Date: Wed, 28 Dec 1994 14:04:21 EST From: "Rob Slade, Social Convener to the Net" Subject: "The Whole Earth Online Almanac" by Rittner BKWEONLA.RVW 941025 "The Whole Earth Online Almanac", Rittner, 1993, 1-56686-090-3, U$32.95/C$41.95 donr@aol.com 70057.1325@compuserve.com drittner@uacsc1.albany.edu %A Don Rittner %C 15 Columbus Circle, New York, NY 10023 %D 1993 %G 1-56686-090-3 %I Brady Publishing %O U$32.95/C$41.95 75141.2102@compuserve.com 75141.2104@compuserve.com %P 545 %T "The Whole Earth Online Almanac" Like the "catalogue" or "resource" portion of many online guides, this book lists discussion groups, contacts and file archives, and collects them into topical sections. The book is broader than the usual Internet compilations because of the inclusion of commercial online services and Fidonet. The book is also extremely odd. Part one talks about the book, itself, and part two talks about the different networks and services. The fact that these two sections combined total less than fifty pages is possibly a blessing in disguise, since a lot of the material demonstrates little understanding of the verities of online life and much of it is just plain wrong. Although Rittner is the author of record, there are strong indications that large parts of the book are not his work. Part three, comprising the remaining 500 pages, is divided into fifty-five topics. Within each topic material is divided by system or source, rather than by sub-topic. Some smaller sections have sub-groupings; many don't. Those that do, can be quite confusing, since the headers are not consistent. The largest topic--computers--is almost a third of the total, but has no sub- groupings. Indeed, there seems to be no order to it at all. There is no index. None. "Ecological Science" has a grand total of three listings, plus the news that Compuserve, America Online, GEnie, the WELL, Internet, Bitnet, UUCPNet, Usenet, After Dark, Knowledge Index, Orbit and NewsNet have nothing on the topic. "So what," I hear you cry. "Maybe he isn't interested in ecology!" You don't understand. Rittner is the author of "Ecolinking" -- a whole *book* on that one topic (cf. BKECOLNK.RVW). Having said all of that, there are definitely items of interest in here. There are a number of entries which you won't find in other, major, resource guides. It is not, however, going to be easy to find them. Therefore, while this might be fun, it has a long way to go before you could call it useful. copyright Robert M. Slade, 1994 BKWEONLA.RVW 941025 ====================== DECUS Canada Communications, Desktop, Education and Security group newsletters Editor and/or reviewer ROBERTS@decus.ca, RSlade@sfu.ca, Rob Slade at 1:153/733 Author "Robert Slade's Guide to Computer Viruses" 0-387-94311-0/3-540-94311-0