Global Google
Google, the web's best search engine, has silently opened a UK site (www.google.co.uk). You can click a radio button to restrict searches to UK pages. There are other international versions too, such as www.google.de and www.google.fr , though www.google.dk is a bookstore. Google has also launched an i-mode service, for users of Japan's mobile phone system, which you can find at www.google.com/imode.
Spaced out
Some of the people who live in the South Pacific may see an unusual and very expensive firework during the next week, when Russia's Mir space station re-enters the Earth's atmosphere. But for the best view, an expedition plans to observe the re-entry from a chartered plane flying at 25,000 feet.
Details are on the website at www.mirreentry.com, along with a history of Mir and a QuickTime movie simulation of its expected destruction.
Cool dudes
Online columnist Douglas Rushkoff, who teaches media culture at New York University, has been interviewing people who create and flog popular culture to teenagers for America's PBS public broadcasting television network. The Merchants of Cool programme also has a website at www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/cool/.
Although mostly text, the website does include some RealPlayer video clips to download.
Yippie-yi-yo
Country and western songs are not likely to get many mentions here, but check out the chorus: "My dot com done come and gone/The wheels came off and it didn't take long/All that venture capital's spent/And our website didn't even make a cent."
Rick Glaze is no rhinestone cowboy, but a business analyst with the ambition to become a Silicon Cowboy - which happens to be the title of his first CD.
Lyrics and samples are at www.siliconcowboyonline.com
Search and see
Here is an idea whose time has manifestly not come, at least in the UK. Room 102 (www.room102.com) is a search engine/directory that also serves up images of the sites it finds. You can have them in high bandwidth, low bandwidth or thumbnail format, unless you want plain text.
The directory is the familiar Open Directory, Dmoz, which is also used by Google. Room 102 is more of demo: the company hopes to sell its SlideShow technology to every other portal site.
Code 404
It is a crushing indictment that many whole web sites are less interesting than some people's error pages, for which the code is 404. See whateverhost.com/404.htm, for example, or www.cga94.com/notHere.htm for a short, sharp shock.
If you want more, Jenni Ripley (mentioned here before) is still collecting error pages at www.plinko.net/404/. Don't forget to try her effort www.plinko.net/404/404.htm
Uncool droids
Warner Brothers has released a "teaser trailer" and poster for its forthcoming film, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone: go to harrypotter.warnerbros.com/web/dailyprophet/article.jsp?id=movie_trailer1.
However, no one has forgotten the trail of 15-year-old girls in England, Singapore and the US who have been put under pressure by Warner's lawyers for running Harry Potter fan sites. The fightback is continuing with the Defense Against the Dark Arts (DADA) project organised by Megora McGonagall, the American girl who runs the Daily Prophet fan site (www.dprophet.com); and Potter War (www.potterwar.org.uk ), which is mirrored at www.screamingfist.com/Pwar/.
DADA is running an petition while other young victims are helping to organise a worldwide boycott of Harry Potter merchandise.
New & noted
• Eat like a hunter-gatherer with help from the Paleolithic Diet Page. a feast of links at: www.panix.com/~paleodiet/
• The world's greatest thinkers are being packaged at www.boxmind.com
• Doomed? Vote at www.dotdoomed.com on whether companies are hot or not.
• The red nose's home on the web at www.comicrelief.com is hungry for money.
• Don't forget: the next commercial web event in the UK is Mother's Day on March 25; www.interflora.co.uk/mothers is just the start.
• It plays you: www.majestic.ea.com
