NATURE
ucmp1.berkeley.edu The University of California at Berkeley's Museum of Paleontology runs several online exhibits here. You can obtain GIF images of plants and animals from the "Remote Nature" menu. The "Origin of the Species" menu lets you read Darwin's work or search it by keyword.
SPORTS
culine.colorado.edu Look up schedules for teams in various professional sports leagues here, under "Professional Sports Schedules."
WEATHER
wx.atmos.uiuc.edu Look up weather forecasts for North America or bone up on your weather facts.
8.5. WIDE-AREA INFORMATION SERVERS
Now you know there are hundreds of databases and library catalogs you can search through. But as you look, you begin to realize that each seems to have its own unique method for searching. If you connect to several, this can become a pain. Gophers reduce this problem somewhat. Wide-area information servers promise another way to zero in on information hidden on the Net. In a WAIS, the user sees only one interface — the program worries about how to access information on dozens, even hundreds, of different databases. You tell give a WAIS a word and it scours the net looking for places where it's mentioned. You get a menu of documents, each ranked according to how relevant to your search the WAIS thinks it is. Like gophers, WAIS "client" programs can already be found on many public-access Internet sites. If your system has a WAIS client, type
swais
at the command prompt and hit enter (the "s" stands for "simple"). If it doesn't, telnet to bbs.oit.unc.edu, which is run by the University of North Carolina At the "login:" prompt, type