August 31st: OK, let's see if anyone can explain this. I was writing a story about domain names (the Freenetname free ISP that gives you a .co.uk domain name as long as you use it to dial up at least once every 90 days - quite a good gimmick, I thought). Anyway, I needed to get some approximate idea of what kind of price real people are paying for domains these days, so I could make an accurate comparison into the story and give people some idea of the kind of value of this offer.
So I went over to Freeserve's domain names registration form and entered a random string of letters in order to generate a quote. Blow me if it didn't say that gtyyyhhi.co.uk was registered. Eh? I mentioned this to my colleague, who joked that I should enter another random string to see what happened.
I did - rgjnroiuniojht.co.uk turned out to be registered as well. Not quite prepared to belive my eyes, I tried mymumsnameisstellaandshedoesyoga.co.uk - and I was also told that this was registered - not just by Freeserve's interface, but also by the one at http://freenames.vi.net (screenshot: vi.gif). After all this I went back to Freeserve and checked again - and this time, my random strings were unregistered.
This screenshot (first_time.gif) is one showing rgjnroiuniojht.co.uk as taken. And this one, taken a few minutes later (screenshot: second_time.gif) says it is available. The only explanation I can come up with is that there was some glitch with the Nominet database...? When I checked all these names at Netnames, they all came up as unregistered, as you would expect. Did anyone else have Nominet problems at about 3pm BST today? What the hell was going on? Am I mad?
***
August 27th: Damon Hill to be replaced by Jarno Trulli - the worst-kept secret in F1. But when Michael Schumacher returns in a fortnight, will Ferrari be backing him, or championship leader Irvine?
Yikes: More British children associate the word "millennium" with Robbie Williams than with the birth of Jesus.
Lovely images of stellar explosions, etc, from the Chandra orbital X-ray observatory.
A web page that may be of interest to fellow UKNM sufferers. Sorry - subscribers.
***
August 26th: I knew there were lots of alternative browsers, but I didn't know there were this many.
***
August 25th: Sexually transmitted diseases via the Internet.
Have fun with William Hague.
Amazon's new Purchase Circles "service" is extremely amusing, as long as you can bring yourself to ignore the outrageous abuse of privacy that it represents. I was particularly chuckling over the books most popular among Microsoft employees, including "How to program Microsoft Outlook and Microsoft Exchange", which must come in handy for those all-night debugging sessions.
***
August 24th: NME.com has some classic front covers you can send as e-cards. From about 87 to about 92 I was an avid NME reader. Ah, the distant days of my youth...
Air Guitar for World Peace: "If everyone stops what they are doing and plays air guitar for five minutes, there will be no more wars because all the soldiers will have laid down their arms." Yeah, brother.
***
August 23rd: 89-year-old Doris "Granny D" Haddock (yep, real name) is walking across the USA to campaign for reform in political campaigning. Good on yer, Doris.
Caprice's new site qualifies for Worst URL In History as well as Worst Web Site Ever Ever Ever.
The virtual people project looks fun. Download the .avi files for a 3D-people giggle.
***
August 20th: Ho ho! Hard disk knackered! No updates for a few days, methinks.
***
August 19th: As the Turks pick up the pieces, it seems the Californians got away lightly this week, with their 5.0-on-the-scale mini-quake.
The Economist style guide makes interesting reading on its own.
***
August 18th: The worst background image EVER!
The best y2k statement of (almost) compliance I've seen yet. (From RageBoy's EGR).
***
August 17th: Check out what Netscape Online will look like. A bit dull, if you ask me.
"The dinosaurs faked their extinction 65 million years ago and still roam the earth, spending their days wrapped up in convincing latex costumes that blend them perfectly into human society. They are our doctors, our janitors, our senators." What a great idea for a novel.
***
August 16th: During my week off I experimented with BeOS, and successfully got it installed on a new partition on a Win98 box. As a result, sites like Betips are suddenly of great interest to me.
A great idea: the Good Beach Guide. No surprise to find that my home town, Folkestone, does not get a recommendation. When we were kids we used to play a game on the beach - Spot the Condom.
From my mate Randall: see future scientists at play, at the Twinkies Project site.
E-news is a nice web-based USENET interface thingy.
***
August 6th: Patrick Moore is da man.
A message arrives from hOl: "My good friend drfetid, who currently lives in Middle Earth and is unable to send email due to the delicate state of his beard, would like to refer you to his web site, drfetid's wizards of the sonic." In case you're wondering, it's a bunch of MP3s.
Looking directly at the eclipse is Very Bad, and here's the British Medical Journal to tell you why.
Harvest time has arrived chez gilest.
Black holes make a lot more sense now.
***
August 5th: Ha ha ha! Microsoft given a slap by judges because Word cannot word-count legal documents properly.
If anyone else got confused by the Queen Amidala / Padme role-swapping goings-on in The Phantom Menace, here is a complete scene-by-scene guide. For those who can say Yes to the question, Do You Naboo?
An e-mail from Mother Theresa alerted me to the Touyou Kanchou Hakubutsukan Oriental Enema Museum.
***
August 4th: Rock-paper-scissors-Spock-lizard.
Cor, Donkey Kong Jr for PalmPilot. Did anyone else have one of these Game N Watch things when they were a kid? Mine got confiscated by Sir when the alarm went off during an English lesson.
Travelling on India's trains, by BBC Online readers.
Chris Nuttall must be short of stories.
John has a wonderful collection of Underground station maps and diagrams, and I think they are fab.
BOL said: "It's happy hour! Come and get a free book with our compliments between 1530 and 1730 BST this afternoon!" Well here's what I got at 1622 BST. Oh dear.
***
August 3rd: ZDNet speculates on what Apple's next PDA will look like. Sadly ZDNet's designers are not as clued-up on what constitutes "cool" as Apple's are.
Great scoop at Telepolis: Janet Reno's letter to the German government saying, "Hey guys, ever thought of controlling export of encryption like we do?"
I would have thought that the world population reaching 6 billion was a serious environmental issue. So quite why these people are selling mouse-mats and T-shirts is beyond me.
Free image library. And another one.
***
July 30th: Post-it stories.
Boobscan: the inevitable evolution of CatScan. How long before we have Arsescan?
From Lawrence: Who is this man? And why does he know so much about carpets?
***
July 29th: For a moment there I thought this was another translation service, but it turns out to be something else.
I was looking for a Swedish-English translator and found this amusing thing ("Swedish idioms in painfully literal translation") on the way. Later on I found the translator I needed: en sagolik tur!
Blimey. Cyberbromley.
***
July 28th: Jerry Pournelle rants about the nightmares he had installing Real Audio G2 and Netscape 4.6. The latter, it seems, searches for Internet Explorer, and if it finds it, replaces the existing home page with Netscape Netcentre! That's outrageous! Stupid, stupid, stupid...
***
July 27th: A lovely collection of all things Feynman, contributed by Edd.
A complete history of fab computer games. This takes me back to my days as a spotty *teen-year-old playing Defender in the cafe at the Sports Centre, after I'd got out the swimming pool.
The iBook is too "girlie", says John Dvorak.
This is getting insane. Universal Studios say you can't link to them without permission. I say as many people as possible should set up links to Universal and tell them where to stick it. Like this: Universal Studios.
Coo - EA jumps in with PalmPilot games. Will they do SimCity too? Please?
I'm fed up with commuting through Victoria Station every day.
Great little A-Z of Parliament on the BBC site.
***
July 26th: Fantastic satellite-tracking, globe-spinning Java thing. Could they do this for all the litter in orbit as well? Would we still see the Earth underneath if they did?
Best Belgian Beers: heard the URL on Magic FM, of all places.
Clearly ITN needs that new sub-editor it just hired. The spelling there is scandleus.
***
July 22nd: Smile for the magic internet camera!
You read it here first: Thanks to a new agreement between the BBC and the acting unions, Blake's 7 is going to return to daytime TV in the UK. It was a cult show in the 70s and I for one was hooked on it. And I missed the last ever episode, something which always annoyed me.
***
July 21st: Another cracking addition to How Stuff Works. This time, art.
Shame Neil Armstrong is so publicity-shy.
I can't help thinking Apple haven't quite got it right with the iBook and AirPort. It's not really wireless Internet access at all, is it?
***
July 20th: Single? Have an e-mail address? Put it on your car bumper! "Honk now, Chat tonight!"
A shameless self-plug: I have interviewed Jim Irvin, singer with 80s pop geniuses Furniture. On the off-chance that any of you remember their gorjuss single Brilliant Mind, you might like to find out what happened to them next.
***
July 19th: I say, that looks frightfully uncomfortable.
There are three types of deja vu, apparently. But I knew that already.
Linux Laptops: They make it all sound so tempting.
***
July 16th: Anakin, where is that briefcase Jedi Marcellus Wallace gave you?
They sound a lot worse than you ever imagined they would.
Pets Pyjamas: Burberry Trouser Suit. Notice the iMac-styled cat litter tray on the front page.
The Dr Seuss parody page.
***
July 15th: Robbie Williams' site is so difficult to use, it actually has instructions: "Change this title by moving the mouse, and then click to go." Thankfully it also offers a "simple interface" option. Which isn't a huge improvement.
Apollo 11 picture gallery. And the flight log.
***
July 13th: Alex Zanardi's official site: "You haven't made a mistake, my friends. You have clicked into my Internet site, the right one, the official one, the gift I'm giving you upon many of your requests to visit me online."
I like the look of Moose's movie. The trailer is worth the download.
"Of COURSE robots will take over the Earth." "With luck, they'll be better Slashdot moderators."
***
July 12th: Slashdotters debate film vs digital cameras.
Tour the delightful characters and wonderful photographs of Frestonia, as taken by Tony Sleep.
Hello, we are from Norway. To celebrate the millennium we have decided to paint our entire city blue. Oh yes.
For sale: 1 server, heavy usage, unreliable. Quick sale for cash - we need it to buy another one - love, eBay.
***
July 9th: India's government tries to censor the web, but Rediff.com has different ideas.
Lessrain.com: I like the "selector" navigation system.
Ask the Magic 8ball a question, and it will give you an answer. Since it uses streamed jpegs, you need to use Netscape, unless you're using IE on a Mac. [Thanks to Edd for this one].
Nice list of interactive fiction games you can play in your browser, or download for offline fun.
Hotmail's new look. Hmm.
Hosting's cheap at saturn.org.
And it's Go! Go! Go! Real Audio interview with Murray Walker - he explains why there are no women drivers in Formula 1, among other things.
Even more problems for Third Voice.
Find yourself on the Net with EgoSurf. (Actually just combines results from other engines, but I liked the name).
Consign your cookies to the cookie jar.
***
July 8th: Nice, fast, mapping interface at the new National Car Rental site.
"Why this huge web site -- all this information?/ Did the Angels bring you here, clicking with your mouse?/ God needs a tool to bring us together."
Been researching futurology today: here's Peter Cochrane and Ian Pearson's technology calendar (in a simple HTML version) - here's Ian Pearson's essays - and here's a nice page of other links. Ian Angell has a nice selection of miserable predictions, too.
Lawrights is a fine gem of a site offering free guides to your legal rights under English and Welsh law. The "what to do with annoying neighbours" page is particularly useful.
Use ad-blockers, and you can't read our content. So there.
***
July 7th: Pakistani newspaper site dawn.com is reportedly being blocked by India's only ISP, Videsh Sanchar Nigam, says a story in the Times of India.
Oftel: Access to bandwidth, proposals for action.
Miles Hunt has shaved all his hair off.
Seems that Comet have to take their entire site down to update product prices. Dolts.
***
July 6th: The new-look LineOne. "I know boss - let's change the background colour from green to, err, blue."
Wimbledon photo galleries. Anna for the boys, Tim for the girls, Sampras for the tennis fans.
Another great web re-branding. Take a perfectly good name like imvs.com and change it to YALPLAY. Yes, yalplay.com. What on earth are they playing at?
***
July 5th: He ain't CmdrTaco, he's Mr Malda now.
Our database is almost empty! Please help us populate it! Please!
I used to make mix tapes for people, but it never occurred to me to put them on the web. Great idea.
VocalTel, the site for people annoyed with LocalTel, returns: find out why Tripod deleted their old site, and why the founder left the project.
And as the homing pigeon of Fate is sucked into the air intake of the jumbo jet of Destiny...
Online banking in the UK; all the services compared. But not tested and rated, sadly.
The list of greyed-out Geocities sites grows longer.
Surprisingly positive coverage of Janet Street-Porter's appointment as Independent on Sunday editor - in The Independent.
***
July 2nd: Incident at Oakridge. Real-life inspired sci-fi short story.
Jack Schofield tests a WAP phone. "There's no way to read attachments." Well, whaddya expect?
A Nokia 9110 put to the test.
***
July 1st: Eating too many tomatoes turns you orange, but carrots can have the same effect.
XML makes Windows obselete, apparently. Nice.
***
June 30th: Boycott Yahoo and Geocities?
Most of the Slashdotters like Philip Greenspun's book, Philip and Alex's Guide to Web Publishing, which I'm still ploughing my way through.
I'm particularly pleased to hear that slaptoast.org is still available. As is toastslap.org.
MSN's new homepages service: can you imagine building your homepage in Windows Way? When I clicked on "Home pages on this street", I got a 404 error. Durrr.
Why banners don't work. Sock it to 'em, Edd! POW!
What the UK Government has been told about NEOs (Near Earth Objects): "An asteroid impact prediction with a period of decades between detection and the event would probably trigger an all-out programme for intervention, while a predicted impact within a time that precluded any intervention could lead to various forms of fatalistic behaviour. If it were a highly imminent event, it could even precipitate a major breakdown in social and economic institutions." (Note: it's a PDF file).
How to do just about anything by e-mail. Hosted by Geocities, so now official Yahoo! content, I s'pose.
***
June 29th: Take a closer look at your carpet.
"The council was impressed of course, could he bring balance to the force?" Here be spoilers, but it's dead funny.
Nice guide to Paris ici.
"A few weeks ago, I was waiting in line for Star Wars tickets and had my Palm VII with me. It was the first time I really enjoyed using the Palm VII. I kept up with the news, Slashdot, and sent e-mail to everyone I know." Review of the Palm VII.
Blimey, ASCII art reaches new levels (depths?).
She's survived this far, although clearly with use of a facelift and lots of makeup.
Michael Stipe confesses: "I buzzed Stonehenge in a helicopter". Lout.
Explore the strange things that happen in Thame.
Flippin' heck. I wish Slashdot the best of luck.
***
June 28th: Brixton Online shows there is life south of the river. And has listings for the Ritzy Cinema, which is nice.
Few pop stars update their own web sites, and even fewer with the clarity of Momus.
***
June 25th: Exchange of letters between the Pope and Cardinal Basil Hume, shortly before Hume died. The Pope's letter is very formal and Holy; Hume's reply is surprisingly, and amusingly, ordinary. Good on ya, Cardinal.
Talk of what Palm Pilot creator Donna Dubinsky is up to at Handspring gets me all wriggly with excitement.
Edd has very kindly made gorjuss into a Userland channel. Apologies to anyone viewing this from the Userland page. You just get a link back to where you are. Ain't life strange?
Nice to see jwz finally getting round to a re-design. Webcollage reminds me of stuff at potatoland.org.
***
June 24th: Advice for hayfever sufferers. Like me. Sniff.
He may be a computing God, father of Apple, and so on, but why does Steve Wozniak have such a desperately uncool web site?
Woz on Steve Jobs: "I actually like him".
A new GoType! keyboard for Palm Pilots - but only the Palm V. I want one of these for a Palm IIIx.
When I was in hospital, the doctors were interested in my Palm Pilot. Now I know why.
Mr Wake-Up will call you any time of day or night and read out the memo you left when you visited his web site. For free. Shame it's not available in the UK.
Riot is a bit like the Shredder, but with more people involved. Good fun, though.
Coo: NewsUnlimited now on Yahoo UK. Ideal for Doc-ing to Pilots. And faster to browse - d'ya hear me, you snail-pace Guardian servers? Huh?
Talking of which, Makeit is a great little Windows utility for easily putting web pages into Doc or AvantGo format. Right-click on a page, choose MakeitDoc, and the Doc file is downloaded via the Pilot Screwdriver. Neat.
One more for today: life from Palm Pilot's point of view. This bloke is mad.
***
June 23rd: The Factoid is all very well, dead clever and that, but why? Why would you want one?
***
June 22nd: Nice to see the National Criminal Intelligence Service justifying its existence. "Intelligence - you need it."
Nice site from the Woodland Trust.
What kids think about marriage.
***
June 21st: Richard Hoy on why discussion lists suck. Hmmm.
Cheap computing latest: 200 dollar Linux box, instant-on, no M$ applications in sight.
***
June 18th: Java bubble-wrap; not as fab as it's cracked up to be, but improves with good mouse technique.
Proof that inflatable cats can be fun. And funny.
Tricks of the trade: telling hecklers to shut up.
What happens when your wisdom teeth are taken out. I must go to the dentist.
Tampon reviews! Tampax gets 6 out of 10. Erk. Barton's Advice for the Lovelorn is also extremely worth browsing.
Why Mac lovers move to PCs. Oh yes they do.
Couldn't huge retail group House of Fraser afford their own domain then? This is quite shocking.
***
June 17th: Art exhibition blurbs are also so wanky; "It's about journeys and explorations, passing through gates and opening 1,000 windows..." No it's not, it's a bunch of still life photos.
Wow, Domainwatch is a great way of hunting down who's registered what.
Harry Knowles reveals his romantic side. He likes Notting Hill, says the scenery reminds him of Rotterdam. Isn't Rotterdam an industrial nightmare?
Environment and activism stuff from Squall. And GreenNet.
***
June 16th: I was the kid who could never get my Etch-a-Sketch to do diagonal lines.
Wouldn't mind seeing a UK versh of Outdoor Explorer.
Contaminated Land : These people have spunk, as they used to say in the old days.
***
June 15th: Behind the hype, Zoom appears to me to be little more than a bunch of links to other sites. Very poor.
***
June 14th: Scary, but not as good as the play version.
Another awful government web site shocker.
Edd has set up his own business. If I didn't know better, I'd say he was trying to be the Philip Greenspun of Northern England.
***
June 11th: Reading a back issue of Wired, I came across the story of how a bunch of geeks in Cheltenham invented key-based cryptography in the early 70s.
Danny's updated his web page. About bloody time, too.
***
June 10th: Spot-on observations on the awfulness of Quicktime 4.0. Pretty much sums up why I uninstalled it the same day I got it.
Get an 0870 phone number and charge people to call you! Yuss! Give it to the gas board, the leccy people, or indeed any corporate giant that irritates you.
***
June 9th: Webmonkey for kids; great idea, but sadly the Frames section doesn't say: "Frames are Bad. Don't do Frames. Just Say No," etc.
New F1 season, new Martin Brundle quotes.
Uh oh, fart: Raymond knows what day your birthday was.
Is anyone at home at SETI @home? Doh!
And you thought Y2K was going to be a problem.
***
June 7: Now that's what I call a busy desktop. Part of a much larger desktops exhibition. What is this geek fascination with desktops?
All this food is out there, but at some point you have to say, `My stomach's full.' You don't continue to nibble.
***
June 4: Journalist behavior revealed: "... We then ask for a press pack and the free plastic thing that is being given away, not to mention the T--shirt, and leave." Chris Long tells it how it is.
ArfDigita, for lost doggies.
If this offers the service I think it does (storing your photos in an online database for free), I am extremely impressed. At the moment it appears to be a bit buggy, so I am a bit disappointed.
Netscan names the 2,048 lamers with the worst networks on the Net.
When Apple screw up, they do it big.
Nice camera. I'll take it.
Things to do when you're bored. I like the sound of "Watch TV, repeat everything they say in an Italian accent."
Star Wars vs Battlestar Galactica: "I'm not like Han Solo! My hair is tan!"
***
June 3: For once, Jesse Berst is talking sense. Consumer PCs in a year from now will be a lot sexier.
Thank goodness for the extremely useful metres-penguins converter.
Advice from Tim Berners-Lee to unmetered.org.uk: "... 'Click here ...' is terrible web style. "
Manufacturing as art.
Discover your Star Wars name. Mine is Turgi-Josi, which proves that it works. Or doesn't, as the case may be.
I'm all in favour of MPs getting web sites, but I wish they wouldn't ask their researchers who can't spell "sponsor" to build free ones for them at Geocities. Why don't they all get sub-domains at parliament.uk for heaven's sake?
Jakob says: "There will be a new buzzword next month. Count on it. But don't jump at it just because Jupiter writes a report about it."
***
June 2: An audio walk round Whitechapel - I quite fancy trying this out.
AIBO - woof woof. Specs of Robodog's emotion chip.
Play MP3 on your PlayStation? And how 'bout cheaper Rio boxes? Cor.
Oh God, Darth Maul fanfic. Take cover.
I'm not sure what architectural hacking is, but I quite like the look of it.
Internet availability in Eastern Europe: "A major barrier to Internet usage is the poor state of the underlying telecommunications infrastructure."
***
May 28th: This brilliant online jpg compressor doesn't just compress jpgs - it compresses them several times and gives you a choice of which one to save. Marvellous.
Dave Winer demands what I've been demanding for years; simple web editing. For once, he has a point.
Edd told me that scripting.com now has an AvantGo channel.
And Phil mentioned this factory-finder at Friends of the Earth.
***
May 27th: God is not a DJ, it is Borg.
A brand new Mistrel Palm modem. Sigh.
***
May 26th: NATO intelligence
If I had a thousand quid to throw away, and a larger living room...
***
May 25th: Does this mean gorjuss is trendy then? Or just on the back of the bandwagon?
Send your soppy lovey dovey stories to Cacharel, so they can make a fortune out of them.
A rather good Peter Gabriel page, styled the way I like.
In Episode 2: "Anakin and Amidala will meet unexpectedly ... They will fall in love and do their thing." Warning: Episode 1 spoilers!
I thought to myself, "I wonder if anyone's got smug.net?" So I typed it in and here's what I found.
Constable painted my home town. Yep, looks pretty much like it.
Here's the first Government web page I've seen with direct e-mail links to ministers.
Year 2K Chocolate Bug (TM). "Eat it while there's still time!"
Sounds like a sexy Palm modem solution.
***
May 24th: Bloody hell: the Phone Book is online.
Add an image to Kodak's Photo Quilt.
Smaller computers? Yes please.
I'd have constant fears of the monitor crashing down on my head.
***
May 21st: What you get when you cross an iMac and a vibrator.
Quite like Daniel's Internet thingy.
A newbie tries building a web page. The verdict: "It may not be worthy of a Webby, but the free-form GeoCities page is my favorite."
The Red Top gallery is very good indeed.
***
May 20th: Ooh, palm.net is live already. Note the lack of anything European in the coverage page.
Wow. Who wants to help me set up one of these environmental monitors for the UK? Fab stuff.
As much as this might sound like a nice idea, it just won't work. That's the point of the Net.
FriendFactory: probably the most useless thing on the Net, ever. Even the name's awful. Who's gonna actively go round telling his mates: "I'm a member of FriendFactory, don't you know." You might as well change your name to Johnny No-mates.
"It is our perception that inadequate political control has been exercised over the development and determination of cryptography policy. The policy agenda has been allowed to drift for too long. It is imperative that Ministers take a firm grip of the issues from now on." Ooohh yuss.
Sorry, I don't believe your name is Miles Cumpstey.
Kosovo links sent to Nettime list.
Jadoo! The Indian web directory.
Triffic world time zones thingy at CNN.
Fed-up NewsUnlimited readers sock it to the management. Yeah!
***
May 19th: New web-clipping Palm VII to go public next week. I don't want web-clipping, I want the whole thing, and I want it in the UK, and I want it now. Dammit.
C|Net spams me with this rubbish: "Hi, I'm Halsey Minor, founder and CEO of CNET. As you've probably noticed over the past few months, auction services have been springing up all over the Internet. Almost all of them try to offer users everything from Furbys to French horns." Funny, I thought C|Net was against spam.
Watch paint peel, if you're bored.
Enough to chill your blood: "Recent diplomatic initiatives by the United States government seeking European agreement to the "key escrow" system of cryptography masked intelligence collection requirements, and formed part of a long-term program which has undermined and continues to undermine the communications privacy of non-US nationals, including European governments, companies and citizens."
***
May 18th: Can't wait till he gets to the battle to destroy the Death Star.
It's all very clever, but why would anyone want to make their PalmPilot look like Windows CE? Can't see this making lots of money for these people, when there are so many excellent - and free - Palm app launchers out there
Yahoo Fantasy Soccer: why didn't they do this in the UK first?
A rather neat gallery of every Mac ever made is here.
***
May 17th: Lovely cheap MP3 player/recorder: come to daddy.
Amaze your friends! Crash your mail server! Crash other people's mail servers! Create your own e-mail hoax!
UK Plus now has Scottish and Welsh-specific search options.
***
May 14th: All you need to know about Dolphin.
I really quite like the look of secure web mail.
***
May 13th: Well, we got a D-Notice about the spies. Pity the poor Register, who didn't. Incidentally, this isn't a mirror the site that caused all the rumpus, it's a mirror of a previous one that caused a smaller rumpus. It's dead boring anyway.
Skipintro is the funniest site in the world, ever. Sit back and let it wash over you.
Lloyd Wood, who I've already pointed out is quite gorjuss himself, has pointed out that no-one needs to put up with Deja.com's Even Worse Interface if they use Spacesearch.
Alltheweb is a new search engine - pretty good. Had this page in it, anyways.
At least Scott Adams is honest about his reasons for creating Dilberitos. He wanted to make money.
Loads of fantastic ideas for future things in the Student Design Awards. The consumer products, communications, and transport sections are particularly good.
"Space 1999 is a 10 day festival of independent and community-based space exploration organised by the Association of Autonomous Astronauts (AAA). Space 1999 is part of the AAA's Five Year Plan to establish by the year 2000 a world-wide network of groups dedicated to building their own spaceships." Crikey. I'll get me spacesuit.
Jo Whiley's fave tunes.
***
May 12th: Echoes of Asimov: watch this video of Sony's robot dog in action. Amazing when it kinks a little ball, then its head follows the ball's movement away. Incredible. Two thousand quid a time, though.
Video feed from the new Scottish Parliament.
The Scottish Parly web site is a darn sight friendlier than the English one. Nice maps and drawings of the new buildings, too.
How Wired designed its pages for AvantGo on the PalmPilot
Phantom Menace not very good, say American newspapers. So Harry Knowles was right then.
Much to my surprise and horror, the newly-renamed and revamped Deja News is even worse that it was before! Incredible!
This image arrived in my inbox: What you get when you cross an iMac with a toilet. lol.
***
May 11th: It had to happen. iMac styling hits PalmPilots. It would be depressing if they didn't look so cool.
JS Boggs invites you to forge some money.
Whey-hey: another Turnbull. And this one had brains.
Steve! Steve! Stop watching TV! For God's sake, man...
Dymond Geyser is a friend of Steve's. He has a page about Laura Greene. Apparently she's Sarah's little sister. Well I never.
What do breasts do all day?. Note: this one is a rude.
Ooh. You can listen to XFM. Used to be very good, then The Man bought it and it went rubbish, now it's a bit better again.
And Yahoo has started doing radio today.
***
May 10th: The BBC's finest programme, From Our Own Correspondent. Took me ages to find the home page for it, mind.
Clearly running Slashdot is getting to Rob Malda.
Jason has built a pretty decent site considering it's his first try. I don't envy him his medical condition, not one little bit. Shame about liking Bryan Adams though. Ugh.
When, when, when will this sort of thing be available in the UK????
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May 7th: Why Windows web pages have tiny text. The web and operating systems explained.
And another Tidbits article: The second generation of digital cameras. I think I want this one.
"After disposing of his PalmPilot, Willard began an intensive course of therapy that includes several hours of handwriting exercises every day." Thank God it's satire.
The perils of setting up a free ISP. What do you do when one of your new customers works for The Register? Yikes.
We'll only sue you if the deal screws up.
The Mirror asks: IS JOAN COLLINS TURNING INTO MICHAEL JACKSON? Err, no.
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May 6th: I like people who think big when they design a personal site. This guy has designed the very ingenious Deskcam software, which monitors a webcam of your choice, then puts images from it on your desktop at specified intervals. A great distraction from horrible work things.
Phantom Menace reviews - it's OK, there's no plot spoilers.
gilest.org is running Apache/1.2.6 on Linux. If you didn't know, and you wanted to find out, you could use the clever Netcraft "what's that server running?" page.
UK Max is now doing an online address book; "We do not promise that the operation of the Service will be uninterrupted or error-free". Well of course not. No sign of PalmPilot integration, either.
Last time she turned into a polar bear. This time she becomes an android. Download another amazing Bjork video for a visual and audio treat.
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May 5th: IBM's new portable computer looks kinda tasty.
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May 4th: Oooh, this looks nice.
Take a step-by-step tour of Windows 2000, courtesy of Windows Mag.
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April 30th: What the hell is the Department for Culture, Media and Sport playing at? These people are supposed to be putting the nation's museums on the Net. God help us.
IC24. Oh dear. Oh dear, oh dear, oh dearie dearie dear. It's awful.
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April 29th: NewsNow to take away - and some interesting demos like the PalmPilot news feed.
"Each User grants to TDV a perpetual, irrevocable, royalty-free, non-exclusive, sublicenseable (through multiple tiers) right and license to use, reproduce, sell, modify, adapt, publish, translate, create derivative works from, distribute, perform, play, and exercise all copyright and publicity rights with respect to any content such User provides to the Service."
For PC owners who are jealous of iMac owners. Somehow they just don't look as good.
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April 28th: Calling Dick Tracey! Calling Dick Tracey! We have your new wristphone ready, now.
Here's the best webcam I have ever, ever seen. Take control of it and watch stuff happen in London.
If anyone can work out what the point of this is, will they let me know? Thanks.
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April 27th: I never thought I would say this about an MSN-inspired web site, but WHSmith online is brilliant simply for the free online access to the Hutchinson Encyclopedia. Just what I have been waiting for.
And another useful thing: here's one of the best lists of Windows tips I've yet seen.
Recent additions to the Met Police site.
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April 26th: Java Rubik's Cube: playaway!
The Hampster Dance was funny, but sorry, things are starting to get a little out of hand now. It ain't funny anymore, folks.
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April 23rd: 16 Colour cinema. Nearly 300 simple graphics animations. Many of them involving shit and poo, for some reason.
How to make your own lightsabre. And a sobering thought: George Lucas hasn't directed a movie in 22 years.
Those Slashdotters, how do they find things like this? And glasses that double as monitors? Won't they be a bit, well, cumbersome?
EasyEverything - the new chain of Internet cafes coming to a High Street near you.
Letterpost - e-mail to snail mail interface, 10 dollars for 10 letters - that's about 60p a letter to anywhere in the world. gorjuss.
The Guardian has a whole section devoted to Flat Eric.
So that's what it means: 10 questions about Linux, answered clearly and simply.
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April 22nd: Let's be serious now: check your computer for the CIH virus before Monday April 26th.
Hands up - or down - anyone who wants to join the Masturbate-a-thon!
Netscape now offering free web space thingy with no banner ads, but the world's worst interface.
But why bother with that when you can have a 3D home page instead?
This looks like the biggest bunch of bullshit I've seen for a long time.
Dosgames: games for DOS
Time magazine on The Phantom Menace. Warning: plot spoilers ahoy! The buggers have ruined it for everyone.
More great stuf from The Register: this time, they survive a cracking attempt, then cheekily suggest the attackers turn their attentions to TechWeb or CNet! Ha ha!
Writing web pages in non-Roman fonts: a handy guide
First rumours emerge of this year's Glasto line-up.
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April 21st: As usual, The Register spots the story amid the spin. This time: what Microsoft's Win2k scheme really means.
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April 20th: Maps in the news. And Quick Maps for quick, simple, maps.
The Museum of Web Art takes itself far too seriously.
What you get when you cross a GameBoy with an iMac.
Detailed low-down and anti-hype on Linux and all that comes with it.
Matt Hunt has a fishy story to tell.
Dive into the world of Freeserve users.
Lionhead and their masterpiece Black and White. Like the webcams and office map. Wotcher Jamie!
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April 16th: Do you hear the frogs shout? Yes. They are loud. This is tree-hugging hippy bollocks.
Spinner.com makes for simple, mindless listening while surfing. I like the alt.80s channel.
All businesses should have one of these.
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April 15th: Would you get a tattoo in exchange for free food for life? Yup, me too.
The Webmonkey makes domains, IP addresses, and the stupidity of the Internic clear for everyone.
Lycos now does London maps.
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April 14th: We are all going to die: here's the details of asteroid 1999AN10, which will come dangerously close to Earth in August 2039.
It's the Spice Pope: listen to clips from his Top 40 smash album, Abba Pater. Grrrreat!
The history of the Universe in 200 words.
See some Quicktime previews of Matt Groening's Futurama series, starting soon. Hope someone shows it in the UK.
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April 13th: Click2Send is a free web-based service for transferring large files, for those people without Zip drives. Neat idea, hope it works.
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April 12th: These are not the toys you are looking for. Let them go about their business.
This man watches too much television, thank God.
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April 9th: Quackshot: good old-fashioned duck-huntin' fun.
From our biotechnology friends in Germany: What happens on time=zero? Leave your opinion on page countdown event! Automatically, you will attend to a raffle!
After all these years - a welcome discovery on the web, of a site dedicated to Press Gang. Julia Sawalha never bettered it.
Back in time - read an original review of the original Star Wars movie.
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April 8th: A nice list of UK radio stations on the Net. Tune in.
News as cartography: the very strange Newsmaps site
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April 7th: I like the sound of Lloyd Wood. He's the same age as me, but his web site is cooler. Arse.
VBay: Buy junk. Sell junk.
Now you can get the Today Programme via Real Audio from the BBC site.
What's going on? How come some German site can build a better railway timetable for the UK than Railtrack can?
Your site sounds all very earnest and important, but why can't you be clearer about what, precisely, you are trying to say?
*** I went away on holiday ***
March 19th: Useful page about Italo Calvino, an author I greatly admire
Astonishing things people have typed into the Webcrawler search engine.
I like this Kevin bloke. He's funny. And his fakelink page is a laugh, and his cartoons.
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March 17th: Virtual reality as used by the US Marines. Check out the maps.
Star Trek Voyager fans: remember, Neelix must die.
Transcripts of The Day Today and Brass Eye - the news tonight has that story with this report.
A great little idea for UK new media folk looking for a job: http://surf.to/newmediajobs
An operating system in a browser. Sadly you have to use IE4+ to see it, but give it a go - the results are pretty impressive.
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March 16th: Hints for DJs. How to get everybody swinging their pants.
Do you want to see some spam? And listen to classical music as it scrolls by? Of course not. But just in case you ever do...
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March 15th: interFACE is London-based pirate radio on the Net.
The Collage image database looks very interesting indeed.
Alternative uses for IBM computer equipment. Did you know you could smoke the manuals?
Itsy: it's an itsy bitsy ickle tiny computer. Which runs Linux. And makes my PalmPilot look very puny indeed.
The Sparrow is probably the ugliest electric car in the world. Big brother to the C5, I reckon.
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March 10th: Finnish house and trance in Real Audio.
The American Sign Language browser presents signing in tiny Quicktime files. Interesting to browse.
I had a creature at Technosphere almost 2 years ago. It mated once, then got killed by a carnivore in a silly, pointless fight. I was quite sad. Now I have another creature. It's name is Lawrence.
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March 9th: Gorjuss palette effects and helpful pre-set palette sets at Palette Man
The Guinness St Patrick's Day site offers a unique service - place your hand against your computer screen to get a full electronic palm reading.
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March 5th: The government finally releases a consultation paper on encryption policy. Stand will be interested, I hope.
The Virtual Chancellor simulation is good fun.
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March 4th: Graham Linehan, Father Ted writer, speaks with alarming honesty about his pornography addiction.
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March 3rd: Yikes! Incredible PlayStation 2 screenshots!
See-through speakers; mount them in your car windscreen, or computer screen, for perfect audio while you drive or work. Sigh. Ain't technology just fab?
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March 2: This is the world's cheapest and most bizarre-looking ergonomic keyboard.
Hairy tongue syndrome. Imagine snogging that.
Textfiles.com; browsing and Palmpilot heaven.
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March 1: A little Brit-zine with high opinions of itself: Gorillagorillagorilla.
The amazing story of US agents inserting cunning back-doors into crypto software sold by a Swiss techno firm to governments all over the world.
Better best forgotten: Steps Site!
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Feb 25th: Ask the Magic Nipple to predict your future. Oh mystic nipple, answer me...
Star Wars meets Macbeth, in a terrific student movie production. Download the whole shebang (may take a while) and enjoy.
The Random Art Generator: if nothing else, a great source of Windows wallpaper.
Wow, fantastic PR job: IBM tells us about fish-n-chips.co.uk after it's finished selling chips online. Doh.
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Feb 24th: The story of the News of the World reporter who "made his excuses and stayed" makes for entertaining reading...
Greens Foods is where I like to buy a salad at lunchtime. Free carrot cake for anyone who sees the web site!
The Lawrence Report - slow site, but essential reading.
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Feb 22nd: Insomnia zine offers a neat collection of articles and London-oriented listings, plus an amusing spot-the-celeb page...
AFAIK, the Acronym Finder is the only one of its type.
For those of us in southern England: Charva Text Standards.
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Feb 19th: Yay. Virtual crack.
Moving banner ads - something innovative for online advertising?
Find out what your name sounds like. This is fantastic.
Why browse the Net all by youself? Take someone for a ride with the Co-Navigator.
More kit from Sony: the Digital Photo Frame lets you plug in a Memory Stick, and display your fave pics instantly. Turn it on or off by just waving your hand in front of it. Lurrve it.
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Feb 18th: Thank god for that: y2k-compliant toasters, rice cookers and grills from Sanyo.
Report your incoming spam to the SpamCop.
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Feb 17th: Sony hiFD floppy disk - 200MB of storage, backwards compatible with old floppies. Shite web site, though.
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Feb 16th: Horror of horrors: how fragile is your CD collection? Steve Albini says very.
Teeth Magazine: note the extremely clever Javascript app that lets you highlight whatever text you like, then mail it somewhere, print it, or search for related things. Coool.
A really good periodic table. Take a look at the source to see what a monster of an HTML file this is.
The Pentagon taking a relaxed view of possible y2k problems in Russia, connected with its nuclear weapons. Hmm.
Digicrash: the story behind the demise of DigiCash.
Palm V: whoo hoo, but ho-hum. Good things: Thin! Metallic! 56kpbs data transfer! Better screen! Bad things: No wireless IP! No colour screen! No removable back panel for upgrades and pager widgets!
Sneakermaker. yumsville.
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Feb 15th: Michael Kinsley, editor of Slate, explains why they dropped the subscription fee: surprisingly frank and honest, and with interesting views on web advertising.
Robin Hunt explains his view of the new media journalist, and new media journalism.
Java Mornington Crescent, and links to other MC servers. No huffing.
The Race for the networked PDA, according to Guy Kewney. And guess what - he thinks Palm / 3Com will get there before Symbian or BT / Microsoft.
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Feb 12th: Gordon has a list of free Internet access services.
The Guardian: used to be known for making mistakes in its paper. Now guess what it's known for. Evidence here.
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Feb 11th: The Register, once again, proves it has the best Microsoft trial coverage with this superb, detailed, and easy-to-follow story explaining why Nathan Myhrvold was made to look silly in court.
The free-pc givaway story this week generated a lot of news and a lot of interest in the States. Here's the framed screen you would have to put up with if you signed up.
A Lego Macintosh. Well, why not?
Make music with other surfers - using the amazing Net Resonator.
What will the y2k experts be doing on millennium night? Salon decided to ask them.
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Feb 10th: Nice banner and button generator at http://www.netstudio.com
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Feb 5th: Oh this is funny. Very funny: Culture News from Wired News, the one where zine writer Todd Levin grabs a spare Cool site of the Year award from eBay, then puts it up for sale. lol.
At last. Someone makes something useful with Flash: Map of the Market
Simson Garfinkel uses Win98 for infra-red file transfer at the bottom of this article.
She looks pensive, deep in thought, quite attractive. She's apparently the star of the next Final Fantasy movie. And she's entirely computer-generated. Sometimes the pace of technology takes your breath away.
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Feb 4th: Interact with the box: in --> t -> e -> r ---> f e r e
Mapping the Universe, well, about one ten-thousanth of it. Still looks pretty cool though.
Do the Hamsterdance - altogether now, do bee dee dah doo be doo.... Then download Duckpins. It's worth the wait.
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Feb 3rd: Some people are just too strange: http://www.bumperdumper.com/bumper2.htm
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Feb 1st: Rotating cow! Hideous wallpaper! Orjan rocks: http://www.bahnhof.se/~medhage/
Search over 200 books for specific words or phrases at Concordance. Odd, but must be useful to someone.
Raggett has written a fantastic guide to simple stylesheets.
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Jan 29th: Lance Arthur, creator of Glasdog, attacks the disciples of Jakob. This guy has attitude. He means it.
Great article about Google search engine on Techweb, and accompanying comment from Slashdot.
RankHovis lets real people find out out the supermarkets make bread. Plus Quicktime Hovis ads from the past.
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Jan 28th: TBTF this week posts an interesting view of the portal-merger-fever in the American net industry now. Everyone wants portal+members+POPs+pipes.
Jonathan Kaye calls me with details of his new directory of hotels suitable for use by people with disabilities. He has hand-coded it all himself, and I am very, very impressed.
