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Alien Travel Guide (ATG) was developed by Zeuter Development Corporation as an educational aid for Canadian schools. Between 1995 and 1997, financial assistance was generously provided by FedNor and Northern Ontario Heritage Fund Corporation. ATG is now available worldwide on CDROM or through access to our Web Site or those of our partners. For more information, contact us at help@alientravelguide.com.

ATG was designed to be a comprehensive, attactive, accurate, hyperlinked & expandable repository of information - created by students for students. ATG "topics" are organized by standard subject areas of Art, Science, Geography and History. We find this organization is a complete one with the following acknowledgements:

"Art" applies to the creative thought commonly attributed to the right brain.
"Science" applies to the factual knowledge commonly attributed to the left brain.
"Geography" applies to any three-dimensional space, on or off the planet.
"History" applies to any event occurring since the beginning of time.

Thus, anything which exists can be assigned a place in three-dimensional space and time. As well, any thing which does not exist, is, by process of elimination, thought, emanating from either the left brain or the right, speaking colloquially. For example, the History section documents events related to matters of thought, such as Philosophy, Religion and Language, as well as Government, Sport and Economics.

While under development, the target age group was Grade 9. A minimum of "million-dollar" words and complex concepts have been employed except where necessary and then only when followed by a complete explanation. A search tool and index are provided to aid in finding the topic of interest quickly and efficiently.

There are five components to each ATG Web Page.

1) Title: The title describes the name of the topic. Topics are arranged in a logical hierarchy.

Click the Icons to navigate topics. The Home Page Icon looks like Zippy the Pinhead, with apologies to Bill Griffith. The Index Icon looks like a book. For related topics, click the Left and Right Arrows whereas clicking the Up Arrow climbs out of the current topic.

2) Picture: Each topic is illustrated with a picture which reinforces the present topic. In some instances, a short video clip may be viewed or audio samples may also be available. Each picture has an associated source or credit. Click the picture to see the picture credit or to play any audio or video provided.

3) Story: The story describes the topic of interest.

4) Credit: The author of each topic is credited to assure the highest quality of information content. Click the link in the [square brackets] to see the author of the present topic.

5) Bibliography: The author of each topic provides a reference for the content provided. Click the link in the {brace brackets} to see what reference was used by the author and/or further reading recommended for the present topic.

The idea for ATG stemmed from a software program released in 1993 called Personal Animator for DOS, written by Nick Slater of Zeuter Development Corporation. Personal Animator allowed users to animate three dimensional objects of their own design including images, text and sound. The unique aspect of Personal Animator was that it allowed the user to set attributes of mass and charge to any object, effectively simulating planetary, molecular and atomic systems to a high degree of accuracy. The objective of Personal Animator was for the user to incur greater understanding of the natural processes which effect all known physical objects. The mere existence of Personal Animator is a testimony to the underlying simplicity of the natural forces of the universe and reveals how complex behaviour can rise from a fairly simple foundation.

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