Web Walk: if I were a teenager

Computer Life column for January 10, 1998 by
Richard Gordon

In this month's Web walk, we visit one silly site, two useful ones, and several that may appeal to the teenagers in your house.

This month's silly site is Hallmark Cards' weekly posting of card ideas that were too far out for its Shoebox Greeting division (www.shoebox.com/funny/funny.asp). Some are too off-color to be sold; some celebrate inappropriate occasions; some are just a tad too cruel.

The first useful site is for all of us who do not have 3 shelves of cookbooks: fire up your Web browser and visit the Recipe Guys (www.recipeguys.com) courtesy of Qualice Corporation. Membership in this Web area is free now, but there will be a small subscription fee beginning May 1. If you submit 4 recipes between now and April 30, they promise to give you a free 12-month membership. Since this is a new Web area, the recipe database is still growing, but it is well-organized, attractively designed, and looks like it is on the way to becoming a resource for compu-savvy cooks.

The next Web site can help a busy parent with a part of a young child's evening that early childhood educators tell us is essential to kids' future reading success: the bed-time story. You can find dozens of stories, many with pictures, at the Home Office Mall's Bed-Time Story site (the-office.com/bedtime-story).

This Web area's sub-title, "For the busy business-parent," caught my attention. When I used to visit my son's 1st and 2nd grade classroom, I would sometimes read or re-enact one of Gianni Rodari's "Telephone Tales," a series of short bedtime stories that a fictional traveling salesman would tell his daughter over the telephone. The kids loved the Rodari tales I found in an anthology; this Web site is in the same spirit: short, fanciful bed-time stories that will appeal to kids and that their busy parents will enjoy reading.

Before the holidays, one reader asked me about Web sites towards which she could steer her teenagers.

One of the more parent-friendly teen Web sites is the electronic version of the Christian magazine Campus Life (www.campuslife.net). It deals with many issues facing today's teens (parents' divorcing, sexuality, crime) from a Christian perspective.

I was more impressed by an on-line 'zine pitched at teenage girls: SmartGirl (www.smartgirl.com). This site is broader in its appeal and includes extensive opportunities for readers to participate: reviews, advice columns, chat areas.

When I was a teenager, if the Web had been around, I probably would have started surfing at unfURLed (www.unfurled.com). At this site, MTV and Yahoo team up to provide a pretty cool site for pop music fans whose tastes range from alternative to rap, reggae, and ska.

Another site of interest is WebNoize (www.webnoize.com), devoted to music-on-line concerts and for downloading-on the Web. Or just start at Yahoo's exhaustive list of Music Web sites (www.yahoo.com/Entertainment/Music).

Judging by the activity I see in the street in my neighborhood, a lot of under-16 boys are on wheels. If mountain biking is your thing, go to the iBIKE site (www.ibike.com). Skateboarding what spins your bearings? Yahoo lists over 100 different sites devoted to your sport (www.yahoo.com/Recreation/Sports/Skateboarding).

If your teenager is typical, he or she spends time playing video games. There are tons of sites out there. Two I hadn't visited before but that look promising are the Eidolon Gamer's Society (bird.taponline.com/eidolon) and Game Revolution (www.game-revolution.com). I found Eidolon a little easier to navigate, but I found plenty of information, reviews, cheats, and previews for PlayStation, Nintendo64, Sega, and PC-based games at both sites.

If it's your daughter who games the most, have her try Grrl Gamer (www.grrlgamer.com), a site devoted to the girls and women who Quake in the Myst.

Copyright © 1998, The News Journal Company

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