The Online World resources handbook revision history
====================================================

The following major changes have been done to The Online World resources 
handbook since its original release: 


Version 2.1  May 31, 1995  -  ISBN 82-7820-002-5
------------------------------------------------
Highlights:

- The move from Gopher (and Telnet) to WWW continues. Many links are updated 
  accordingly. A similar shift from BITNET to Internet for mailing lists. 
  Strong growth in offerings from countries outside North America.
- Added many new "After Hours" pointers, including: Forums for owners of 
  pets (dogs, birds, cats, etc.). Links for photo enthusiasts, genealogy, 
  popular mechanics, lyrics/music. Nintendo. WebMuseum. A large store for 
  CDs, cassettes, videos. Chinese music, the Virtual Shareware Library.
- Sources for holiday travellers reorganized (by region), with new links 
  for India, China, other areas. Database of French art. Unesco's World 
  Heritage list of special cultural and natural historic sites around the 
  world. 
- Information wanted: Recommended strategy for locating information on the 
  Web. The world's largest index to online data. Hunt in over 500 databases 
  in one go. Recommended Internet tools. More practical hints on the use of 
  Internet browsers. Sending mail from the Internet to an X.400 address.
  Free expert assistance for journalists and authors.
- Health: Forum for diabetes. Forum for all types of human allergies. New 
  Web-page with many health related links.
- News: Commercial news at bargain prices. 20,000 stories per day from
  over 500 English language sources. National Indian newspaper.
- Business: Guide to international trade terms. Several new links to
  Japanese sources. Asian Development Bank Business Opportunities. More 
  on China and India. Links to: MasterCard. Directory of commercial 
  organizations on the Internet. 
- The online hypertext version of the handbook is popular. The text was 
  updated in average every second day since version 2.0. 

Version 2.0  March 31, 1995  -  ISBN 82-7820-001-7
--------------------------------------------------
Highlights:

- Most Internet links changed to URLs in preparation for an online 
  hypertext version (scheduled made public soon), 
- Broadcasting schedules for news in many languages. Links to a large 
  number of U.S. newspapers, broadcast networks, magazines and 
  publishers on the Web. New Russian news sources. Asian business 
  magazine online. Tables of contents of the top English language 
  magazines for computers, sports, electronic & computer games, and 
  music & entertainment. - Free "Creating Your Own Newspaper" service. 
- Round the world travel guides, maps, flags, subway navigation in
  several cities, printed travel handbooks, travel health information,
  virtual visits to European cities, museums' on the Web.
- Hypertext guide to resources on International Affairs. Reports on
  worldwide business practices. The Zagreb Stock Exchange. Interactive, 
  live chats in private virtual meeting rooms on the net. 
- Searching over 100 computer publications, 10,000 Internet newsgroups, 
  and 200,000 World Wide Web. 
- Distribution service for newsletters on the Internet.
- Usenet's Frequently Asked Questions texts on medicine-related topics.
  New pointers for those interested in AIDS, diabetes. A comprehensive 
  guide to Internet Clinical Medicine resources. A chronic fatigue 
  syndrome Web site. 3-dimensional digitized images of the human body.
  Powerful search engines tied to health/medicine areas.
- Resource for Macintosh users.
- Database with information on various disciplines of engineering, from 
  marine to chemical to electrical to nuclear. 
- Catalog of full-text electronic texts on the Internet.
- New address to the WWW by email service. 
- Auto-logon to the Internet using Trumpet Winsock.
- Usenet: comp.archives' collections of free software. The FAQ "How to 
  get access to NetNews (Usenet)?"
- WWW pointers: Penthouse Magazine, Playboy, Porsche cars, Sony's music 
  and movies. Europe Online S.A.
    
Version 1.9  January 30, 1995  -  ISBN 82-7820-000-9
----------------------------------------------------
Highlights:

- Many new African sources.
- Travel and News by continent. Interesting GO-pages. New free Internet 
  news source covering CIS countries.
- Many new and updated pointers for European Community information. 
- Foreign language tutorials.
- Patent information on the Internet.
- Sources of information on politics.
- Sources for alcoholics. More on cancer. Women's health issues.
- Many revised http and ftp pointers across the board. New tools
  gives different (and easier) ways of retrieving information.
- Several commercial services have changed names/addresses, and are 
  getting a presence on the Internet.
- Easier access to Frequently Asked Question files.
- Usenet/Netnews by email.
- New address for WWW by email.

Version 1.8  November 30, 1994
------------------------------
Highlights:

- The IBM Global Network
- The Clearinghouse for Subject-Oriented Internet Resource Guides 
- The NewsHound news filtering service
- The DowVision news filtering service
- The "In, Around and Online" newsletter
- CompuServe's multilingual machine translation service
- Pointer to resources on India
- Brazilian patents data
- Internet Global Phone
- The Microsoft Network
- AutoPages of Internet on the Web
- Frank Sinatra discussed and praised. 
- On the Web: Dialog, Data-Star, ClariNet, Dun & Bradstreet, IBM 
  Global Network, Sprint, Boardwatch Magazine, Der Spiegel.
- Full text articles from Time, Vibe, and Entertainment Weekly
- FAQ files: The How to get access to Netnews. Finger. Winsock Application.
- Defined: JPEG, pseudo-SLIP (replaces dialup SLIP connection), NNTP server.
- The Network Service Providers Around the World file, and other offerings.

Version 1.7  September 19, 1994
-------------------------------
This update further strengthens the focus on Europe, Latin America, Africa, 
and Asia in the business application sections. 

- The World Wide Web by email, including hints on searching data bases 
  on the Web by email.
- Find information in WWW, Gopher, and ftp files through Lycos.
- Offerings to help locate information sources on the WWW.
- WAIS searches by email.
- Searching Usenet's Frequently Asked Question (FAQ) texts.
- More on Usenet by email.
- The gophers and WWW pages of the world, sorted by country.
- CompuServe, Dialog, Data-Star and ECHO on the WWW.
- Read news from all countries of the world through Clarinet. 
- Data-Star is strong on European business information.
- Microsoft on the Internet.
- Global demography and population information.
- Discussing Australian and New Zealand wines.
- Images from the Vatican Library's collection of books and manuscripts.
- Added: sources on genealogy, art from Louvre in France, The British 
  Library, the United Nations, the Organization of American States, the 
  Council of Security and Cooperation in Europe, French news summaries,
  the latest UK news. 
- Hint: How to handle mail returned due to error in contents.
- Hint: Receive confirmation when your Internet mail has been received.
- Hint: Getting off that mailing list.
- Various: relevance ranking, IBM Global Network, CD Plus, firewalls, HTML,
  Unicode, the Internet Talk Radio, Veronica by email, and more.

A Canadian version of the handbook is available in print. Print versions 
focusing on Australia, Spain, Iceland, and Denmark are being prepared.

Version 1.6  July 5, 1994
-------------------------
This update further strengthens the focus on Latin America, Africa, and 
Asia. 

- Foreign language assistance
- Learning foreign languages
- Books in "other" languages
- Six different news digests on Africa
- New sources on China
- Interactive Chinese Chess
- International political and economic news from British Broadcasting 
  Corporation (BBS).
- This week's currency exchange rates
- The Information Bank on African Development Studies (a World Bank 
  project)
- Net-happenings has "moved," and can now be searched through gopher and WWW
- The Encyclopaedia Britannica
- Access MCI Mail from the Internet
- More pointers on satellites, amateur and packet radio
- Full-motion movie trailers from Warner Bros, MCA/Universal, and
  Walt Disney Pictures.
- Heart, lung, and blood diseases resource
- The Internet Poet Archive
- An Internet clipping service
- Parenthood
- Finding lists of periodic postings (FAQs) to Usenet
- QWK, .tar-files, more on compression, ftp via Gopher, finding the best
  gophers in the world, more on GopherMail, IRC, Linux, Lynx, WAIS FAQ,
  the WebCrawler database of WWW information pages, Internet tools. . .

Version 1.5  May 11, 1994
-------------------------
This update further strengthens the focus on Latin America, Africa, and Asia 
for business applications and holiday travelling in particular, and has new 
European pointers. 

- New section on "Using email gateways to Internet resources."
- The Stanford Netnews Filtering Service.
- Resources on Sudan, Czech economy, NAFTA, The Maastricht Treaty, UNICEF, 
  Africa, 
- English language database on Japanese technology.
- More on Japan: Yomiuri Shimbun, Tradstat, Dow Jones News/Retrieval's
  offerings, Teikou's company profiles.
- La Vie Francaice, La Stampa, Wall Street Journal Europe, Nouvel 
  Economiste. 
- The Islamic Computer Resource Guide, and information on Qualam.
- Telnet to CompuServe.
- EUnet Traveller - for easy access to the Internet while in Europe.
- Reading encyclopedias online.
- The RSI (Repetitive Stress Injury) Network Newsletter. 
- Sending faxes through the Internet.
- More on MIME and BASE64.
- More on cryptography.
- Law-related resources on the Internet. 
- Internet VoiceChat.

Version 1.4  March 10, 1994
---------------------------
This update focuses on Latin America, Africa, and Asia for business 
applications in particular, while strengthening the European pointers. 

- New sources for news, conferences, gophers, and more for China, Japan, the 
  Middle East, Israel, Southeast Asia, Korea, India, Australia/New Zealand, 
  Brazil, Mexico, xUSSR countries, Sub-Saharan and North Africa, and other 
  countries. Includes some Spanish language services.
- Network Service Providers Around the World 
- The Directory of Information Services in China 
- The KOI-8 (Russian/Cyrillic character) coding scheme. 
- The No>m standard code (Vietnam) 
- Some official information sources for the United States and Canada. 
- Pointers for Cello, Lynx, Mosaic, PPP, SLIP, FreeWAIS, Winsock, Binhex 
- Special Internet Connections 
- Updated pointers to the WHOIS service, the Interest Groups List of Lists, 
  NET-RESOURCES, and RFCs.

Version 1.3  January 8, 1994
----------------------------
- Using gopher services by email (Gophermail)
- Using Internet's finger by email
- Using Internet's ping by email
- Online store with over 260,000 book titles, 
- Online store offering over 80,000 CD records 
- References to CCITT replaced by ITU-TSS. Revised ITU information.
- The Gale Directory of Databases
- China Import/Export news
- CitiBank Global Report
- Many new sources for music lovers
- The NewNIR-L mailing list.
- Majordomo
- MIME
- Added references to several Frequently Asked Questions files 
- More on Internet "demos", 
- More on RFCs
- More books.
- The Sierra Network is now The ImagiNation Network.
- URL (Universal Resource Locater), and HTTP.
- Irving Kind's Glossary of Computer Oriented Abbreviations and Acronyms 
- The text has been reformatted. Margins are now 1-76. Single-spaced 
  text with double-spacing between paragraphs, and with full-block 
  text rather than indentations at the beginning of paragraphs.
- Readers can now send their credit card number by PGP encrypted 
  email when registering.

Version 1.2   November 1, 1993
------------------------------
- Added the home-ed mailing list, and The University of Phoenix's
  accredited degrees through courses conducted online
- Corrected addresses for lists previously at RPIECS
- The SIMTEL20 software library was closed. The software 
  is now available through the SimTel Software Repository. 
- The Maastricht Treaty on European Union
- Directory of scholarly electronic conferences
- More science fiction, music, and The CIA World Factbook.
- Forums for Mark Twain, Tolkien, - and the bizarre
- Tarzan and Frankenstein (books)
- Searching Webster's dictionary
- Eunet Deutschland GmbH
- Travel Britain Online
- The World Health Organization
- Advantis (IBM)
- "The Totally Unofficial List of Internet Muds"
- More WordPerfect support
- Financial Times' thirty international business reports.
- Sources on business in Mexico from Dow Jones.
- Forums for international trade and management.
- Trends: Interactive newspapers. Global telephone. Email by voice phone.
  CD-ROM supported communications. 
- New books and magazines.
- Information about Compress, Demos, Jughead, RIP, SNA, .TAR, and .Z

Version 1.1.  September 1, 1993
-------------------------------
- Added The Internet Resource Directory for Educators 
- Chinese character codes (Big5/GuoBiao)
- Hytelnet
- Netfind
- TRICKLE
- Access to WHOIS
- InterNIC's automated mail service
- South African Bibliographic and Information Network
- Added CHPOEM-L, and some other conferences/forums
- Continental Cablevision's Internet connection
- Updated addresses to all APC host computers
- Updated text about CIX (England)
- Email to Advantis IBMmail
- New address to SuperNet/SuperBBS
- New phone numbers/NUA numbers to TWICS (Japan)
- Expanded on computer viruses
- (Most) registration rates are now in US$. 
- The TOW support forum
- Addresses to the book's Danish and German publishers
- Added books/magazines to appendix 5

Version 1.0. August 5, 1993
---------------------------
Initial release as shareware.

For information, contact Odd de Presno at opresno@extern.uio.no .