Not sexy
Am I Hot Or Not, a sort of beauty rating site, once swept the web, followed by dozens of imitators. Amazingly, it is still going. So is a German imitation, Binichsexy.de, which has recently spawned a British version, Amisexy.co.uk. The company that owns it, Wapme Systems AG, is now planning to roll out similar systems in the US and other countries, saying it opens up "considerable earnings potential with the aid of premium multimedia messaging (MMS) and Universal Mobile Telecommunications (UMTS)". Presumably, it already makes money from people who send Sexymail to one another after rating their pictures and clicking the "contact me" button. (Sorry, this aspect was not tested.) Sexymail costs £1 a week. But how many young lovebirds will get together this way is open to question. Rating site pictures often look as though they have been nicked from professional escort agencies or soft porn sites, and even the ones that look genuine could have been posted by a "friend" as a "joke".
http://amisexy.co.uk
http://binichsexy.de
www.hotornot.com
Ask Harvard
What sort of tough questions should journalists be asking about, say, Iraq? The long-established Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University has launched the Watchdog site to tell them. It also "seeks to encourage more informed reporting by putting journalists in contact with authorities who can suggest appropriate, probing questions and who can serve as resources" - people at Harvard, for example. www.niemanwatchdog.org
Nigriwhat?
Nigritude Ultramarine did not appear on the web until last month, and now Google shows more than half a million hits. What happened? The answer is a competition among search engine optimisers and others to get their website to the top position on Google for that term. The first part of the competition (and an iPod) was won brilliantly by forums.merkey.net ahead of Philipp Lenssen's Google Blogoscoped. The Slayer prize of a flat screen monitor will go to whoever is top on July 7. And if you make it to Blogoscoped, look down the page for info on VisitorVille - website traffic displayed in a Sim City-style format. http://forums.merkey.net
http://blog.outer-court.com
www.darkblue.com/seochallenge
www.visitorville.com
Nicer one
The National Institute for Clinical Excellence (Nice) has launched a new website designed to make its guidance for the NHS on treatments and care more accessible. Visitors can now search for guidance by illness, so it should be much easier to find things. www.nice.org.uk
Spoof!
The Onion now has a challenger in the web satire market, with The Spoof!, and a central part of its appeal is that anyone can sign up to contribute stories. The original site, launched in 1997, was called There's No Place Like Home, before it became Laughsend. The original authors retired, tired, and now Jack O'Farrell has taken up the cudgels with the latest version. Regular features include celebrity diaries and a caption competition. The Onion was founded in 1988 and also has printed editions. www.thespoof.com
www.theonion.com
Google Guide
Nancy Blachman's popular Google tutorial has been updated and the content reorganised. Now you can also download a PDF version for $1.99. The guide is a companion to the McGraw-Hill book, How to Do Everything with Google, which Blachman co-authored. www.googleguide.com
http://shop.osborne.com/cgi-bin/osborne
Sic transit
Too late now to watch the transit of Venus, but the European Southern Observatory site has all the photos and animations you could need. www.vt-2004.org
New & noted
Blogosphere news
http://blogpulse.com
Wildlife conservation
www.wildlive.org
FBI insanity
www.caedefensefund.org
Map of Springfield
www.csupomona.edu/~jelerma/springfield/map
Six of the best: Ronald Reagan
Home site
www.ronaldreagan.com
Presidential Library
www.reagan.utexas.edu
Memorial Foundation
www.ronaldreaganmemorial.com
The American experience
www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/reagan
Pictorial history
http://victorian.fortunecity.com/manet/404
The filmography
www.imdb.com/name/nm0001654
