About time
Black history has been neglected in the UK, and we have been very slow to follow America's example, which has held an annual Black History Month for the past 25 years. However, the national archives (formerly the public record office) and the Black and Asian Studies Association has now opened a website, Black Presence: Asian and Black History in Britain, funded with lottery money. It covers black and Asian history in Britain from 1500 to 1850

. At the end of this month, the story will be continued at another site, Moving Here, which will cover the history of migration to England from the 1800s to the present day. A third lottery-funded site worth visiting is Be-Me, which stands for Black and Ethnic-Minority Experience. This educational site was set up in 1999 "to record the historical experiences of African-Caribbean and Asian people who came to Wolverhampton after the second world war".
www.kn.pacbell.com/wired/BHM/bh_hotlist.html
www.pro.gov.uk/pathways/blackhistory
www.movinghere.org.uk
www.be-me.org

Buy now!
Next Thursday is Internet Shopping Day in the UK, and industry body IMRG (Interactive Media in Retail Group) would like you to fire up your browser and buy something - just to support the cause, of course. It has put up a microsite to reassure people that online shopping is safe. Visitors are also promised some special offers and competition prizes. Local merchants are hoping to benefit from a new directive brought in on July 1, which requires companies outside the European Union to pay VAT on goods and services sold electronically to European customers. Sponsors of the 24x7x2003 campaign, which signifies "always available", include B&Q, Boots, MFI and Marks & Spencer. http://24x7.imrg.org

Class
In the past two months, Schools Web Directory UK says it has "found, visited and catalogued" 3,657 school websites, and now claims it has a full set of state secondary school sites, plus many independent and primary schools. However, this does not mean you can find details of every state secondary school because, shockingly, only 57% are online - and about 5% of these sites "could be described as grossly out of date or under-developed". Still, well done to the LEAs for Blackpool, Cardiff, Clackmannanshire, Isle of Wight, Kingston upon Thames, Orkney Islands and Rutland, all of whose state secondaries are on the web. You can add your local school, if it is missing. www.schoolswebdirectory.co.uk

Open gov
Anonymous US government employees are busy collecting and collating information on citizens, under its Total Information Awareness programme, so anonymous citizens should start doing the same thing on governments and their employees. That's the idea behind Open Government Information Awareness, a website created by a student at MIT in Boston. The UK does not appear in the list of states, but it might be worth getting a copy of the database software the site uses, and doing it ourselves. http://opengov.media.mit.edu/

Small Wondir
It must have sounded a great idea at the time. The web is full of ignoramuses and smart alecs, so you just need a website to connect the two. That is what the Wondir Foundation, a non-profit start-up, has provided. People can type in their questions, which scroll by in a window, so others can leap in and answer them. The site has been up for more than a year now, it is still in beta test and, sad to say, neither the questions nor answers show any sign of promise. www.wondir.org

Meet Danaja
If the kids are at a loose end this month, you could always take them to the Burarra Gathering of indigenous people in northern Australia. It's all done in Flash MX, so the loading times are long: if you are using a V.90 modem, it is better to download the presentation first. There is a lot of background information, including resources for teachers. And how else will they learn to say "Bobo burraya niya barra" instead of CU l8r? http://burarra.questacon.edu.au/home.html

Download: http://burarra.questacon.edu.au/pages/download_site.html

New & noted

Arthur's Poetry Club
http://pbskids.org/arthur/
Motown Museum
www.motownmuseum.com
Speed up the Web
www.performancecorps.org
www.websiteoptimization.com

Six of the best Le Tour

Official site
www.letour.fr
Live coverage
www.dailypeloton.com/tdfmain.asp
New York Times Flash guide
http://a208.g.akamai.net
News and results
www.cyclingnews.com
Tour de Lance
www.lancearmstrong.com
The blog
http://notd.blogs.com/tdf