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>>> June 24, 1999 Light summer reading Bored? Drop by Tag magazine (www.tagmag.com) and wile away some time. >Inside, you'll find a good number of sections. Begin with the regular feature, usually a good read. And unlike all those other mags that kow-tow to the stars they love, Tag features the Celebs We Hate. You can play around with the amazing Sex Machine, if that tickles your fancy. As well, there's the usual panoply of topics: entertainment, style, lives, work, mayhem and wit. Nice added touch: an area for reader feedback under whatever you're currently reading. Ear to the ground: Everybody loves gossip, though not everybody will admit it. And nothing's better than gossip about the purveyors of gossip. So check out mediagossip (www.mediagossip.com), a daily weblog of gleanings from going-ons around the media biz.Flame me: Mitchell Amihod |
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>>> June 17, 1999 A piece of the action So, you think you've got your finger on the pulse of pop culture? Think you know which flick's gonna be hot and which is not? Well, put up or shut up at the Hollywood Stock Exchange (www.hsx.com). It's an entertainment stock market game; you trade with Hollywood Dollars. You've got your MovieStocks, which include films in all stages of production (from concept to release). There are StarBonds, through which you can finally own a piece of your favourite star. You can buy Options and gamble on the opening weekend winners and losers, or buy into a managed or indexed fund. 20-minute fun-o-the-week: Check out Blind Wino (www.blindwino.com), starring Drunk Driver and Ask Satan.
Flame me: Mitchell Amihod |
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>>> June 10, 1999 Tastes like chicken What do you get when you take a database program, fill it with a bunch of entries on every topic you can think of, and mix in tons of cross-indexing? You get a little bit of Everything (http://everything.blockstackers.com). Everything is a communally maintained web database, where users participate in rating the information they find. The dbase is constructed from nodes, each featuring its own topic (the list of topics is too vast to describe, and it grows daily). On each node, there are a number of branching links to other related nodes. The more people who follow specific node-to-node pathways, the stronger the links become, and the higher their rating on the link list. It's the kind of thing you have to see for yourself. It's a good concept, it's fun to browse through and you never know what you're gonna find.
Flame me: -Mitchell Amihod |
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>>> June 3, 1999 What now, Furby™? Okay, so the Furby™ you got for Christmas has been sitting idly on the shelf, sleeping for the last two months. The cuteness has all but worn off. Well, you can breathe some new life into your electric gremlin with a good ol' fashioned autopsy. Not too sure where to begin? Then visit The Furby™ Autopsy page (http://www.phobe.com/furby/) and all will be revealed. There you'll learn how to gut and skin your Furby™, with the end result being a much better, demonic cyborg-esque Furby™. File under S for Strange: Been sitting on this for a while. It's just bizarre. Let me know if you figure it out. Sam Sloan's homepage: http://www.ishipress.com/index.htm
Flame me: -Mitchell Amihod |
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>>> May 27, 1999 Visit the Salon lately? Sporting a brand-spanking new look, Salon Magazine (www.salon.com) is one site that's always a pleasure to read. Content is updated daily, with plenty of quality features and columns covering a wide spectrum of topics. Sections include news, technology, arts & entertainment, books, media, people and comics. Columnists you may recognize include Garrison Keillor, Camille Paglia and Susie Bright, among others. Definitely worth a visit every day or so. I guarantee you'll find something to pique your interest. Good cop, bad cop: If you've been online for a while, you know what a problem spam can become. Well, here comes SpamCop (spamcop.net), sort of a neighbourhood-watch-meets-anti-spam-activism. If you get some spam, just go to the SpamCop site, plug your spam into their handy-dandy form, and they'll take care of the rest. Flame me: -Mitchell Amihod |
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>>> May 20, 1999 Stars in my eyes Sure, some of the less-informed will tell you the best place to spot stars is on St-Laurent, or possibly at Planet Hollywood. Maybe, if you're into living stars. But some of us prefer our stars like our drinks: on ice. And thanks to the wonders of technology and a sick mind, it's now possible from the comfort of your living room. Welcome to the Celebrity Morgue (www.celebritymorgue.com), a site where you can find some of your favourite famous and infamous celebrities enjoying their eternal rest. Inside the ice box you'll be able to take a peek at JFK, Mussolini, Rasputin, Tupac Shakur and Mother Teresa, who are in good company with Kurt Cobain, Marilyn Monroe and Dumbo (yes, the elephant). Some are more graphic than others; if you have a weak stomach, don't visit during dinner hours.
Flame me: -Mitchell Amihod
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>>> May 13, 1999 One stop shopping At Information Unlimited (www.amazing1.com) the possibilities are unlimited. Carrying a vast array of products ranging from the harmless to the downright dangerous, it makes for some good window shopping. You can start by checking out some of their Anti-Gravity devices (personal fave: hover board). Or maybe some mind control is more to your taste--I've been considering the Telekinetic Enhancer myself, for the low price of $99.95. If you are drawn more towards the mundane, there are devices for Dog and Rodent Control, or perhaps stun guns and tasers are more your speed. With Father's Day rapidly approaching, this may be just the site you need to get that oh so special gift. Flame me: -Mitchell Amihod
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>>> May 6, 1999 Fork you Some Web sites are nice to visit, some sites not so nice. And some are so not so nice (bad design, slow loading, buggy frames, etc....); they deserve a boot to the head. But since that's just not technologically possible (yet), do the next best thing: fork 'em at www.forkinthehead.com. Recognizing the need for an easy, standardized way to let someone know when their site gets on your nerves, the fork-meisters have developed the fork-o-gram, a handy, easy to use feedback form to give a fork-in-the-head to any site. There's also Fork-U, with weekly feature articles on different aspects of web building: traffic, marketing, tech issues and some guest features. Funny stuff #2: This week's funny content is provided by Tom DelMundo and his Adventures in Advertising site (www.tomdelmundo.com). Serving up a weekly strip-o-life with good observations and a bit of randomness, it's a snappy little read. Check out the archive too. Flame me: -Mitchell Amihod
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>>> April 29, 1999 Read the fine print While I love looking at ads all day, some of the more interesting ads have never seen the light of day. For one reason or another, some ads get as far as the client, only to be killed before garnering international acclaim and accolades. And what do you do when something's killed? Stick it in the graveyard--or in this case, the Advertising Graveyard (www.zeldman.com/ad.html). Within the graveyard you'll find dead ads from both print and Web. One of the funniest on the site is an ad that appeared on starwars.com for one day. Rumour has it that it was an idea of St. Lucas himself, a parody of the teaser for Godzilla (you know, the movie with the Iguana-Rex).
Truth or fiction? Could Dan Quayle have said that many stupid things? You decide: http://members.aol.com/gopstopper/gopstop.
Flame me: -Mitchell Amihod
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>>> April 22, 1999 Vengeance will be mine When it comes to revenge, there is always the pressing problem of doing it with style. Then there is the dilemma of where to shop for the necessary tools. Thanks to the net and Force-Ten (www.force-ten.com), it's never been easier. Force-Ten is a supplier of revenge, spying, police and military equipment. On the site you'll find the Evacuator (as seen in Mission Impossible), a liquid that causes its victims to uncontrollably "evacuate." If you prefer getting tech-revenge, you can always buy the Sonic Nausea, which induces nausea in its victims through a combination of ultra-high frequency sound waves. Or the surveillance spyglasses, which let you check out the action going on behind you. An added bonus is that they provide UV protection. Force-Ten also offers a few books on how to get even, plus much much more. All for entertainment purposes, of course. Flame me: -Mitchell Amihod
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>>> April 15, 1999 Keeping up with the techno Joneses Quite frankly, I'm often disappointed with traditional media's handling of tech stories. Usually full of hype and half-facts, it gets a wee bit annoying after a point. When you want your geek news, you ought to get it straight from the nerd's mouth. Two sites I recommend are Slashdot: News for Nerds (http://slashdot.org) and HNN: The Hacker News Network (http://www.hackernews.com). Both sites have been around for a while, doing a good job of reporting on subjects of importance to geeks. Slashdot has become popular enough that it now creates a "slashdot effect": a Web site becoming virtually unreachable because too many people are hitting it after the site was mentioned in a Slashdot article. SI pity the fool: The definitive Mr. T vs Everything site: http://www.sit.wisc.edu/~kljense3/MrT.html. Need I say more? |