Moving stuff
It might be stretching a point to describe the BBC's motion picture library as "one of the world's great living treasures", but it certainly makes compulsive viewing. The library includes more than 300,000 hours of footage from the BBC and CBS News, going back more than 70 years. You can get a taste from the public site, with clips streamed to Windows Media Player in a browser window. However, you have to register for full access to videos and your own "storage bins", and to be able to download preview clips.
The MPL even offers to dig out any clips you need ("Call or email us now and let our researchers tap into the motherlode for you"). As well as being entertaining, the site also looks like a long-term revenue opportunity.
www.bbcmotiongallery.com
Euro fun
"Learning about Europe can be fun," claims the European Commission, and its EuropaGO site proves it. It offers four games in 11 languages for kids aged 10-14, with more to come. Games cover things like European history and geography. Click the piggy bank on the welcome screen and you can play at collecting a set of Euro currency - coins and notes - while avoiding enemies such as wasps and magpies. It's not SuperMario, but there are worse things around. www.europa.eu.int/europago
Music lists
As the current music download scene surely testifies, there's almost nothing blokes like better than making lists of their favourite albums. Pitchfork Media has been doing that for about five years, with several advantages: you get nice little reviews and cover art, and you don't actually have to listen to any of them. Pitchfork's list of the top 100 for the 1970s is as odd as expected, given the widely different tastes of the people who picked them. David Bowie's Low, for example, takes the top spot, when it probably wouldn't feature in a list of top 10 Bowie albums. But if the 70s seems just too long ago, the site has similar lists of 80s and 90s albums to argue about. You can also dive into the archive of reviews that Pitchfork has been publishing daily since 1995. http://pitchforkmedia.com/top/70s
http://pitchforkmedia.com/top/80s
http://pitchforkmedia.com/top/80s
Anti-phishing
Windows users who are worried they might fall victim to "phishing" - the use of fake sites to collect personal and financial information - can now add a toolbar that helps to spot the scam. SpoofGuard, from Stanford University's security lab, works as an Internet Explorer plug-in. It makes a wide range of checks then gives you either a green, yellow or red light. SpoofStick is a much simpler program that tells you which site you are on. It works with IE and Firefox. It may also be worth visiting the Anti-Phishing Working Group site for the latest news. http://pitchforkmedia.com/top/80s
www.corestreet.com/spoofstick
www.antiphishing.org
Train tracker
Tube travellers watch the dot matrix indicators to find out when the next train is due. But Balázs Boros's Tubetrack lets you do the same thing at home. Unfortunately, the tube data is limited to the Bakerloo line between Queens Park and Elephant and Castle, and the Docklands Light Railway, but the latest version 0.3 also handles "live departures and arrivals for all UK national rail stations". The software uses the internet to collect information from the Transport for London Tube estimated time of arrival (ETA), DLR Daisy and National Rail websites, and displays it on your desktop instead of in a browser. There are versions for Microsoft Windows, Linux (SuSE and Red Hat) and Mac OS, and they are all free. http://homepage.mac.com/balazsboros/tubetrack
Fuller flavour
Google Labs has launched a beta test version of what it calls "site- flavored search", which means it is optimised to provide better results for users of a particular site - possibly yours. How does Google know what to highlight? It uses "a profile created by a site's webmaster on behalf of the site's visitors". The profiling starts with categories such as health, home and music. Choose music and you get a choice of sub-categories such as electronica and bluegrass, and so it goes. www.google.com/services/siteflavored.html
New & noted
Bots for pre-schoolers
Weird foods
Office Moron quiz
Six of the best: Marlon Brando
Obituary
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/3568221.stm
Filmography
www.imdb.com
Tribute
http://brando.crosscity.com
Wikipedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marlon_Brando
Trivia quiz
www.meredy.com/brandotriv.htm
Yahoo directory
http://dir.yahoo.com/Entertainment
