If the word "wymyn" causes you to go ballistic - er, into aggression enhancement mode, then you can break a wind of politically incorrect relief as you read about Heather's trip to the zoo. One of her two mommies explains the zoo in politically correct terms, while Heather cuts through the bovine waste products and gets to the heart of the matter. You'll find plenty of superb animal photos and a few chuckles, as well as additional sarcastic links. "http://www-swiss.ai.mit.edu/zoo/heather-has-two-mommies.html"
It had to happen sooner or later. We've become so accustomed to a lack of face-to-face intimacy that now you can even pay your final respects over the Net. At Simplex Knowledge Co.'s Cybermourn site, you can see via closed-circuit camera a new image of the deceased and company every 30 seconds. Cybermourners will be able to send flowers, shiva baskets, and sympathy cards, and can even arrange to have prayers said. A live chat between cybermourners and anyone at the funeral who feels up to facing a keyboard can be conducted in another frame. OK, the idea has some merit to it, but check out the wildly inappropriate cheerful avatars for your chat session. "http://www.skc.com/cybermourn/index.html"
"Jeffrey Zeldman Presents" is an ambitious title for a home page, but a visit here will not disappoint. The site hosts an incredible array of audio and video pleasures presented with sophisticated and elegant design. For starters, there are plenty of QuickTime movies and GIF animations that are not merely irritating tricks but endeavor to be actual art. Web designers can feast on design tips, Q&A ("Ask Doctor Web"), pointers to resources and tools, a discussion of the creation of the "Batman Forever" Web site, and a free collection of backgrounds, textures, and icons. You also get paintings by Zeldman's talented girlfriend, an unusual (be forewarned) adult section, and original music clips. Come be amazed and entertained. "http://www.zeldman.com/"
"Batman, the Animated Series" (a.k.a. "Batman TAS") gives you yet another version of the batty bemasked marvel... as if Adam West, Michael Keaton, Val Kilmer, George Clooney, and all the other cartoon and comic book figures aren't enough. At any rate, this nicely organized Batman TAS encyclopedia site pays homage to those dark, mysterious Bat-characters from this television series, with in-depth bios of heros and villains alike, including Harley Quinn, Commissioner Gordon, Poison Ivy, Joker, and Two-Face. You'll also find video captures from the show. It's a spooky but safe enough place for brave kids to visit. "http://www.cmgnet.com/~ames/"
Speaking of things dark and gothic, the Cure's house on the Web has all the modern conveniences, and if you're lucky, you might bump into a friendly Cure member ready to chat in the conservatory. Go to the kitchen and find out how to make Robert Smith's favorite prawn curry. Hear official bootlegs (huh?) and watch videos in the lounge, or grafitti the bathroom (we did!). Of course you can buy stuff, and be patient while they move in properly, but this is good real estate. Wonder what the neighbors think. "http://www.thecure.com/"
Weird things that fly, or almost fly, are featured here. You can find out where to get a book on building your own hovercraft or simply enjoy browsing the images and info on rocket belts, jet packs, flying platforms, one-man helicopters, and more. You can see pictures of a real flying saucer, the Avrocar experimental craft. Other amazing images include flying cars and functional flying platforms supporting people. "http://www.prysm.com/~jnuts/"
Veronica, Rita, Ingrid, and Greta - they're all here in glorious posed stills, with home pages and personal tidbits. The well documented site takes a generally respectful tone, except when referring to Frances Farmer as a "babe". All the stars are here, as well as cheesecake shots of the inimitable Mamie Van Doren and Jane Russell. Dazzling. "http://users.deltanet.com/users/dstickne/"
The topic is tea. Chinese tea. Indian tea. Tea that's healthy. You name it, if it's even remotely related to tea, the Tea Man can tell you about it. This easy-to-swallow newsletter may be just what you need to relax after a long, hard day. Ah, the variety. The rituals. The amazing tea facts. Do stop by. "http://www.teatalk.com/explorer/index.html"
Hawthorne Lane is a toney restaurant in central SoMa, San Francisco, that comes from the same stock as Chez Panisse. So it's no surprise its Web site has an elegant logo and articles about growing heirloom tomatoes. In fact, each item on the menu gets it own full text paragraph. The nice thing here is the opportunity to click a recipe and make the mouth-watering dish for yourself. Well worth bookmarking for those times when you need to impress the guests. "http://www.hawthornelane.com/hawthornelane/"
Are you a noodle nerd? Are styrofoam cups of petrified noodles your idea of a major food group? Here's the Web site of your food dreams, or nightmares. You can read about the inventor of Top Ramen instant noodles, learn how to prevent "noodle breakage", and view the famous (oh, really?) Cup Noodles billboard in Times Square. If you're truly a gourmet, don't miss the unbelievable recipes for delicacies made with Top Ramen. How about Top Ramen Chicken Noodle Strudel, for example, made with pineapple, cornstarch, red pepper, broccoli, and chicken flavor Top Ramen? Yummm. "http://www.nissinfoods.com/"
HYPNOTIZE YOURSELF ON THE INTERNET
No, not the standard way, in which you stare at your monitor long enough to fall asleep, dropping your nose on your keyboard and filling your screen with "hhhhhhhh...." This site is easy to navigate and provides simple directions for anyone who wants to use self-hypnosis to improve their life. There is a special section for teachers and students for overcoming test anxiety but all can learn to make personal and practical use of self-hypnosis. You can even take a mini-vacation by using the information provided. The site author, has included a professional history and a short history of hypnotism. "http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/hypnotism/"
The romance of the hobo takes a bit of a beating - as did, apparently, a good number of hobos - in David Barnes's audio interviews of 83-year-old Bob Zimmerman of Peru, Indiana. Zimmerman, who rode the rails during the Great Depression, here relates tales of the simple acts of kindness that kept him and his buddies alive and the anything-but-kind acts of the freight yard "bulls" hired by the railways to keep the hobos at bay. Zimmerman's a decent raconteur, but the combination of low-quality recordings (you'll need TrueSpeech to play the selections) and Barnes's interjections make listening something of a challenge. "http://www.fortwayne.infi.net/~dbarnes/hobo/hobo.html"
VIRTUAL DAYDREAMS OF THE GREAT OUTDOORS
Created with netsurfers in mind, Nature Break is a site with virtual outdoor adventure for those of us who are too desk-bound to get out there for real. All of this relaxation is brought to you by the wonders of QTVR. Look around Diablo Canyon, for example, imagine yourself there, and feel restored. Of course, the rest you can get while waiting for each movie to download over a dial-up line is probably pretty beneficial too. "http://naturebreak.com/"
LUNATIC TO TRY TO BIKE AROUND WORLD IN A MONTH
Nick Sanders is Mr. Determined. Despite a dislocated ankle, extreme exhaustion, and really crappy weather, he managed to ride his motorcycle almost the length of the Americas in 35 days, only to have snow bungle the final steps of a complete journey. At one point, he was so tired he fell of his bike and couldn't pick it up again. You can follow Sanders's agony online, and prepare to do it again as he's off in October on the Mobil Around the World Challenge. It will all be documented, it will raise money for charity, but it will not, apparently, demystify the answer to the question, "Why?" "http://www.mobilchallenge.ihost.com/index.html"
If you've always wanted to sail solo around the world or dreamed of a similar extended trip, point your browser to Global Online Adventure Learning (GOALS). Here you'll find accounts of sailors who've tackled or are tackling the ultimate in daring, endurance, and skill. Besides background on the sailors and their vessels, this site keeps you posted on their recent or current progress with explodable maps, journal entries, pictures, and statistics. There's also a virtual yacht club, in case you want to learn to tie knots or communicate with other surfers, and a nice photo gallery. Click here, matey. "http://goals.com/"
Trendy, useful, and pure Web: that's "Yahoo! Los Angeles", sister of "Yahoo! San Francisco" and "Yahoo! New York". Web sites with local focus are coming on strong, and this is one of the biggest and best. What Yahoo did to organize the Web it's doing for LA with its famously easy-to-grasp categorization by subject. Business, classifieds, news, maps, show biz, sports, recreation, and more and more make you wonder why anyone on the Web will ever buy a travel guide again. Every major city should have something like this and eventually probably will. "http://la.yahoo.com/"
Who needs a travel service when your tour guide lives at your destination and offers to arrange your itinerary by e-mail? Rob Kay promotes his own services as well as the fabled beauty of Fiji with his Fiji Islands Guide, a site as low key as the land it describes with concision and graphic economy. His FAQs page takes the tone of a travel brochure but his tidbits are on the money. You'd expect that of a former journalist. This guide does not have Fodor's glitz, but then, paradise never needed glitz. The Endless Surfing page refers to the real thing. Sigh. "http://www.fijiguide.com/"
Don't go looking for a welcome from Fidel at CubaNet. The look of the site is slick, the content rich, and the politics expatriate. Though a self-proclaimed "non-partisan Internet project", CubaNet does focus on the "underground democracy movement" in Cuba, and aims to skirt government censorship with a bit of help from the Web. That said, CubaNet is, if not non-partisan, at least non-polemical. The site includes an encyclopedia of Cuban music and music-makers (text only, though), selected art by Cuban artists, a photo album, and daily news updates from Cuba in English and Spanish. The art of dissident artists and cigar labels are also highlighted. The site hosts an enormous list of like-minded sites in both English and Spanish. "http://www.netpoint.net/~cubanet/"
US CONSUMER PRODUCT SAFETY COMMISSION If you want to get the latest scoop on potentially dangerous products to protect yourself and your family, or if you're simply curious, you can get the facts direct from this US government agency. The site includes business and consumer issues and more. "http://cpsc.gov/"
A well designed search site for finding e-mail lists for the discussion of special interest topics. You can choose from 14 major categories, or use the search engine to find a mailing list about almost anything. "http://www.liszt.com/"
THIS IS A TEST; THIS IS ONLY A TEST...
Want to know your IQ? Eager to reveal your personality type? Or maybe you want to see if you'd be a good entrepreneur. This testy Web site has links to online tests for the taking. "http://www.2h.com/indexnu.htm"
Very simply, if it has anything at all to do with the US Navy, it's here. "http://www.ghgcorp.com/abeaupre/al5-navy.htm"
Looking for something? Beacoup Search Engines has links to more than 450 search engines arranged in 14 categories. With links to everything from the Turkish "Tum Turkiye Tarayicisi" to the GenBank biotechnology search engine, something's bound to help. "http://pacific.discover.net/~dansyr/engines.html"
WHAT TO WATCH WHEN YOU WATCH THE WEB
When you need that one item to convince your hot date that netsurfing is more fun than dinner and a movie or even TV, you might try this list of over 400 Web-cams. Categorized for your sanity. "http://www.dreamscape.com/frankvad/cams.html"
CLOWN HALL OF FAME AND RESEARCH CENTER
No joke. The Clown Hall of Fame and Research Center has lots of great clown stuff and links, but "research center"? What do they study, how many clowns fit in a circus car? Who do these clowns think they are? "http://www.webdom.com/chof/"
Like skiing? Like snowboarding? Like it so much, you'll visit a site devoted to them in September? If so, hyperski over to Hyperski. And we don't want no guff from anyone who can see snow outside their window right now. "http://www.hyperski.com/"
You can advertise for free anything from horses to real estate to employment at this dreamy site for private and commerical sales. Ads are divided by category and last for 30 days. You can make use of the FreeChat offer for final negotiations and live auctions. "http://www.hitchhikers.net/classifieds/index.shtml"
Lots of radio stations broadcast on the Net now. Of course, you have to spin your virtual dial to find something to your liking. Now with "The DJ" free software for Win95 (and a 28.8 kbps modem) you have access to continuous music delivered via RealAudio. With over 40 channels such as Folk, Punk, R&B, etc., you're bound to find something to soak up the bandwidth at work. The interface looks like a car radio and even has pre-set buttons for your favorite channels. Don't have Win95? Go to the Web site and enjoy the same features. Now that RealAudio 3.0, with superb stereo sound, has been released, this may be the first killer sound app on the Net. The DJ: "http://www.thedj.com/" RealAudio: "http://www.realaudio.com/"
Are you enamored of Web Search Engines? Wouldn't it be great if you could search your own documents the same way? You can, with Digital's "AltaVista Search My Computer Private eXtension" free beta software for Win95. Using the same technology as Digital's excellent public engine, you can index and search your hard disk. The software also recognizes both Microsoft Exchange and Eudora mailboxes, which can be handy if you are using Eudora Light with its lame one-at-a-time search capabilities. Results are displayed in a table that lets take a quick peek or launch an application. The same desktop interface allows you to search the Web without launching your browser. The downside to this is the huge index files, which appear to be about half the size of the indexed data. If you've got the spare space, though, it's worth it - this baby is fast. Alta Vista: "http://www.altavista.digital.com/" eXtension: "http://altavista.software.digital.com/products/search/nfintro.htm"
The staff at the Clicked shareware emporium staff is a little peeved at our review in NSD 2.28. We said they use a "blatant copy of the Microsoft site format for listing files". In fact, the Clicked folks designed their site before Microsoft adopted a similar look. And a Mac version is in the works. "http://www.clicked.com/shareware/"
Back in our infancy (NSD 0.7), we covered Vermont Teddy Bears. In our growing years (NSD 1.31), we went for the serious and amusing commentary of the Paine News. And as an adult Net entity (NSD 2.28), we liked David Siegel's graphics, fonts, and snotty home page. They've all since moved. Bears: "http://www.vtbear.com/" Paine: "http://painenews.com/" Siegel: "http://www.dsiegel.com/"
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