Another Web Walk

Computer Life column for October 31, 1998
by
Richard Gordon

It's time for another of our periodic samplings of what's on the Web.

First, I took a peek at one of the on-line women's e-zines: AOL's Electra, subtitled "Real Women: Real Life" (www.electra.com). This one's been around for about two years, but us guys are usually behind the times.

Electra includes areas on style, healthy eating, money, career, general health, family, and "lovelife"--and a chat area. Various columns also discuss current events from a woman's perspective. Their current 60-Second Poll was topical: "Which Halloween candy do you stash?" So, that's where all the Snickers have gone.

In cleaning up some old e-mail, I found a copy of Yahoo's second ever e-mail listing of interesting web sites--from September 1995. One of the sites listed there is a topical hit once again, thanks to a certain Senator from Ohio: NASA's Shuttle Web (shuttle.nasa.gov). This site includes an area where readers can submit questions to the crew, multimedia clips of and official data from the current mission, and archives of previous shuttle missions. It contains a mix of feature articles and in-depth articles about some of the experiments performed on the shuttle missions.

Last week's Yahoo! Picks of the Week list featured another space-related site: Life Magazine's "A Giant Leap for Mankind" Web area (www.pathfinder.com/Life/space/giantleap). This is a very slick on-line photo essay--even including video clips. However, be prepared for lengthy download delays.

Enough of these classy Web sites. Let's get into some serious time-wasting.

For example, the silliest Web site I've run across in the past several weeks is the Feed Celine! Web site (139.146.236.139/celine.html). The premise here is that, with all her money, surely Celine Dion can afford to buy and eat a bit more food. In those soulful poses in which her eyes are downcast so romantically, is she really just scanning the ground for potato chips?

I'm a sucker for useless trivia. Therefore, I relished a visit to Deborah Henigson & Jennifer Godwin's Land O' Useless Facts (www-leland.stanford.edu/~jenkg/useless.html). Where else, in the time it takes to eat a peanut butter sandwich, can you learn that the ZIP in ZIP Code stands for "Zone Improvement Plan"; that Andrew Jackson was the first President born in a state that was not one of the original 13 colonies; that only two presidents' names have contained double letters in both their first and last names--William Harrison and Millard Fillmore; that a pregnant goldfish is called a twit; and, with your final bite, that 111,111,111 x 111,111,111 = 12,345,678,987,654,321.

Deb and Jen urge readers to verify these facts before using them in Ph.D. theses.

I sent a Scottish friend of mine the address for the Scottish Slang Site (www.paidmyre.demon.co.uk/). After listening to the seven samples there, he sent me a message back typed in a nearly incomprehensible brogue.

And finally, in honor of today, go to Mythic Vision's list of haunted houses (www.hauntedhouse.org). None from Delaware are listed yet. Maybe next Halloween.

Tip of the week

How can I find interesting web sites?

There is no truth to the rumor that columnists find Web addresses scrawled on restroom walls. But Web addresses or URLs (Uniform Resource Locators) can be found nearly everywhere else: magazines, advertisements, newspapers, e-mail from friends and colleagues, TV, radio.

There are dozens of sites designed to help you keep up with new and exciting Web sites.

Three of the best are Yahoo! Picks of the Week (www.yahoo.com/picks/), The Original Cool Site of the Day (cool.infi.net), and Netsurfer Digest (www.netsurf.com/nsd/). Both Netsurfer Digest and Yahoo! Picks of the Week are also available in an e-mail version.

Copyright © 1998, The News Journal Company

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