Learn how to enjoy and decipher the information revolution--with this fun, easy-to-use techno-geek tour of the best tools available today. Want to learn about: Who's really running a Web site behind the scenes? See "Alexa" on page 259. A global on-line database of living things? See "Tree of Life" on page 109. A computer-controlled wide-band radio to tune in the world? See "ICOM PCR- 1000" on page 10. The best place to buy world maps, reachable via the Web? See "The Map Shop" on page 113. Satellite imagery downloadable from the U.S. Geological Survey? See "Satellite Imagery" on page 136. A metasearch engine that trolls other sites like Yahoo and Excite and distills the results? See "Inference Find" on page 155. The best way to use search engines like Alta Vista and Yahoo? See "Synthetic Aperture" on page 153. How to keep informed with 20 unusual and extraordinary Web sites? See "20 Web Sites Off the Beaten Path" on pages 188-91. The hottest new marketing idea driving e-commerce? See "Viral Marketing" on pages 86-87. The essay that predicted the information age 50 years ago? See "Endless Frontier" on page 378. The classic and superb documentary that captures the first world war like no other? See "World War I (VHS)" on page 267. Where the U.S. is most vulnerable to terrorists in the 21st century? See "Melissa's Lesson" on pages 249-51. Each entry includes Internet URLs, notes on why the item was selected and how it works, what age level it suits, how long it has been in development, what it should cost (on the street), and how likely it is to become obsolete. In five revealing sections--on hardware, sources, software, plasticware, and paperware-- Informatica 1.0puts into new perspective the avalanche of new products. It selects the best tools for an information society, yielding the best ways to sense and measure things, to manage the results, and to refine them into practical knowledge.

Peter McNaughton Black founded and is CEO of XIPHIAS Corporation, a Los Angeles-based publisher of reference products on disk and the Net.

10 Rules to Buy By: The Informatica Guide to Hardware

1. NEVER BUY VERSION 1.0                  
The integration of hardware and operating system software is extraordinarily complex, and manufacturers rarely get it right the first time.  You'll save money and avoid misery if you get a slightly older, more proven model.

2. CHOOSE A LAPTOP OVER A DESKTOP
Laptops now feature almost all the power of desktops.  They naturally integrate flat screen displays, which are much easier on the eyes.  Further, all laptops have batteries, and batteries are uninterruptible power supplies.  If the relative cost of the laptop vs. the desktop worries you, add the cost of a flat screen display and UPS to the tag for the desktop, and things will even out.    

3. BUY A SLOWER PROCESSOR AND MORE RAM
The RAM (random access memory) you buy has much more to do with the speed at which your applications (other than games and high-end graphics) run, than does the speed of the microprocessor (forget what Intel would have you believe).  That is because a machine with minimal RAM will 'swap' information from RAM to the hard disk and back again constantly.  Hard disks are slow accesss, RAM is very fast.  Buying version 2.0 laptop with a boatload of RAM is the most effective strategy.

4. MAKE SURE THE MANUFACTURER HAS A GOOD WEB SITE FOR NEW DRIVERS AND BIOS UPGRADES.
Inevitably, manufacturers find flaws in the softward they ship with their machines.  The best of them make it very easy for you to download upgrades, and do a good job of explaining what these improvements will do, and when they will be necessary.  You can check this out thoroughly before you buy the machine by cruising the Web site.

5. GET A SCREEN THAT HAS A STANDARD 4:3 ASPECT RATIO.
There are many laptops that have screens that are more rectangular than the norm (they look a bit like a wide screen move, rather than a TV screen).  Stay away from them, as there are many software programs that don't handle non-standard aspect ratios well.

6.BUY FROM A MANUFACTURERE THAT WILL SWAP OUT FOR REPAIR.
The direct sales outfits, in particular Micron, Gateway, and Dell, have terrific programs.  If the machine fails while under warranty, they send you a shipping box overnight, with a prepaid shipping ticket.  Off you send your ailing laptop, and in short order it comes back fixed or totally swapped out for a new.  Same goes for modular components, like DVD-ROM drives.  This is infinitely superior to driving the dead machine to an authorized repair shop, and being told they have a three week backlog.

7. GET LOTS OF PRE-INSTALLED SOFTWARE.
Microsoft Office bundled with your computer is way cheaper than Microsoft Office bought off the shelf.  The same principle applies to most software you might want.

8. MAKE SURE THE PORT REPLICATOR IS INCLUDED IN THE DEAL.
Most laptops do not have all the plugs and spigots built in.   Hence, to have full connectivity, it's a good idea to buy the port replicator ( the thing that has all the plugs and spigots) - sometimes called a docking station when it has room for expansion cards and other internal devices.  Make sure that there is an Ethernet port built into the laptop or the port replicator, because most of the future high bandwidth Internet connectivity solutions (things like DSL, digital subscriber lines) will need it.

9. MAKE SURE THE CARRYING CASE IS WELL PADDED ON THE CORNERS
The biggest problem with laptops is that you can drop them.  There are three solutions.  The first is to get an indestructible one (see Panasonic CF 25).  The second is don't drop it in the first place (easier said than done: after all, it's portable).  The third is to carry it in a case that is very well padded in the corners (most damage to laptops happens when they are dropped on the corners - and that's the best way to destroy the flat screen display (tres cher to replace).

10. GET THE LONGEST-LIFE BATTERY AVAILABLE, AND BUY A SECOND.
Here's the rule of thumb: Buy enough batteries to cover one full flight from New York to LA with headwinds (7 hours or so).

HARDWARE
Astroscan 2001
Wide Field Basic Telescope Package

http://scientificcs.edsci.com/scientifics

Edmund Scientific claims this is the "Easiest To Use Telescope Available," and that may not be pure hoo-hah. The thing is made of ABS plastic, so it'll take a licking and keep on ticking. It sees a very broad 3 degrees of the sky (the width of six full moons). It's rounded bubble-like body makes it easy to hold, either standing up, or cross-legged on the ground.

My first telescope was a Tasco refractor. I got it in the summer of 1963, and that summer I regularly took it out on the fairway of a golf course near my family's summer home in Maine. It came in a big wooden box, and had to be unpacked and assembled. The whole process took about 20 minutes to set up, and an equal amount of time to break down, with an ample amount of opportunities to lose wing nuts in the grass at night.

In the middle of that summer, there was a total eclipse, the path of which passed over the northerly coasts of Maine. My grandmother had the patience and kind-heartedness to drive me way north, and set me up on a hill with a hundred other folks. I just barely got the thing set up before the sky went dark.

I wish I'd had this instead.

Type:                         Telescope
First Developed:         1976; Edmund Scientific
Price Range:                $350-$400 depending upon options
Key Features:                Very simple, easy-to-use
Ages:                        Junior high, and later
Obsolescence:                Low
Further Information:        http://astronomy.thelinks.com/
        Contact Edmund Scientific at (609) 573-6395




SOFTWARE
Redshift III
Digital Planetarium

http://www.maris.com

A digital planetarium, crafted by the cream of Russia's space scientists. Stunning, with great depth.

One day in the summer of 1963, I got to go to the Cincinnati Planetarium and have the controls to their Zeiss celestial projector all to myself. I turned the dials, and the stars sped through the sky, eons of celestial development passing by in seconds, planets flashing by like meteors.

I get the same rush from Red Shift, but in some ways even better. The people at Maris in London pillaged the Russian space program for astrophysicists after the Soviet economy collapsed in the early '90s, and set them to creating a virtual planetarium. They made Red Shift, and continue to add to it year by year. It is a truly wonderful CD-ROM that will appeal to more than just astronomy buffs.

If you've got a backyard, an occasional clear night, and maybe a kid, you ought to have Red Shift. It's like having the playbook to read before you go out to watch a game of celestial football.

Type:                        CD-ROM
First Developed:        1995
Price Range:                $50-$60
Key Features:        Great detailed digital planetarium, with lots of little videos
Ages:                        10 and up
Obsolescence factor:        Re-released about every two years
Further Information:        Good (but much simpler) freeware orreries and planetariums available on the Net (see NGC View, WinTrak).


SOURCES
The Trip
Air Flight Tracking

http://www.thetrip.com/usertools/flighttracking/

I had to travel a lot when I was a kid. With parents divorced and living in different cities, every summer meant a plane flight from Los Angeles to Cincinnati, and back.

Several of the flights were scary, one with a flaming engine, one with a bomb scare. Neither my Mom nor my Dad ever sent me skying away without a frightened glitter in their eyes.
Now that I'm a parent, I know the feeling. Sending any loved one off on a plane trip is scary, but
I've recently found a palliative, TheTrip.com.

Nominally, this site is set up to be a cyber travel agent. I suppose it does that, but I don't know. The only reason I ever come here is when I have a family member on a plane. The site has a little service called flight tracking.

Enter the airline and the flight number, and it reaches into the noumenon (actually the FAA radar data), and determines the position, speed and altitude of any flight. TheTrip flight tracker continuously plots the position of the plane over a map of the US. If you wish, you can watch the whole flight crawl across the surface of the earth. Sometimes I do.

TheTrip will e-mail up to three dear ones, indicating when a flight has landed. A couple of cookies are a small price to pay for this kind of peace of mind.

Type:                        Web site
First Developed:        1998
Price Range:                Connect time
Key Features:        Amazing integration of the FAA's remote sensing and data management capabilities
Ages:                        10 and up
Obsolescence factor:        Medium
Further Information:        http://e-flight.com/  great site for people who hate flying. Reports on near misses and pilot errors provide ample support for paranoia.


PLASTICWARE
Powers of Ten (VHS)
Filmed by Charles adn Ray Eames

http://www.powersoften.com

Charles and Ray Eames did some remarkable stuff. The Eames chair is still a triumph of design (still sold by Herman Miller). The Mathematica exhibit (elements of which are still on display at the California Museum of Science and Industry in downtown Los Angeles) is still one of the best hands-on exhibits ever put together (for others, see Exploratorium of San Francisco). But the thing they did that may just last forever is the Powers of Ten.

Originally, it was an experimental film done in black-and-white underwritten by IBM. They called it. "A Rough Sketch for a Proposed Film Dealing with the Powers of Ten and the Relative Size of Things in the Universe." Catchy.

The notion was to give a visual sense of scale in the known universe. The first image is of a guy sleeping on a picnic blanket on Soldier's Field in Chicago. Every second, the camera zooms ten times farther away, and in a little over a minute there's no farther to go. Then the camera zooms back in to the guy's hand, and reverses the process, traveling ten time slower every second until the subatomic level is revealed.

The effect is so powerful that it has been knocked off constantly. Recently in the opening sequence of a Star Trek movie (marginal), and in the opening sequence of Contact (pretty good, especially the conceit of playing the audio tracks of TV and radio programs at roughly the distances  they might have traveled since first broadcast, traveling back in time the farther away from Earth).

But nothing matches the original, which strives to be scientifically correct, and when finished was done in color. Both are on a video tape called The Films of Charles & Ray Eames - Volume 1.


Type:                         VHS tape
First Developed:         1968
Price Range:                        $40 (personal use); $80 (institutional)
Key Features:                Striking visuals
Ages:                        10 and up
Obsolescence:                Never
Further Information:        http://www.pyramidmedia.com/home3.shtml
        Eames Office, P.O. Box 268, Venice, CA 90294, U.S.A., phone (310) 396-5991

PAPERWARE
Computer Lib/Dream Machines
Written by Ted Nelson

http://www.sfc.keio.ac.jp/~ted/

The central folio of the da Vinci of the Computer Age.

This guy, and this book, are the reason a lot of us got into computing to begin with. In 1973, seeing anything wonderful in a computer took an extraordinary act of imagination. Ted Nelson saw EVERYTHING wonderful in computing.

He saw it, and then he described it, and then he drew little pictures and diagrams of it. Computer Lib/Dream Machines is a book as imaginative, as prescient, as noble as any da Vinci folio. Everything great about computers today was imagined by Ted Nelson before Jimmy Carter was elected, before Steve Jobs took drugs, before Bill Gates went to Harvard. Get a copy (even if it's the bastardized, shrunken version put out by Microsoft Press), and discover where personal computing is going, as described by Ted Nelson before the trip began.

Type:                        Oversize trade paperback book
First Developed:        1973
Price Range:                $24.95
Key Features:        Amazing prescience
Ages:                        10 and up
Obsolescence:                Low
Further Information:        The original is exceedingly rare. The Microsoft Press version is less hard to find. Other books and articles by Ted Nelson are more abstruse. For more on Nelson's contribution to  the history of computing, see http://www.netvalley.com/netvalley/intvalxan.html

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Excerpted from Informatica 1.0: Access to the Best Tools for Mastering the Information Revolution by Peter M. Black
All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.