Book hunt
When you have read a particularly entertaining book, you may be tempted to buy another title by the same author. Readersonline-europa.com offers a more imaginative possibility. Its Book Forager lets you describe the book using a set of sliders from happy/sad to short/long and produces a list of possible titles. It is not only fun, it seems to work. The Readersonline site was created with the support of Ariane funding from the European Commission as part of the Network for the Promotion of Books, Reading and Translation. However, Forager was developed by a British company, Applied Psychology Research Ltd, whose customers include Lastminute.com and Blockbuster Video. This month, APR also introduced a UK government-funded Forager at Branching Out, the site for public libraries. www.readersonline-europa.com/forager
www.forager.co.uk
www.branching-out.net/forager
Songmail
Ambient composer Brian Eno has been the first (and quite possibly the last) major artist to release a composition embedded in a piece of email. The work, called Wander, is in text-based Koan Vector Audio (KVA) format, and plays when the email is opened - providing you have also downloaded Sseyo's 421K Koan Plugin 8.20. Sseyo says typical tracks range from 500 bytes to 5K. You can get Wander by emailing Enos Wander@sseyo.com, listen to it on the web (after refreshing the page), or compose your own instead. www.sseyo.com/products/artist_titles/genmus1.html
Dynamite site
This week's Nobel Peace Prize - announced tomorrow - is driving traffic to the Nobel site. This has recently been expanded with interactive educational content such as virtual laboratories and games. Visitors can, for example, make Pavlov's dog drool or experience the Nobel dinner in one minute. Don't forget last week's Ig Nobels. www.nobel.se
www.improbable.com/ig/ig-top.
Mind control
Factnet is never less than interesting, and its take on the World Trade Centre atrocity is an example. It argues that the terrorists themselves were victims of a mind control cult, and needs to be tackled on that basis. Factnet is better known for tackling a different cult: scientology. For government thinking on the war against terrorism, see America's National Security Archive (NSA) briefing book and, here, 10 Downing Street and the parliamentary research paper. www.factnet.org/letters/FACTNewsSeptember2001.html
www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB55/index1.html
www.pm.gov.uk
www.parliament.uk/commons/lib/research/rp2001/rp01-072.pdf
Free thinking
The September issue of The Spook is devoted to thoughts, memories and comments on New York. It's a "real" magazine you download in Adobe Acrobat format. The Smithsonian Institution is also collecting thoughts on September 11 for its Book of Reflections. www.thespook.com
www.si.edu/comment/
Blog on
If you want to find out what the merry band of British bloggers (web loggers) is up to, try the Gbloogle search engine at Ben (Times Interface, as was) Hammersley's personal site. It has no connection with Google but it does search blogs listed on Threadnaught, another place to look. Swindon Town fans can, of course, go straight to Swindonlog, but there are no prizes for figuring out its connection with a member of the Online team. http://gbloogle.benhammersley.com
http://gblogs.threadnaught.net
www.swindonlog.com
Crackers
Want the scoop on dogs in the news? You can find it at The Scoop, obviously. If there is anything better than this site, it must be its companion, Cats in the News. The canine site was launched on January 1, but what justifies this mention is the imminent launch of what could be an even more amazing version about pigs. www.dogsinthenews.com
www.catsinthenews.com
www.pigsinthenews.com
New & noted
• First novels from three new authors discovered on the web: http://NewAuthors.iPublish.com
• uSwitch, which compares gas, electricity and phone deals, has added digital TV: www.uswitch.com
• The CIA has updated its valuable Fact Book. For the 2001 edition, see www.odci.gov/cia/publications/factbook
• Revolutionary women of Afghanistan: http://rawa.fancymarketing.net
• New series with Captain Jonathan Archer: www.startrek.com/news/nextonent.asp
Six of the best Music awards
Mobo
www.mobo.net/MTV
Video Music
www.mtv.com/onair/vma01
The Grammys
www.grammy.com/awards
The Ivors
www.britishacademy.com/ivors.htm
Brit Awards
www.bpi.co.uk/jm/brits
Winners guide
www.thisdayinmusic.com/cont/awards.html
