Toys ahoy
Mummy, where did Barbie come from? And which was the first company to mass-produce teddy bears? The History Channel has scheduled a two-hour programme, The History of Toys and Games, for next month, and produced an interesting site about the subject. Testosterone-fuelled surfers may find Modern Marvel's Boys Toys more interesting. Flash is obligatory, in all senses of the word.
Those who grew up playing with a whip and top may be interested to learn that today's top toy is a Game Boy Advance, according to a vote on Yahooligans! Jade's Funky Fashion Makeover and the Barbie Camcorder are also desirable. Those looking for present ideas could also consult the Family Fun listing of the best games chosen by various age groups. The voting on the 71 toys that reached the final was done by children at 18 day-care centres in the USA, who spent three weeks playing with them. Old Century Baseball, a pinball machine, proved the most wanted toy.
www.historychannel.com/exhibits/toys/
www.historychannel.com/boystoys/boystoys.swf
Street site
Ruavista - it means "street views" in Portuguese - is a site devoted to street life and "signs of the city". Examples include posters, decorated shop windows, road signs, graffiti, posters and plaques. The webmaster, Marc Voelckel, reckons these provide more insight into real cities than the monuments and tourist landmarks found in guidebooks. The result is both interesting to look at, and involving, because everyone should feel they can contribute photos. To encourage participation, there's a Photo of the Week section, and the site is holding a photo contest, which closes on December 30.
Trailsides
The limitation of the Ruavista site is that it lacks geographical context: there are no maps, directions or compass points, so the photos are merely random views. Pickatrail takes the opposite approach. It focuses on trails a backpacker might follow, with maps and trailside photos. The glamorous stuff includes trails through Yosemite National Park and the Grand Canyon, in the US. However, it also includes a walk on the Dorset coast, and a fairly unchallenging trek along the Victoria Embankment and around St James's Park in London. The site also has an A-Z of placenames with links to maps and other information, and a brief guide to anoraks.
www.pickatrail.com/jupiter/features/gear/anorak.html
Geosurvey
You probably read how American and British children did not know where Afghanistan was on a map of the world, and failed to pick out the Pacific Ocean. Think you could do better? Twenty of the National Geographic's Global Geographic Literacy Survey's 56 questions are online.
Review TV
Great idea for a site: post the titles of well-known TV series and let anyone review them. The hard part is to come: getting intelligent amateur reviewers to take an interest. "Bring back Angus" has many qualities, including brevity, but it's not Nancy Banks Smith.
GOSH!
From December 1, you will be able to pledge £5 and send up to 50 electronic Christmas cards from the Merry Christmas site, with 80% of the money going to the Great Ormond Street Hospital Children's Charity. Gosh, which is 150 years old, is hoping to raise £100,000.
Kids' stuff
UCIcinemagic is a lively new website from UCI Cinemas for kids aged from five to 11. Visitors can enter competitions, send e-cards and play a couple of games. The main drawback is that it is all done with Flash, so it helps to have a fast internet connection.
DIY portal
Why should Yahoo, Microsoft and AOL have all the fun? Now anyone can launch a portal to make resources available online using the Scout Portal Toolkit. The SPT has been developed by the Internet Scout Project with funding from the Andrew W Mellon Foundation. It is open source code developed with the Apache web server running on Red Hat Linux, and requires a web server with PHP 4.0.6 and MySQL 3.23 or later. The project has been running since 1994, sponsored by America's National Science Foundation. Its function is to inform the American educational community about the internet.
http://scout.wisc.edu/research/SPT/download.html
New & noted
· James Coburn:
http://benmont.lib.net/james_coburn/english_top.html
·European Young Consumer competition for schoolchildren:
·White House life:
www.whitehouse.gov/history/life/
· A browser-based spelling checker that will correct Hotmail: www.hotlingo.com
· Desk tops: www.snapyourdesk.barkins.com
· Thirsty Horse of Mongolia: www.thirsty-horse.com
Six of the best
Toons
The Big Cartoon Database
Toon Zone
Jerry Beck's
Animation World Network
Toon tracker
Links www.nonstick.com/links.html
