### Merging content and application
Example: Combining two CGI services

## Enter your email address to receive email if Rainer Poertner posts anything new on Usenet:

###

<form method="GET" action="http://www.netmind.com/cgi-bin/uncgi/url-mind">
Enter your email address to receive email if Rainer Poertner posts anything new on Usenet:
<input type=text size=40 name="required-email">
<input type=hidden value="http://dejanews.dejanews.com/cgi-bin/dnauthor-profile.tcl?author=72143.2726@compuserve.com%20(Rainer%20Poertner)" name=url>
<input type=submit value="Register"> </form> While it's amusing to know you'll receive email if Rainer posts again, my real purpose here was to demonstrate one of the cool things that are possible because of the web's Common Gateway Interface (CGI). In this case, I've combined DejaNews (CGI method=GET access to a .tcl script running under Apache/1.0.3) with the NetMind URL-minder (CGI method=POST to a machine running NCSA/1.5). This is distributed computation, folks! And it's available today, using utterly simple tools: I suspect that most of what developers think they need ActiveX or DCOM or even Java for, they could be doing with some silly CGI script (server) and an HTML form (client).

By the way, notice that Apache/1.0.3 thing above. This is a link to a service that will tell you what web server a particular site is running. The URL looks like this:
`<A HREF="http://www.netcraft.co.uk/cgi-bin/Survey/whats?host=dejanews.dejanews.com&port=80">`.
It's just a standard hypertext link, but it's not to a static document; it's a link to the output from a process running on an another machine (in this case in the UK, running some server).

These days, I'm working a lot with Win-CGI. You might want to look at some of my Win-CGI experiments. NOTE: this web site is on my laptop, so it's not always online!

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