"RECENTLY, while planning a walking trip to northern England, I bumped into someone who told me about a great series of maps I hadn't previously known about. I also met someone who tipped me off to a cozy B&B along the trail, someone who went to the trouble of digging up the train schedule for the area and one hospitable soul who lived along my route and offered to put me up for the night. Serendipity? No, technology: I met all these people on the Internet." Not on the WWW, "but there's another part of the Internet that works in a different way. Called Usenet, it's an unsexy, low-tech bulletin board divided into categories. Millions of people around the world read it, respond to questions, engage in lively debates and post new information every day." "If you have access to the Internet, you have access to Usenet. The trick is finding the proper bulletin boards, which are called "newsgroups" - there are thousands. Here are three to get you started: rec.travel.europe, rec.travel.asia and rec.backcountry. The first two are self-explanatory; the third is for wilderness travel: hiking, skiing, mountain biking, climbing, etc. You can ask search engines such as Alta Vista http: //altavista.digital.com to look for information on Usenet, instead of on the web."
AOL has a great set of BBS. "Another good set of bulletin boards, open to anyone with Internet access, are operated by the folks who publish the Lonely Planet guidebooks. To get there, point your web browser to www.lonelyplanet.com and follow links to 'The Thorn Tree.' "
"On the minus side, the bulletin boards can sometimes attract know-it-alls who don't, in fact, know it all. Others have axes to grind or scores to settle - which they might not disclose immediately."
This information about sites that permit you to search for cheap airline seats and other related services is adapted from articles by Julia Angwin ("Booking a Flight on the Internet," San Francisco Chronicle, 9/30/97, p.4) and Dennis Tanner, Newhouse News Service ("Web sites can provide solutions for those special travel needs," SF Examiner, 12/21/97, p. T-2"), with some added comments.
Other low fare sites not listed in the above article:
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