H-Net Cyberthoughts
TERRY L. TAYLOR, CO-EDITOR H-ALBION (TAYLORT@ALPHA.NSULA.EDU)
Fri, 2 Jun 1995 11:22:34 -0600
A. COMPUSERVE GETS AGGRESSIVE IN EUROPE CompuServe is moving
aggressively to protect its European turf, announcing it
will open a European headquarters with the goal of doubling
its European subscriber base to 600,000 by May 1996.
Approximately 8,000 new subscribers are signing up every
week, according to the company. Meanwhile, home-grown
competitor Europe Online is emphasizing its "profound and
pervasive European national and local content," and it use
of local languages to differentiate itself from its Yankee
competitor. (Investor's Business Daily 5/31/95 A18 x
Edupage)
B. HYPERTEXT BOWLS OF SPAGHETTI Howard Strauss of Princeton
University thinks WWW content designers need to relearn some
old lessons of scholarship: "In the past we learned how to
use footnotes, tables of contents, and indexes effectively,
but in our electronic formats we seem to have forgotten all
that. We use too many hypertext links, use them where they
make no sense, ignore the difference between footnotes and
tables of contents, build links to bizarre and unexpected
places, ignore standard ways of linking, and confuse, rather
than enlighten, with hypertext structures that make bowls of
spaghetti seem like models of good organization." (Edutech
Report, May'95, p.1)