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OUR AFFILIATE RECOMMENDATIONS
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Hot+Cold Snack Box
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A versatile, personal electronic mini "fridge" keeps drinks and snacks
cold or hot. Pop one on your desk and no more sharing the corporate
fridge and having your bananas smell like soy sauce because your
co-workers are into Chow Mein.
RoboCub Walking Talking Robot with Wireless Remote Control
Sharper Image
Walks, talks and sings "I'm a little robot, da-da-da...". The eyes and
mouth light up as it spouts dozens of random phrases. What's not to like?
Holiday Dinner Wine Package
Wine.com
Six decent wines that are sure to please everyone during your holiday dinner,
along with up to 14 recipe cards, a wine aroma wheel, a food and wine
pairing pocket guide and a varietal/main dish advisor. An easy and affordable
way to avoid having to make wine choices for your holiday meal.
Millenium Truffle Bars
Bodega Chocolates
Mmmmmmm, truffles.... They're expensive, but really, really delicious.
Handspring Visor Edge
Handspring
It's the thinnest, coolest Palm OS PDA on the market. Plenty of power
and really easy to stuff in your shirt pocket or purse, something you
can't always easily do with the other PDAs. No business person or student
should be without one these days. Expandable too.
Scooter Mania Sweeps The Country!
BREAKING SURF
For the tenth anniversary of the first American Web page, CNET presents a portrait of the Internet in triptych, with commentary by three Web experts. Developer Jeffrey Zeldman of the (ex-) Web Standards Project reviews the struggle to establish a system of standard Web coding for interoperability between sites and browsers, and Webby Award-founder Tiffany Shlain discusses the dotcom bust and the aftermath of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the World Wide Web, reminisces about designing the first Web protocols and predicts that the next Web revolution will be led by the Semantic Web, a system of organizing information for the sharing and processing of Web data across a variety of programs and applications.http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1005-201-8182805-0.html
Archiving Global Life and Net History
In his final Technology Review column, Michael Hawley of MIT waxes elegant on the idea of the Internet as a living memory repository. Citing such projects as the All Species Foundation's ambition to record and genetically sample every species on Earth, and the Internet Archive Web preservation effort, Hawley makes a case for the Internet as the logical engine for the collection and dissemination of human and natural record. "For the same reason a diffuse network can survive all but the most massively widespread catastrophes," he says. "Diffuse memories cannot be extinguished. A little like DNA, the bits reside in active vessels and can be transmitted into the future." The column is a nice read and a lucid distillation of a concept that has been hovering around the edges of Web awareness for the last couple of years.http://www.techreview.com/magazine/dec01/hawley.asp
Social Engineering Fundamentals
SecurityFocus has begun running a series of articles on how social engineering is used by hackers to gain access to computer networks. This first article broadly defines social engineering as "a hacker's clever manipulation of the natural human tendency to trust." The article details some of the techniques that go under the banner of social engineering and provides an extensive set of reference links. There's a lot of good reading here about the intersection of human psychology and computer security, which makes the series of interest even to those outside the security profession.http://securityfocus.com/infocus/1527
This provocative and profound article from Wired writer Steve Silberman notes a disturbing trend in the rising incidences of autism and Asperger's syndrome among families in Silicon Valley. Silberman starts with a bit of history on how the related disorders were first recognized, then quotes some startling statistics for their incidence in California, specifically in Santa Clara County. What follows is some informed speculation about the genetic underpinnings of autism and its relation to the high concentration of "geek" workers. Silberman notes that a recurring theme in autism case histories has been a fascination with highly organized systems and complex machines. The article bears on the whole phenomenon of "geek" culture.
Wired: http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/9.12/aspergers_pr.html
Autism Society of America: http://www.autism-society.org/
Playing video games, especially those that require surviving in surreal conditions, is an acquired taste. In this remarkable article about the difficulties involved in playing Alien Resurrection, Peter Olafson makes gaming accessible and intimate for those who don't play such games. Remarkably, Olafson displays an ability to make the reader just as tense and afraid as he was while playing and agonizing over the game. Those familiar with Orson Scott Card's novel, "Ender's Game", will recognize the feel of the Battle Room in this piece. One cannot help but think that by playing the game, Olafson has become a better soldier, able to scope out and kill aliens. Yes, it's only a game, but Olafson makes non-believers aware of why some people invest so much time in it.
http://www.robotstreetgang.com/article.php?sid=24&mode=&order=0
One-Man Broadband Wrecking Crew
There's a reason ISPs may be having financial trouble, and his name is Mike Masnick. Masnick has been booted off five ISPs in the last ten months and triggered abrupt changes in business direction for two others. "Hurricane Mike" now figures he's the broadband Bermuda Triangle. If the US government really wants to spread broadband throughout the nation, it should kick him out of the country, he suggests. The wreckage-strewn path of his quest for a fast connection includes RhythmsNet Connections, Web Connect, Covad, Sprint, and PacBell. By now, you've probably guessed the climax to this amusing (unless you're Masnick) tale. Yep, he signed up with AT&TAtHome and a month later - well, now we know the real reason ExciteAtHome fled to the welcoming embrace of bankruptcy. Be nervous about companies that talk about having a solid business and are working on contingency plans, Masnick cautions us. Amusingly, when we read the Salon article, we were greeted by a pop-up ad for Verizon high-speed Net service. We guess Verizon figures it's too big to suffer the Masnick effect.http://www.salon.com/tech/feature/2001/12/06/broadband_bermuda/index.html?x
An Interview with Lincoln Stein
Perl and bioinformatics are intimately connected, we learn in this interview with Lincoln Stein. Lincoln's a prolific bioinformatics researcher who thinks scientists should pick up programming skills and has certainly shown the way himself. His own programming initiation began with an innovation spurred, as it so often is, by lack of funds. As a grad student, Lincoln needed to run a gene assembly task but couldn't afford to use the department's VAX, so instead he built a program to do it on his own Mac. Later, he wrote the most widely used Perl module on the Web, CGI.pm, as a way to publish genome maps. He uses Perl because it effectively handles text, which is what protein sequences mainly are. The interview offers wide-ranging but brief views on gene patents, the role of proprietary software, the need for open-source code, and current frontiers in biological research. Stein will be speaking at the bioinformatics conference in Tucson, January 28-31. Northern readers may find themselves with a strange bioinformatics urge come then.http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/network/2001/12/07/stein.html
This odd story covers the logical extension of a common trend. Many recent computer viruses have been aggressively harvesting data from infected computers and sending them to various online destinations. The Badtrans-B worm spreads through Microsoft e-mail software and captures keystrokes from infected computers. It then sends the captured data to several e-mail addresses, including one belonging to an independent ISP called MonkeyBrains, which is owned by Rudy Rucker Jr., creator of the hilarious First Twins site. MonkeyBrains was overwhelmed with over 300,000 e-mails from infected computers, e-mails which contained pilfered passwords and other confidential data. The FBI contacted Rucker and wanted unrestricted access to the database of all those e-mails. Rucker, not happy about this, decided to provide a database that reveals whose machines have been compromised to the public, minus the password and keylogged data, for obvious legal and privacy reasons. Rotten.com broke the story.
BadTrans.B: http://www.sophos.com/virusinfo/analyses/w32badtransb.html
First Twins: http://www.thefirsttwins.com/
Database: http://badtrans.monkeybrains.net
Rotten.com: http://www.dailyrotten.com/articles/archive/189387.html
Sklyarov Rats on Company, Gets to Go Home
Dmitry Sklyarov is going home. The Russian programmer, famous for his arrest at the behest of Adobe Systems, was a poster child for all that was wrong with the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. The company he worked for marketed a program allowing users to unlock Adobe's eBook Reader software. Even Adobe asked for his release, once they heard the massive public outcry the arrest precipitated. Sklyarov is home, but he remains under court supervision while in Russia. When Adobe and Sklyarov's employer settle, he will be free of this affair entirely. Wired and CNET each have a take.Wired: http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,49122,00.html
CNET: http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1005-200-8171528.html
Major Pirating Crackdown Maybe Isn't So Major
"DOD" doesn't always stand for the Department of Defense. DrinkOrDie was a loose network of crackers at the focus of a worldwide crackdown recently. Why? Maybe because it hasn't been all that active in the last half-dozen years and so government authorities could call any action against it "successful" and define the term. Wired has the story, dismal though it is. Cyberworld, a Russian hacker site, has more input and provides a passel of links at the end. The success of the operation all rather depends upon what the definition of "is" is. DOD was such a small part of the warez forces out there that it takes real chutzpah to declare victory after something like this.Wired: http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,1282,49096,00.html
Cyberworld: http://www.cyberworld.ru/scenebusted/
Assuming you're still not tired of "How It All Went Bust" dotcom stories, you'll find this one quite engrossing. SiliconValley.com interviewed seven former employees of Webvan to find out what it was like to work there and to try to "carry out the company's grand mission of transforming the way Americans buy groceries." The stories come from line workers rather than the executive suite. Each worker gets about a page of space, which is really not enough. One senses that there is a good book waiting to be written from these workers' tales.
http://www.siliconvalley.com/news/special/webvan/
Lord of the Rings - The Lighter Side
The Lord of the Rings trilogy is set to be huge - and for the next three years at least. Name your movie series - Star Trek, Star Wars, Jurassic Park - they were successes, but we don't remember the level of hype we've been seeing with this Tolkien adaptation. This site takes the hype even further, featuring an interview from beyond the grave with author J.R.R. Tolkien. Gollum's Diary? Yep, they have that too, not to mention the Middle-Earth Mamas. By the way, if you're into scooters, check out the sidebar, then Get Over IT! They have a little of everything here, and well done, as long as it works on your browser/platform combination (we had a little trouble with Netscape 4.75 on Mac OS 9.1).http://www.ugo.com/channels/filmtv/features/middleearthguide/
Industry Music Subscription Service Launches
Pressplay's music subscription service has received a lot of press in advance of its launch this week. This joint venture of Sony Music Entertainment and Universal Music Group is an industry response to the Napster phenomenon, and of course will cost you money to keep those companies in limos. On the other hand, you can try the service for two weeks free (don't forget to opt out!) and test the access to 200 music streams and up to 20 downloads. The service will charge you between $10 and $25 per month for access to up to 1,000 music streams and up to 100 downloads a month. Pressplay doesn't allow downloading of songs to portable MP3 players, which, with the requirements for Windows and Windows Media Player (sorry, iPod fans), will limit the service's appeal to most digital music consumers.http://pressplay.com/
Microsoft Drives Platform for Privacy Preferences Standard
Have you downloaded Internet Explorer 6.0 from Microsoft? If so, you already know about the Platform for Privacy Preferences (P3P), a standard that will allow users to determine how much personal information their browsers will surrender while they surf the Net. In Internet Explorer 6.0, P3P is about cookies, those small pieces of code that sites leave on your hard drive for all sorts of reasons. The 6.0 version explicitly reveals a site's cookie policy to a visitor, as long as the site also embraces the P3P standard. Only a quarter of the 100 most-surfed sites have implemented P3P, but with 12% (and growing) of the surfing public using IE 6, sites are rushing to become P3P compliant. Regardless of the value of the information provided by P3P, Microsoft's market clout might make this standard widespread as many sites feel compelled to embrace it. BusinessWeek Online has more.P3P: http://www.w3.org/P3P/
BusinessWeek: http://www.businessweek.com/bwdaily/dnflash/dec2001/nf20011214_1114.htm
One Journalist's Take on the Microsoft Remedy
The US Department of Justice is accepting from the public comments on the Proposed Final Judgment that would settle the most recent of the government's Microsoft anti-trust suits. Nine states, and many informed observers, have rejected the proposed settlement as a slap on the wrist that does nothing to change the company's questionable practices. One of the more reasoned appeals comes from Scott Fulton (whose sometime nom de plume is D.F. Scott), a 17-year vet of tech journalism. He has posted his comment, which concludes that Microsoft must surrender all operating system code to an open Licensing Bureau that will then allow any company to build its own versions, to his Web site. Fulton presents a fascinating look at Microsoft practices over the years and his letter is worth a read if only for that. But read quickly - who knows how much longer AtHome will be hosting Web pages.http://members.home.net/dfscott3/011218%20DOJ%20Antitrust.PDF
Internet World - Yes, the Conference Still Exists
At the recent Internet World conference, e-commerce entities were conspicuous by their absence. Unlike years past, the floor was largely supported by storage and content-management companies. Streaming media also was widely represented, although Real Networks has been taking some heat in other forums over their latest implementations. Internet World's headline theme was "Internet World still draws a crowd" but, in the words of one participant, "you could roll a bowling ball down the floor and never hit anyone." The format here is upbeat, with business enterprise at center stage. Just how heavily that stage was occupied seems largely a matter of perspective. We found three perspectives, and never broke a sweat.Internet World: http://www.internetworld.com/events/fall2001/
CNET: http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1005-200-8170684.html
MSNBC: http://msnbc.com/news/671080.asp
Web Standards Project Buzzes Off
In 1998, the people behind the Web Standards Project (WaSP) decided to make it their business to persuade companies like Microsoft and Netscape that building increasingly incompatible browsers was threatening to turn the Web into "a tower of digital Babel". True to its name, WaSP employed a lot of buzz and a few well-placed barbs to finally convince reluctant browser-builders of the need to embrace uniform and open standards. And now, its job here is done. Kind of. Though WaSP says it is taking "a gentle leave of absence", its farewell message carries a distinct sting: "most of the web remains a Balkanized mess of non-valid markup", it says, because of developers "chained to the browser-quirk-oriented markup of the 1990s" and "clients who confuse the web with print". You can read their thoughts on the state of affairs today, and find a list of resources for Web standards recommendations on the project's home page.http://www.webstandards.org/
Despite a low response rate, questionable methodology, and a tone that is at times strident or incoherent, this long, detailed survey report powerfully exposes the bureaucratic and uncooperative ways the Bells act towards independent ISPs. According to the report, some 43% of ISPs don't offer or have stopped providing DSL service because the Bells make life so hard for them. One hoped-for outcome of telephony deregulation was that independents would, with commercial nimbleness and customer sensitivity, spur innovation, spread broadband access, and prod the big telephone companies towards a competitive approach to business. Seems like it hasn't quite worked out that way. The ISPs would like the Bells to treat them a little more like valuable clients and less like rivals. Instead, the depressing litany of obstacles, ineptitude, and callous indifference displayed by the Bells towards the ISPs sadly reflects the monopoly heritage that apparently still permeates their corporate culture.
http://www.newnetworks.com/FINALISPSURVEY2001.htm
Google Catalogs (sic) Launches Catalogue Search Service
Google has assembled a search service for over 1,500 mail-order catalogues. The service is still in the testing stage, and currently is free for catalogue retailers. It's an awesome collection of catalogues, ranging from 1-800-Flowers to Zany Brainy, covering just about anything which can be remotely delivered. A random sample includes biotech gear, exotic car accessories, socially aware tours of Europe, king/queen-size clothing, waterfowl supply ("Hey, Frank, we're low on grebes."), beauty products for older women, and - brimming with shocking possibilities - Martha by Mail. If you're the type, you'll have lots of fun browsing here.http://catalogs.google.com/
Microsoft Releases Security Patch Bundle for Internet Explorer
This bundle of security fixes addresses several serious bugs recently revealed in Internet Explorer. The Microsoft Security Bulletin has readable details. We strongly urge any of you using Internet Explorer to install these as soon as possible.http://www.microsoft.com/technet/treeview/default.asp?url=/technet/security/bulletin/MS01-058.asp
Microsoft Releases Security Patch for Win XP/98/Me
My but this is tiresome to write about. This one is bad enough that it's making the major media outlets. Any XP machine connected to the Net is basically wide open to any script kiddie who can read. Win 98 and Win Me are also affected through the file sharing facilities in each OS. A patch is available and if you don't install it you're just chum in the great digital ocean.Patch: http://microsoft.com/technet/treeview/default.asp?url=/technet/security/bulletin/MS01-059.asp
Wired: http://www.wired.com/news/business/0,1367,49301,00.html
Washington Post: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A7050-2001Dec20.html
We've managed to squeeze out another issue of our brand new NSR e-zine, so we want to remind you to subscribe if you're interested in those lovable hunks of metal. In this one, we have the AIBO car and robotic parking garages, robots at war, (both the fake and real kinds), smart dust, not-so-smart bugs, and low-cost color vision from Mindstorm. Oh yeah, did we mention the $25,000 replica of Robby the Robot from "Forbidden Planet"? We actually get a commission if you buy one of those babies from our link. Sweet.
NSR: http://www.netsurf.com/nsr/
Subscribe: http://www.netsurf.com/nsr/subscribe.html
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Netsurfer Books Holiday IssueSURFING SITES
For this issue, our last of 2001, we decided to try something new. Rather than cover bold, fresh territory, we decided to go back and rehash some of our writers' favorite sites with a new perspective. These sites may come from NSD reviews or they may be personal favorites we haven't covered. A new innovation we have implemented is that our writers now get recognized directly for their work, at least in this section, at least in this issue, at least for the writers who participated. Enjoy, have a happy New Year, and we'll see you around the second week of January.Lawrence Nyveen
Hollywood has the Academy Awards. TV has the Emmy Awards. As you might expect, the Webby Awards are more interactive: clicking, scanning, and reading are required. You'll also find much more diversity in Webby Award categories. Every year, it seems, promoters try to make the Webby Awards more glamorous with celebrity endorsements and media hype. Most of us are more interested in finding great sites, and that's what the Webby site emphasizes with prominent categorization. In 2001, there were 30 categories of winners, including games, kids, personal Web site, weird, and best practices. (Try to find equivalents in the more commercial and politicized Oscars.) In sum, this site is a portal where you can hardly go wrong. Every nominee and winner has something of merit a click away. It's a great place to browse, a panoply of exemplary content and design. Moreover, you can nominate sites for future awards. We tend to agree with a link label on the home page that the winners list, with winners from 1997-2001, is "the ultimate bookmark". As you might expect, some sites are history.
http://www.webbyawards.com/main/
Ken Schulze
This year saw the proliferation in popular Net culture of a number of animated shorts, led by the grand-daddy of them all, "All Your Base" (which actually originated in 2000). There's a reason this particular piece was the biggest phenomenon among the genre. We're just not quite sure we can pinpoint it. It might be the driving backbeat, or the use of modified photos, or the sampling of the Zero Wing, or - most probably - a combination of these factors. Who knows. What we do know is that we still get a kick out of watching it, almost a year later. Only one of the sites we found last year still has the movie posted, but there may be more out there.
http://curtis.curtisfong.org/fobonics/bases/
Lawrence Nyveen
I think one of the best examples of what can happen on the Internet is "Hi monkey!" Monkey's genuine Web site, which is dedicated to the adventures of a terry-cloth primate, is the epitome of what you get when you combine a bizarre sense of humor, too much intelligence, and Web publishing - much like the T.W.I.N.K.I.E.S. project. Monkey takes his audience on outings to museums and bookstores, to temples and concerts, and simply to his own kitchen to expand the readers' horizons and also amuse us all. It's like a Simpsons for the Internet. Kids will enjoy the site, but adults are going to get more out of it because of the subtle humor scattered throughout.
http://www.himonkey.net/
Regan Avery
If there's one thing the Net has accomplished, it's to peel back the veneer of sameness that we usually wear out in public, and expose our real selves. Would you admit to casual acquaintances that you own a black velvet painting of JonBenet Ramsey, part of the American Heroes collection? Would you admit to bidding on it? What about a sick-looking owl built of seashells? The "Who Would Buy That?" site spotlights bizarre moments in online auctions. Besides the owl and "painting", recent featured auctions include a selection of CIA-themed Christmas ornaments, a purse made of cork, and a vintage funeral home make-up kit.
http://www.whowouldbuythat.com/
Lawrence Nyveen
A Sequentially Tarty Look at Comics
When I've had a hard day at work, I come home to a nice hot cup o' Sequential Tart. The combination of wit and sarcasm in this 'zine about comics can get me through even the roughest post-meeting meltdowns. There are so many good articles in each issue that I try to save some of it for later, because I usually have one of "those days" a week.http://www.sequentialtart.com/
Regan Avery
Some of us hate solicitors - whether they use the phone, instant messaging, snail mail, or e-mail. It's even worse when the spam's a scam. Unfortunately, any reply at all usually just affirms your existence as a valid target and we often choose just to ignore the attempt and get on with our lives. We admire people who choose a harder road, such as these anonymous heroes who took on 419 scammers. The 419 con promises the victim future riches if they can only pony up a bit of required dough right now. It sounds dumb, but some people fall for it. Our heroes pretended to fall for it and strung along one scammer far longer than would be healthy for anyone not as anonymous.
http://www.buddyweiserman.com/
Lawrence Nyveen
The Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest
World's wittiest contest site, lair of rebellious loquacity, repository of so much winning hot air it warms the globe, the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest is a mecca for creative writers and open-minded readers who thumb their noses at literary critics and other traditional authority figures to honor, enjoy, and nourish outlandish, often hilariously warped twists and turns of postclassical imagination. Common sense be damned. Laws of physics and logic, time and place, relax or dissolve in ever-growing archives of brief but impudent blarney. Metaphor moribund in modern literature takes on new life from realists and fantasists armed with index cards, clever craft, and preposterous flights of ridicule from the ninth dimension. This is arguably the most entertaining site on the Web. Think you have a great first sentence for an imaginary novel? Think again. Bulwer-Lytton winners have you beat. By far. Hemingway has been aped, of course, to perfection. In a hurry? Hie thee to the Lyttony of Grand Prize Winners. Talk about enlightenment. It's positively gemological. What point! What flourish! What lofty tradition of defiant grit, what singular devotion to tortured verbosity, what startling vistas of recurrent glory proliferate from one server port across all the world that acknowledges ink!http://www.bulwer-lytton.com/
Ken Schulze
The section called This Week at this site is better viewed than explained. It's sort of like a headline service, with links to places like the Hunger Site. Yet, it's not really a headline service at all; the site's writers interject their own ideas pretty constantly. In a blurb about text-messaging service Uboot, for example, they note features that are perfect "for those with the memory of a goldfish...." The mix includes an exhortation to Vote for the Fat Bloke in a pop-idol contest, a report of sorts on semen collection at Singapore Zoo, and other weirdness. Other sections include reviews of the Sony CMD-J5 mobile phone, Casio's wrist MP3 player, and Creative's NOMAD digital jukebox. Fun Stuff includes the Good Wife Guide, games, and even advice, should you wish to take it. The site appears to be relatively new - meaning the content's fresh and there's more on the way.
http://www.studentmagazine.com/
Jay Haight
The American Medical Association
Think how many people have interests in medicine and it's easy to see what a challenge it is to offer something of value to all of them on one Web site. Restrict access to certain resources to members only, and things start to get complex and frustrating, right? Actually, the American Medical Association (AMA) has performed something of a miracle with its home page. From there, you can jump to: information for physicians, other health professionals, or patients (the latter category includes Doctor Finder, Hospital Finder, and Medical Group Practice Finder); medical news; journals; a sub-site on bioterrorism; press releases; background on the association's annual meeting; and various members-only features. The AMA site is often a starting point for research because it covers so much, including consumer and public health, ethics, legal issues, policy, and medical science. Absence of banner ads and applets may make it look dull. Who cares? It's all about information. This site has undergone many changes over the years and it will no doubt continue to do so. It just keeps getting better.http://www.ama-assn.org/
Ken Schulze
Military intelligence. Marijuana initiative. Zoo design. All oxymorons, right? Not necessarily, at least insofar as zoo design goes. There's a lot of material available for free here - not only photos, but some pretty in-depth discussion as well. You don't have to be a zoologist to appreciate the information here for the taking. It helps, but it's not essential. If the closest you ever get to an animal happens to involve throwing a pinch of food in to the guppies as you head for the fridge, you'll still find something to interest you here.
http://www.zoolex.org/
Jay Haight
Upromise Helps Consumers Save for College
What do AT&T, Citibank, McDonald's, Exxon, ToysRUs, Coca-Cola, AOL, and several thousand other companies all have in common? Go ahead, think about it. We've got time. Done thinking so soon? Sheesh. OK, here we come to the rescue: they all support Upromise. A percentage of everything you buy from them goes into your Upromise account (assuming you've joined, of course), and those pennies add up to substantial amounts of money saved for a college education. Love him or hate him, even US Senator Bill Bradley has jumped on this bandwagon. Tax-free investment for college? How could you go wrong? Of course, education isn't for everyone. More than one person has noted that it ain't the way you pick your nose; it's where you put the booger that counts. The Upromise approach seems a lot more productive, however.http://www.upromise.com/
Jay Haight
Fodors.com is a fine place to start a trip. You'd expect this site to live up to the brand name established by the print Fodor travel guides. It does so in a straightforward (some would say, boring) manner. Take the home page - it's a miniature portal that presents upfront access to a nice variety of pages. The top navigation bar links to: reviews of hotels and restaurants around the world, but mostly in the US; Expedia.com, for reservations; a news section that includes tips and precautions, bargain alerts, tipping guides, and other practical resources; a travel forum; a cruise guide with a search facility; the iExplore.com subsite for upscale world adventurers; a Family Travel Center that includes city-specific advice such as "Around Los Angeles with Kids" and columns on topics such as "The ABCs of Taking Kids Overseas" and "Getting Sick on Vacation"; and resources such as language primers, travel tips, and a section on national parks. You can download hotel and restaurant reviews of destinations in the US to the Palm VII handheld. Fodors.com is not the be-all and end-all of travel sites, but it does cover a lot of ground. Navigation is easy. And its name is easy to remember.
http://www.fodors.com/
Ken Schulze
Karen Kenworthy has been writing for computer mags for a decade, and has a newsletter that reaches tens of thousands. She's one geeky gal with a boatload of hardware opinion and expertise to back it up. She has power tools for Windows users over here that we'd bet you mostly never even dreamed of. Ever wonder why a CD starts running when you insert it into the CD-ROM drive? Autorun.inf Editor allows you to work that magic on your very own. Many other useful freeware apps are here for the taking. It's the holidays, for crying out loud! You're expected to pig out! No better place than here.
http://www.karenware.com/powertools.html
Jay Haight
You PC users got some weirdness going on? Maybe you need some data recovery tools, or a disk-test proggie, or maybe you need to recover some lost passwords. Maybe you just need a step-by-step diagram to help you get root rights on a Linux box. This is your place. Security and data recovery is what it's all about here, and what it's about is good. Solid tools, and easy to understand language. You'll bookmark the place. We did.
http://www.cgsecurity.org/index.html
Jay Haight
The world's largest new and used bookstore is online, in case you hadn't noticed. Powell's City of Books, in Portland, Ore., is almost that: a small city. The main store occupies an entire city block. Several satellite outlets, all huge, sell books as well. How many bookstores have you visited that have their own parking structure? These folks make your Barnes and Nobles and your Amazons reach for the covers and sob. The online store is everything the brick-and-mortar counterparts are - well, except for the coffee bars. Titles? Thousands. Service? Right there. E-books, paperbacks, trades, hardcovers, rare books, new, used, tech, fiction - it goes on and on. These people live and breathe books, and it really shows. This is the best place to check for any titles of interest.
http://www.powells.com/
Jay Haight
BMW has been bankrolling short films/long ads by renowned directors, producing five so far. We still like the commentary of Ang Lee and John Frankenheimer best, but a recent addition directed by Guy Ritchie features a surprise actor. Yes, that is Oddjob's son! Oh, Ritchie's wife, Madonna, is in it, too. Download the BMW film player to play enhanced QuickTime films with added content, at as much as 2.5 times the display window you'd get in a normal stream - sort of a DVD player without the player. You need a lot of RAM and hard drive real estate to view the films, but it's worth it.
http://bmwfilms.com/
Lawrence Nyveen
I was once did a bit of Ivy League squirrel field research, so this "study" struck a chord. Given a bit of string, some time, and some nuts, a mind with a little curiosity and inventiveness can be an entertaining thing.
http://www.eecs.harvard.edu/~yaz/en/squirrel_fishing.html
Lawrence Nyveen
AllRecipes is my first stop for anything related to baking (and cooking, but I don't do much of that). The ingredient search is invaluable not only for the times when you only have barely more items in your refrigerator than Old Mother Hubbard had in her cupboard but also for those times when you're baking for someone and they ask, "Could you make me a chocolate cake like my mother used to? I know it had mayonnaise in it...."
http://allrecipes.com/
Regan Avery
There are soitenly any number of sites out there where you can read about the Three Stooges, but this one's among the most comprehensive. It's even updated regularly! In addition to reading, you can view some films, catch some sounds (all playable with Windows Media Player), or purchase material in VHS or DVD format. If you'd like, you can even order a catalogue of Stooge-related goodies. Woo-woo-woo!
http://www.threestooges.com/welcome.htm
Jay Haight
There are some jobs which call for inordinate amounts of time spent staring at a computer screen. They require focus - deep focus, trance-like focus. You're slinging bits, or surfing sites, or wrangling spam, or grasping words out of thin air and shaping them into deathless prose with nothing more then several billion neurons seething on the bleeding edge of chaos. And if you want to get into that state where everything flows, where the fingers fly on the keyboard, and the words self assemble into sentences, and the symbols into algorithms, you need to be in the zone. The Digitally Imported zone. Try it with Winamp.
Digitally Imported: http://www.di.fm/
Winamp: http://www.winamp.com/
Arthur Bebak
CORRECTIONS
We reviewed the Congo Cookbook, a selection of African recipes and food culture, in an article cleverly titled "African Cooking" in NSD 5.27. Using e-mail instead of drums, the site owners have let us know that they have secured their own URL, which follows.http://www.congocookbook.com/
Our Brides Did Not Fly in Space (as Far as We Know)
The NSD writer whose bride took part in NASA Space Shuttle mission STS-80 wants to correct an editing error. While she took part in the mission, she was a ground-based lab tech directing lab ops, not an orbital one.