Webbies
The 5th Annual Webby Awards ceremony has come and gone, but the video is still online. You can watch a webcast of the event at www.webbyawards.com, and follow links to the two sets of winners: the ones chosen by a panel of judges, and the ones decided by popular vote (see www.webbyawards.com/main/webby_awards/nominees.html). Curiously, both went for the same site in the Weird category - Pan's home page - even though it seems perfectly normal by web standards. For a table of all the winners going back to 1997, see www.webbyawards.com/main/webby_awards/winner_list.html
Sin spot
Normal Bob Smith is letting his many critics extract their revenge. A new feature at his wonderfully tasteless home page lets you dress him in a dress, slap sores on his torso, plant a bloody axe in his head, and even brainwash him with Bible readings. Apparently lots of people want to do even worse things to Normal Bob because of his earlier offering, which allowed you to dress-up Jesus. He remains unrepentant, and paying guests can play with a special Hollywood Jesus dress-up.
See www.normalbobsmith.com and www.jesusdressup.com
Search here
Alltheweb, the net's biggest search engine, has never attracted the number of users its size and speed deserved. But that could change with the new version, which provides more functionality while retaining ease of use. You can now limit searches to a particular language, and click to search web pages, pictures, videos, MP3s and FTP (file transfer protocol). But the "offensive content filter" is set to on by default. The results are still not as good as Google or the meta-search engine, SurfWax. Incidentally, Google has added a date feature to its advanced search page. You can now search for pages updated in the past three months, six months or year.
Go global
The Economist magazine has produced a handy guide to many of the world's nations. The "briefing books" marry useful and detailed country profiles with articles from the weekly magazine, though not all of these are available free. Nonetheless, the site is a valuable addition to sites such as the CIA World Factbook and the WorldSkip portal.
Annotea
The "smart tags" feature planned for Microsoft's Windows XP operating system attracted an astonishing amount of ignorant invective from people who presumably had not seen similar things before. In fact, this approach started with hypertext, long before the web, and tags are so useful, their adoption is virtually certain. The World Wide Web Consortium is also developing an open "smart tags" system called Annotea as part of its research into the Semantic Web. Anyone can join in the fun at www.w3.org/2001/Annotea
Cool mail
Hotmail has a cooler look and now integrates better with the MSN portal and MSN Explorer browser. The downside is that the opening page no longer shows your email. On the plus side, Microsoft has strengthened its junk mail filter, and you can dispose of all mail from people not in your address book. To dealwith spam in other mailboxes, see http://office.microsoft.com/assistance/2002/articles/OlManageJunkAndAdultMail.aspx
Jurassic 3 Jurassic Park 3 has brought dinosaurs back from extinction again with a bang, topping the US charts last weekend. The official site is at http://jp3.jurassicpark.com but some fan sites are more useful. Try www.jp3hq.com and www.dreamworksfansite.com/amblin/jurassicpark3. Also take a look the round-up of reviews at www.rottentomatoes.com/movie-1108705.
Free wheeling
The American Solar Challenge race down Route 66, across the Great Plains and through the Rockies to California, was due to end yesterday. Find out who won at www.formulasun.org
New & noted
• Final Fantasy movie clips at http://movies.yahoo.com/hv/movies/feature/finalfantasy.html
• The Bubbleworld saga continues: www.thebubbleworld.com
• www.stickdeath.com : Not weird enough for aWebby?
• Yes, but is it art? www.gloriousninth.com
• What's hot: www.speedle.com
• Five second of mild amusement: http://theyrule.orgo.org
Six of the best Words
A Word A Day
www.wordsmith.org/awad
Neologisms
www.logophilia.com/WordSpy
Slang
www.notam.uio.no/~hcholm/altlang
Style
www.guardianunlimited.co.uk/styleguide
Resources
www.internetwriter.co.uk/chapters
Word games
www.m-w.com/game
