PS2 to web
Since June 11, UK owners of the PlayStation 2 have been able to connect their consoles to the internet to play online. But until now, the only "site" they could see was Sony's own. Now, thanks to an online hack by Martyn Brook, a young web designer from west Yorkshire, users can turn their PS2 into a web browser and visit almost any web page they like.
Brook has found that it is possible to change the web address the PlayStation first looks for when it goes online. The method is a fairly simple six-step process: details are on his site at the address below. This is a well-produced online magazine dedicated to online games, and acts as an alternative homepage to the official Sony site. The site is packed full of news, reviews and tips on how to play MP3 music files on your PS2, and will be of interest to anyone into online gaming, not just devotees of PS2.
www.brookfresh.co.uk
Feeling lucky?
Stuck where to go on the internet? Then direct your browser towards BananaSlug.com, a simple website designed to promote "serendipitous surfing: finding the unexpected in the 3,083,324,652 web pages indexed by Google." The site performs a regular Google search but also seeds it with another random word that creates an "accidental encounter". That accident throws up pages that may get overlooked in a regular search. You are given some control over the random words: you can, for example, seed your search with a word from Shakespeare or a list of jargon words. www.bananaslug.com
The virtual tour
Kevin Smokler describes himself as a "writer, speaker, maker of mischief and a passionate believer in the web's ability to connect readers, writers and good books". By day he is a book critic for the San Francisco Chronicle, but he has recently launched the Virtual Book Tour, an innovative way for small publishers to promote their books to a wider audience. The plan is simple. Authors tour websites, mostly highly active community weblogs, much as they would tour book shops. Tours last for two weeks with the author "stopping" at one site each weekday, 10 sites in all. Each site participates either by posting book excerpts, audio clips of the author reading, an interview with the author, or a review of the book. www.kevinsmokler.com/vbt.php
www.sonewmedia.com
Antigravity
At first it looks like an elaborate hoax: eight seconds of tiny video that claim to prove the existence of anti-gravity. A triangular frame wrapped in kitchen foil floats in the air with only a thin electric cable connecting it to the ground. The machine in the video is called the Lifter, and it works without moving parts, flies silently, uses only electrical energy, and is able to lift its own weight plus an additional payload. The cost of building a Lifter is about 90p. There is already a number of websites dedicated to the "lifter project" - a bunch of scientists intent on getting antigravity off the ground.
Hundreds of them are building their own lifters and posting the details online. The quest for anti-gravity, the effect of reducing or cancelling a gravitational field, has been popular since the early 1960s. The scientific principles that allow the lifter to float have been around longer than that. Thomas Townsend Brown, an American physicist, discovered them in 1928.
jlnlabs.imars.com/lifters/hexalifter/videos/hexalifter.rm
www.americanantigravity.com/about.html
jnaudin.free.fr
www.soteria.com/brown
Online Matrix
You will soon be able to enter the world of the Matrix all on your own. Set after the third film, Matrix Revolutions (which will be in the cinemas on November 7), Warner Brothers has announced that Matrix Online will be a massively multiplayer online roleplaying game, similar to EverQuest and Star Wars Galaxies. The game will allow thousands of players to enter the Matrix universe and fight agents, perform gravity-defying leaps and movements in the film's famous "bullet time". www.thematrixonline.com
hackthematrix.warnerbros.com
New & noted
Photoblog this September 11
www.aboutitall.com/septphotoblog
Play keyboard Sumo
www.chthonic.f9.co.uk/sumo
The Propaganda Remix Project
homepage.mac.com/leperous/PhotoAlbum1.html
Six of the best: Holiday checklist
Currency converter
www.xe.com
Check the weather
weather.yahoo.com
Check the time
www.worldtimeserver.com
Check with others
thorntree.lonelyplanet.com
Last minute travel and safety advice
www.fco.gov.uk
Useful links
http://travel.theguardian.com/travelsites
