THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Monday, August 22, 1994 TAG: 9408200058
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E01 EDITION: FINAL
SERIES: The Gateway
Exploring the Computer World
SOURCE: BY JAMES SCHULTZ, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Medium: 87 lines
INTERNET USERS CAN'T yet hear the live-action splash of ocean critters or watch in real time the heavenward sprint of a NASA rocket. Leave it up to museums, though, and one day soon, travelers on the info superhighway will be able to pull over and get their ears and eyes on breaking events.
Many of the nation's 8,000 or so museums are going hands-on and interactive. Wordy text panels and three-color murals on badly lit walls are on the way out. Information Age material is flooding through touchable TV screens and game-ready computer monitors.
Take the Virginia Marine Science Museum. Two years ago, museum exhibit technician Mark Vang learned a university was posting daily tropical storm updates to the Internet from the National Hurricane Center in Coral Gables, Fla. His find led directly to a museum exhibit on hurricane tracking in the museum's weather room.
On a light olive map of the southeastern United States, major cities are marked by small black dots. A longitude-latitude grid appears over the southern Atlantic ocean. As he receives updates, Vang takes colored tape (different colors for different storms) and places it on the map so viewers can track storm progress.
Spelled out are tropical storm or hurricane names, dates of origin and passage, maximum wind speeds and estimated levels of property damage. This past weekend, museum staff was following the progress of Hurricane Chris.
A coming museum expansion will likely add bigger and better gear. As Internet offerings expand, the museum wants to marry Net information to the next generation of computerized exhibits that will respond at the sound of a voice or the touch of a finger.
``There's a new technology revolution going on as far as exhibits are concerned,'' says Lynn Clements, the marine museum's education coordinator. ``We want to incorporate the latest computer and video technology. But we also want to make the technology transparent, so people can get information easily.''
The museum regularly exchanges electronic mail with other institutions to compare notes about what's working and what's not. News of equipment that survives heavy human traffic and rough handling is especially popular, but e-mailers also chat about program success and issue research updates.
A museum-developed software program, Build A Fish, has become so popular that Vang has uploaded it as an Internet shareware offering. From all over the world, users can download the program into their computers and try it out. Computer requirements are basic: Any IBM-compatible machine with at least 1.5 megabytes of hard disk space and a color graphics adapter will do.
Users pick attributes from a menu list, and existing fish are matched to the requirements. Included in the program so are are about 65 Chesapeake Bay and Atlantic Ocean species, from deep sea anglers to blue sharks. Eventually, Vang hopes to run Build A Fish on more sophisticated machines with high-resolution graphics and animation capabilities.
If users like the program, they are urged to send a $20 user fee back to the museum. Vang says the museum has raked in more than $1,000. Now a Canadian professor living in Ontario wants to develop a French-language version.
``The neat thing about (Build A Fish) is that it's gone all over the world,'' Vang says. ``It removes from your thinking geographic barriers. Even though you're dealing with people through machines, it's almost more humanizing.''
The Build A Fish shareware program is available on Internet software archives. Use the FTP command to access oak.oakland.edu. Login as guest and provide your name as a password - a courtesy. Then use the command ``cd /pub/msdos/biology'' to get to the right directory, then type ``get bldfsh21.zip'' to ship the file to the computer of your Internet access provider.
InfiNet users can select the ``Files and File Transfers'' from the main menu, choose the ``Popular FTP Sites on Internet'' and go to MS-DOS Archives. Then type ``cd biology'' and use the same ``get'' command. You'll still need to transfer the program from InfiNet's machine to your computer.
The file comes in compressed format, so you'll need a data decompression program such as PKUNZIP in order to operate the program.
If you have any questions about Build A Fish, send Internet e-mail to Mark Vang; his address is marcus infi.net. MEMO: If you have any ideas or comments for The Gateway, contact Rob
Morris, robm@infi.net or call 446-2362.
In Hampton Roads, computer users can explore the Internet through the
InfiNet online service. For details, call 622-4289.
by CNB