The Oscars are fast approaching, and the official site at www.oscar.com or www.oscars.com, has all the nominations, while Yahoo! is providing links to further coverage at www.movies.yahoo.com/oscars/.
The American Institute of Physics has assembled a fascinating and comprehensive resource worthy of a visit and exploration from anyone interested in our understanding of the nature of reality, and how we arrived at it.
It’s particularly good at succinct explanations of how apparently abstruse theories like quantum mechanics have practical application. See www.aip.org/history/.
Few things are as fascinating as historical newsreels, whether they’re as old as Tsar Nicholas II’s coronation in 1896 or as recent as Nelson Mandela’s inauguration.
Now, Newsplayer, has assembled more than 10E000 newsreels and television news reports from sources such as Paramount, Empire News, French Pathe, Reuters and ITN and put them online in Windows media format.
There’s a catch – full access costs R250 a year – but the free samples are well worth the trip to www.newsplayer.com.
Greenpeace has set up camp in the Arctic just a mile from “BP Amoco’s dangerous oil project, Northstar” and is reporting its campaign at www.greenpeaceusa.org/ arctic. It does have some great pictures – including the shots of polar bears being arrested at a United States protest.
Meanwhile in Iceland, Keiko, the killer whale made famous by the Free Willy movies, is being returned to the wild. The Ocean Futures Society is following his progress in KeikoWatch at www.ocean futures.org.
Anyone curious about the world – or just desperate to finish that geography homework – will find much of interest in the World Skip site, www.worldskip.com. Pick a region, then a country, for a growing set of links in a wide range of categories. It may not be the first place you’d turn for information about the economic giants, but the coverage of dozens of small countries is invaluable.
UK-based Worldpop.com hopes to become the leading music portal for teenagers and young adults who follow the pop charts. As well as interviews and Radio 1/Top of the Pops-style chat, its offerings include a world singles charts based on sales in 52 countries. The rival Clickmusic.co.uk site is offering a No.1 Game which provides a “warts ‘n all insight into the workings of the music industry”.
A new website wants your memories, and is offering to archive them. More accurately, it’s offering to put them online so that other people can browse them by date, by name or by subject. Random access memory is described as an “experiment in collective recollection”, and once you’ve registered to gain access, it is an entertaining place to browse. Whether any meaningful themes will eventually emerge is another matter. Visit www.random accessmemory.org.