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Nikola Tesla may be one of the most brilliant men in history. He was known for his love of pigeons, battle with Thomas Edison, battle with inner demons, and his dependence on finacial backers.
But most of all, he changed civilization forever with electric power distribution. How many really fundamental aspects of civilization there are: The wheel This list is not large. The inventors of most are lost to history. But one single man is responsible for two of them: Radio and Power distribution.
Credit him for the electric motor and florescent lights. A memorial on Goat Island, at Niagara Falls, is a solitary public reminder of the man and his era.
It is a fact that the Supreme Court, of the USA made a final judgement that Nikola Tesla did, in fact invent radio. Like many legal decisions, this decision came too late to be of any practical use to Tesla, and most people still credit Marconi with the invention. It is a fact, that Marconi made the first long distance transmission, it is because he created a better antenna, not the underlying radio technology. In fact, Tesla had already demonstrated the radio control of automated submarines to the military in New York Harbor.
There are lots of web sites with information about Tesla, and many sources about this fascinating man.
But how do you find the best information on Tesla. The best solutions involve a voodoo recipe of several things: order:;:2:4:Ask your friends or neighbors . This is what you had to do in the 'olden' days: before the internet .
Even if you begin your exploration at a library, public or private, you will find that much of the information on Tesla is available via computer, very likely the same internet that you have access to at your home.
There are two kinds of web resources that you will see over and over again: the first kind is a search engine, you know, the old standards like Ask.com , Google or newer ones like Quaero, ChaCha, Guruji.com or a directory of existing sites: like DMOZ, which use humans working as librarians to pour over the web sites, find the ones dealing with Tesla and sort them for you.
There are some troubles using these strategies: Google's ranking algorithm for Tesla is highly impacted by the web business of SEO (search engine optimization) which attempts to defeat Google's hueristics to increase a web site's visibility and so make it look bigger than it really is. This makes it harder to find the real good sources for Tesla. SEO is big business for sites that make money on the web, because search engines can make or break a web site. There are ethical and unethical people useing these techniques who have not the slightest interest in Tesla. In fact, any search engine using computer algorithms to analyse text can completely ignore nuances of language for example, searching for Tesla instruction may get you tons of listings about 'learn Tesla acupuncture' . How many times will you have to dig down to the seventh page of the web search to find something really useful about Tesla? More times than you wish!
One alternative, A directory organized by humans like DMOZ will not suffer that kind of lanugage problem, but the editors of those directories are volunteers, with limited time and have to obey some odd rules about what makes an acceptable web site: many types of information rich sites on Tesla can't even get in. In fact, the decisions about what is good is under control of a very few people with rigid: a junior editor often has a decision overturned by a another editor sometimes, for the most obscure reasons. They are well meaning, but can they really speak to be knowledgeable about all they do? The websites that are accepted may have to wait for weeks to get approved , if ever. And the categories are limited, with no place to put new concepts. It takes months for a category to be approved: if at all.
A surprisingly successful alternative is the wikipedia, where everyone can update the information: and amazingly enough, wikipedia does a very good job of being authoritative, precise and, well, generally useful.
Now, in September 2008, there is a new start-up in web site ranking directories that uses the power of the public to answer the question of which site is best, or at least as they put it: "which site has the most vava-voom!" That new venture is http://vava.vu/ , a web domain out of the Pacific Island nation of Vanuatu. Vava.vu will let any web site be entered to be rated by the general public and given the tag Tesla. For example: http://vava.vu/?Tag=Tesla -- will get you started! The evaluation is simple: a web site about Tesla has a rank and a 'statistical strength' associated with it: When someone visits vava.vu, those sites with weaker strength are put side by side, and it is up to the visitor to say which site of the two is more useful. When enough votes are cast, the visitor will see the real top ten sites about Tesla ,or any category: These sites are the ones that you, the public has given the green lite to. The idea is logically solid in that a visitor only can compare two sites at a time: one will win and one will not. A visitor can't give a yea or nay to one site by itself because that would skew the results. Some sites will consistantly prevail over lesser sites.
So if you are interested in Tesla , you can go find the answers in several areas: Locally in the library, from friends, or on the internet at your favorite search engine, a directory like DMOZ or wikipedia. Or with the new alternative on the block: http://vava.vu/?Tag=Tesla
J. Chord at vava.vu is a student of the Web seemingly forever. Up on the www he now follows the difficulties people have in using the information that is so near, yet so far.
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