| Yahoo Goes Chinese |
| Viagra - Nope, Not Us, Don't Need It |
| A First in Online Terrorism |
| The History of Mother's Day |
| Web Users Increase by 1.6 Million Since January |
| Bid on a Porsche |
| Most Beautiful Person: Hank the Angry, Drunken Dwarf |
| Letters and Credibility |
| Sound from Wax and Tin |
| We Like Haitian Art |
| Insightful, Plainly Written Film Reviews |
| The Hollywood Stock Exchange |
| Wok This Way |
| Smithsonian Revelation |
| Southwestern Archeology Has Done the Digging for You |
| InteliHealth's Intelligent Health Knowledge |
| Rosemary Fisher Tells You What to Eat |
| More Good Dino Stuff |
| Travel Afar to Do Good |
| BOOK REVIEWS |
| LETTERS TO THE EDITOR |
| Contact and Subscription Information |
| Credits |
BREAKING SURF
The amazing run-up on Yahoo stock over the past year may turn out to be justified after all. Yahoo has just launched two Chinese versions of its site, in the major dialects used in China and Hong Kong/Taiwan. The sites appear to be clones of Yahoo with extra Asian content - however, you'll need to have Chinese characters enabled to make sense of the pages. Yahoo is reportedly talking to Chinese officials about a more formal relationship, important because of strict official controls on Net content and access in that country. If Yahoo can capture that immense Asian market in its formative stages, they will indeed be worth seriously big money.http://chinese.yahoo.com/
http://gbchinese.yahoo.com/
Viagra - Nope, Not Us, Don't Need It
The Village Voice headline, ripe with possibility, reads "Village Voice Interviews New Yorkers on Viagra" - just one of the amusing moments spawned by the supersaturation of the media with word of the latest pecker picker-upper. Another triviality is Mother Jones's "Provocative Prescriptions" which explains how other impotence drugs such as Vasomax and Caverject were named. The page also announces the winner of a contest to name a fictional new impotence drug. The real scoop can be had at FDA Viagra Information Page.Village Voice: http://www.villagevoice.com/ink/lee-1.shtml
Mother Jones: http://www.motherjones.com/sideshow/umansky.html
FDA: http://www.fda.gov/cder/news/viagra.htm
http://www.news.com/News/Item/0,4,21779,00.html?st.ne.1.head
The first documented holiday honoring motherhood, or at least a specific mother, was the Greek spring festival in honor of Rhea, wife of Cronus and mother of the gods. The more recent history of the theme has its own touch of Greek drama. Anna Jarvis, originator of the official Mother's Day, died childless. Bitter enough about the commercialization of her holiday to file a lawsuit trying to stop the 1923 Mother's Day festival, she was arrested for disrupting a war mothers' convention. Two complementary sites provide other interesting Mother's Day tidbits. Holly Hildebrand offers more info about Jarvis, while the Taste Sensations site focuses on the US and English history of the holiday. For a lighter side of motherhood, try "You know you're a mother when...". Holly: Ta
http://www.chron.com/content/interactive/special/holidays/97/mom/history.html
ste: http://www.shoptheplaza.com/taste/mothers.html
You Know: http://camelot.shadowlink.net/~jill/knowmom.html
Web Users Increase by 1.6 Million Since January
According to a recent Relevant Knowledge survey, Web users now number over 57 million. The survey also reveals that the online male/female ratio continues to approach parity: 56% male vs. 44% female. Other interesting tidbits include that 39% of the US online population falls between the ages of 18-34, an age group that makes up only 30% of the US population. Furthermore, 51% of Web users have college degrees versus 24% in the general US population.http://www.relevantknowledge.com/Press/release.html
http://www.ubid.com/
ONLINE CULTURE
Most Beautiful Person: Hank the Angry, Drunken Dwarf
Trust the Net to put mainstream media in its place. People Magazine is running its annual Most Beautiful People poll online, and sure enough the field is packed with the usual Hollywood suspects. But wait, who's that leading the pack? None other than Hank the Angry, Drunken Dwarf, with about 20 times the votes of the current runner-up, boat-boy Leonardo DiCaprio. It's just possible - barely - that the voting is slightly skewed because Howard Stern has been promoting the poll and Hank the Angry, Drunken Dwarf on his insanely popular radio show. Don't get your hopes up for Hank, though: "The Online Beauty Poll has no influence on the editorial decisions People Magazine makes in selecting its Fifty Most Beautiful."http://www.pathfinder.com/people/50most/1998/vote/index.html
We've prepared an installment of our new, improved Letters to the Editor (see the Letter of the Month). The page starts off with a brief discussion of the credibility of Web sites and a list of resources that deal with the topic. This collection features more deep looks into the mind of our editor than usual, so bring your safety goggles.
http://www.netsurf.com/nsd/letters/letter.04.14.html
ARTS AND ENTERTAINMENT
You might expect a site on the history of phonographs to cover 33-rpm record albums. This site, however, focuses on the very first audio recording media, tinfoil and wax cylinders. Phonographs played these cylinders something like the way a music box plays. The site's owner, Glenn Sage, has all sorts of great information on these early recordings, from how to clean those dirty wax cylinders in Grandma's attic to where you can hear live samples. Glenn's got some samples on his site, where a Cylinder of the Month feature highlights different two-minute recordings. If you don't want to wait for the download, you can print out an order form to buy the samples on CD, too.http://www.tinfoil.com/
We confess to knowing little about Haitian art, but we know what we like, and Haitian art makes the grade. Its distinctive style originated when unschooled artists created a school of their own. The look is unmistakable, a sort of visual equivalent of the magical realism of Mexican and South American literature. More than that, there's a unique clarity in the light and bold colors. Claude Dambreville's studies in female form seem to glide off the canvas, and animal paintings hint at but never give in to anthropomorphism. Every inch of canvas is crowded, yet there's no mistaking the focal point. Yes. We like Haitian art very much.
http://www.medalia.net/
Insightful, Plainly Written Film Reviews
Cutting, entertaining, and original film reviews are hard to find. All TV and newspaper critics seem to say the same things about a film - and they all either love it or hate it. For an intensely personal but meaningful look at films, try the Reactions section of 24 Frames Per Second. Rather than the sweeping generalizations or erudite comparisons with obscure films from the past that professional reviews so often contain, these are genuinely personal and down-to-earth reactions. The site also offers a wealth of information about past and present films, the world of Hollywood and the sometimes surprising favorite films of site visitors.http://www.24framespersecond.com/
If you love film and adore money matters, then tune to the Hollywood Stock Exchange. This cleverly designed Web site lets you trade virtual dollars in MovieStocks. The stocks represent real (not virtual) movies, and register a value derived from "buzz and box office". You can purchase StarBonds of actors from triple-A superstars to C-grade aspirants. You have to set up an account before you start trading.
http://www.hsx.com/
Chopstix.co.uk is the place to go if you want info on Chinese and Oriental edibles. Browse interviews with Chinese cookery experts, skim a tasty variety of recipes, and find help if you want to do the wok thing but don't know how.
http://www.chopstix.co.uk/
BOOKS & E-ZINES
Haunting, evocative, and quintessentially professional, this photographic e-zine is designed by photojournalists for photojournalists, but all can enjoy at least the features. Not the glamor job the uninitiated might assume it to be, photojournalism has captured this century in images of spectacular impact and importance. Walk through Requiem, an exhibition of Vietnam War journalists killed in action, and view the last frame that Robert Capa snapped before stepping on a land mine. Watch Douglas MacArthur stepping ashore at the Philippines, or see the Pope in Cuba on his recent visit. Rich with RealAudio commentary, on-the-spot descriptions, and QuickTime video, this multimedia Web site holds interest for everyone.http://digitaljournalist.org/
We don't feel qualified to give a thumbs up or thumbs down to the Columbia Journalism Review - or even to its very crisp Web site. All we can really do is give you the URL and tell you that it's generous to a fault in the content it offers surfers. When we looked, the cover stories examined media's role in the salacious and unremitting Clinton-Lewinsky-Jones-Whitewater-travel-office-filegate saga. In separate stories, CJR considers what's up with two media moguls, Rupert Murdoch and Conrad Black, neither of them American. It writes seriously about values and ethics in journalism. If you're prepared to contemplate journalism beyond sound bites, you'll appreciate CJR's class act. We probably should have bookmarked it before; the oversight has been corrected.
http://www.cjr.org/
Never ones to forego an eye-catching headline, we'll happily cover this arrestingly named set of sites - and not just for name but for content. Several California book stores have banded together to promote the latest by Elizabeth Wurtzel, author of "Prozac Nation". Her new book, a rumination on the history of manipulative female behavior, has an equally evocative title: "Bitch: In Praise of Difficult Women". Each bookstore offers different excerpts from the book and other material such as Wurtzel's working notes - some of which is exclusive. Two catchy quotes from the author should whet your appetite for the book: "Quite simply, the bitch role offers women the only option they have to be both powerful and sexy; all other representations of powerful women essentially come down to Margaret Thatcher and Golda Meir," and "Feminist writing has become dry, I want to make it wet again."
Booksmith: http://www.booksmith.com/bitch.html
Printer: http://www.pibooks.com/wurtzel/index.html
Cody's: http://www.codysbooks.com/bitch.html
Capitola Book Cafe: http://www.cruzio.com/~bookcafe/bitch.html
Everybody seems to offer their own "create your own personalized front page" server running now, but CRAYON was doing it while those sites were still in diapers. Our reviewer first made her own CRAYON newspaper in 1995 and she thought it was the best thing on the Internet since VAX. When you buy a paper, the first thing you do is sort through and pull out for recycling all the sections you're never going to read. CRAYON works the same way. Tell it what you like and it will deliver a single customized news page for your perusal. If you decide to print it out, you can spill coffee on it, just like your regular paper.
http://crayon.net/
The A-List Subscription Machine
Multimedia Marketing Group, MMG to us publishing types whom the company shotguns with press releases, has released a nifty piece of Windows software. The software is a little app that lists and briefly describes 100 of what they consider to be the best e-zines on the Net. Best of all, it has each e-zine's subscription protocol built right in, so that should you wish to subscribe to, oh say, Netsurfer Digest, just click on its name and away you go with an easy dialogue box. Not for everybody, but kinda nifty.http://www.mmgco.com/alist/
Fiction Recommendation Engine and Bookstore
At this site with a Great Library of Alexandria theme, a virtual librarian greets you and asks your opinion about a long list of book titles. The slickly configured process lets you easily express your opinion of several hundred books in about ten minutes. The Librarian digests this information, then produces a list of books that seem to be the kind you would enjoy reading. Should you wish, you can buy books and download them from the site. You can find even unusual, rare, and out-of-print books with the efficient search engine. This unique approach, well presented and personalized, puts this site a step above most online bookstores.http://www.alexlit.com/
This humongous index contains links to, literally, a world of online newspapers, magazines, and other publications. The site is organized by country and subject (e.g. education, entertainment). You get more than 2,000 links to 170 countries. The site boasts that "This service is the Brazilian number one and one of the best of the world!!!" We can't vouch for Brazil, but we liked it.
http://www.classweb.net/webpress.htm
Search for Magazines, Very Old and New
Ever wonder where old Time magazines go to? DrMag has them, along with a whole bundle of old and new magazines, journals, and newsletters from around the world. Most fascinating is the Attic, where you can find pubs from the beginning of time - well, since magazines began, anyway, around 334 years ago. Do a DrMag search, or subscribe to your favorites through the site.http://www.drmag.com/attic/attic.cfm
SURFING SCIENCE
The hip and whizzy Revealing Things is the first Smithsonian exhibition to be created specifically for the Internet. You navigate the site via Thinkmap, a Java application that displays the relationships between different objects - metaphorically apt, for the site focuses on relationships and how you fit into the world. Think of a hybrid of James Burke's Connections and the Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon Web site. Users should have a decent online connection and moderately modern browser for maximum enjoyment.http://www.si.edu/revealingthings/
Southwestern Archeology Has Done the Digging for You
Southwestern Archeology isn't in and of itself a large site, but what it lacks in primary resources it more than makes up for in secondary ones. The site designers put a lot of thought into selecting the scores of links. Some are perhaps a bit text heavy for the casual surfer, but none that we visited seemed too technical for people with even the most casual interest in the archeology of the American southwest. Links lead to some of the most famous archeological subjects - the Hopi, for instance - and you'll find the expected references to Clovis sites and kuchina dolls, but pleasant surprises include sites examining Black and Jewish settlement and contribution, one on ghost towns, and an explanation of atlatl technology. This is one of the most varied and highest quality set of links that we've seen on any subject, and we recommend it highly.http://www.swanet.org/
InteliHealth's Intelligent Health Knowledge
InteliHealth is a personal and public health megasite with something for everyone, including news, a searchable drug database, and an excellent Adult Health Advisor that provides background (without graphics, alas) on anatomy and scads of diseases and abnormalities. The electronic library offers access to nearly a million pages of "action-oriented" health info. But can you trust what you find here? Johns Hopkins University and Aetna Healthcare sponsor the site and info comes from the National Institutes of Health, National Health Council, and United States Pharmacopeia - folks in the field with superb reputations. For the heck of it, we put InteliHealth to the test with a search on "sex" and were fascinated by hits such as "The Prostate: What Women Should Know" and "Men's Brains Shrink Faster Than Women's."http://www.intellihealth.com/
Rosemary Fisher Tells You What to Eat
You know you're visiting a personal site the moment you read this page's title: "Healthy Eating to Prevent/Reverse Osteoporosis, Heart Disease, Cancer and Dementia (Alzheimer's)." Whew! At age 79, cookbook author Rosemary Fisher claims to know a thing or two about what you ought and what you ought not to put in your body, and, in large type for older eyes, offers online advice to help others "rebuild or preserve their good health by strategic dietary modification." Here you'll find sample recipes from Rosemary's books along with mini-essays on the importance of specific foods and nutrients. The recipes include salmon mousse, pineapple cheese, cottage cheese pancakes, "Impossible Turkey Pie", "pudding moose," and other Fisher adaptations and originals.http://www2.rpa.net/~rcfisher/
These two dino sites will delight kids of all ages. The Hairy Museum of Natural History (HMNH) features online trading cards, a new one each week focusing on a single dinosaur species. We really wish there were an archive of past cards, but one is promised. Mike Keesey's pages present striking art in an easily navigated format. We didn't count, but there appear to be hundreds of images ranging from digital 3-D to pencil drawings.
HMNH: http://www.io.com/~mwalk/hmnh/hmnhmain.html
Keesey: http://www.gl.umbc.edu/~tkeese1/dinosaur/
COMMUNITY SUPPORT
The EcoVolunteers Web page links people who want to travel to work on scientific research, conservations, and education projects with many foundation-based projects looking for participants. Projects range from reintroducing wild horses to the Mongolian steppe to rescuing chimpanzees in Sierra Leone. Travel arrangements are made by the individual; other than that, the cost of participating is low. The simple interface lets you choose by location, species, or type of work.http://www.ecovolunteer.org/