Today (Thursday Jan. 29), web-surfing comrades will log on to the web sites of five major Mexican financial institutions: Bolsa Mexicana de Valores (www.bmv.com.mx), Grupo Fianciero Bital (www.bital.com.mx), Grupo Financiero Bancomer (www.bancomer.com.mx), Banco de Mexico (www.banxico.org.mx) and Banamex (www.banamex.com). Then they will stay logged on to those web sites by pressing the reload button over and over and over again, thus clogging up the web servers so that clients can't make transactions and international financiers can't get information on their potential banking partners. The occupation, the first of its kind, takes place from 11 a.m. to noon local time.

Perhaps a similar occupation at the virtual headquarters of mbanx might soon be in order.

Breakup Girl (www.breakupgirl.com) is a sassy, sexy avenger of women scorned. This humourous site is packed with advice for the recently dumped. Need to know how to get your stuff back or maybe how to get rid of his in an environmentally friendly way? Or perhaps you need some pastimes to wile away the lonely days? All the answers are there. There's even interactivity: a bulletin board to share your woes, a guide to interpreting personal ads and some not-so-sentimental postcards to email the bastard. The whole thing is packaged beautifully with cartoons to boot. And if you guys are feeling discriminated against, not to worry. The advice column and bulletin board seem to be quite popular with the non-matching chromosome set.

While many of us will once again be contentedly surfing by the time this is published, many others will not. Hundreds of thousands of people will be without power for several more weeks.

That's where the web can actually help. The kind people at LaurentianWeb have set up Opération Hébergement (www.laurentian.com/host). Their service allows you to offer to share your home with those currently without. You simply fill out the online form selecting certain criteria for who you can accommodate and they'll get the information to the shelters.

As our own situations get better and the storm begins to fade from our minds, we must remember that, with the devastation faced by south shore residents, it is still very much alive for others.

What's a desperate shopper to do? Log into the Sharper Image (www.sharperimage.com), of course. With the miracles of overnight express couriers and credit cards, you could be offering an "elevated feeder for larger dogs" tomorrow without skipping a beat. It's helpful to have plenty of credit left on your card, but they do carry some affordable bobbles. For $25 you could get your hands on the (very Operation-like) Alien Autopsy Game or, for five bucks more, a car air purifier. Or you could give your dad that 25th Anniversary Arlen Ness custom motorcycle he's always wanted (provided you have $50,000 of credit available). Who said necessity is the mother of invention?

The most plentiful dictionaries include the usual western languages plus Catalan and Russian, but a strong contender (as you can well imagine) is found in Québécois. So, if you were planning a little trip to Hawaii this holiday season, you might want to be prepared for that cabbie who sweetly says, "Have a nice day, white honky tourist" in his native tongue!

Since the site was redesigned in September, traffic has nearly doubled. More than ever, people are making their voices heard through the site--especially at the RantOnLine bulletin board.

Now, two more new developments: last week, after much reader clamour, selected parts of our classifieds were introduced to the electronic frontier. And this week, what with the postal strike and all, we're introducing "Alternative Mail" for those of you who never seem to find the time to pick up that box of 25 prefab holiday greeting cards. So gather your e-mail address book, log into our site (www.montrealmirror.com/postcards/cardcenter.html) and send away! With several "virtual" cards to choose from you'll be able to impress even the greatest humbugs .