Women's aid
The University of Maryland's Center for Women and Information Technology has a comprehensive and entertaining website on, what else, women and information technology. Along with links to articles around the world on women and technology, it also has a huge collection of links to sites, resources, news and discussion lists. There's also an exhaustive catalogue of books on women and tech.
Rev up a bike
Remember reverend Paul Sinclair? The leather-clad, motorbike-riding pastor features in the news now and then when raising funds for various worthwhile community projects. Now he's online at www.fasterpastor.com, and online payments company NetBanx has donated a payment system to allow supporters to donate at the site. Check out the pastor's stunts, which have involved Clint Eastwood's lawyers, writing a column for Bike magazine, and serving up a cup of tea on a motorbike with a stunt rider at 60 mph.
Body heat
A host of celebrities are not only willing to let everyone know which of their personal body parts they like best, but are also willing to auction them off - as photographs - to benefit the cancer support charity Gilda's Club London. The collection, Vaseline Bodies, has snaps of Moby's tattooed neck, Meg Mathews' pierced nipple, and Yasmin le Bon's wrists. Also on offer are commissioned works by six leading photographers, under the theme A Celebration of Skin. View at the auction site QXL. Bids are accepted until September 8.
Browsers blab
How much does your browser know about you? Find out how much it lets slip about you as you surf, by completing a survey on privacy at http://atlas.cs.york.ac.uk/~ada101.
The survey is part of a research project on the subject by a University of York computer science student. Once you email your answers, you can click on a button to see the details your browser would happily cough up about you to marketers or data miners. The site also steers you to www.anonymizer.com, which lets you surf anonymously.
Shop window
Never know where to shop online? Homeshopping.co.uk lists and evaluates UK online shopping outlets, and also hunts for the best deals.
Get on the bus
The educational site WTech Gateway - which gives detailed information about countries all across the world for students and teachers - has a particular interest in the progress of Rebecca the Ghanabus. Rebecca is the Newcastle University-sponsored bus travelling to the small Ghanaian village of Akumfi Atakwa with equipment for the school library. WTech hosts the lively illustrated diary of a 19-year-old who spent three months teaching English and science there. See www.wtech.co.uk/Mandeep/. The BBC is documenting the bus journey at www.bbc.co.uk/ghanabus.
Smokin'
As dot.com delivery services go, iToke has to be one of the more unusual ventures. From tomorrow, the Amsterdam-based marijuana suppliers promise to deliver iToke orders in Amsterdam via couriers on green bicycles - called iTokerristas - within 30 minutes (although whether the purchasers will even notice the passage of time, or have any concern about it whatsoever, is another issue). Transactions are done by SIM card and customers can order by Wap.
Taster
Foodies have a new site to salivate over: www.foodoo.com features six leading UK chefs, including Gordon Ramsay, Antony Worrall Thompson, and Sophie Grigson, and wine expert Hugh Johnson. Plums, squid, tagliatelle with mussels and green sauce, and rhubarb, orange and mascarpone fool all feature this week, along with a collection of Caesar salad recipes. Perhaps appropriately, Foodoo also hurls an abundance of cookies at your browser.
New and noted
Habitual sock-losers can subscribe to a monthly delivery service from Britsox. Products for the disabled can be bought at www.disability-shop.com; and www.southlife.net is a webzine for artists, writers etc in the South. Teletext has gone Wap at www.teletext.co.uk
