Hot Wires

Cyber maths

Mathematical documents, with "live" formulae and charts that recalculate when the reader types in new figures, can now be exchanged across the World Wide Web. Mathbrowser is a Web browser which, besides reading Web-standard HTML documents, can also read documents created with Mathsoft's Mathcad software. Mathsoft's distributor Adept Scientific is offering Mathbrowser free of charge from its home page at http://www.adeptscience.co.uk/ and further information is available from Mathsoft's US web site at http://www.mathsoft.com/

Volume sales

The Internet Bookshop has reorganised its Web pages and added a keyword search facility to help customers find the book they need in less than eight seconds. It is now taking orders for more than 100 books a day. About 40% of customers are academics. Customers can already order any of 750,000 UK titles from the Whitakers Books in Print list, and will soon have access to the Bowker-Saur list of 2 million American titles. The Internet Bookshop is at http://www.demon.co.uk/bookshop/

Well managed

The Association of Information Management has recently released a special issue on the Internet and is planning a web site. Further details from Moira Duncan, email moira@aslib.demon.co.uk

Net profits

The University of Derby's Design Research Centre is cashing in on the explosion of business interest in the Internet. It is offering Internet training and consultancy to business and commerce, and already runs World Wide Web sites for music industry clients including The Shamen. "We are ideally placed to offer support and advice because much of the current Internet expertise lies in the academic field," said the DRC's Sean Clark.

Money for art's sake

The University of Nottingham library has scored another funding victory, with a total of Pounds 183,000 from the funding councils to put five separate research collections in the arts and humanities on computer databases. In March the library won Pounds 207,000 to make the OMNI biomedical research database available on the Internet.

Much travelled

The University of Staffordshire has launched a digital portfolio of selected works from the travelling arts group WOW. The Web site hopes to build on the work of the group which explores the tensions between digital imaging and traditional fine art practices. The site can be found at http://www.staffs.ac.uk/arts/finey-art.

Free bird

Magpie is a guide to Internet resources for teachers and educators put together as part of a final-year project at the University of Aberystwyth. The site has more than 900 entries, covering Websites, gopher holes, FTP servers, ezines, books, mailing lists, jargon lists and other goodies for the educator. http://www.dcs.aber.ac.uk/jjw0/index-ht.html. If you have problems accessing the site, try using the main address only.

Special needs

Acorn computers is launching a series of programmes to raise the proifile of special education in the United Kingdom. The first is a series of three forums in Northampton, Leeds and Maidstone.

The company has also set up a special telephone information service to cover queries raised in this area.Tel: 01223 254444. Further details on the events are available from Hilary Swift. Tel 01223 254287 email hswift@acorn.co.uk

Clone alone

Apple Computer has launched a competitively priced range of workstations which offer full multimedia capability across both Mac and MS-DOS systems. Meanwhile an American company, Power Computing, is shipping some of the first Mac clones. Olivetti is a major shareholder in the private company.