The most common request I get is for information on prices of agricultural commodities, so I was keen to see what Rural press had to offer on their site. My impressions are mixed. If you have a look at their grains section, except for one market commentary it is just the same links to the USDA market reports that we have on AgNet. The cattle and sheep market reports are much more like what I was expecting. A good wool market summary is provided by Elders. They also had a link to the Australian Council of Wool Exporters, who are now providing some marketing information that I wasn't aware of. Unfortunately they are also using frames. To have a look at the latest report without downloading a new browser try this link http://www.ozemail.com.au/~acwemelb/mr960830.html
James Street will be involved in running some conferences from the rural press site, and he will be keeping us posted on what's happening. Some of you will have already come accross him as forum manager on the msn Agriculture Today forum.
I have had some grumbles from Farmwide as they claim this site is causing users confusion. I am trying to contact Rosie Simpson to sort it out, meanwhile they have removed their links to AgNet in retaliation.
Farmwide now has a list of email addresses so I might drop our list - let me know what you all think. Another option might be to make the list open to everyone associated with agriculture, I have had a couple of requests from non-Farmwide particpants.
15/8/96
If not much seems to be happening on the page this week it is because I am shearing out at the block. Next week crutching, then muelsing at home. Now all I need are the wool prices from 1973!
The Sydney Futures Exchange trade Wheat and Greasy Wool futures. If you grow these commodities and are interested have a look at http://www.sfe.com.au/products/agriculture.html.
A search engine that is quite new and quite good is Hotbot.
When you find a page you want to return to later, without having to follow all the links you followed to get there, and without writing it down: Go up to the 'Favorites' menu and choose 'Add to favorites', check the name looks sensible and press OK. Now whenever you go into the favorites menu you can go straight to that page by selecting it.
If you want to come straight here every time you start up Explorer, go into View|Options and select 'Start and Search Pages' then press the button that says 'Use Current'.
Here is a message I received from Graham Thompson, who participated in the LandcareNet trial a while back:
Been reading the "experiences column, and it becomes apparent that the same thing is occuring with this trial as occured with the LandcareNet trial sponsored by Telecom.
Our property, Olive Downs Station, Richmond, NWQ, has a DRCS telephone system and I spent heaps of time trying to get onto the Net. Unfortunately DRSC only run at 4800 bps so "fast" communications is not on. I must admit I quit. Then my children, on SDE Charters Towers, were to use the modem via Austpac but again the screen was clutered by "stuff" and communications virtually inpossible. This time I got onto Telecom State Manager and he told me that the DRCS were to be replaced by a MORE modern system with better data capability. Has It Arrived??
I guess some of you know that feeling. I don't know if the situation has improved, but if someone does can they please let Graham by emailing him from the link above.
To get to them just click on the link, an error message comes up - ignore it. Then a few seconds later the Newsgroup will appear. You should read the group for bit before you start entering any messages to get the feel of the group. Generally the rules are be nice to people and keep to the subject of the group. If you have only been using the World Wide Web untill now, this is the first time that you might experience unpleasantness that you weren't looking for. Usually the idiots find these types of Newgroups to boring to bother with, but there is nothing to prevent anyone posting what ever they like.
To look at the other NewsGroups on msn go into categories|internet centre|newsgroups. The names work like latin name for fauna with the leftmost word being the general category. sci is science, rec - recreation, alt - alternate, aus - australia and so on. Remember the warning above, but have a look - there is likely to be a subject right up your tree.
If the subject is not there, either the information is not available in Australia, or AgNet hasn't found out about it. The next best thing is to go to one of the search engines. My favorites are Alta Vista and Open Text.
...My experience of registering on the
internet was a little slow but mainly my own fault. The modem finally
arrived on a Thursday and after connecting to our computer I set about to
register with Microsoft. This was done on our existing telephone line and
I experienced problems in connecting to the internet. Half an hour to an hour
would be spent trying to connect. If this was going to be the norm I was
going to quit! The following Monday Telecom arrived and connected the new
line and being on this line I connect to the internet with the first call
most times...
Robert also thinks a list of the email addresses of the pilot participants would be useful. This seems like a good idea so if you want your name on the list let me know by clicking here.
| Ian Bailey ian@agnet.com.au |