Festival time
The Edinburgh International Festival is now in full swing and this year there is a flotilla of festival sites to help you navigate around its myriad delights. A good place to start is www.edinburghfestivals.co.uk which provides a solid overview - even if some of the information is a year out of date. Much better is www.edinburghguide.com, featuring many independent reviews and is better organised. The Edinburgh festival is actually several festivals all being held at the same time, and each has its own site. The official site for the International Festival is at www.eif.co.uk. The ever popular Fringe is at www.edfringe.com. For the Book Festival go to www.edbookfest.co.uk and the Film fest is at www.edfilmfest.org.uk/2001. One of Scotland's leading film ezines, iofilm.co.uk, is also running daily coverage of the Film Festival. There is also the Tattoo and the Guardian-sponsored television festival. Further Guardian coverage at www.theguardian.com/artslatest.
Amazon
Mike Daisey is an actor and playwright who also spent two years working for online bookseller Amazon.com. The non-disclosure agreement he signed has just expired, allowing him to tell the "real story" of Amazon.com. His hilarious take on how he "learned to slavishly love idealistic mouth breathers, 60-hour weeks, and the cult of personality that is Jeff Bezos," is now online. The result is 21 Dog Years, a Gonzo-style expose for the dot.com age, that mixes fact and humour in the manner of Michael Moore or the UK's Mark Thomas. Or as Daisy puts it, "a philosophical inquisition yielding the same kinds of questions one might ask after surviving a bender in Vegas." See www.mikedaisey.com
Film search
CNMovies.com claims to contain information on more than 321,000 films, culled from the pages of books such as the Complete Index to World Film since 1895, the Halliwell Film Guide and Who's Who. It also has a stills library, vintage movies section and magazine. All this, it claims, should be enough to give the Internet Movie Database - regarded as the Mecca for film buffs online - a run for its money. www.cnmovies.com.
Foreign ways
The online campaign to force the government to fulfil its election promise and give us all a continental-style drinking culture has been launched. Think you are as grown up as the French? Then sign the petition at www.drinklikejohnnyforeigner.co.uk
Deep space
Launched more than two years ago, the Chandra X-Ray telescope has captured some of the most magnificent images of the deep universe. The best have been collated and now been made available on a new website. Check out the pictures, or just download some stellar wallpaper. See http://chandra.harvard.edu
Book worms
A new site helps net users search for books held in their local libraries from the comfort of home. It works by arranging books on a set of sliding scales. You tell it what kind of book you like and it narrows it down to a handful of choices. www.branchingout.net/forager
Window shop
Germany's online net art bible, Telepolis, has a new online exhibition. Shopping Windows examines "net art after the age of e-commerce" and the exhibition includes new work by a number of net.art pioneers, including a very playable deconstruction of the computer game by Belgium duo JODI.
The UK is represented with the inclusion of work by I/O/D's Mathew Fuller and Harwood, a sometime member of digital art collective, Mongrel. Be patient, mind, it takes ages to load. www.heise.de/tp/english/kunst/nk/shopping
Embracing it
Virgin Records is making the new Embrace album available to net users two weeks before it is due in the shops. The only snag is is that you have to have bought their debut album if you want the preview. Virgin is trialing a new CD fingerprinting scheme, which is designed to reward loyalty. All you do is pop the debut album in your CD drive on your PC and you will be driven to a special streaming site where the entire album will be available. If successful, Virgin says it will extend the service. www.embrace.co.uk
New & noted
• New quotations and sayings database at www.quotesandsayings.com
• Yell.com has launched a new property site. http://uk.yell.com/property
• Live comedy across the UK. www.chortle.co.uk
Six of the best Human cloning
The advocates
www.humancloning.org
The instructions
www.biofact.com/cloning/human.html
The debate
http://farnsworthfamily.tripod.com/Humancloning/cloning.htm
The official line
www.dti.gov.uk/hgac
The case against
http://web.mit.edu/news office/tt/2001/apr04/cloning.html
The Guardian
www.theguardian.com/genes
