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Now you can find answers to these and related questions by checking the National Supercomputer Centers Usage Database, an ongoing Web-based project gathering usage statistics at the four NSF centers. Annual and monthly data are available. The database gives information on users, grants, accounts, and usage as well as project abstracts.
This Web site is by Quantum Research Corporation, under contract to the National Science Foundation.
Thanks to the efforts of consultants Ben Johnson and Paul Walker, /usr/news and motd messages are now available on the Web. The Web page is automatically updated every three hours, and entries are sorted by date and name. Set your bookmark today!
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Proving that they take challenges seriously, researchers at NCSA used the June 1996 annual meeting of the NSF/NCSA World Wide Web (N2W3) Federal Consortium to showcase several new software prototypes and projects that will help lead the Web's evolution from a medium for information dissemination into a forum for digital interaction. |
Last year, Vice President Al Gore challenged NCSA and the other members of the consortium to move the Web beyond browsing and into collaboration. This year, he faxed them a letter congratulating them on a job well done while, of course, urging them to do more by broadening their horizons to include other sectors (international, state, and local government, academia, industry, and public and private institutions). During the past year, the 15 federal agencies that constitute the consortium responded to the vice president's challenge by compiling federal home page guidelines and by devising plans for electronically organizing their work places, for data mining, and for providing public access to information. NCSA, to whom the consortium looks for the technology, responded with software.
At the meeting, which was held June 18-20 at the Beckman Institute on the campus of the University of Illinois and attended by more than 50 people, NCSA rolled out several Web-based frameworks and networking projects specifically geared towards improving electronic collaboration. The networking projects included I-WAY--the multi-institutional, distributed computing project--and the Global Interoperability for Broadband Networks (GIBN) project, a testbed for linking the G7 nations [see access, spring 1996].
The highlight of the software presentations was a prototype of Habanero, NCSA's latest "killer app." Habanero is a Java-based, pluggable framework that supports synchronous as well as asynchronous collaboration. NCSA staff also demonstrated projects in the works to make Habanero more robust and secure. One project that is nearing beta stage is a tool that saves digital workplaces assembled with Habanero so that they can be retrieved later. It is ideal for convening weekly collaborative sessions. Other new software had participants thinking in terms of Web-based computing and more extensive use of video on the Web. (See NWebScope and upcoming issues for stories on Habanero, Vosaic, and Biology Workbench.) New Web pages for the consortium were unveiled just prior to the start of the meeting.
Among the most energetic sessions were the afternoon discussions in which participants presented wish lists for collaborative technology and sketched out their plans for incorporating these tools into their agencies. Others spoke optimistically of extending the boundaries of collaboration to foreign nations.
The N2W3 Federal Consortium [see access, Fall 1995] promotes use of the Web among federal agencies. It also fosters collaborative research and development and information exchange among the agencies and NCSA. The consortium is sponsoring a Federal Webmasters Workshop on August 7-9 in Bethesda, MD. Janet Thot-Thompson, who manages a Technology Center at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, is the current chair of the consortium.
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In late April NCSA unveiled a new Web home page
for the center as well as
reorganized and redesigned secondary and tertiary Web pages. A centerwide
committee began work on the reorganization in November 1995 with an analysis
of NCSA's information, other Web sites, and new Web tools.
The NCSA Home Page Committee consisted of artists, writers, and technical staff: Maxine Brown, Carlton Bruett, Colleen Bushell, Ginny Hudak- David, Doug Fein, Jennie File, Ben Johnson, Melissa Johnson, Tom Magliery, Bob McGrath, Bridget Neu, Paulette Sancken (chair), Kim Stephenson, and Paul Walker. Bruett created the new graphics, and Walker, Ben Johnson, and Fein implemented the Java scripts used on the pages. |
To maintain the new pages and coordinate updating and maintenance of the entire server, Maxine Brown, associate director of Marketing Communications, appointed Cordelia Geiken as NCSA's Webmaster. Geiken is responsible for ensuring that NCSA groups convert to the new templates in the coming months. She is also staying abreast of all Web technology issues and developments to keep NCSA state-of-the-art.
Other changes are taking place on NCSA's Web server. Excite! Inc. has joined with NCSA to help index the server contents. The Mountain View, CA, organization has provided its search engine to the center along with technical support and upgrades free of charge for a year. Use the Search link on the main NCSA pages to see how the Excite! search engine works. Comments can be sent to webdev@ncsa.uiuc.edu.
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This spring NCSA's Education and Outreach Division joined with the State of
Illinois to showcase Illinois' economic development and technological resources
using the World Wide Web.
The Illinois Coalition, a nonprofit group that spearheads efforts to strengthen the state's economy using science and technology, organized Project COMPETE, an integrated, statewide effort to help small- and medium-sized firms adapt or adopt modern business and industrial practices. The project is funded by the federal National Institute for Standards and Technology through the Illinois Department of Commerce and Community Affairs and the Management Association of Illinois. |
The Web site was unveiled in March by Governor Jim Edgar. "Illinois is becoming a national leader in developing unique ways to encourage economic development," Edgar said. "The new Illinois Web site will help companies locate and utilize sources of technical and business modernization assistance that can help them become more competitive. It will help market the products of Illinois suppliers to manufacturers in the state and throughout the world and will promote economic development through a unique partnership between the public and private sectors."
The COMPETE Web site is the first in the nation to be electronically linked to a major online publisher of manufacturing information. Illinois and Thomas Regional Directory Company Inc. have joined together to allow users to seamlessly find information on manufacturing companies and products as well as the infrastructure in Illinois that supports them.
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NCSA: The National Center for Supercomputing
Applications
access / Summer 1996
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