Nippy machine
It is not always remembered that the world's first business computer was used in west London by Jo Lyons, the tea-shop company. But this year is the 50th anniversary of Leo (Lyon's Electronic Office), and an international conference is being organised to celebrate it. See www.is.lse.ac.uk/BusinessComputing50 for details, and www.leo-computers.org.uk for more about Leo.

This year has also seen the 100th anniversary of the first transatlantic radio transmission by Guglielmo Marconi. Patricia Hewitt, e-Minister, opened Marconi plc's celebratory site at www. marconicalling.com . The content could be interesting but, sadly, the design is unremittingly hostile to the millions of web users with impaired vision.

Vote Hottie
If the creators of Amihotornot were on a royalty, they would be very rich. The number of workalikes keeps growing, and now includes localised versions such as www.amihotornot.com.au, www.amihotornot.de, www.amihotornot.nl and so on. One of the latest variants, Am I Electable or Not?, has a topical local angle, and the Fantasy Cabinet is worth a look. But it would have been more fun if the site's designers had cloned the statistically much more interesting approach used by Pick The Hottie. This site has got even better since I last mentioned it here, with the addition of a MyHotties facility.

God's Debris
The prolific Scott Adams has written a non-Dilbert book, and is selling an electronic version for $4.95 at http://dilbert.com. The intro and a brief chapter are available free. "People under the age of 14 should not read it," says Adams.

Children can be diverted to the new promotional but educational game, Dilberito (direct link, www.dilberito.com. However, when they win, you'll have to explain what a nemesis is.

Top Tara
The web is full of people beavering away at specialised databases and search engines, many of them hugely useful to people in their particular subject areas. Examples range from The Film Box Office Database at www.boxofficeguru.com/film.htm to the Fencing Search Engine. Of course, you have to know where to find them. The answer is Tara Calishain's brief newsletter, Research Buzz www.researchbuzz.com. It does make you wonder how we ever managed without such things as www.lighthouseclothing.com/database/searchdatabase.cfm and http://country-music-club.com.

Buy lines
The commercial web is still showing signs of life. Iris Spectacles is flogging designer eye-wear online, while The Original Swedish Wheat Heat Company is offering pillows filled with organic wheat and lavender: therapeutic when heated in the microwave, apparently. However, if you are more concerned with love, life, and lips, then Blistex would rather you visited its lively new site at www.blistexlips.co.uk.

Grace notes
The Mighty Organ is a webzine that has more in common with Lord Gnome than E Power Biggs. It has an impressive list of contributors, many of them based around London, who usually get paid for writing, but here are busking online for free. The Organ has some way to go, but it has not made a bad start. See www.themightyorgan.com.

Perverse
Are you one of those people who thinks there just isn't enough filth on the web? If so, help is at hand. You can "pornolize" any site just by typing the address into the pornolizer. The same technique has been used for years to "jesusify" sites from www.askjesus.org, though that address no longer works. However, you can still "dialectize" a site or even shred it at www.potatoland.org/shredder. The extremely foul-mouthed Search Bastard is still going strong, too.

Car shots
John Frankenheimer, Guy Ritchie, and Ang Lee are among the big-name directors making Hire Films - shorts that feature BMW cars. You can even download a BMW Interactive Film Player to play them, for the PC (4.5MB) or Mac (7MB): this adds features to Apple QuickTime 4.1.2 or later. The first two in the series are showing now at www.bmwfilms.com

New & noted
• For the world's biggest, possibly only, collection of gay advertising, go to www.commercialcloset.org

• Not just what it says www.this-page-intentionally-left-blank.org but a project.

• Think of it as Google with pop-up knobs on: www.ilor.com
• Scientific American now has some favourite websites. See www.sciam.com/explorations/2001/051401top50

• You may not be able to watch an American state-sponsored execution on the web, yet, but you can hear some at www.soundportraits.org/on-air/execution_tapes

• See the celebrity lav seats auctioned for charity at www.flushed.org.uk

Six of the best Douglas Adams

The Tributes
www.douglasadams.com
The Guide
www.bbc.co.uk/h2g2/guide/A5932
The FAQ
www-personal.umd.umich. edu/~nhughes/dna/faqs/ dnafaq.html The Edge
www.edge.org
The Profile
http://books.theguardian.com/departments/science fiction/story/0,6000,327512,00.html
The Links
http://dir.yahoo.com/Arts/Humanities/Literature/Authors/Science_Fiction_ and_Fantasy/Adams__Douglas