Whitney Bischoff doesn't want to wait for a call from a reporter to tell the world about her hobbies. The nursing professor at Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi reserves a sitting room in cyberspace, inviting the world to see an image of a coverlet she quilted.
Anyone with a mouse, updated computer and modem can click to Bischoff's digitized billboard for a residential detour along the information superhighway: (http://www.sci.tamucc.edu/~bischoff/wrb.html)
The potential audience for Bischoff's quilts is millions of users on the Internet who wander its multimedia portion known as the World Wide Web. The Internet is an expanding universe of computer networks. The Internet has doubled in size annually for the past decade and now spans 150 nations.
Does the world really care about Bischoff's quilt? Or Royce Fromme's "Egyptian Photo Gallery," complete with a brother blocking the view of a pyramid?
Or a baby picture of Kathryn Donohue's daughter?
Bischoff, Fromme, an A&M-Corpus Christi student, and Donohue, a computer lab supervisor at the university, aren't concerned about the light traffic at their virtual doorstep. The web page is for friends, families, associates and perhaps the occasional quilt hobbyist or Egyptologist who, unexpectedly, rings the bell.
Home pages -- the latest excursion on the Internet -- provide an opportunity for people "to show their creativity and be able to express themselves," said Patrick Michaud, assistant professor of computer science at A&M-Corpus Christi. His images of a flaming Pop Tart experiment at a web site draw hundreds of thousands of web wanderers, giving his site almost cultlike status in the cyberworld.
Chris Shipley, the San Francisco-based editor of Computer Life magazine, said personal home pages appeal to the exhibitionist in people. "We want to brag on ourselves or our family," Shipley said.
Fromme, who plans to graduate this semester and become a professional home page builder, is among thousands doing just that on the World Wide Web.
"People like to have exposure for themselves," he said.
Some say these scrapbooks encourage more communication between people, while others say the impersonal world of cyberspace gives people a false sense of connection.
"We want to communicate," said Bischoff, who teaches nurses about computerized medical information. "Our neighborhood is expanding because we have the Internet. We might feel closer to people who are very far away because we can communicate often at low cost. We can also find people with narrow similar interests."
No one keeps track of the number of pages on the web, but Internet watchers estimate that hundreds of new personal home pages are being added to the web each week. The number of host sites where pages can be posted is approaching 10,000, according to industry sources.
People list "pages" or web sites on computers servers. The authors include text, audio, and even video clips about themselves, families, pets, vacations and more. The World Wide Web is the multimedia portion of the Internet, which integrates audio, video, graphics, animation and text.
By entering the Internet address into the computer, a web wanderer can see the page displayed no matter where the original computer server is located.
For more than a year, universities and local Internet providers have been letting individuals put up personal home pages. Now on-line computer services, CompuServe, American Online and Prodigy, are offering millions of members free and simple tools to create web pages without complicated computer codes. Subscribers fill in the blanks using pre-formatted pages as a template. Or people can learn the coding, called hypertext markup language (HTML), through manuals.
Microsoft Word is one of several software corporations that offer a template to create web pages using the Microsoft Word program. Web page consultants will charge as much as $75 an hour to design business or personal home pages, local Internet service providers said.
Free software programs called HTML editors can be downloaded at the following Internet address:
Another recommendation is to copy codes from an existing web pages to use as a template. Reviewing other web pages is the best way to get ideas, Internet page designers say.
The fun of home pages is that they can be edited, updated and changed frequently, page designers say.
Industry observers parallel the enthusiasm over personal home pages to the novelty of desktop publishing 10 years ago. A PC and a laser printer made self publishers out of ordinary people. They could send out fancy newsletters and professionally-crafted greeting cards.
With desktop publishing, the author always controlled who received the newsletter, Computer Life's Shipley said. On the web, anyone can go to a site to read or download an online newsletter.
If computer users don't know a home page address, they might find it through several search programs available through Internet providers. A computer user might search for Whitney Bischoff's home page using the key word Bischoff, Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi or quilts.
A home page acts as a starting point and can lead the web traveler in several directions. Highlighted words or images on Bischoff's home page direct visitors to related pages that include her publications, professional presentations and her favorite quotes. A visitor to the site need only mouse-click to flip the pages of Bischoff's scrapbook.
Bischoff thinks of the links to her quilts and quotes ("The one who dies with the most fabric wins") as the personal touch in her virtual office in cyberspace. As desks and office walls display family photos or funny cartoons next to spread sheets and memos, business home pages also can be personalized, Bischoff said.
People often use web pages to post their resumes. "It's an easy way for people to find information about you," Michaud said. "I use it almost as a business card."
Some Internet watchers believe people can get too up close and personal on the net and risk harassment from a stalker.
"People need to remember what they've done is put up a billboard about themselves on the highway," Shipley said. "It can't say only Ford Tauruses get to see it. Everyone who drives on the highway has the opportunity to see it."
Shipley recommends that people restrict their home pages to a discussion of personal hobbies and interests.
Donohue of A&M-Corpus Christi doesn't worry about having her daughter Tabitha's picture on her home page. "I'm thinking (stalking is) no more likely to happen on the Internet than it is for some weirdo to follow me home from the grocery store."
University professionals with home pages say they don't post information about where they live. "You don't put up identifying information. You put up what is personal and meaningful to you," Bischoff said.
Pamela Brouillard, A&M-Corpus Christi assistant professor of psychology, cautions that home pages, like electronic mail, change "the whole nature of what we think of as interpersonal communication. It's potentially an isolating way of communicating."
Electronic mail or e-mail is the digital equivalent of a letter, which can be sent and received almost simultaneously to anyone in the world.
"It has the potential of developing a generation of emotionally illiterate people," Brouillard said. "`You can always control computer interaction. It gives the appearance of being open and enhancing, but at some level it is restricting."
She doubts that people will stop sending greeting cards by regular mail because of e-mail and home pages.
But Bill Glass, a local Internet page designer, already is collecting Christmas graphics to decorate his virtual holiday greeting on the net.
"It's a great way to exchange pleasantries with friends you don't see anymore," Glass said.
Ira Rosen, a journalism student at Del Mar College, frequently checks into the web sites of a circle of friends from all over the world. They met years ago in Israel and keep in touch through electronic mail and by visiting each other's web sites.
Royce Fromme, an A&M-Corpus Christi senior, programmed a signature book to record comments from visitors who browse his collection of photos he took while in Egypt. Visitors can also view comments of previous guests. Reactions posted in his book were favorable: "Hey guy, pretty cool stuff" (Mike Wilkerson). "Yes, you're all over the world, like your photos." (Jan Willem Visser, Holland).
Bill Schoenfelder, a 24-year-old Macintosh computer lab assistant at A&M-Corpus Christi, designed a web page as he would an entertainment center in his apartment. Links on his home page transport a viewer to other web sites on his favorite television shows, sports teams and cities he loves.
Schoenfelder hates golf and warns neophyte browsers against clicking a golf symbol on his home page. The curious click, of course, and offenders are immediately zapped to the Barney home page.
"That's the worst thing I could think of to punish people on the Internet," Schoenfelder said.
Schoenfelder said his page allows a lowly lab assistant to dream big in digitized images and text. His face overlaps a president's on Mount Rushmore. His head replaces Apollo's in an image of a Greek statue.
"When I walk down the street here in Corpus Christi," his home page begins, "People stop and ask me, `How do you cope with the incredible stress and challenge of being a MacLab assistant, one of the most high profile and dangerous careers in the world?"
The home page has boosted Schoenfelder's ego, he said. He even talks in the third person now. "To have my own page and anybody can read it worldwide..." Schoenfelder said. "Not that anybody would want to search for Bill Schoenfelder and wonder what his page is like."
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