Neil McIntosh 

Web watch

DIY moovies | Juice up | Bargain hunt | Weekly thrift | Art for all | Cold turkey | Beat about... | Six of the best
  
  


DIY moovies

Sometimes a website comes along that just blinds you with its creative brilliance. Fjallfil.com is one of those sites. Take one cow. Add music, some dance moves and vocals, and build your own rock video (in one of three genres) or a workout video (with Fonda moves). Then sit back and marvel at the work that has gone into this brilliant waste of time. It requires the latest version of Shockwave, but it really is worth installing the software for this one.

Juice up

Do you ever feel guilty about all your power-guzzling gadgets? The video on standby, the computer whirring away at all hours, not to mention the fridge, freezer, lights and all the other things casually left on? Well, now npower and Greenpeace are offering what Guardian columnist Polly Toynbee has described as "easy virtue just one quick phone call away": wind-generated power to consumers.

Npower will build a windfarm at North Hoyle, with the hope being that enough consumers will sign up to persuade them to build more. The 'leccy still arrives through a plug: the difference is, you're not melting a glacier to stock up on ice cubes. And you can sign up online, too.

Bargain hunt

www.clearance-comet.co.uk, the high-street electronics chain, has just launched an auction site to sell off its unused returns, ex-display and damaged stock. The site has auctions on a range of goods, from TVs to camcorders, starting at just £1, with all the items sporting a one-year guarantee. When Online visited this week, the range of goods on offer was small and the bidding was quite high. Still, it looked like there might be some savings on big-ticket items such as camcorders. But it's worth noting the prices at discount online electronics retailers before bidding - Comet's normal "in store" price is less of a guide if the likes of Unbeatable.co.uk are selling the same thing much cheaper - as new.

Weekly thrift

Indeed, the price you pay at auctions can be a curious thing, as new research from two US academics has shown. Their findings, reported in last week's Economist, show that items at that daddy of auction sites, eBay, fetched 2% more if they were sold at a weekend, rather than during the working week. Chuck Wood and Robert Kauffman also discovered that pictures, already known to be worth a thousand words, were also worth a few more pounds (or dollars): 5.7%, on average, was added by a snap of the item under the hammer. And a vendor with a high trust rating from other eBay users made 6.8% more than those with low ratings.

Art for all

Since its launch last year, Easyart has made it simple to decorate your walls with something a little better than old Athena posters: visit their site, pick a classic art print, choose a frame, and you're off. Now they have redesigned their website in an effort to make it easier to navigate, and are offering 10% off until the end of the month (quote NEWEASYSITE when prompted at the checkout). You can even get photographs of your own turned into a Warhol-esque print.

Cold turkey

The British Turkey Information Service (no, really) says the "post millennium family" is most likely to feel daunted by the prospect of Christmas dinner, as opposed to the more experienced older hands who presumably know their giblets from their turkey breasts. Reaching out to the convenience generation, they've launched a website full of tips, trivia, recipes and jolly handy defrosting and roasting calculators which might - just might - save you from Boxing Day belly ache - or bellyaching, for that matter.

Beat about...

If you feel watching President Bush junior giving a speech is like watching a child wobbling on a bike - everyone's wincing because they're convinced he's going to fall off - you might appreciate Bushgrammar.com. It's a website devoted to spotting, and correcting, the countless "Bushisms" coming out of the White House every week.

Gems include, "Africa is a nation which suffers from incredible disease" and the memorable, "Redefining the role of the United States from enablers to keep the peace to enablers to keep the peace from peacekeepers is going to be an assignment." You can even get favourite quotes put on a mug or T-shirt. There have been fewer additions of late - is this an attempt to rally behind Bush post September 11, or is he getting better?

New & noted

· TUC showcase for unions: www.learningservices.org.uk

· Routeplanners for your handheld: www.palmtop.nl

· Search TV by keyword: www.bloomberg.com/tv

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