PLUGGED IN : NEWS BYTES.

NETWORKING: High-tech executives gathered at a public school near the U.S. Capitol to publicize Net Day '96, a volunteer effort to wire many of the nation's 140,000 schools for Internet access. Net Day organizer John Gage, chief scientist at Mountain View-based Sun Microsystems Inc., said the gathering at Hine Jr. High School in Washington, D.C., this week was meant to call attention to volunteer efforts in 47 states that will occur on various weekends through October.``When we did the first Net Day in California last March, we wired 4,000 schools and touched off this wave of interest in other states,'' Gage said. Conceived last year by Silicon Valley executives, Net Day quickly evolved into a grass-roots effort to get local volunteers to string the cables for Internet access in California public schools. For the cost of a $350 wiring kit per school, about 4,000 schools were able to link at least five classrooms and a library during the March Net Day, Gage said. Volunteers organized themselves through a Web site (www.netday96.com). California's Net Day worked so well, other states followed suit for this fall's effort.

WEB LINKS

COUNTRY CONNECTION: If you are searching for information from a particular country, then the eDirectory (http://www.edirectory.com/) is for you. This mega-site is so easy to use: Clicking on the country's name takes the user to a page that lists search engines specific to it. Though there are no descriptions of the scope of these indexes, you will often find that the results are more fruitful than those offered by the usual US-based search engines.

TEXTBOOK TRADE: The Student Market Book Exchange (http://www.studentmkt.com) allows American university students to post information about textbooks they'd like to sell, trade or buy. The site allows people to browse through a list of 300 book titles, and find out what is offered by students at their own school. Registration is free. On-line forms let users search for books by subject area, title, edition, and even the condition of the book in question.

MAC MAGIC: If you've got Internet access, help for your Mac is never too far away. The Internet, if nothing else, is a bottomless well of information about computers. The best place to start is Apple Computer itself. It maintains an extensive library of technical help called the Apple Support and Information Web. You'll find it at http://www.info.apple.com. Another invaluable troubleshooting library is the Complete Conflict Compendium. You'll find it at http://www.quillserv.com/www/c3/c3.html.If you want a direct answer, then try the Hmmm Zone Web page. You'll find it at http://www.quillserv.com/newhmmm/hmmm.html. At the Hmmm Zone, you can post a description of your problem. It's not unusual for some reader of the page to have experienced - and solved - the same problem. Typically, you'll get a response in less than 48 hours.