According to Gartner Group’s latest research, the gulf between companies and countries ready for Y2K and those that lag behind continues to widen.  See http://www.pcweek.com/a/pcwt99032/1014195/

A high quality web site (Luddites should take a look at this wonderful cultural and historical studies site)
Guildhall Library and Guildhall Art Gallery (with a focus on London topography and six centuries of civic life on the river Thames) http://collage.nhil.com/

Interesting archives on research methodology issues in general
psych-methods
http://www.mailbase.ac.uk/lists/psych-methods/

• Coaches like a real teacher
• Focuses on your learning needs
• Tailors the lesson plan to you
• Adapts to your responses
• Offers several learning styles

See http://www.smartone.com/

Tools for College Writing
http://www.cabrillo.cc.ca.us/divisions/english/290/

This week, I feature four ACE professors who classified their courses in ACE as "graduate courses in managerial accounting."  Actually, there is still a shortage of coursepage listing that I would classify as truly "managerial accounting" at a graduate level.  For example, some of the most helpful courses presently listed might easily be classified elsewhere such as in financial accounting, accounting information systems, or auditing.  We need more managerial accounting ACEs at the graduate level.

Instructor: Cindy Peck
Institution: Anderson University
Course Name: Managerial Accounting
Textbook: Managerial Accounting
Author(s): Garrison & Noreen
I found it more informative to visit other courses where Cindy includes more study guide materials.  Her home page is at http://users.anderson.edu/~cpeck/

Instructor: Tanya Lee
Institution: University of Arkansas
Course Name: Asset Management Textbook: Cost Accounting
Author: Maher
This morning Professor Lee's handouts, notes, and presentations gave me "Cannot Be Found" messages.  However, I suspect that she is willing to share these with educators since she registered her coursepage with ACE.

Instructor: James M. Peters
Institution: Carnegie Mellon University
Course Name: Financial Analysis
Course Packet Author: James M. Peters
This appears to be a great web site.  I found a lot of "File Not Found" solution file disappointments.  However, James may be willing to share some of those hidden solution files with educators.  He has some very interesting illustrations and cases in financial statement analysis that are linked through ACE.  This particular course might be better classified under financial accounting, but there are many points of interest for managerial accountants as well.   Bravo James.

The American Political Science Association launched Teaching Political Science.
http://www.apsanet.org/teaching

International law
http://www.asil.org/

Some funny quips from bored flight attendants to cheer up or frighten the hell out of bored passengers
http://www.zdnet.com/yil/content/depts/forward

Radical Films (for political history buffs and old hippies)
http://radfilms.com

PI: Team Chess Game (for multiple players)
http://www.kidslovechess.com

From David Fordham
I assume you mean connectivity for the Internet and public network communications (phone), so if you actually meant connectivity for something else, please disregard this reply.

Right now, the only two large-scale options for connections via satellite are (a) fixed-base with the geostationary satellites (the K-band pizza dishes on the side of apartment buildings, or the huge C-band dishes in the rural farmyards), or (b) the LEO satellites, intended for mobile hand-held or other "non-pointed" devices.

I doubt you mean the geostationary connections, since each one of these would probably require a licensed transmitter, and require much more power for that transmitter than you would want to pull through your house wiring (126,000 miles is a long way for a microwave radio wave to travel and still maintain its signal integrity).

If you mean LEO satellites, you don’t need to wait. Several

providers are already selling services on these. For example, see: http://www.iridium.com

But do you really need such a service right now?

Most Internet providers I’m aware of provide support for V.90 over POTS. Even if there isn’t a local phone number for your provider, almost all of them have toll-free connect lines which support V.90.

V.90 works over POTS. Your throughput will not be as fast as advertised (*very* few people actually realize transfer rates of 56kbps), but for most home-office applications, it should be sufficient, even for generalized web browsing. It may not be sufficient for real-time video and audio applications, but most of those are dependent upon your switching center, anyway.

If V.90 is not fast enough for you, you can still use V.90 for the UPLOADS (remember, very little is going FROM your client computer TO the Internet), and use satellite for your DOWNLOADS (data coming FROM the Internet TO your computer, such as web pages, weathermaps, video clips, etc.) over the Iridium and other LEO constellations.

Most satellite Internet services I’m aware of indeed utilize POTS for uploads, and the satellite link for downloads only. In fact, I’m not aware of any satellite services which allow satellite connection for UPloads. So any way you slice it, you’re probably going to utilize a V.90 modem over POTS one way or another.

Now, for my personal suggestion:

If you can wait a couple of years, I expect to see mucho change in the pricing of satellite services in the coming 24-48 months.

Right now, today, in our "backwater" locale, way out here in the boonies, (the agricultural Shenandoah Valley, largest town within a five-county radius is population 45,000), we have digital PCS providers offering "unlimited connect time" packages for as little as $75 per month, long-distance included (yes, amazing isn’t it! unlimited long distance INCLUDED along with unlimited air-time, on the handheld digital PCS "cellular" phones (PCS isn’t really cellular, but to the consumer it appears the same).

And regarding pricing structures, let me take a side trip by mentioning that I personally have a land-line POTS unlimited long-distance service for $39 per month at home. Four years ago, who would have predicted unlimited long-distance service, both in-state and out-of-state, U.S. plus Canada, 24-hours per day, 7 days per week, for a flat fee of only $39 per month?! "Ridiculous," I would’ve said four years ago. But here it is today.

The Iridium and other satellite constellations will be facing increasing competition from these type services. So we will probably see all kinds of innovative pricing strategies in the year 2000 and 2001. Remember, a satellite service is heavy on fixed costs, low on incremental costs. So as long as capacity exists, it is to their best interest to sign up new customers for a song. (... and you can’t begin to imagine the digital capacity available in a 2 gigahertz-wide band of wireless spread-spectrum RF in the sub-millimeter wavelength band!).

David R. Fordham, CPA, CMA, Ph.D.
James Madison University, School of Accounting
Mail Stop Code 0203, Harrisonburg, VA 22807
Phone: 540-568-3024, Fax: 540-568-3017, Email: fordhadr@jmu.edu
Homepage: http://cob.jmu.edu/fordhadr/

Bob Jensen's Index Page

Bob Jensen's Bookmarks

New Bookmark Archives

You can read more about middleware at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/260wp/260wp.htm

I recommend that all researchers, especially accounting researchers, take a look at the favorable book review by Dennis Patz that begins on Page 121 in the January 1999 issue of The Accounting Review.   The book being reviewed is entitled Critique of Accounting:  Examination of the Foundations and Normative Structure of an Applied Discipline (Westport, CT:  Quorum Books, 1995) by Richard Mattessich.  I recall receiving unsigned letter years ago claiming, in effect, that esteemed accounting researchers were emperors without clothes in fiefdoms of little importance to the real world.  This was followed with a signed and widely circulated, albeit unpublished, document by several of the top researchers in prestigious research universities that raised the same concerns.  Mattesich tackles these issues in his book.  In the book review, Professor Patz lists those concerns that still haunt us and researchers in many, if not most, other disciplines.  In accounting, however, it is more difficult to pinpoint where research of those that control the tenure gates in the most prestigious research institutions has added genuine value to the practicing profession.

Booknews, Inc. , February 1, 1996
A critical examination of contemporary accounting, investigating the methodology and reasoning process appropriate for the discipline. It aims at a synthesis of the two major opposing camps of present-day academic accounting: the "critical-interpretive view" of Great Britain and the "positive accounting theory" of America. Among the topics in 12 chapters are the historic and cultural mission of accounting; valuation models, capital maintenance, and instrumental hypotheses; and what has post-Kuhnian philosophy of science to offer?

It would be interesting to turn the tables and process trace major changes in the accounting profession.  Where and from whom did the seminal contributions to practice arise?  For example, I have always admired the credit given by Bob Kaplan to cost accountants at John Deere for originating some of the seminal activities-based costing changes in practice that are belatedly soaring in popularity in business firms and other organizations.  In a plenary session (New York City in August 1994) of the American Accounting Association, Joel Demski claimed that about the only academic contribution to practice was dollar-value LIFO.  Knowing Joel, he was probably exaggerating with tongue-in-cheek, but then again was he really exaggerating in a featured presentation in front of over 2,000 accounting educators, practitioners, and researchers in the audience?  Certainly academic research has had an impact upon standard setting and education.  It is less clear what that impact would have been inter alia in the real world without being forced via changed standards.  In any case, the book itself is probably the best of the Mattesich treatises on research.

Thank you Dan Price for this lead on an excellent environmental report web site
http://www2.gol.com/users/hsuzuki/report.html

My innovative software feature of the week is called Quick View Plus 5.1.
This product comes for the same company (Jasc Software) that sells the wonderful and inexpensive Paint Shop Pro.
Quick View Plus lets you view email attachments when you may not have the software installed to view those attachments.  For example, you can read an Excel spreadsheet on a computer that does not have any spreadsheet software.  I just received some pictures from my wife's brother in Germany.  I could not view these pictures as email attachments.  But they can be viewed with Quick View Plus.  No mention is made of virus protection, but my hunch is that there is virus protection here since you can see the documents (like Excel spreadsheets) with less risk of engaging the macros that allow viruses to do nasty things to your computer.  You may want to view some documents with Quick View even if you have software like Excel that will stimulate nasty viruses embedded in macros.  Quick View will also do the following:

• Allows you to easily view a wide variety of formats: text, spreadsheet, graphic, database, presentation, compressed files, and html.
• Lets you view files and attachments as they were meant to be seen, with true display of important formatting features such as fonts, styles, columns, tables, headers, footers, page numbers, footnotes, embedded graphics, and OLE objects. Hyperlinks can also be seen and activated from within QVP.
• Manages all your documents copy and paste to create new files; make old docs in old apps into new documents, rename or remove old documents.
• Locates just what you need fast with a powerful search and hit highlight function. Prints all or part of any file and provides fully formatted output. Integrates with all major e-mail and groupware programs: Microsoft Exchange, Outlook, Eudora, Netscape Mail, and Lotus Notes.
• Supports new formats: Paint Shop Pro, MS PowerPoint 97; Lotus WordPro 96 & 97; RTF 1.5; vCard, Kodak Photo CD.
• Supports new integrations and browsers: Eudora 4; Outlook 98; Outlook Express; Lotus cc:Mail 8.1; Internet Explorer 4; Netscape Navigator

I took advantage of the download trial offer at
http://www.jasc.com/qvp.html

I have updated my listing of accounting and finance glossaries along with my own Technology Glossary at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/245glosf.htm

I am active in the FEI.  Belatedly, the FEI has some technology helpers.  An archive of presentations is now available at http://www.fei.org/download/dl_index.htm
One presentation you may want to download is Gartner Group?s technology trends for the next five years.  This presentation summarizes the state of key technologies and assigns probabilities to some possible future scenarios.

There is also a new FEI Express listserv for members.

Associated Colleges of the South Technology Fellowships (I had one --- they're great).   If you are in an ACS institution, now is the time to apply.
http://www.newhomemaker.com/

Harvard will help educators integrate newer learning technologies
http://www.cdlib.org/

Grade tracking software called GradeQuick
http://www.jacksoncorp.com/

Thompson Publishing and VarsityBooks.com are moving toward bypassing campus book stores with online sales of 400,000 titles and up to claimed 40% discounts.  Required books for courses in more than 50 colleges are now listed online.
http://www.varsitybooks.com/

From Lycos
TAX GUIDE
http://investing.lycos.com/ac/taxes.asp

Note from Jensen:  CNN reports that less a year ago, 2% of the users of a web page with advertising clicked on the link of the advertiser.  This has declined to a current rate of 1%.  There is software available to suppress advertising on a web page.  As a result, commercial web sites are resorting to attractions other than advertising.  Free services and contents are the current rage on the web.  For example, see the above examples from Lycos.  Be very careful, however, that you are dealing with the true web site of a reputable company.  Beware of any contests that request money.  Even if the contests are free, however, the vendor may be asking for information from you that can be sold or bartered.  I have a case dealing with some of these issues at
http://WWW.Trinity.edu/rjensen/acct5342/262wp/262case1.htm

PC Week’s Fast-Track 100 spotlights technology innovators in government and education and finds the public sector turning Web-ward to deliver new services and cut costs.
http://www.pcweek.com/a/pcwt99031/393441

Related links

• http://www.infowar.com/
• http://WWW.Trinity.edu/rjensen/acct5342/helpers1.htm#URLs  
• http://WWW.Trinity.edu/rjensen/acct5342/262wp/262case1.htm
• http://ariel.cs.trinity.edu/~jhowland/security/security/
• Artificial Intelligence/Expert Systems section of the American Accounting Association.
  http://www.bus.orst.edu/faculty/brownc/aies/aieshome.htm

If you know any accounting educators with helpful materials on the web, please ask them to link their materials  in the American Accounting Association's Accounting Coursepage Exchange (ACE) web site at
http://www.rutgers.edu/Accounting/raw/aaa/ace/index.htm
Please send these professors email messages today and urge them to share as much as they can with the academy by easily registering their course pages with ACE. 

This week, I feature three ACE professors in the area of Accounting Information Systems (Ceil's excellent web site was acknowledged previously)

Instructor:  Lisa Austen
Institution:  University of Arkansas
Course Name:  Accounting Technology
Textbook:  Accounting, Information Technology, and Business Solutions
Author(s):  Hollander, Dennam Cherrington
Lisa has some cases and case solutions on the web.  She has removed some, but my guess is that she will share them with you if you send her an email message.

Instructor:  W. Darrell Walden, Ph.D., CPA
Institution:  University of Richmond
Course Name:  Accounting Information Systems
Textbook:  Building Accounting Systems
Author(s):  Perry & Schneider
Darrell provides a lot of helpful materials, including multiple choice questions with solutions.  This is an especially helpful web site for those of us teaching Microsoft Access applications in accounting.  You can also download the team PowerPoint presentations.  Hew uses Great Plains general ledger software.  Bravo for this excellent web site Darrell.

New online MBA Program from SUNY Empire State College (competency-based academic standards)
Limited to 50 students
mba@sescva.esc.edu

What’s more, Alexandra Barrett of PC World reports, "Macromedia Makes a Big Flash: Two-thirds of Web users have [Macromedia’s] fast graphics viewer and don’t know it." Read what else PC World says at: http://www.pcworld.com/pcwtoday/article/0,1510,9939,00.html

eCode - manage your online identity
http://www.ecode.com/

It's never too late to learn Ben
Simulations Plus, Inc. creates advanced simulation software for education, pharmaceuticals, and industry. Our exciting new FutureLab™ educational software series, for science curriculum, enables teachers and students to quickly and easily perform simulated laboratory experiments on a personal computer.
http://www.simulations-plus.com/

Byte is back.
http://www.byte.com/

Bob
Thank you for linking to The New Homemaker! Every mention helps get the word about my site out, and I appreciate it.Regards,
Lynn Siprelle
Editor, TNH
http://www.newhomemaker.com/

Journalism's Slipup.com (Yahoo says:  "To err is human, to forgive is online.")
http://www.slipup.com/

Mysteries of the Nile - Land of the Pharaohs.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/egypt/

Download Internet Explorer free from
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/ie/ie5/default.asp

Maximize your search capabilities
http://www.microsoft.com/magazine/ms/preferredpc.htm

Are You Stressed Out? Take the WomenCentral Stress Test
http://womencentral.msn.com/women/health/stressquiz.asp

Watch out Bill Gates --- Apple has bounced back from 5% to 10% of market share!
Its colorful iMac is now the top selling PC since overtaking the Compaq Presario 5050 as the top selling PC
Sadly, I think Apple's market share on higher education campuses is still plunging, but those iMacs make great XMAS gifts for homes and apartments.
http://www.apple.com/

Library of the Workplace
http://www.cord.org/workplacelibrary/

Also see the excellent online cottage industry information systems textbook offerings at Cybertext
http://www.cybertext.com /

Montessori Assistants to Infancy
http://site101185.primehost.com/AtoI.html

Gen X Guide to Finance
http://www.usnews.com/usnews/edu/student/dwgenx.htm

Bob Jensen's Index Page

Bob Jensen's Bookmarks

New Bookmark Archives

Many, probably most, accounting professors and practitioners argue that SFAS 133 is too complex for financial statement preparers and investors. One simplification being advocated by former FASB Chairman Dennis Beresford (Journal of Accountancy, March 1999, pp. 65-67), the International Accounting Standards Committee (IASC), and many others is to adjust all derivative financial instruments to fair value and delete the enormous complexity of making decisions as to what contracts must be versus what contracts cannot be adjusted to fair value.

I have my doubts about fair value adjustments in many instances.  And that is not just because one of my professors years ago at Stanford University, Yuji Ijiri, was and is forever more an advocate (at least in elegant theory) of historical cost.

My real-world Mexcobre Case has been revised.  This case  illustrates a real-world instance where, in my analysis, adjusting derivative instruments to fair values is highly misleading to investors. The valuable copper price swap should not be booked at   anything other than zero in this real-world case.  This would be true even if the particular derivative instruments in the Mexcobre Case were traded in markets that were wide and deep (which is not the situation in the Mexcobre Case).

My revised Mexcobre Case is located at http://WWW.Trinity.edu/rjensen/acct5341/speakers/133sp.htm

My revised teaching notes and case solutions are available to accounting educators and practitioners.  You may request free access by sending me an email message to rjensen@trinity.edu .

Bernie Milano discusses KPMG's very serious efforts to break the glass ceiling
http://www.accountingstudents.com/toolbox/workingworld/

Paint Shop Pro will capture all or your selected part of any screen and make virtually any kind of graphics file. PSP will also read most any graphics file and convert it to most any other type of graphics file. It is also relatively easy to covert most graphics pictures to text using OCR programs such as my favorite Omni Pro.

The PSP software is the best buy in the history of Windows. For layering, I also use the expensive and user-unfriendly Adobe Photoshop, but for most of my graphics captures the inexpensive PSP will do the job. You can download a trial version of PSP from http://www.jasc.com

I might add that I also really like Lotus ScreenCam for making animations or videos of successions of screen images. The current price from PC Zone is only $28. This software does not come with a user's manual because the software is so easy to use that no manual is necessary. You can also capture audio, although Brian Zwicker notes that even professionals have problems with ambient noise (I also have this problem).    Lotus ScreenCam is great when you want to show students a succession of steps (software usage, journal entries, mathematics calculations, statistical tests, etc.) and narrate while you go. The reader is free (and not even necessary if you save the animation as a video).

In response to Brian's question, I don't think the quality of the audio or the video has a much of anything to do with whether you use Lotus ScreenCam, Microsoft Camcorder, or Hyperionics. HyperCam.

I will comment on Lotus ScreenCam scm animation files versus avi video files. When I make an animated scm file it looks great and requires a small amount of disk space, say 249Kb of space for a 62 second animation. If I save the same file as a video avi file the same segment requires up to 55,092Kb of disk space for the highest quality video.

A minor difference is that the scm player must be downloaded to play the 249Kb file or any other scm files (this free scm player is very quick and easy to download and install from the Lotus web site). Most computers already have some capability to play avi files without downloading a proprietary player.

The essence of this problem arises in terms of web bandwidth. I just downloaded a 3,153Kb avi file from Ronald's web site at http://www.sbea.mtu.edu/rrtidd/avi/Excel/excel97.htm . It took 78 minutes to download across a T1 line starting at 1:22 p.m. on Thursday, August 11. Of course the download would have been much faster when I arrived at work before 5:00 a.m. At either time of day, however, the download would have been much faster if Ronald had instead made a scm or other animation file of the same screen events the file would have been much smaller and flowed over the web much more efficiently.

As a compliment to Ronald, I want to stress that the quality of the audio and video is magnificent. However, It took 78 minutes to download a 3,153Kb file that only yields 45 seconds of playing time. One of the reasons for the high quality is his high sampling rate used in capturing the audio and video. A high sampling rate yields great quality at a great cost in terms of file size and bandwidth requirements on the Internet. I doubt that the software used matters nearly as much as the video/audio sampling rate, the quality of the microphone, the quality of the computer's capture hardware, and the screen resolution and video adapter quality of the computer itself (since we are talking about capturing successions of screen images here). I would opt for the Lotus ScreenCam scm file unless higher quality audio is absolutely essential. Users will save immense amounts of downloading time and disk storage space savings.

One drawback of the Microsoft Camcorder and the Hyperionics. HyperCam appears to be that they will only capture avi video files. Lotus ScreenCam provides a choice between the scm animation or the avi video options.

In any case, the relevant web sites are as follows:

Lotus ScreenCam free trial version
http://www.lotus.com/home.nsf/tabs/screencam
$28 PC Zone price at 800-419-9663

Microsoft Camcorder
Free inside the MS Office 97 Package
Reviewed at http://winweb.winmag.com/library/1996/1296/12r48.htm

Hyperionics. HyperCam
http://www.hyperionics.com/
$30 for downloading at the Hyperionics web site

If you know any accounting educators teaching doctoral courses, please ask them to link their materials  in the American Accounting Association's Accounting Coursepage Exchange (ACE) web site at
http://www.rutgers.edu/Accounting/raw/aaa/ace/index.htm
Please send these luddites email messages today and urge them to share as much as they can with the academy by easily registering their course pages with ACE. 

Only two accounting educators have registered their doctoral program coursepages with ACE.  Special thanks to the following good guys.

Jagdish S. Gangolly
Institution: State University of New York at Albany
Course Name: Inf 703 Information Organisation
Textbook: Automatic Text Processing
Author: Gerard Salton
The Adobe Acrobat course materials and the many web links should be of great help to Accounting Information Systems instructors in undergraduate as well as graduate courses.

Instructor: Jagdish S. Gangolly
Institution: State University of New York at Albany
Course Name: Inf766 Quantitative Techniques in Information Science
Textbook: Modern Applied Statistics with S-Plus
Author: Venables & Ripley
This course has less shared information than the AIS course above, but it provides a good syllabus and some other materials for the quantitative foundations of information systems and data analysis.

Instructor: Dan Stone
Institution: Univ. of Illinois
Course Name: Accountancy Research Orientation for Ph.D. Students
Textbook: (1985). Basic Research Methods in Social Science. New York, McGraw Hill, ISBN 0-07-554463-6.
There is a great section of this course entitled "What is research?" along with an interesting assortment of readings.  There is another section on "The Craft of Scholarship."  I could not get Lecture and Review materials buttons to work at Dan's web site this morning, but the fact that the buttons are there indicates that he must intend to share some of the materials.

Gleim's CPA Exam Preparation software is available as a free academic site license to colleges and universities.  Students who use the free online campus network materials may also purchase the Gleim books and software for a discounted price of $100. 
http://www.gleim.com/

Becker reports only 12% candidates sitting for the CPA examination pass it on the first go around
http://www.accountingstudents.com/toolbox/cramtime/
The Becker prep course uses a lot of video presented in classes given in many cities across the U.S.

Micromash has a $595 price to individuals, but I could not find any information about a site license at
http://www.micromash.com/

Because of the multimedia and some other features, I prefer Bisk's TotalTape multimedia CPA package and frequently demo it in my technology road shows.  Its site license is $750 on a campus.  A student or former student can get it for $375 or $475 depending upon whether their campus or alma mater has a site license.
http://www.bisk.com/

I lost some of my trust in the U.S. Department of Education data tables.

The USDE table where I got this data also contains masters and doctoral degrees statistics. There are only 54 doctoral degrees in accounting (35 men and 19 women) in 1994/95.  I am suspicious of that data.  Hasselback (Page -2 in the 1998.99 Edition) reports 163 accounting doctorates for 1995.  Hasselback tracks accounting doctorates by name regarding where they graduate and where they work after graduation.    Hasselback's online Accounting Faculty Directory is at http://rarc.rutgers.edu/raw/Hasselback . You may have to go to the free hard copy version (ISBN 0-13-613696-6) for doctoral enrollment data (I cannot find that table in the online database).  In this one instance, the USDE statistic of 54 accounting doctorates in 1994/95 is way off the mark of the 163 doctorates reported by Jim Hasselback.

"Sticky Apps" for making people stick to your web site
http://www.zdnet.com/pcweek/stories/columns/0,4351,391660,00.html

Harvard Business School Publishing (includes cases)
http://www.hbsp.harvard.edu/home.html

In Canada you can find HBS cases at http://www.ivey.uwo.ca/cases/

In the U.K. you can find HBS cases at http://www.ecch.cranfield.ac.uk/

What faculty members will be put out to pasture? (Thank you David Fordham).  What David forgot to add is that the most likely professors to be put out to pasture are those that spend too much time chatting on listservs rather than taking a look out at the real world.
http://cob.jmu.edu/fordhadr/keepup.htm

Environmental Education on the Internet
http://eelink.net

SocialFunds.com
http://www.socialfunds.com/

Survivors of the Exxon Valdez Oil Spill - 10 years later...
http://www.exxonvaldez.org/

Meltdown at Three Mile Island
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/amex/three/

European Environmental Law Homepage
http://www.eel.nl/

If you keep hearing about XML and don't know what it is see
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/245glosf.htm#HTML1

A Shockwave tour of the Tower of London (the next best thing to being there.)
http://www.tower-of-london.com

Community College Web (U.S. and Canada)
http://www.mcli.dist.maricopa.edu/cc/

Cafe des Poetes (poetry)
http://members.tripod.com/Megan_Thomas

FILEWORLD'S Top Ten Spreadsheet Tools

1. Spreadsheet Assistant
Don't settle for what comes in the shrink-wrap. Add more than 180 actions and functions to Excel spreadsheets; most integrate with the standard menus and dialog boxes.
http://www.pcworld.com/r/shw/1%2C2087%2C3828%2C00.html  

2. Excel File Conversion Wizard
Excel File Conversion Wizard helps you convert Lotus 1-2-3 and Quattro Pro files (as well as many other formats) to Excel files in batch operations rather than one at a time.
http://www.pcworld.com/r/shw/1%2C2087%2C3825%2C00.html  

3. Web Queries Import
Get information from a Web site and put it directly into a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet. The information can come straight from a page, or you can easily customize the tool to bring you just the data you need. http://www.pcworld.com/r/shw/1%2C2087%2C3830%2C00.html  

4. SuperSub
This spreadsheet add-in displays a dialog box that makes it very easy to indicate superscript, subscript, bold, italic, and font size for individual characters in a cell.
http://www.pcworld.com/r/shw/1%2C2087%2C4495%2C00.html  

5. Cleaver
If you've got too much fat in your business, chop it out with this aptly-named software-a series of Excel files designed to run "What if?" scenarios. Tailored to help business owners streamline operations to increase profitability. http://www.pcworld.com/r/shw/1%2C2087%2C979%2C00.html  

6. As-Easy-As for Windows 95
A powerful spreadsheet, originally designed as a Lotus 1-2-3 clone for the DOS environment. It features math, financial, statistical, date and time, and scientific functions, as well as graphics capabilities. http://www.pcworld.com/r/shw/1%2C2087%2C5115%2C00.html  

7. DataLoader
This menu-driven add-in for Excel moves data from sheet to sheet based on a unique key that identifies the data to be loaded and the target row. The key can be either alphabetic, numeric, or a combination. http://www.pcworld.com/r/shw/1%2C2087%2C3279%2C00.html  

8. Risk Analyzer for Excel
Navigate among complex choices with this set of decision-support and risk-analysis tools for Excel. http://www.pcworld.com/r/shw/1%2C2087%2C3280%2C00.html  

9. VistaCalc This easy spreadsheet can calculate columns and totals like all the rest. It can also handle loan repayment calculations, depreciation, and other statistical and financial functions. http://www.pcworld.com/r/shw/1%2C2087%2C4884%2C00.html  

10. As-Easy-As Spreadsheet
Like Lotus 1-2-3, this program packs some sophisticated functions. Check out the linear programming, multivariate regression, 3D graphics and hundreds of math, financial, and stat functions. http://www.pcworld.com/r/shw/1%2C2087%2C2399%2C00.html  

Have you ever wanted to center a graphic in the browser window? Doing so is actually quite easy. In FrontPage Editor, just click the HTML tab and enter the following code between the <body> and </body> tags:

<table border="0" width="100%" height="100%" cellspacing="0"
cellpadding="0">
<tr>

<td valign="middle" align="center">
<img border="0" height="355" width="616"
lowsrc="images/loading.gif" src="images/welcome.gif"

alt="Welcome">
</td>

</tr>
</table>

Of course, you’ll need to enter the correct image names and height and width values.
From—Martin Suchym [suchy@fastenal.com] (in ZD Tips)

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My featured accounting educator this week is John Woodroof at high-tech Middle Tennessee State University
http://woodroof.mtsu.edu/

What's next for Microsoft?
http://www.pcweek.com/a/pcwt9903012/1014024/

"Copyright and Intellectual Property"
http://www.arl.org/info/frn/copy/copytoc.html

"Intellectual Property: Database Protection and Access to Information," by William Gardner and Joseph Rosenbaum. SCIENCE MAGAZINE, vol. 281, no. 5378, August 7, 1998, pp. 786-87.
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/281/5378/786

Links on the Digital Future Coalition Website
http://www.dfc.org/

Access America (for senior citizens)
http://www.seniors.gov/

American Campus Communities (private sector assistance with financing and living)
http://www.studenthousing.com

Homeschool Specialists
http://www.homeschoolspecialists.com

Pregnancy & Childbirth Tips
http://www.pregnancytips.com

AutoFormat Hyperlinks

AutoFormat Line Breaks

However, if you really want the pasted text in a MS Word doc file and do not give a hoot about creating an htm file in FrontPage, you can paste the web text in your MS Word doc file. If the pasted text has unwanted line breaks, select this text and choose the menu options (Format, AutoFormat, AutoFormat now). That should remove most unwanted line breaks as well as liven up the hyperlinks.

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At the American Taxation Association meetings in San Francisco last week, Doug Izard from KPMG announced that KPMG will pay for employees to get a Master of Taxation degree at any university having a qualified program.   It is not yet clear whether this only applies to newly hired graduates or to all employees in the tax division.  I searched for an announcement at the KPMG web site, but I could not find any information on this new fringe benefit.  If any of you find out some details, please let me know.  For example, will KPMG pay for room, board, and travel in addition to salary while the employee is enrolled in the masters degree program?  Also what terms must the employee agree to when accepting this fringe benefit?  For example, will the employee have to stay with KPMG for a number of years to avoid having to pay back part or all of the fringe benefit?

I previously announced the funded MBA program for PriceWaterhouse Coopers (PWC) employees and the funded Masters of Accounting programs of Ernst & Young (E&Y).   Unlike the KPMG program, PWC and E&Y employees are restricted to selected universities that designed special programs just for employees of those firms.  The PWC program is an online asynchronous curriculum.  The E&Y programs have a custom calendar that entails about seven months in residence and five months of online courses in s synchronous mode of delivery.

I have updated some information on the PWC and E&Y programs at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/255wp.htm#ErnstandYoung
In particular I made some heavy revisions to my comments on the E&Y program.

The above PWC and E&Y programs illustrate one type of business partnering by universities.  In this type of partnering, the universities design special programs to deliver to employees of the business firms.  Another type of partnering is where the business firms deliver courses for the university degree programs.   An example of this type of partnering is the AT&T partnering with Western Governors University that was announced in two magazines that I track regularly.  For example, see

"AT&T Learning Network Hosts WGU Content," T.H.E. Journal, February 1999, 14-16.

Another example is 3COM's educational partnership with the M.S. In Information Technology online degree program at UNC Greensboro reported in  T.H.E. Journal, February 1999, Page 11.
http://education.3com.com/

An earlier version of the paper is at
http://h-net2.msu.edu/~mmedia/archives/logs/may96/0020.html

A closely related paper is at
http://hibiscus.ucdavis.edu/oecweb/11-97_Agenda/hart7n5.htm

It is tax season.  A few of the leading tax web sites are noted below.  The IRS web site is probably the best managed web site of all governmental agencies.   Start with the IRS and then proceed to other heavy duty alternatives discussed by Barbara Karlin at the ATA meetings last week.

http://www.irs.ustreas.gov/

http://www.taxsites.com/

http://www.taxresources.com/

http://www.abanet.org/tax/sites.html

http://www.willyancey.com/

Will Yancey lists a bunch of tax professor web sites at
http://www.willyancey.com/tax_faculty.htm

Since I do not teach taxation, I hesitate to pick out the leading educator web sites in this area.  I will, however, mention the links to three of my friends who teach taxation.

Amy Dunbar at http://www.sba.uconn.edu/users/ADunbar/dunbaru.htm

Tom Omer at http://omer.actg.uic.edu/

Mark Wolfson at http://gobi.stanford.edu/facultybios/bio.asp?ID=168

Forthcoming Adobe Acrobat Version 4
http://www.internetworld.com/print/1999/02/15/news/19990215-update.html

A new Web Capture tool lets users store Web pages as PDF files with graphics, frames, and formatting intact. It also stores hyperlinked pages in the PDF file as many as 999 levels down. 

The new version of PDF lets users store more data about the structure of documents, so they can extract objects, such as text graphics, from a PDF document.   (Question from Jensen:  Can you revise the basic document and still save the hyperlinks and bookmarks without having to reset every one of them when you create a revised PDF file?  For example, if your document had a Table of Contents, can you save all the internal bookmarks used for links in that Table of Contents after you revise the document in some small way?  My guess is no, and until salvaging of internal bookmarks and external web links becomes feasible, Adobe Acrobat is not an efficient authoring tool for your documents that have lots of internal bookmarks and external web links.)

Gartner Group analyst Rita Knox said version 4.0 is a significant step forward. "This is a major rethink about what the product is," she said. 

Knox said Acrobat 4.0's new features for preserving document structure address a major weakness of PDF and will help keep it relevant as structure-rich formats like XML gain ground.

The office-oriented features may convince many corporate users to switch from the free Acrobat Reader to the full version of the product, she said.

Adobe Acrobat 4 will be available within 30 to 60 days for the Windows and Macintosh platforms. The Macintosh version will lack the full digital-signature and Web-capture capabilities. Estimated street price is $249.

From Microsoft

Tools for Teachers
http://www.microsoft.com/education/k12/classroom/free.htm

Technology is a Fountain of Youth for Some Seniors
http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/features/1999/02-12seniors.htm

TechNet Tricks and Traps
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/tips/default.htm

Thanks Bob
This come across my computer today. Perhaps you will find it interesting.

http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/news/0,4586,2212765,00.html

This URL has an article about cheating with technology. Some of it is really high tech. It also has a large number of links to cheating stories on the WEB.

Robert V. Blystone, Ph.D. rblyston@trinity.edu
Department of Biology
Trinity University
715 Stadium Drive
San Antonio, Texas 78212
210.736-7243 FAX 210/736-7229

The Garden of Claude Monet.
http://www.mmfa.qc.ca/visite-vr/anglais/index.html

WebMD Health & Wellness Center
http://shn.webmd.com/

Close to Home Humor
http://www.closetohome.com/

From the Scout Report
New Media Encyclopedia [RealPlayer, QuickTime] http://www.newmedia-arts.org/

This online reference work is a scholarly research tool for the study of new media and related artistic practices. The New Media Encyclopedia, now in the first of two phases, consists of four primary sections: Glossary, Chronological Landmarks, General Bibliography, and Artists & Works. The Artists & Works section is the core of the site, containing brief biographies of new media artists and critical descriptions of their works, which users may view with a RealPlayer or QuickTime plug-in. The section currently covers 43 artists and 233 of their works. By the end of the project’s second phase, scheduled for late 1999, it will include over 100 artists and 500 works garnered from the collections of the project’s three collaborators: the Centre Georges Pompidou, the Museum Ludwig, and the Centre pour l’Image Contemporaine. Users should note that since the project is still in its initial phase, some portions of the encyclopedia may be under development.

One of the most common complaints by FrontPage users centers around formatting problems when text is pasted into a document. I thought it would be useful to forward the following from ZD Tips:

 Renato Navajas (renaton@mict.gov.br) and Chris Barker (cbarker@microsoft.com) both recommended using the Paste Special command—instead of the Paste command—on FrontPage Editor’s Edit menu. When you do so, the Convert Text dialog box appears. Select either the Normal Paragraphs or Normal Paragraphs With Line Breaks option and click OK.

Chris Maher (chris@1x.com, http://1x.com/advisor/), on the other hand, recommends switching to HTML view, and then choosing Paste from the Edit menu. Doing so will paste your text without formatting. Be aware that this method removes carriage returns, as well, so it may not be appropriate for long selections.

From ZD Internet Search Advantage
One of the most effective ways to search the Internet is to use a search agent or robot that queries multiple search engines. These robots usually act as Metasearch engines on one particular subject, for example, searching for email addresses or ftp files. Copernic 98 plus is a Metasearch agent that gives you access to more than 130 Internet search engines and directories. You access these search engines in channels or groups that are organized by the subject area of the Internet which they cover. When you conduct a search you select one of the 19 channel sets and simultaneously access the related search engines. For example, the default search engines for the Web channel are AltaVista, AOL NetFind, Excite, Goto.com, HotBot, Infoseek, LookSmart, Lycos, Magellan, WebCrawler, and Yahoo!. Copernic includes channels for the Web, newsgroups, emails, books, business, finance, games, jobs, kids, learning, life, movies, music, news, news archives, software, sports, technology and travel.

Copernic also provides a variety of features that give it a flexibility you don’t usually find in search agents. Some of Copernic’s features include Boolean operators, relevancy ranking, search history, search wizard, offline browsing, search reports, Internet Explorer integration, and online upgrades. Copernic is available for Windows 95, 98, or NT4.x.

You can download Copernic at:
http://www.copernic.com

If you copy a lot of text from other sites or other applications and frequently paste into a FrontPage Editor document, sometimes you’ll get a mixture of font styles and size. While you’ll often want to preserve these styles, sometimes you’ll want to bring in just the unformatted text.

An easy and fast way to do so is to first paste the text into a new Notepad document and then cut and paste it into FrontPage editor.  From ZD tips.

Added Comment from Jensen:  I usually paste the document into MS Word, select all the text, and then click on (Format, Autoformat).   That improves some things, particularly many of the unwanted line breaks

A ZD MS Access Tip
In databases that track billing and payment transactions, you’ll often want to display the number of days an invoice or other item is outstanding. To generate this value in its basic form, subtract the invoice’s creation date from the current date. So, on a form or report, you could enter the following expression in a textbox’s Control Source:

ÚteDiff("y",[DateCreated],Date())

This expression subtracts the current date from the invoice’s creation date and returns the result as the number of elapsed days. By itself, however, this expression continues to generate the days-outstanding value even when the invoice is paid or completed. To prevent this, use the following modification:

=Nz(DateDiff("y",[DateCreated],[DatePaidInFull]),DateDiff("y", [DateCreated],Date()))

This expression first subtracts the date in [DatePaidInFull] from [DateCreated]. If [DatePaidInFull] is null, however, then this expression also returns a null value. As a result, Access evaluates the second expression in the Nz() function and subtracts the current date from the invoice’s creation date

1 - AECM is 5-years old this month. Thank you for your continued support.  (Bravo Barry)

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From Tracey
Seeking Successful Examples from Accounting Classrooms for a Teaching with Technology Toolkit

Request for your successful examples

Submission deadline (for ONE PAGE description): March 10, 1999

Do you successfully use technology in teaching accounting? Would you like your innovation to be included in a prestigious free CD-ROM/Web toolkit to be distributed to faculty worldwide?

The American Accounting Association (AAA) and American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA) are developing a CD-Toolkit to provide accounting faculty with useful examples and supportive materials for incorporating technology into their courses. If you have successfully used technology to enhance your students’ educational experience, you can help others do the same! Your experience can become part of the CD-Toolkit that will be distributed to faculty interested in enhancing their courses by using technology to accomplish their learning objectives.

We are looking for examples that span a wide range of content areas and technological applications, as well as a range of complexity from simple applications to those that are more complex. If you have or know of successful applications of technology in teaching accounting, please fill out and submit the simple one-page form at the bottom of this e-mail message. If you prefer, you can find this form on-line at:

http://www.rutgers.edu/Accounting/raw/aaa/newsarc/toolkit.htm

Southwestern Publshing Company's Forum for the Academic Accounting Community
http://www.swcollege.com/acct/forums/conf.html

Three featured accounting educator web sites.

If you had a link to Julie Smith David's web site, you should probably change it to the new link shown below.  Julie has some great helpers, including download presentations of her lectures in AIS.
http://www.cob.asu.edu/faculty/jsdavid/

David Spiceland at the University of Memphis has always had a helpful web site
http://www.people.memphis.edu/~dspice/
When a password is required, David usually shares this password with accounting educators.

Amy Dunbar has just moved to the University of Connecticut. Her new web site is at
http://www.sba.uconn.edu/users/ADunbar/TAXHOME.htm  
She provides the following information about her part of the ATA meeting in San Francisco this week:

Amy's part deals primarily with WebCT. She wrote a WebCT section of a teaching monograph to be published by the American Taxation Association next summer. The pdf file is at
http://www.sba.uconn.edu/users/adunbar/webct.pdf

Amy would appreciate your printing and bringing this overview to the technology session.

It would also be great if you could check out a couple site built using WebCT. Amy describes various WebCT tools in the pdf file, which you can see in action. For example, John Wanless uses WebCT for his financial accounting course. The site can be accessed at:
http://www.webteach.atc.fhda.edu:8900/public/ACCT1/index.html
Note that you should use a login id of guest and a password of guest.

I would like to remind you that Windows Find and Windows Explorer Find utilities are useful when searching file names.  These utilities will not, however, search the text strings inside every file.

I am now going to describe a rather amazing $80 piece of software that was featured on Computer Chronicles (PBS).  Before doing so, I must inform you that I just downloaded the software and am only familiar with a few of its various features.  The feature that I like is that I can click on Find and type a keyword such as "Dunbar".   Enfish Tracker Pro will search inside every file on my hard drives for a document or saved email message (I use Outlook for email) that contains the word Dunbar.  I get a listing (containing the surrounding phrases) of every one of my web documents that contains Amy Dunbar's name, every MS DOC  or other file that contains her name, and every stored email message that contains her name.  She can't hide anywhere in my various hard drives.  John Howland says this search feature is standard on UNIX operating systems, but it is not standard in Windows-based operating systems.

The downside is that the full version of Enfish Tracker Pro requires 100 Mb of hard drive.  It also takes slightly over one hour to initialize, but since I can let it run in background and do other things on my computer, the initialization phase does not bother me greatly. You can use it while it is initializing.   I am still trying out some of the other features such as a cross-referencing utility.  It creates an index that you can customize for frequently searched terms.  You can also customize this index, and I have already done so on my new version.

You might like to download a 45 day trial period for Enfish Tracker Pro software from either of the following web sites:
http://www.kvo-intercom.com/Enfish/download/
http://kidsurf.softseek.com/Business_and_Productivity/Information_Organizers/Review_20070_index.html

The home web site is at
http://www.enfish.com/index.html

Enfish Tracker Pro continuously monitors all your information sources simultaneously and actually reads everything for you. It locates, prioritizes, cross-references and displays your information in an organized environment where you can view it instantly (including graphics) and work with it more effectively. Plus, it alerts you to any relevant new information you may have missed.

Trinity University's Student Managed Web Fund
http://www.trinity.edu/pcooley/smf/index.htm

World’s Smallest Web Server (For ubiquitous computing from Stanford University)
http://wearables.stanford.edu/

Microsoft Office 2000 Guide.
http://www.microsoft.com/magazine/ms/office2000guide.htm

WordLab
http://www.wordlab.com/
Described by Yahoo as a "thesaurus with serious attitude,"

StockMaster
http://www.stockmaster.com/

500 Mhz Notebooks
http://www.zdnet.com/pcweek/stories/news/0,4153,388838,00.html

Internet Learning Materials for MBA Students
http://bized.ac.uk/fme/

I usually forget to monitor EDUCAUSE and regret it later
http://www.educause.edu/

The Harlem Renaissance (from Encyclopedia Britannica)
http://harlem.eb.com/

U.S. Freedom of Information Act Reading Room
http://foia.state.gov

Ethical Business: the Search for Research
http://nt1.ids.ac.uk/eldis/hot/ethics.htm

Current U.S. Employment Data
http://stats.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.toc.htm

College Students Online
http://www.collegestudentsonline.com

ScholarAid
http://www.scholaraid.com

BEST COLLEGES: Pro & Con Guide
http://www.dancris.com/~projim

Barnes and Noble Books and Gifts
http://www.garden-of-gifts.com/gardenofgifts/barandnob.html

Buck a Book
http://www.buck-a-book.com

Algebra You Can Use
http://www.tdi.net/kkoths

The Knowledgent Corporation
http://www.knowledgent.com/
Creating Virtual Private Universities??

Biological Sciences
http://biology-newark.rutgers.edu

Down Syndrome software - language development
http://www.es.co.nz/~geddes

Automobile and Truck Purchasing Online (Slow Loading Large File)
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/bookbob.htm#AutomobilesAndTrucks

Religion Online
http://www.religion-online.org/

Educational Software
http://hem2.passagen.se/jgordon/gp/index_e.htm

Bexar County Appraisal District (Thanks Aaron)
http://www.bcad.org/property.htm

stateline.org (tracks events taking place in the 50 state capitols)
http://www.stateline.org/

English Tutoring Services
http://toefl.telecampus.com

Not a LSAT prep course—a law school prep course
http://www.lawpreview.com/

The Christian Homeschool Journal
http://members.xoom.com/hmschooljrnl/

Negotiator Pro Co.
http://viamall.com/npro
Publisher of high quality negotiation support software and role-play simulations.

The Hampster Dance
http://www.hampsterdance.com/

FunTrivia.com
http://www.funtrivia.com/

Free-PC.com
http://www.free-pc.com/

For the young and old like me
A Retirement Calculator
http://www.usnews.com/usnews/nycu/money/moretcal.htm

Good morning

While diving through all the URL’s in the reply by Robert Jensen to

Don Eland’s original message I came across some links to ‘excellent

sites for English teachers’

What I didn’t find was a link to probably the BEST English for teachers site on the web (I am biased of course)

http://english.unitecnology.ac.nz

English Online (a message from Richard Elliott at the University of Auckland)

Good morning
While diving through all the URL’s in the reply by Robert Jensen to Don Eland’s original message I came across some links to ‘excellent sites for English teachers.’   What I didn’t find was a link to probably the BEST English for teachers site on the web (I am biased of course)
http://english.unitecnology.ac.nz

Readers may wish to go to this site and peruse the excellent ( downloadable/ modifiable/ useable resources for english teaching) Also have a look at the introduction to the Internet pages...an excellent resource and one which is receiving some superb feedback!
enjoy the rest of your day

regards

Richard Elliott
Head of Learning Technologies
‘Learning in the drivers seat, technology turning the wheels!’
UNITEC Institute of Technology
Private Bag 92025
Auckland New Zealand
phone: 6498152929;Fax 6498154312
UNITEC URL: http://www.unitec.ac.nz

Welcome to the latest edition of the Internet Essentials ‘99 Newsletter for the financial professional. This newsletter is dedicated to the needs of Accounting and Finance professionals.
http://www.tiac.net/users/nhannon/news.html
Today’s topics include eFax, your free fax address on the Internet, New Hyper-Computer:   60,000 times faster than a 350-Mhz PC, Playstation Clone Ok’d By Judge, Bar-code for your Fridge?, Programs for Better Browsing, Free PC offer a huge hit, and  PRE-IPO...... exit23b.com and the free stock giveaway.
http://www.tiac.net/users/nhannon/news.html
Please visit the Web site and let me know what you think about it.

With great optimism,
Neal Hannon

A FrontPage tip from ZD tips
You’ve probably noticed that when you insert VBScript or JavaScript into a Web page, FrontPage ignores your script in Normal mode. Since the script is invisible, it’s easy to accidentally delete it.

To prevent this problem, choose Format Marks from the View menu. When you do, the location of your scripts will then be marked with a little flag. JavaScript flags have a "J" on them, while VBScript flags show a miniature version of the Visual Basic logo

An Internet Search tip from ZD tips

One of the key elements of each search result is the document’s URL. The directories that pages are placed in can often help you determine a document’s relevance. For example, if you’re looking to download a software program named "Vigrim" and you’re presented with the three URLs listed below, the choice is fairly obvious.

www.domain.com/products/vigrim.html

www.feldergarb.com/reviews/vigrim.html

www.october.com/downloads/vigrim.zip

The directory named downloads is a good clue, but the fact that the file in that directory is a .ZIP file almost ensures that you’ve found the download you want.

It’s also a good idea to look at the link URL for each individual search result URLs when you retrieve a significant number of documents from the same site. Some Webmasters are so good at submitting their site information to search engines, that their Web site’s pages show up repeatedly. However, this doesn’t necessarily mean that the site has information that’s relevant to your search. In such a case, you’ll want to use a NOT statement to exclude those sites from your results.

On the other hand, many searches will retrieve multiple hits from a site precisely because they are relevant, in which case you might have literally dozens of Web pages to sift through. For an example, go to AltaVista and do a phrase search for "library of congress." In this situation, it will probably be easier to track down the information you need at the Web site rather than through your search results. Cut (truncate) the URL back to only the Web site’s home page or a directory  related to your search. For example, if a variation on the URL www.domain.com/products/document.html appears multiple times in a search results, you might want to cut the URL back to www.domain.com/ or to the products directory.

When you do click through to the site, make sure to take a careful look at the navigation bar. Also, stay on the lookout for a sight map, which can give you a quick graphic representation of all the information on the site.

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

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The annual premium for a minimal E-Risk policy would begin at $4,000, according to a Fidelity and Deposit spokesman. That would include a risk assessment, but none of the consulting services offered by IBM, he added

Despite bandwidth bottlenecks that could slow response times and potentially high development costs, more companies are adding rich media to their Web applications.   Universities will be certain to follow (in some instances lead).
http://www.pcweek.com/a/pcwt9902031/387407/

Lotus Preps Non-Notes Collaboration Tool
Code-named "Haiku," the product does not use the brand-new Lotus Notes R5 client.
http://www.internetwk.com/news0299/news020599-8.htm

Learning Connect (with special features for Lotus Learning Space developers)
http://www.learningconnect.com/

Thank you Neil Hannon for these two web site suggestions
SAP has expanded its great web site on e-commerce
http://www.sap.com/internet/index.htm

Free downloading games galore (chess, card games, crosswords, etc.)
http://www.geocities.com/features/Entertainment/clicknplay/

Oklahoma State University Distance Learning
http://distancelearning.okstate.edu

Center for Innovation in Education
http://www.center.edu/

Make Money Now (home business opportunities and learning projects for children)
http://www.magiclearning.com/cgi/members/MC20037.html

Also see  Furure World
http://www.future-world.com/24148.htm

And Magic Learning Systems!
http://www.magiclearning.com/cgi/members/oz19877.html

Pleasant Corner Bookstore (discounts from 40% to 90%)
http://www.peric.net

World’s Best Videos (an enormous selection)
http://www.totalmarketing.com/128310

Suppressed Science (Would Darwin have made it in modern science?)
http://www.karoo.net/heretical/darwin.html

America's 10 Most Wanted (words that is)
http://www.theatlantic.com/unbound/fugitives/index.htm

Aviation Accident Database
http://www.tstonramp.com/~kebab/

Dead Musicians
http://elvispelvis.com/fullerup.htm

New Media Encyclopedia (avant-garde artists and filmmakers)
http://www.newmedia-arts.org/

Masters of Photography
http://masters-of-photography.com/

Funtastic Learning (for children with special skill development needs)
http://www.funtasticlearning.com

Stories, poems, and excerpts from forthcoming books by Alfred A. Knopf publishers.
http://www.randomhouse.com/knopf/borzoi/

African-American artists and art works
http://www2.blackside.com/immaw/

Bar Review and Bar Exam Preparation
http://www.thestudygroup.com/

SeniorTalk.Com (Jensen is getting closer to needing this)
http://www.seniortalk.com

Changing Seasons Software (for serious stamp collectors and those just wanting to see the pictures)
http://www.stampbase.com

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I begin with the Academy (Hyper) Awards of Internet Device Hardware and Software as listed in my favorite magazine called NewMedia, February 1999, pp. 28-48. The title of the article is "The Next Big Thing: Internet Devices." Many of the award winning products (such as the winning laptop computer) are not necessarily restricted to Internet applications. I provide a summary listing under the link "The Next Big Thing" at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000equip.htm

Next I add some of my own additional predictions under the link "Some Additional Next Big Things" at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000equip.htm
Actually some of my suggestions here are really just my favorites at the moment.

What I would really like is for you to send me some suggestions for some other big things. If I agree with you I would like to add it to the list (under your name).

New Media's judges chose the Macromedia Dreamweaver (as a Visual Authoring Tool on Page 35) and Macromedia Dreamweaver Attain (as an Iterative Online Training and Education Delivery System).  Poor old Asymetrix ToolBook and Librarian did not even get honorable mention by the judges.

As a visual authoring tool, I find Dreamweaver to be innovative, but it is very tedious for basic HTML in my viewpoint. I prefer the exceedingly efficient Microsoft FrontPage for the basic HTML document. Then I like to read the file in Dreamweaver in order to add behaviors, layers that hide and show, multiple level and embedded layers, and many innovations for tables. In other words, I use Dreamweaver to fancy up some of my FrontPage documents.

I have added an illustration of hiding and showing layers using Dreamweaver. It may be best to run this illustration in Internet Explorer. The illustration does not work well in my version of Netscape. My layering illustration is at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/dreamtut/example1/dwex01.htm

Using Dreamweaver is a lot easier than coding JavaScript like I used to have to do for hiding and showing layers. See
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/busn2311/helpers1.htm#JavaScript

I have not used Dreamweaver Enterprise and probably will not be able to do so until I install my own server rather than rely upon the faculty server at Trinity University. Serving up two-way interactive documents requires special server configuration and software that my University is reluctant to install on the common servers. For $799, however, Dreamweaver Attain lets instructors install interactive course management systems on the web. There is also an Authorware Attain for the more sophisticated Authorware system. The Macromedia web site is at
http://www.macromedia.com

The current wealthiest man in the world, Bill Gates, is often accused of borrowing from the creativity of competitors like Apple Corporation and Netscape.  At last it is revealed that he did amass his billions with creativity --- creative accounting.   "For years, Microsoft has systematically distorted its profit from figures in an effort to consistently beat Wall Street expectations and keep its stock price steadily rising.  The false reports would violate SEC regulations and amount to outright fraud." claims Charlie Pancerzewski, the former Chief of Internal Audits at Microsoft Corporation. I want to thank Roger Debreceny for this tip. The current link that works this morning is at
http://www.seattleweekly.com/features/9901/features-romano.shtml
If that fails, use the Article Search key word Ramano or Mike Romano to search for the article "Microfraud? A Microsoft executive accuses the company of cooking its books."

I am using a new Trinity University classroom (with 30 computers) that uses the Insight System from Tech Electronics at
http://www.techelec.com .

I am very happy with this system. I cannot only see what is happening on any student’s computer, I can take over the keyboard and mouse functions of any student’s computer and/or project that students computer on the front screen of the classroom. I can project my computer onto the monitor of any or all students. I can designate groups of students and then interact with each group.

There are many other features. I suggest you take a look at this system

To contribute to the on-going discussion about classroom software that allows instructors to control/project student computers...

I’m still in search of the right answer, too. For a new computer lab we installed this fall, we looked at two hardware solutions, but couldn’t get them incorporated into the classroom design without major delays (the conduits already laid down in the concrete floors would have required some modification for the cabling). In addition, we didn’t want to have more hardware on the student desktops (these systems require some sort of box that daisy-chains all the computers together and then to a central controller). And, these systems are very expensive (@$15-20K for a 33-computer lab).

We looked at CLASSNET (made by Minicom 800-922-8020 http://www.macatawa.org/~minicom) and V-Net (made by Inline 800-882-7117 http://www.inlineinc.com) Another system, which I have not seen is COMWEB.

Our big hope is for a software solution. We examined CLASSROOMS which looks great. Unfortunately, we couldn’t get it to work properly in our NT lab (even though they said it was NT-compatible). CLASSROOMS is made my DDES in Canada and distributed by NorCal in the US—see http://www.ddes.com .

That’s my two-cents...
Melissa Carter-Goodrum mcarterg@INDIANA.EDU

A [multi-computer classroom] software solution is offered by Altiris (http://www.altiris.com). I have seen a demonstration. It has a lot of capability and is less expensive than most hardware solutions. It will run on Windows 95/98 and NT.

Rob Ingram
Culverhouse School of Accountancy
University of Alabama
Tuscaloosa, AL 35487-0220
mailto:ringram@cba.ua.edu
http://cbasss3.cba.ua.edu/accweb/ringram/

There is a new bill in US Congress that will be affecting all Internet Users. You might want to read this and pass it along to others. CNN stated that the Government would in two weeks time decide to allow or not allow a Charge to your (OUR) phone bill equal to a long distance call each time you access the Internet. This will be very costly for those of us who like to "surf the net" and communicate frequently via emails.

Think about that for a minute, and how it would effect each and every one of us. Please visit the following URL and fill out the necessary form to contact your Representative regarding this matter.

The URL is http://www.house.gov/writerep/

Impact of Netscape/AOL merger on the browser wars?
http://www.statmarket.com/coverstory.html

Neil Hannon has some great links this week (Issue 2.5) at
http://www.tiac.net/users/nhannon/news.html .
Included is the following Virtual Meeting Place link:
The kind folks at http://jointplanning.com have assembled a Web site dedicated to providing space for virtual meetings for groups. Features include a calendar function, discussion groups, areas to post items of interest and even a place to take a group vote. This site is free for non-commercial use.

Baker Library at the Harvard Business School
http://www.library.hbs.edu/bakerbooks/

New Books at Baker Library
http://www.library.hbs.edu/bakerbooks/recent/

New Books from HBS Press
http://www.library.hbs.edu/bakerbooks/hbsp/

Faculty Books in Print
http://www.library.hbs.edu/bakerbooks/faculty/

TeachMe Finance
http://www.teachmefinance.com/

From the Scout Report --- Bnet
http://www.bnet.co.uk/

The information management services company Fontal (UK) aims to provide "leading sources" of business management information on the Internet at Bnet. Guides, directories, and case studies on business administration, business regulations, intellectual property, innovation, manufacturing, and quality, among many other topics, are available from a searchable database. Although use of the database is subscription-based, free access is available to full- and part-time students, academics, and librarians following registration and acceptance of the Bnet User Agreement.

Bob,
My web site (soon to be updated with more Peachtree FAQs and books)
http://users.sedona.net/~cyacht

I received your attachments just fine. Great idea!
Carol Yacht, Author
College Accounting with Peachtree (Volume 1); College Accounting with Excel & Peachtree (Volume 2), Houghton Mifflin
Computer Accounting with Peachtree, Irwin/McGraw-Hill
520 634 0603 (MT)
520 634 9006 (Fax)
http://users.sedona.net/~cyacht

From the Scout Report: The CIOS/ McLuhan Website Project
http://www.cios.org/encyclopedia/mcluhan/index.html

Created by the Communication Institute for Online Scholarship (CIOS), the CIOS/ McLuhan Website Project aims to be a hypermedia education resource, introducing students to communication studies through the work of Canadian theorist and educator Marshall McLuhan. This informative, well-designed site exemplifies the rationale behind McLuhan’s oft-quoted aphorism: "the medium is the message." The site is comprised of four engaging sections: M, Probe, Explorations, and Collide-Oscope. M provides a brief history of McLuhan’s life and work as well as a bibliography. Probe, an interactive tutorial section, contains four modules introducing the ideas and concepts of the "Toronto School" of communication studies. Explorations offers four case studies in modern media, allowing students to apply what they learned in the Probe modules. Collide-Oscope, which is currently in development, will be an educational game, teaching students about McLuhan’s four laws of media

Used Books Online
http://www.angelfire.com/ny2/usedbooks

Katy High School (Seems like quite a few Trinity students graduated from this National Blue Ribbon School called Katy)
http://www.katy.isd.tenet.edu/khs

 Journal of International Forum of Educational Technology & Society
http://zeus.gmd.de/ifets/periodical

Human Anatomy
http://www.vesalius.com

UK Computers and Texts Journal
http://info.ox.ac.uk/ctitext/publish/comtxt

The Easy Way to Learn
http://www.magiclearning.com/cgi/members/FC19285.html

So you think Mike Kearl has data? Try the Stat. Market that claims to have over 11 million visitors per day.
http://www.statmarket.com

Advertising in Days of Old
http://www.frankjump.com

Recognizing and Rewarding Good Teaching in Australian Higher Education
http://services.canberra.edu.au/caut/commproject/rrgt/titlepag.html

Western History Photographs
http://gowest.coalliance.org

Black Archives of Mid-America
http://www.blackarchives.org/

Churches and Church Membership
http://www.arda.tm/archive/CMS90ST.html :

Electronic Privacy Information Center
http://www.epic.org/free_speech/copa/

PC Week Labs tests show that the new version of Linux has the horsepower to perform at the enterprise level, giving corporate IT managers more reason than ever to seriously investigate using the open-source OS in their organizations.
http://www.pcweek.com/a/pcwt9902011/387766/

Plus: Learn Linux now!
http://www.zdu.com/catalog/deptcatalog.asp?DepID=19&Sort=&CourseID=5731#5731

Jamie Lewis says Linux needs more than hype to battle
Microsoft. Read the column at
http://www.pcweek.com/b/pcwt9902015/2196965/

Bob Jensen's Index Page

Bob Jensen's Bookmarks

New Bookmark Archives

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I also have a tutorial Excel file called 133exb.xls that can be downloaded along with my updated tutorials at http://www.cs.trinity.edu/~rjensen/13300tut.htm

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My good friend Ceil Pillsbury forwarded a copy of an Arthur Andersen multimedia training package of three CD-ROMs entitled "Mastering Markets: Foreign Exchange." These are probably the most sophisticated multimedia training modules that I have ever examined. There were a few glitches (at infrequent points where videos hang up) and sometimes the navigation alternatives were confusing, but the advantages of this learning hypermedia are immense. If you get a chance to purchase or otherwise use these or other modules in the AA InterAct Learning™ Series, I think you will really be impressed. I gather that these modules are expensive to produce (the package that I reviewed cost almost as much to produce than most of us earn in a lifetime). The cost to use is also not cheap --- a one-year, one-user rental price is $1,399. But this is really good stuff, and AA cannot be expected to give it away. The web site for the module that I reviewed can be found at
http://www.arthurandersen.com/Framesalt.asp?/dtrm/interact/fx.asp

You can order a free demo CD while viewing the above web site. I recommend that you do so. Note that multiple-user discounts are available. There is a high level of multimedia quality and technical learning detail. There is also a high level of realism in the video clips.

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From Joe Straub (in his words):

John Wiley & Sons has partnered with AccountingNet to bring the trusted print versions of GAAP & GAAS to the Internet.

You may already be using these texts as references or required reading in your courses. By offering both print and Internet versions, you and your students will enjoy many advantages:

*Lower costs through special student discounts.
*Point-and-click user-friendly applications.
*No more worries about lost, damaged or stolen texts.

For the first term of 1999, AccountingNet is happy to make available our "Student Resource Kit" to colleges and universities!

OUR BEST VALUE $129, "Student Resource Kit" GAAP & GAAS, online and print versions, plus a subscription to TaxLibrary.com. and the 1999 CCH Master Tax Guide

1999 GAAP Print $49.95

1999 GAAS Print $49.95

1999 GAAP Online $9.95

1999 GAAS Online $9.95

1999 CCH Master Tax Guide $19.00

 To set up your school on any of these programs or if you have any questions e-mail me at joeys@accountingnet.com or call (800) 724-4696 ext. 262.

I look forward to working with you and your institution.

Sincerely,

Joe Straub
Director of University Relations
AccountingNet

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President-elect Jan R. Williams is filling AAA committee assignments for 1999-2000. If you are interested in serving on a committee or in suggesting someone to serve, please send contact information (name, affiliation, address, phone, fax and email) with any specific committees of interest to:

Jan R. Williams
Ernst & Young Professor
Associate Dean for Academic Programs
716 Stokely Management Center
University of Tennessee
Knoxville, Tennessee 37996-0570
Fax: (423) 974-1766
Email: jwilli13@utk.edu

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EDI Resource Center
http://www.telistics.com/ediresourcecenterfr.htm
Technology, e-commerce, and information systems

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T.H.E. Journal beginning on Page 62 of the January 1999 issue has an interesting article entitled "Using External Collaborations to Advance Distributed Learning at the University of Pennsylvania" by Michael Eleey and Marsha Comegno. The online version is at
http://www.thejournal.com/magazine/current/feat02.html

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Dear Amazon.com customer,
Because you’ve purchased John Hagel’s previous book, "Net Gain," we thought you might like to know that his latest
book, "Net Worth" is on the shelves at Amazon.com. For the next few days, you can order this title at a savings of 40% by following the link below:

In "Net Worth," John Hagel and Marc Singer consider the future of e-commerce and the emerging role of the "infomediary." The "infomediary," according to Hagel and Singer, will give consumers increased privacy and vendors an unprecedented look at how their customers behave—but at a price. "Net Worth" is a provocative look at how the role of customers and vendors will change in the network economy.

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The Write Response
http://www.writeresponse.com.au
The Write Response is Australia’s leading education mailing list supplier

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The Course Resource
http://www.course-resource.com

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Written language and speech therapy
http://members.xoom.com/she123/

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Zéro de Conduite !
http://www.zero-de-conduite.com/

French Pedagogic web site
http://www.zero-de-conduite.com/

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Abacus Virtual College
http://www.virtualcollege.co.uk

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Treasury of Children’s Classic Stories
http://www.geocities.com/heartland/lane/6410

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The Writers Symposium
|http://symp.hypermart.net

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College Party House
http://www.geocities.com/CollegePark/Gym/3085/index.html

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Visiting Russia with HCM Sys (For you Sarah and Bruce)
http://hcmsys.com/ru.htm

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The Poetry Corner
http://www.get-involved.com/poetry-corner/

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Berceo’s Spanish courses in Spain (For you and the other Spanish instructors Matt)
http://www.berceo.com

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Wildflowers and Wonderings
http://www.angelfire.com/de/walker

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American Truths (lots of audio)
http://www.americantruths.com

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National Computer Training
http://www.n-c-t.com

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From ZD Tips
Would you like to make one of your Web images look like an old, yellowed photograph? Or perhaps put your face in the middle of a $100 bill? Or make an image look like it’s on fire?

Now you can with a free Web-based service called WebFX. WebFX takes any image on the Web and applies one of several dozen effects to it. The new image appears in your browser, and you can then download it to your hard disk.

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Some of the featured items are not commodes per se,
They're accounting stools with outboxes.
.

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Sometimes there are issues of a journal that turn out to be especially helpful. This is the case in the January 1999 issue of Syllabus. You should be able to obtain free monthly issues of this journal. You may want to obtain a hard copy of the entire issue, although highlights are available at http://www.syllabus.com/jan99_mag.html

1. On Page 8, a bulletin is provided announcing the new joint venture of Western governors University (WGU) and Open University. A new online university called Governors Open University will offer competency-based network distributed education to all states and territories of the United States. Some added information about WGU accreditation begins on Page 38. You can read more about these matters at http://www.wgu.edu
   
2. Beginning on Page 18 you will find Lawrence Hinman's very easy to read overview of "streaming Video: Adding Real Multimedia to the Web." This is my favorite article in the January 1999 issue. Near the end of the article you should note the discussion about the G2 format.
   
3. Beginning on Page 24, Michael Major has a nice article on "Next Generation Internet and Video: Emerging Applications." Especially note the NGI medley of broadband networks that is being built in parallel to the Internet. Applications at various universities are mentioned, including the University of Akron, Virginia Tech, Penn State, and William Patterson University.
   
4. Beginning on Page 40, you will find Jeff Stabenau" article on "DVD: The MultiMedium."
   
5. It really is important to note what is happening with copyright legislation. An overview is provided by Robert Diotalevi beginning on Page 44 with an article entitled "Copyrighting Cyberspace: Unweaving a Tangled Web." In the U.S., fair use safe harbors for educators survived the Digtal Millennium Copyright Act signed by Bill Clinton on October 28. Previous drafts were bleak for educators than the final version of this bill. Now we must watch for The Digital Era Copyright Enhancement Act, H.T. 3048 that is still tied up in Congress. There are several other bills affecting Fair Use that are noted at the end of the article. You can read about pending legislation and communicate your thoughts at http://incongress.com
   Also see http://thomas.loc.gov
   
6. Beginning on Page 48, Sharon Gray provides a short review of collaboration tools.
   
7. There are other articles as well.
   
8. Syllabus also has a Buyers Guide at http://www.syllabus.com/jan99_BG.html

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Security On Campus, Inc. --- crime and safety statistics on over 500 campuses
http://www.campussafety.org
I did not find a link to Trinity University --- thinks are pretty quiet here.

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From Aaron Konstam,

A library staff member told me about this most amazing web site that might interest some or you.

First the problem it solved. I wanted to order a book that had been published in 1971, had no ISBN number and was out of print. I tried amazon.com and the Powell bookstore in Portland (the nations largest bookstore), with no success.

Well one goes to: http://www.bookfinder.com and I found 5 or 6 bookstores throughout the country that had a copy of this book. I have managed to arrange to purchase 2 copies when before I couldn’t even locate one copy.

Evidently, www.abebooks.com gives similar service. It is a great help for us book people, or is it people of the book.

To Aaron's message I might add the Bitty Blackboard web site that, among science news items, has a science book finder at http://www.ittybittyblackboard.com

To Aaron's message Chris Nolan added the following excellent source for finding books in general:
http://www.trinity.edu/departments/library/books.html

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PedagoNet is a learning resources search engine.
Find leaning resources here.
Consider linking your own materials (it was easy to fill out the form)
PedagoNet - Learning Resources Search Engine
http://www.pedagonet.com

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What letters really sell? (marketing)
http://www.nmoa.org/Museum/letters/lett01.htm

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21^st Century Teachers Network
http://www.21ct.org/

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Two Fun Guys and an Accountant (thanks for the tip Dan)
Cheap shots about accountants (there should at least be a moratorium in tax season)
http://www.execpc.com/~thorsten/JOKE.HTML

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Microsoft This Week
http://www.microsoft.com/misc/mstw/

FREE Online Learning CD-ROM for faculty members and IT professionals. (Jensen ordered a copy)
http://www.microsoft.com/education/hed/online

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International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences
http://www.iadas.net/index.phtml

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From the Scout Report

Alternative Press Center
http://www.altpress.org/
Alternative Press Index
http://www.altpress.org/api.html

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From the Scout Report (includes sections on impact of the web on religion and the sociology of religion)

Religious Freedom
http://cti.itc.virginia.edu/~jkh8x/relfree/home.html
Religious Broadcasting
http://cti.itc.virginia.edu/~jkh8x/relbroad/home.html
New Religious Movements
http://cti.itc.virginia.edu/~jkh8x/soc257/

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From the Scout Report

FAIR - Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting (with audio)
http://www.fair.org/

FAIR is a media watch group that "seek[s] to invigorate the First Amendment by advocating for greater diversity in the press" and offers critical analysis and commentary on media bias and censorship issues. FAIR’s Website includes selected articles from _Extra!_, the magazine of FAIR; current and archived broadcasts of _CounterSpin_, FAIR’s weekly radio show; current and past editions of Media Beat, a weekly syndicated column on media and politics written by Norman Solomon; a section devoted to Media Activism; and a section called Media Watch Desks, which scrutinizes media from various perspectives. In addition, a section entitled Media Files organizes documents, broadcasts, and Websites by subject to help users locate specific information. FAIR also maintains a mailing list, that provides news, commentary, and action alerts to interested parties

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From the Scout Report

Directory of Corporate Archives in the United States and Canada http://www.hunterinformation.com/corporat.htm

Editors Amy Fischer and Liz Holum Johnson open doorways to the often closed realm of corporate archives in this publication from the Business Archives Section of the Society of American Archivists. _The Directory of Corporate Archives in the United States and Canada_, an ongoing effort, details the nature, location, and accessibility of historical business records for corporate archivists and researchers. Over 200 entries from Anheuser-Busch and Blockbuster Entertainment to the William Wrigley Jr. Co. are listed by company name, geographical location, or name of archivist, and complete contact information, conditions of access, and physical description of materials are provided when available

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From the Scout Report (Jensen's been preaching to you about registering your accounting classes here --- go for it.)

Accounting Coursepage Exchange
http://www.rutgers.edu/Accounting/raw/aaa/ace/index.htm

The Accounting Coursepage Exchange (ACE) is a new database of Accounting coursepages and syllabi presented by the American Accounting Association. All educational material is searchable by title, institutional affiliation, textbook, or instructor, among other criteria, and interested parties may add their own coursepage on-site

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From the Scout Report (Jensen highlighted this link in the last edition of his bookmarks)

EdgarScan [Excel]
http://bamboo.tc.pw.com/

Developed at the PricewaterhouseCoopers Technology Centre, EdgarScan helps company researchers effectively sort through the mass of quarterly (10-Q) and annual filings (10-ks) housed at the SEC EDGAR Database (reviewed in the February 9, 1996 Scout Report). Filings and initial public offerings may be searched by company name or industry code, and search results are listed in an easy-to-read format with hypertext table and Excel spreadsheet output possibilities.

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Worldly Investor
http://www.worldlyinvestor.com

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Western History Photos
http://gowest.coalliance.org

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Toxic chemicals in your food
http://www.foodnews.org

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ParkBench Streaming Video
http://www.cat.nyu.edu/parkbench

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Only the names are changed to protect the stupid
http://www.mcsweeneys.net

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Are you getting greeting cards by email that you cannot read on your computer? Go to
http://multimedia.aol.com/external/postcard.htm

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Bob Jensen's Index Page

Bob Jensen's Bookmarks

New Bookmark Archives

The top links for current issues in accounting include the following:

http://caarnet.ntu.edu.sg/cn/ian/index.htm

http://www.iasc.org.uk

Reply from Roger:
Bob mentioned my regular (well, OK, not as regular as I would like!) newsletter .. John and Jenny at ANet have rationalised the ANet lists .. Double Entries is now only coming out on ANews-L .. ADBLE-L has been wound up .. the URLs shown below:

http://www.csu.edu.au/anet/lists/ADBLE-L

should be replaced by

http://www.csu.edu.au/ANet/lists/ANEWS-L/

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Bob:

I have started a new web site index for teaching materials in the financial reporting area. The site is at http://www.cob.ohio-state.edu/~tomassin/finrepon/ .. Please forward this message to your colleagues so that they may refer to the materials.

Happy new year!
Larry Tomassini [ tomassin@cob.ohio-state.edu ]

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AccountingNet's URL is at
http://www.accountingnet.com

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EXCEL 2000 Spreadsheets on the Internet
http://www.microsoft.com/magazine/confidential

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Frontpage 2000 Beta
http://www.microsoft.com/magazine/jan1999/fp2k/fp2k.htm

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MS 2000 Guide
http://www.microsoft.com/magazine

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Richard Campbell recommends the Microsoft web site at http://www.microsoft.com/ntserver/nts/downloads/recommended/mediaserv

The Windows Media tools provide a powerful, easy-to-use set of authoring and encoding tools for producing live and on-demand streaming media content. The Windows Media tools may be installed on computers running Windows 95, Windows 98, or Windows NT Server 4.0 with either Service Pack 3 or Service Pack 4. The Windows Media tools download includes:

NetShow Encoder
NetShow TAG Author
NetShow Plug-in for Adobe Premiere
NetShow ASF Indexer
NetShow Presenter and Publish to ASF
PowerPoint add-ins
VidToASF and WavToASF conversion tools
Codecs for creating Windows Media Technologies content.  

The SDK allows developers to write new tools or extend existing applications to work with NetShow Services or ASF.   To play streaming media content (including ASF content), you need the Windows Player. You can download this free from a link given at the bottom of the page at http://www.microsoft.com/ntserver/nts/downloads/recommended/mediaserv

I would have included the Windows Player link, but the URL is about as long as this entire message.  Go to the bottom of the above link for the free download of Windows Player.

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RealPlayer is still trying, but it is tough to compete when Microsoft makes the above software free
http://www.real.com/products/playerplus/upgrading.html?src=q4_1201_freesub
Seems like I recall that somebody named John Davison Rockefeller would sell Standard Oil products below his cost until all the competition left town.  Then monopoly prices went up.  There are "Gates" to  reincarnation.

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From Movable Type to Data Deluge
http://www.worldandi.com/article/ssjan99.htm

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The first Smithsonian exhibit created for the Internet
http://www.si.edu/organiza/museums/ripley/eap/rt

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American Museum of Photography
http://www.photographymuseum.com
Photographs of a NY Cabbie
http://www.nycabbie.com

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RAND Corporation's research reports are now online --- WOW!

http://www.rand.org/PUBS/index.html

RAND has a long history of research on issues relating to the national security and public welfare of the United States, and it publishes the results of this research to serve the public interest. Its work involves most of the major disciplines in the physical, social, and biological sciences, with emphasis on their applications to problems of policy and planning in domestic and foreign affairs.

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Dear Dr. Jensen,

I am writing to tell you of our comprehensive on-line tutorial software,
SCOTTS (http://www.scottnet.com/present_welcome.htm), from our homepage
http://www.scottnet.com/

We would be grateful for any observations you might wish to share with us privately to improve the beta-version of this product.
Sincerely,
Joseph L. Scott, Ph.D.,
President, Scott Supply Service, Inc.
<mailto:scott4me@ix.netcom.com>

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 Microsoft's Terra Server
http://www.terraserver.microsoft.com

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Reviews of Version 2 of Macromedia Dreamweaver
http://www.macromedia.com/software/dreamweaver/reviews/reviews

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Microsoft's Quickstart (including a tutorial on how to create a virtual class)
http://www.microsoft.com/education/hed/online/qukstart.htm

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It is not new, but you may want to check out GTE's BigBook of yellow pages and other guides
http://www.bigbook.com

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Please add this to your bookmarks on creative writing
A Journal For Teachers of Writing in Webbed Environments
http://english.ttu.edu/kairos

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The Better Business Bureau has a great web site
http://www.bbb.org

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Online dictionary and thesaurus
http://www.voycabulary.com

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Multimedia headstones --- you can leave something behind
http://www.leif.com

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High School Students' Physics of Just About Everything
http://www.kent.wednet.edu/staff/trobinso/physicspages/PhysicsOf.html

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Bad Fads Museum
http://www.adscape.com/badfads

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Online Surgery
http://www.onlinesurgery.com

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It is a good thing that my students do not publish their school diaries. Some of the adjectives would not be in the dictionary.
A Yahoo Pick of the Year for 1998 --- Diaries of Second Grade Students
http://twinlakes.k12.in.us/schools/elem/el/mrgall/diary/diary.html

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Mark Twain at Large
http://library.berkeley.edu/BANC/Exhibits/MTP

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INFOBITS is an electronic service of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill’s Center for Instructional Technology. Each month the CIT’s Information Resources Consultant monitors and selects from a number of information technology and instructional technology sources that come to her attention and provides brief notes for electronic dissemination to educators.

SHNEIDERMAN ON INFORMATION VISUALIZATION

The School of Information and Library Science at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill recently sponsored a public lecture, "The Eyes Have It: User Interfaces for Information Visualization," by Dr. Ben Shneiderman of the Department of Computer Science, Human-Computer-Interaction Laboratory (HCIL) at the University of Maryland. Shneiderman discussed the way in which human perceptual skills are currently underutilized by human-computer graphical user interfaces (GUIs) and what the future holds for this area. He presented his "Information Seeking Mantra": overview first (give the user the big picture), zoom and filter (allow the user to pinpoint area of interest and screen out extraneous information), then details-on-demand (provide more detailed data only when the user requests it). Shneiderman argues for more sophisticated information visualization interfaces which will enable users to comprehend and navigate through "information-abundant" Web sites without being overwhelmed by the vast quantities of data.

Shneiderman is author and editor of several books on user interface design, including DESIGNING THE USER INTERFACE: STRATEGIES FOR EFFECTIVE HUMAN-COMPUTER INTERACTION [3^rd edition,  Addison-Wesley, 1997, ISBN: 0201694972, http://www.aw.com/DTUI/] and

SPARKS OF INNOVATION IN HUMAN-COMPUTER INTERACTION [Ablex, 1993, ISBN: 1-56750-078-1, http://www.cs.umd.edu/projects/hcil/pubs/books/sparks-of-innovation.html]. He is a co-author of the forthcoming book, READINGS IN INFORMATION VISUALIZATION: USING VISION TO THINK, to be published January 1999 [Morgan Kaufman Publishers, 1999, ISBN: 1558605339].

For more information on Dr. Shneiderman and links to online copies of his recent papers: http://www.cs.umd.edu/~ben

Here are some of the Web resources that Shneiderman cited in his presentation:

The LUCID (Logical User Centered Interaction Design) Framework
a methodology framework for managing the design and testing of the
software user interface
http://www.cognetics.com/lucid/

Sun Microsystems "Guide to Web Style"
http://www.sun.com/styleguide/

Spotfire --- a supplier of data exploration and collaborative discovery solutions to the pharmaceutical, specialty chemical and biotechnology industries with the ability to immediately display large amounts of disparate data and to visually query that information for trends, anomalies, outliers and patterns
http://www.spotfire.com/

WestLaw Case Explorer Visualizing Legal Information http://www.cs.umd.edu/hcil/west-legal/ See especially the Dotfire prototype: http://www.cs.umd.edu/hcil/west-legal/dotfire/west.html

The current work of the University of Maryland Human-Computer-Interaction Laboratory includes "information visualization, interfaces for digital libraries, multimedia resources for learning communities, zooming user interfaces (ZUIs), technology design methods with and for children, and instruments for evaluating user interface technologies." For more information on HCIL and its projects link to http://www.cs.umd.edu/projects/hcil/

Many providers of online databases offer short-term free trial periods to attract new users to their subscription services. In "Review of Online Information 98" (in FREE PINT, No. 28, December 17, 1998), Dr. Anne L. Barker lists some of the database vendors offering free short-term access to their fee-based services. Included are Derwent’s Drug File and World Drug Alerts, BIOSIS (biological data), H. W. Wilson Company’s bibliographic databases, and Ovid Technologies (bibliographic, scientific, technical, and medical databases).

The article is available on the Web at
http://www.freepint.co.uk/issues/171298.htm#tips

Free Pint [ISSN 1460-7239] is published every two weeks in the U.K. by the information consultant Willco and is sent free of charge to subscribers via email. Articles written by information professionals tell where to find reliable Web sites and how to search effectively.