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Webpages News

June 1997

Vancouver Webpages is moving to a new location closer to BCnet. Service may be disrupted for a while during the changeover period - apologies for the inconvenience.

We're back to Apache 1.1.1 for a while, after having problems with 1.2 stalling.

The server is now running Apache 1.2.0, which implements the new HTTP/1.1 protocol. See W3.org for more details of this faster, superior protocol. 1.2 is now official, not a Beta release.

We've now got a framed homepage, using JavaScript to present a rolling help. This seems moderately efficient, compared to popping up new windows all the time. The help entries are all named tags in a single HTML file, so there are no new requests to get help on new items.

February 1997

VWbot, the searchBC robot, is now at version 4.2. It is still not ported to LWP5, but has several bugfixes, a more flexible weighting algorithm, faster by-date sorting and some result format changes. VWbot is available as shareware.

The DIY pages are available for people wanting a low-cost website. For a small monthly fee, you get 1Mb of space to upload with Netscape Navigator, Netscape Gold or other publishing tools. There is no compulsory content (advertisements, etc.).

December 1996

Season's Greetings to all you netheads out there!

The Webgate now has a homepage, and has had a few bugs ironed out.

The experimental new links page has been reworked to use persistant cookies.

Vancouver Webpages hosts the Cache Now! campaign for http cache awareness.

The searchBC database is being changed to a new (hopefully improved) format. The new format is quicker to search, at least for sparse keys, and allows new URLs to be added while the robot is running.

November 96

The Multisearch Canada page won an NBNSOFT Content Award.

August 8th 96

The Search button on the homepage now links to a frames-based CUSI, which allows simultaneous searching of multiple search engines.

The VWbot robot is now available as shareware.

June 23rd 96

New features in the searchBC New pages - BC pages with embedded applications (Shockwave, etc.).

Now a Browsable Index to the searchBC database. This is a list (sorted by title) of the Web pages found by the searchBC robot - many of the major pages in British Columbia. I hesitate to say most, because it doesn't traverse to an umlimited depth and may take a few weeks to locate new pages, depending on what other pages list them.

Power Up 96

- It was reported that credit card transactions on the Net (with secure server) are safer than transactions performed in person or over the phone.
If you think the Net is vulnerable to hackers, remember that telephone exchanges are computers too, and some (especially PBXs) have been hacked. Surface mail can be stolen or misdirected, while you have no guarantee that a telephone conversation is not going via cordless or cellphone at the other end, vulnerable to a $199 Radio Shack scanner. The Net is secure now, and will get more so.

May 18th 96

The searchBC robot had a bad case of constipation. After a change to the database format several weeks ago, pages were not being traversed to the correct depth. Following a dose of ex-lax, the problem is hopefully fixed and the robot has started on the backlog.

Some lists of new pages, pages with Java and frames have been added as a byproduct of the robots activities.

The robot is now using the Wordnet database to expand synonyms. At present, however, the database is not extensible so user suggestions can't be added. (Well, it can be modified - but the database generation requires more RAM than we currently have. It runs in virtual memory, but thrashes like crazy and takes over the machine.)

April 20th 96

Visual Ping on the NetTools page gives you a picture of the Net bandwidth from your computer to Vancouver Webpages.

April 16th 96

A WordNet 1.5 interface has been added. This is a lexicographer's dictionary giving synonyms, antomyms, holonyms, etc. of English words.

April 5th 96

the Hub is up for testing. This is a script which allows users to temporarily hook up their home systems to the Web, even if their ip address is dynamically allocated.

searchBC has a better interface, with match sorting by weight or last modified date. A companion script mk-metas.html generates META tags for better keyword indexing.

15 March 96

searchBC is now running a bit smoother. THe search engine now lists document features, such as use of Java, and PICS rating (the "V-chip" for the Web)

diveBC now has a few chartlets for some of the dive sites in the Gulf Islands. It's also got an instance of the Java animator applet.

February

A companion project to searchBC, the synonym dictionary, should be operational. This is collecting copyright-free synonyms for the search engine, so that if you search for car you would get documentswith automobile, etc.

29 January 96

Mail has been broken here; apologies if you tried to send.

22 January 96

The year of Windows 95 is finally over - and I hear it doesn't work so well on the Pentium Pro. Now that you've bought all that new hardware so you can run Win95, throw it out and run WinNT. Or of course Unix, which has had multi-tasking, 32-bit, multi-user Internet capability built in for years and most of the bugs are out. Look for SMP (symettric multiprocessing) capability in your O/S to take advantage of the Pro or Alpha (now 400MHz).

4th December

13th November

5th November 1995 (Guy Fawkes' day)


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