Various information sources

Pointers to information resources on the Web. Things like you might find in a reference library. There's an interesting article on ACM electronic publishing plans that has many good points about electronic publishing in general.

General sources of documentation
Documentation available on the Web
Reference lists and documents
Publications on the net

Other personal pages: overall outline of my pointer pages, my own home page (which I actually don't use much), and a page about me.

General sources of documentation

Lots of generally useful info is available in the USENET FAQs organized as the USENET hierarchy or by name. Another source of FAQs which has somewhat better topic sorting. And a further one that has high promise, but I haven't checked out yet, is at The Internet FAQ Consortium. And a search interface to look for the right one...

Documentation available on the Web

Documentation for various systems, products, etc.

Documentation on the Internet protocols

There are lots of ways to access RFCs. One day I'll research this list and produce commentary and comparisons, for now just a list...

Fuzzy Search through RFC text.
http://www.declab.usu.edu:8080/~brandon/RFC/ by Brandon Gillespie at Utah State University is searchable and the index comes hyper-linked.
ftp://ftp.network.com/IPSEC/rfcietf.html
http://www.cis.ohio-state.edu/hypertext/information/rfc.html
http://info.internet.isi.edu/1s/in-notes/rfc/files
http://www.uni-frankfurt.de/doc/rfcien.top.html
http://web.nexor.co.uk/rfc-index/rfc-index-search-form.html
http://ds.internic.net/ds/dspg1intdoc.html

A reference I sometimes use for people who say, "But I only have E-Mail" is Accessing The Internet By E-Mail.

There are also sites that collect other useful documentation on the parts of the Internet Suite that I'm interested in. So far I only have pointers for DNS info at the DNS resources directory.

Specs for the components of the Web

A web page publishing company has written a very good Comprehensive Guide to Publishing on the Web which I recommend to anyone starting out (and even some more experienced types). Given a URL, Web Site Garage returns a quick analysis, of style and usage as well as the HTML.

OneWorld has a collection point for Web developers which looks pretty good. The HTML and HTML+ Specifications at CERN. A more tutorial form of HTML documentation by Peter Flynn, and the W3C page of conversion tools to convert HTML to PostScript, LaTeX and other formats. The URL Specifications and a good Introduction. The HTTP Protocol Specification. Documentation on NCSA's httpd server. Style Guide for Online Hypertext [CERN]. The WWW FAQ.

Reference lists and documents

Locations of various reference lists.

Matrix Information & Directory Services (MIDS) has lots of stats about the Internet and the "Matrix" (the entire collection of communicating hosts, including E-Mail only) online. Particularly useful is their The Internet Number FAQ which explains the many estimates for the size of the Internet.
An English Dictionary and a copy of Webster's Dictionary used to be available, but those links don't seem to work any more. You can use One Look Dictionaries to find dictionaries online, and to search through them collectively.
The Acronym Server.
There is a catalogue of Internet Training Materials compiled by a joint RARE/IETF working group.
Charles Spurgeon at U. Texas has collected lots of information on Ethernet.
The NYNEX Interactive Yellow Pages which uses a bunch of non-standard features so I couldn't navigate it at the time I tried (24-May-1995). I got a newer Mosaic which seems to have helped the technical faults, but it's still hard to use...
A collection of Flags of the World.
The CIA World Fact Book has lots of details on countries (from 1993), and there's a searchable version, and you can check out the CIA's own server which has the 1994 edition.
A list of Country codes and E-Mail accessability.
EcoNet National Environmental Scorecard.
The traditional List-of-Lists (aka interest-groups) is still maintained at SRI (since the days of 2 digit host counts :-), but Mosaic doesn't seem to be able to get files from non-UNIX machines...
There are several other lists of Mailing Lists, like this one, and a searchable one. There is also a general document on How to Find an Interesting Mailinglist, but it's also on a non-UNIX machine so Mosaic will choke on that, too. Additionally the InterNIC has collected a lot of stuff on their Gopher Server.
There's also a list of USENET News Groups.
The Internet Obituary page.

Publications on the net

Real publishing operations that appear on the Web.

There are a lot of interesting full-narrative stories on the net. StoryWeb has a good index with ratings...

The best overall source for information on books is The Internet Book Information Center (IBIC) from which many of the pointers I used to keep here can be reached. These pointers have been removed in favor of going through IBIC. The On-line Books Page catalogs books that can be read in online editions, and can be searched. BookWire aspires to be the most comprehensive guide to the book-related resources of the Internet, and does seem to be pretty good. The UNCAT database has a listing of UNCATaloged titles not generally available in a bookstore or library. Someone else has collected pointers to information on publishers, especially those with on-line catalogs. And Adam Gaffin has collected a list of Media that accept electronic submissions. And Project Gutenberg has lots of text on-line. (but the pointer got stale).

You can get current news from The Nando Times (All the news that's bits we print), from The News & Observer in North Carolina (US). The Palo Alto Weekly newspaper is on-line for Silicon Valley news.

You don't have to write to Pueblo, Colorado for free advice anymore. The Consumer Information Center now offers hundreds of brochures for your immediate use.

This is a small list of some publications which I found useful or interesting. It especially includes ones I don't think are covered in the above lists, but also a few I want quicker access to. Also check out The Internet Public Library for useful lookups

I know of two searchable versions of the 1911 version (slightly updated) of Roget's Thesaurus. One at NIH (in the US) and one in England (which didn't seem to be working last I looked). And now there's another version that I haven't had time to look at, yet.
A searchable (and browsable) version of Bartlett's Familiar Quotations. That page is slow to load as it contains a complete list of sources, so I made a direct lookup page that's very short.
Portions of the British satirical publication Private Eye are online.
There's a copy of Grolier's Encyclopedia available (it's a TELNET resource, this link tells you how to get there...)
A hyperlinked dictionary at CMU.
I've found some papers about the Internet and extrapolations on where it might be going. The Net and the Netizens: An Anthology, an interesting book about the net and Surfing the Wild Internet, about the changes in paradigm the net goes through.
A good version of Alice in Wonderland, with Through the Looking-glass and soon to come The Hunting of the Snark. This is derived from a TeXinfo source and so available in many other forms as well, all explained on the server.
The Voice of America News and English Broadcasts Wire Service.
An online copy of Time Magazine which includes a page to look up how your congress critters voted on select bills.
An online copy of Wired provided by them and another located in Singapore.
The CIA World Fact Book has lots of details on countries (and an older one from 1993, indexed differently).
Lookup access to full text Bible.

Other personal pages

Overall outline of my pointer pages.
My own home page (which I actually don't use much).
A page about me.
The Mike Patton Cryer, a newspaper created to my spec by CRAYON (CReAte Your Own Newspaper).