Gophers, Archie and WAIS
These tools have been almost completely superseded by the WWW, and are only included for completeness. All are concerned with structuring information such that it was easy to find. They have largely been replaced by the WWW, since this provided an easier to use mechanism for publishing information and is multimedia based rather than limited to plain text. The functions of these tools is as follows:
• Gopher is a directory based structure with information in certain categories. Type ‘gopher://gopher.tc.umn.edu’ into your web browser location area to get an idea of this facility.
• Archie is a database containing information on what is located on FTP servers. It would not be used much in a marketing context.
• WAIS stands for Wide Area Information Service, it has been superseded by the WWW.