

Using Webmail (OIT)



Using Pine for E-mail

Pine and Pico Introduction
(Information from Duke University that may be a bit easier to understand than that from the Pine Information Center, below. However, the instructions for cutting and pasting a message were written by someone who apparently didn't know how to use ^6 or ^^ to Set the Mark.)

Pine Information Center
(This site is at the U. of Washington, where the Pine e-mail system was developed and is maintained. Lots of useful help and other documents.)

Using the Pico Text Editor
(Helpful commands to use with Pine's default editor, Pico, to edit e-mail messages and other files.)

The Pine Aggregate Command
(Very useful information about how to locate and act on groups of messages in Pine, from the website of Professor Paula Edmiston of UNC, Ashville.)



Miscellaneous Info

Internet Mailing Lists: Guides and Resources
(Information about finding and using email lists)

Discussion Lists: Mailing List Manager Commands
(This very useful guide from librarian James Milles gives you the correct commands to use with the five major brands of list-running software: listserv, listproc, majordomo, mailbase (now jiscmail), and mailserv. Check Milles's document to find out how to subscribe, unsubscribe, stop mail temporarily, see who else is on a list you've joined, etc.)

Reading Email Headers
(A useful discussion of what the email headers on a message mean. People who want to identify spammers, etc., often use the information headers provide.)

Mail Filtering with Procmail
(Ian Soboroff's "gentle introduction" to procmail, written specifically for use at UMBC. Procmail makes it possible to filter e-mail automatically into separate mail folders. See also the next file below.)

Procmail Quick Start
(This set of instructions by Nancy McGough is designed to help you get started using procmail to filter mail into separate mail folders. Warning: the instructions say Pine requires a lowercase m in $HOME/mail, but at UMBC Pine is set up to need an uppercase M: $HOME/Mail . See also Ian Soboroff's helpful "Mail Filtering with Procmail" above.)

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FTP (File Transfer Protocol) Information

WS_FTP
(You can download WS_FTP LE (Limited Edition) from this site; it's free for people at universities who make it clear that they're using it only for academic work. People who don't qualify for free use of WS_FTP Limited Edition can download WS_FTP Pro, which costs money but has additional features.)

How to Set Up WS_FTP
(Instructions for setting up WS_FTP to transfer files between your PC and your GL web space. Includes useful screen shots.)

Grammar, Style, and Reference Works

Common Errors in English (Paul Brians)

Grammar and Style Notes (Jack Lynch)

Grammar, Style, and Proofreading Tips
(This site asks for your name and e-mail address, but the tips it provides are worth the small effort.)

Guide to Grammar and Writing (Charles Darling)

Karla's Guide to Citation Style Guides
(Karla Tonella provides links to more than a dozen sites offering information on how to cite electronic sources in various formats (APA, Chicago, MLA, etc.)

Library Catalogs Online
(This link from the Library of Congress gives you access to the LOC catalog and many university library catalogs.)

Survival Kit (Joan Korenman)
(Read this to enhance your chances of survival in this course :-) )

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Humanities Sites

Bartleby.com
(Great source of online reference works such as The Columbia Encyclopedia, Bartlett's Quotations, Roget's Thesaurus, The Elements of Style, and more, as well as collections of poetry, fiction, and some non-fiction.)

Communication Studies: Gender and Race in Media
(Karla Tonella's mostly annotated links to a wide range of gender- and/or race-related communications resources, arranged into more than a dozen categories such as African American, Asian American, Cyberspace, Feminist Media, Latin American, LesBiGay, Native American, and more.)

Literary Resources on the Net
(Impressive, searchable site maintained by Jack Lynch.)

Literature Resources for the High School and College Student
(Extensive collection of literary resources, including collections, books, writers' resources, magazines, and a !?! category with links to banned books, book awards, audio lit on the net, etc.)

Some Useful Sites on the Web
(Michael Hancher's comprehensive site focuses primarily but not exclusively on literary matters.)

Voice of the Shuttle
(An exceptionally rich, vast collection of humanities links compiled by Alan Liu, U. of California Santa Barbara)

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Internet Information

Finding Information on the Internet: A Tutorial
(Very helpful resource from the U. of California, Berkeley, that offers detailed information about Netscape, search tools, and search strategies.)

Hoaxes and Urban Legends
(An excellent document from Walt Howe that provides information about myths, scams, and hoaxes circulating on the Internet. It includes a list of common virus hoaxes, though more information about these can be found at the links below.)

Newbies Anonymous: A Newcomer's Guide to the Internet
(Covers the Web, telnet, ftp, Unix, and almost everything else you'd like to know.)

PC Webopædia
(Unsure what a computer cache or a motherboard is? or what SCSI stands for? Here's where you can find explanations of these and other computer-related terms.)

Virus Hoax Info: 99.5% of all computer virus warnings I receive turn out to be hoaxes. Do NOT pass along any warning until you first check the info on the sites listed below. Chances are, you'll find the warning is yet another false alarm:

Search Tools

Single Search Engines

All The Web

AltaVista

Gigablast

Google

MSN Search

Teoma

Webcrawler

WiseNut

Yahoo!

Meta-Search Engines

Ask Jeeves
(Ask a question in plain English; Jeeves consults multiple sources and provides answers. A good idea, but I've never been impressed with this site.)

Dogpile

Ixquick

MetaCrawler

ProFusion

Search.com

Vivisimo

Directories

Librarians' Index to the Internet

Open Directory Project

Yahoo

Searching for People

Yahoo People Search
(Can search for phone number and/or e-mail address)

WhoWhere
(Can search for e-mail, phone, address, web)

InfoSpace
(Can do reverse lookup from White Pages)

PeopleSearch.Net
(Meta-search)

MESA: MetaEmailSearchAgent
(Meta-search)

http://my.email.address.is/
(Can do reverse e-mail search)

AnyWho
(Can do reverse search on phone number)

Switchboard
(Can search for address and phone number)

Worldwide Phone Books

Search Engine Miscellany

BARE BONES 101: A Very Basic Web Search Tutorial
(Clear, concise, and useful.)

Noodle Tools: Smart Tools, Smart Research
(Lots of good information about search engine selection and strategies, as well as guides to citing online materials and to online bibliographies in many fields.)

Deja
(Find Usenet newsgroups and their contents)

MetaCrawler MetaSpy
(Amusing look at what people are currently searching for on multiple search engines. Updated every 15 seconds.)

What People Search For
(More examples of what people search for, though I couldn't get the Ask Jeeves link to produce results.)

Search Engine Watch
(Extensive information about search engines and searching strategies)

Search Engine Showdown
(Another source of useful information about search engines.)

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Software

CNet Shareware.com
(Shareware for downloading; arranged by categories)

MediaBuilder
(Software, graphics, web design tutorials, and more.)

Software I Use and Recommend
(For what it's worth, here is the software that I use and especially like on my PCs.)

TUCOWS
("TUCOWS" stands for "The Ultimate Collection of Winsock Software." A highly regarded site for Internet software, which it evaluates and rates [from one to five cows!])

TUDOGS
(Modelled on TUCOWS, "TUDOGS" stands for The Ultimate Directory of Gratis Software. It offers free software, graphics, and services. It has now started to require you to sign up for its free newsletter in order to access the site. Whether this will lead to your receiving more spam is unclear.)

NOTE: I also used to recommend the Softseek site, but I no longer do. Here's why.

UnZip Software:

  • WinZip Highly recommended. For Windows 3.1 and Windows 95/98/2000/NT/ME and presumably XP.
  • Stuffit Expander FREE! For Macintosh, Windows, Linux, and Solaris.

FYS 101B Text Book Web Pages

Composing Cyberspace Web Page

The Internet: Effective Online Communication Web Site

Marge Piercy Web Page

Yiddish and Hebrew Words in Marge Piercy's He, She, and It

Unix

UNIXhelp for Users
(Especially good for novices)

Unix Reference Desk

Web Creation Resources

A Beginner's Guide to HTML
(A clear, well-documented guide to producing web materials in HTML. It's the most frequently requested file on the NCSA web server. Though it refers to a slightly dated version of HTML and is no longer being updated, it's still quite useful.)

A Brief HTML Sampler
(Examples of some useful HTML tags and how they work.)

Builder.com
(Help with HTML and other aspects of creating a web site, from beginner to advanced.)

Cool Text
(Free site that will help you create and customize logos, bullets, buttons, etc.)

ColorMaker
(Help with choosing web page background and text colors.)

Hexidecimal Color Sampler
(A palette of colors that will reproduce pretty well on limited 256-color Macs and PCs.)

Some Graphics Sites:

Free HTML Editors:

  • Arachnophilia (Very highly regarded; runs on several operating systems, not just Windows, but I'm not sure which ones.)
  • DominHTML (Windows 3.1 and 95/98; version 5.6 comes in a limited freeware edition - click on "purchase" for more info)
  • 1st Page 2000 (Very highly regarded; Windows 95/98, ME, NT, and probably 2000 and XP)
  • HTML-Kit (Windows 95/98, ME, NT, 2000, XP)
  • Nvu(An open-source program that works on Windows [not sure which versions], Linux, and Mac OS X 10.1.5 or later)
  • Selida (Windows 95/98, ME, NT, 2000, XP)
  • TextWrangler (Macintosh - Mac OS X 10.3.5 or later)

Getting Started With HTML
(Clear, straightforward instructions to get you started using HTML. Once you've learned the basics, you may wish to follow the link to an Advanced HTML section.)

Good, Bad, and Bandwidth-Hogging Ugly Web Sites

Graphics for Your Page
(Paula Edmiston's wonderfully useful set of resources for choosing and using graphics)

How Do They Do That With HTML?
(Help with backgrounds, colors, graphics, animation, fonts, and more.)

HTML: An Interactive Tutorial for Beginners
(If you can ignore the annoying blinking ads and pop-up windows, you'll find a lot of very good information here about HTML, along with the opportunity to try out what you're learning.)

HTML Goodies
(A valuable collection of primers and tutorials covering such topics as HTML, Getting Started, Tables, Colors, Backgrounds, Images, Javascript, Perl, and more.)

HTML for the Conceptually Challenged
("Want to learn HTML fast? If you mostly watch television, have an attention span measured in microseconds, and think reading is a waste of your valuable time, this page is for you." From the makers of the Arachnophilia HTML editor.)

How to Create Your Own WWW Documents at UMBC
(From the UMBC Home Page)

Introduction to HTML
(Readable guide from Case Western Reserve University)

HTML Testbed
(See what different HTML tags look like in a web browser, and experiment with your own text and tags.)

The Web Developer's Virtual Library
(Vast resources, including a section devoted to web developers' tutorials.)

Webmaster Reference Library
(Annotated lists of Internet books, articles, and tutorials. Includes an entire section on HTML tutorials.)

WebMonkey Teaching Tool
(Clear, useful tutorials from HotWired.)

WebPagesThatSuck
(How NOT to design a web page)

Writing-the-body Electronic
(From the CyberReader web site)

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