Starting Points for Internet Exploration

If you are new to NCSA Mosaic, the Mosaic demo document will allow you to explore Mosaic's hypermedia capabilities; this document focuses on Internet resources in general, including several different types of information systems that do not have intrinsic hypermedia capabilities.

Disclaimer: NCSA has no control over any of the resources referenced by this document. Some or all of these resources may be unavailable at any time. This is a random sampling of Internet resources and makes no claim to be general or comprehensive.

• Web Overview: An overview of the World Wide Web, a distributed hypermedia system developed at CERN in Switzerland. NCSA Mosaic is a World Wide Web client with additional features.
• Web Project: An overview of the World Wide Web project, headed by Tim Berners-Lee at CERN.
• Other Web Documents
  • Data Sources By Service: A listing of data sources within the World Wide Web, organized by information service (Gopher, WAIS, etc.).
  • Information By Subject: A listing of data sources within the World Wide Web, organized by topic and subtopic.
  • Web News: The latest World Wide Web news bulletin.
  • Web Servers Directory: The central listing of known World Wide Web servers. Servers not yet registered with this list may be noted in the Mosaic What's New list.
• InterNIC InfoGuide : A Web server run by the InterNIC; this is a good place to find general Internet-related information.
• NCSA Mosaic Home Page: The document NCSA Mosaic accesses upon startup by default; this document tells you what the latest released version of NCSA Mosaic is at any given time.
• NCSA Mosaic Demo Page: A self-guided tour of the hypermedia capabilities of NCSA Mosaic.
• NCSA Mosaic "What's New" Page: A day-by-day listing of new information resources on the Internet available through NCSA Mosaic.
• NCSA Doc Finder Quick search-and-jump to any HTML documents on NCSA's web server.
• NCSA Home Page: The home page for the National Center for Supercomputing Applications at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
• Other Home Pages: These are some interesting home pages located all around the world. For the complete listing of home pages, see the Web Servers Directory; for new home pages, see the Mosaic What's New page.
  • ANU Bioinformatics
  • British Columbia
  • BSDI Home Page
  • Carnegie Mellon
  • CERN Home Page
  • Cornell Law School
  • Cornell Theory Center
  • DESY Home Page
  • Honolulu Home Page
  • Indiana Computer Science Home Page
  • National Center for Atmospheric Research
  • Northwestern Home Page
  • Ohio State Home Page
  • Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center Home Page
  • SSC Home Page
• WAIS Starting Point: WAIS (Wide Area Information System) is a powerful searching engine in use over the Internet. This document tells you how to access WAIS servers through NCSA Mosaic.
• Gopher: Gopher is a popular menu-based information system in use on the Internet.
  • Gopherspace Overview: A comprehensive listing of all the known Gopher servers in the world, organized by continent.
  • Veronica: Veronica is a way to search "Gopherspace" for specific pieces of information.
  • NCSA Gopher: The Gopher server for the National Center for Supercomputing Applications.
  • CTC Gopher: The Gopher server for the Cornell Theory Center.
  • PSC Gopher: The Gopher server for the Pittsburgh Supercomputer Center.
  • SDSC Gopher: The Gopher server for the San Diego Supercomputer Center.
  • Original (UMN) Gopher: The Gopher server at the University of Minnesota, home of Gopher.
  • UIUC Gopher: The central Gopher server at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
  • UIUC Weather Machine: The Weather Machine contains up-to-the-minute forecasts and weather satellite images.
  • USC Math Gopher: The Gopher server for the University of South Carolina Department of Mathematics.
• FTP Sites: This is a comprehensive listing of anonymous FTP sites. This listing is not being actively maintained; it is provided as a proof-of-concept. We encourage others to maintain such a listing and make it available to the network.
• Usenet Newsgroups: This is a comprehensive listing of Usenet newsgroups available at CERN, where the listing is housed. This listing is not entirely appropriate for sites other than CERN; it is referenced here to encourage individual sites to set up such listings themselves.
• Finger Gateway: This is a gateway to finger, a common utility program used to obtain information about people on the Internet.
• HyTelnet Gateway: This is a gateway to HyTelnet, a comprehensive index of publicly-accessible electronic library catalogs.
• TeXinfo Gateway: This is a gateway to a large collection of TeXinfo documents at Ohio State University.
• Other Information Resources
  • Hyper-G Gateway: Hyper-G is another Internet-based hypermedia system; this gateway is located in Austria.
  • TechInfo Gateway: Techinfo is another Internet-based information system (somewhat like Gopher).
  • X.500 Gateway: X.500 is a Internet-based phone book service.
  • Whois Gateway: Whois is another Internet-based phone book service.
• Other Documents: Here are some additional interesting information resources not listed above that may be interesting to people exploring the Internet.
  • ANU Art History Exhibit: An exhibit of art history materials collected and put online by Michael Greenhalgh at Australian National University.
  • Bryn Mawr Classical Review: BMCR is a review of classical literature distributed over the Internet.
  • CyberNet: the central on-line "jumping off" point for alternative information seekers. Their library of topics range from the bizarre, to the downright scary. If you're after information about anarchy, Nirvana, or goofy art, come on over.
  • Electronic Visualization Lab: An exhibit of work done at the Electronic Visualization Lab at the University of Illinois at Chicago.
  • Internet Services List: A standard list of Internet services collected by Scott Yanoff.
  • Internet Talk Radio: A collection of radio programs from Internet Talk Radio -- because asynchronous times demand asynchronous radio.
  • Library of Congress Vatican Exhibit: An exhibit of materials from the Vatican Library.
  • Los Alamos Physics Papers (Gopher): The Gopher-based interface to a central repository of physics papers at Los Alamos.
  • Los Alamos Physics Papers (Web): The Web-based interface to a central repository of physics papers at Los Alamos.
  • NCSA Access Magazine: A hypermedia version of NCSA Access, a general-interest magazine published by the National Center for Supercomputing Applications.
  • Postmodern Culture: Postmodern Culture is an edited journal distributed over the Internet.
  • Unified CS Tech Reports: A central index of computer science technical reports from all around the world.
  • White House Papers: A WAIS server containing all of the papers from the Clinton Administration from Day 1 to about two days ago.
  • Internet RFCs: An archive of Internet Request for Comments documents, the technical documentation of the Internet.
  • Zippy The Pinhead: Asynchronous irreverence.