Compression, virus protection, FTP, Download Exercise, Online references, petroleum-related software and data, and maps to download.
There is a LOT of great, free (or very cheap) stuff out there on the Internet! In fact, that was the lead story in the May 1996 PCWorld magazine (check out their on-line site at http://www.pcworld.com). Generally, items that you can download (or copy from the Web onto your computer) fall into two categories - software and data. In order to download these items, you need to know a little about file compression and virus protection.
File compression is ubiquitous on the Internet, for good reason. When a file is compressed, it is much smaller than the original version. That means a shorter time to copy onto your computer. In addition, the compressed version is much less likely to be 'scrambled' as it is passed through cyberspace to you. Visit the WinZip site for a more detailed discussion of compression.
There are numerous styles of compression software which yield files with suffixes unique to the style of compression used, for example, '.zip' or '.sit'. What you need is an extraction program on your computer so you can return the file that was copied (downloaded) onto your computer to its original form. As an extra bonus, the extraction software often compress files as well, handy if you want to attach a file to an e-mail or just fit it on a disk. Compression software for your computer platform can be purchased at software stores, from mail order catalogs, or downloaded from the Web. You may download an extraction program in the following exercise.
Virus protection is critically important if you are going to be downloading software from the Internet. Fortunately, there are many software packages that check for viruses, most are available for download on the Web. A list of several virus protection software sites is included in the Resources section of this workbooook. They can also be purchased at software stores or via mail order. It is important to update the virus definitions for your protection program, usually by downloading updates from the Web page for the specific software company. Security and virus protection are hot topics on the Internet, check out some of the Newsgroup exchanges for other user's experience with various software packages.
Hint: an excellent way to find compression and virus protection software sites on the Web is to search those topics on Yahoo!
Ok, now that you have an extraction program and virus protection, you are ready to proceed. In the not-too-distant past, the method used for downloading files on the Internet was direct command line FTP, which stands for file transfer protocol. It consists of a set of commands which is typed in at the right moment while remotely logged into another computer, etc., and the files transferred fast, very fast. Much faster than you could learn how to do it!
Actually, FTP and its line commands are still the method that the computers use, but the advent of Web browsers has made transferring files much easier for humans. Teaching you how to use command line FTP is beyond the scope of this workshop. Fortunately, petroleum-related data and software are easily downloaded using Web browsers, with which you are already familiar. In our exercise today, we will download software and data from pages on the Web, basically by clicking on hyper-linked text.
Web sites that offer software and data relevant to the petroleum industry exist on the Web in several different guises. They range from free graphics software that does 3-D imaging on Sun SparcStations to simple spreadsheets of natural gas production information. Sites are being added, disappearing, and expanding their offerings every day. Your ability to search for resources is the key to getting useful downloads from the Interent. In the Web References for this chapter are lists of sites that offer useful data or software. We will visit several of these in the exercise.
Hint: if you are using a list of resources and one of the sites is 'not found', try backing off to the main server, that is, shorten the URL to the basic format 'http://www.mines.edu' and follow the links from that page.
I. Go to one of the locations given below, they each have something to download. When you finish the exercise for one site, visit the sites for the other groups.
II. Download a file or program at each site. Save it to your hard disk or a floppy, don't forget to scan for virus!
Hint: notice that the size of files is often given next to the download button or hyper-linked text. That gives you an idea of the time it may take to accomplish the transfer. A ~400 kb Reservoir Engineering spreadsheet program from the Kansas Geological Survey took about 3 minutes to download via a 28.8 modem.
If the file is compressed, open WinZip and extract it (you may have to save it to your hard disk). Notice the relative size of the two files.
If the file you choose on the Web site is displayed on the screen instead of copied to your computer, just choose File from the tool bar, choose Save As and save it to your disk.
III. Once you have a program, you can execute it use File/Run (PC, Windows) or by double clicking on the file icon (Macintosh). A data file can be viewed as text using a word processing program or (sometimes) as a spreadsheet in Excel or Lotus 1-2-3. Usually, the easiest way to accomplish this is to open your software application and choose Open under File on the tool bar.
Newer versions of spreadsheet software allow you to structure (parse) the data as you open it. Tab delimited and comma delimited are two common formats used for Web data. When in doubt, try 'Continue' on screens that say the spreadsheet was not created in that application and 'Tab delimited' for format.
IV. Visit the other sites listed above. Check out some of the sites on the list in the Web Reference list. Did you find anything useful?
*this list is by no means exhaustive
Copyright 1996 by the Rocky Mountain Region of the Petroleum Technology Transfer Council
PTTC is partly funded by the U. S. Department of Energy, visit their Energy Technology Center on the Web.
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