 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
Fun sites to start the New Year with
This article was originally published on December 28, 1999 by SignOn San Diego and Copley News Service.
It's a new year, and a good time to take a look at some of the more inventive, groundbreaking and just plain interesting sites out there:
Conspire has perhaps the most confusing slogan of any Web site: "Telling you what you need to know before you know you need to know it." There's a nifty little program here that will help you write your own conspiracy theory – or, as they put it, "Conspire is provided as a service to all the conspiracy theorists out there who find themselves unable, or unwilling, to come up with their own theory."
The Cyrano Server does much the same thing as Conpsire, but instead of writing new Oliver Stone scripts it writes love letters for the terminally shy. It's actually quite fun and funny, and as suggestive as you choose.
The Remedi Project is a very cool multimedia site utilizing Macromedia's Flash plugin to its fullest. Many of the online art exhibits are quite avant-garde, and all are interactive. There is an archive of previous multimedia exhibits, covering the past year. The fm15 project alone is worth checking out for the cutting-edge interactive art.
MontyPython.com is a highly unofficial, small and silly page, basically just to hold the site name which is blatantly for sale (for the bargain basement price of $16,000). But there is also a fairly busy message board for Monty Python fans, and a complete set of biographies on the cast members.
Atari.org – For anyone who ever owned any Atari machine – from the old 2600 video game of the '70s to their early '90s Falcon030 workstation – this site is either a trip down memory lane or, if you still have that machine, a godsend. There are files and forums, emulators and patches deluxe. They even offer free subdomains for those with an Atari-related business or interest of their own.
Ebay remains an incredible time-waster for anyone who is interested in, well, anything. Ebay is the online auction house, and you can find everything from antiques to computers, stereos to baseball cards, Disney memorabilia to Beanie babies, golf clubs to hunting knives.
Mosaic Records is a small, independent outfit that specializes in lavishly produced box sets of jazz and blues. They still press vinyl as well as CDs, and every run is limited and numbered. Pricey? Sure – but we're talking Jack Teagarden and Duke Ellington and Phil Woods and other heavy hitters. If you're at all into jazz, you owe yourself a visit here.