Bot or not?
A cartoon in New Yorker magazine once famously quipped that, on the internet, "nobody knows you're a dog." Now, on Lycos, not content with leaving users uncertain as to whether they're chatting with a pooch or not, they could find themselves talking to... a computer. Believe it or not, Lycos is publicising the fact that they've released several "Bots" into their chat areas to liven things up. And, in a move which is certain to call into question the intelligence of the average Lycos chatter, a Lycos boss is claiming there have been examples of users chatting for an hour to a bot, unaware that there wasn't a human behind the cartoon face. Draw your own conclusions about the quality of chat there... www.lycos.co.uk

Ballmer's balls
A few weeks ago Need to Know, the excellent online newsletter for geeks, unearthed a remarkable video clip of Steve Ballmer, Microsoft's chief executive, geeing up the troops at a company event. He rampages round a stage in front of the whooping crowd, issuing a strange pig-like squealing, and pulling a variety of scary faces, before breathlessly announcing: "I... love... this... company!"

Now the NTK guys have found a sequel - like them all, Dancing with Ballmer II it's not quite as good as the original, but it's certainly still worth the hefty download. See www.ntk.net/ballmer/mirrors.html

Payphone fun
One of the longest-running online obsessions has surrounded payphones. Don't ask why, but the phones - especially those in exotic locations around the world, have long fascinated geeks. They enjoy randomly picking a number to call, and then chatting to whoever picks up. The best site I've found (and I've looked at a few, believe me) is the Payphone Project. Site owner Mark Thomas is passionate about public telephones - he feels they are a valuable service for the disadvantaged - and started collecting payphone numbers six years ago.

Now he has 300,000 on his site (another 800,000, donated by a contact in the telephone business, are still waiting to be added). Those numbers include, this week, a call box in Bermuda and a bright red public telephone in the Vatican. See www.payphone-project.com

Jo Blog's diary
Weblogs are fantastic things - an easy way for folk to create their own online presence and contribute something to the web that has been made very easy by the Blogger system. The slightly touchy-feely nature of many weblogs (many are semi-confessional diaries, which go into their owner's life in quite intimate detail) means they are viewed as being a very American thing, which is a little unfair. Gblogs is a UK listing of some British blogs - you'll find the confessionals in there too, along with others devoted to everything from telecoms to Bolton Wanderers. All the way, there's some fantastic graphic design and some clever coding too, which goes to show the blogging revolution is just as active here as Over There.
See http://gblogs.threadnaught.net
www.blogger.com

Pilot patter
Probably best to look at this one after you've come back from your holidays... the Professional Pilots' Rumour Network (or PPRuNe, as it calls itself) gives a little bit of an insight into the superficially glamorous world of professional flying. It quickly becomes clear that it's not all Club Tropicana and good tans up on the flight deck - the discussion boards have frank discussions of accidents, near misses, the pay disputes which are causing problems for travellers across the world and, of course, plenty on the particularly stupid things passengers get up to.
www.pprune.org

Disaster zone
And if PPRuNe gets you worried, best get along to Worst Case Scenarios, which advises you on how to get out of a range of sticky situations. "Danger!", shrieks the opening page. "It lurks at every corner. Sharks. Quicksand. Terrorists. The pilot of the plane blacks out and it's up to you to land the jet. What do you do?" It then goes on to tell you exactly what you should do, on a series of pages with titles running from "How to Escape from Quicksand" to "How to survive if your parachute fails to open". Are they serious?

The detailed instructions, and the fact there's a book by the same name, suggests they are. And as something of a bonus, there are extra, web-only pages available - including how to cope with Ebola, anthrax and severed limbs. Worst case scenarios all, I'm sure you'll agree.
See www.worstcasescenarios.com

New & noted
• Health portal... www.healthsites.co.uk

• Online travel gets crowded... www.yell.com/travel

• Online travel gets rammed... www.totaljourney.com