Dexter Shear's "shameless promotion of insect appreciation" is far more than just a database of insect photographs, though you will find a bewildering array of mantids, walking sticks, and antlions. Class: Insecta, Dexter's extraordinary examination of butterfly wing patterns, reads like a psychedelic biology lesson -- you can find some great screensaver material here. CeDigest, a collection of articles about insects and culture, features pieces like "Lepidopteral Symbolism" and "Cicadas in Ancient Greek Culture."
Africana began as a web companion to Encarta Africana, Microsoft's encyclopedic CD-ROM of Africa and the African diaspora. It has evolved into a well-crafted source of culture and community, a "digital bridge" to global African heritage. Features include daily news and analysis; articles about careers, fitness, home, health, and arts; and links to offline events and online media. Don't miss Radio Africana, which streams black music of all genres -- from Afro-Caribe to urban R&B to gospel.
Described as "a kind of Consumer Reports with an eye to the future," TechnoCopia is a kinder, gentler look at the way technology is changing our work and home. Founder Hillary Retig encourages her readers to "anticipate ubiquity" in home automation: computers in the cutlery, robot pets, and GPS transmitters on the kids. You'll find articles on digital television recorders, online car shopping, and PC jukeboxes. How can you record your old vinyl records onto CDs? How can you organize your photos using a PC? Technocopia explains it all for you.
Recipe for a Successful Website
Nathan Shedroff is the Chief Creative Officer at Vivid Studios, a company that's been building and launching online ventures since the Web's earliest days. Much has changed since then, but the six ingredients that Nathan describes remain essential. They're worth understanding thoroughly if you're cooking up a web site, whether it's fast food to go, a candlelit dinner, or a sit-down banquet for a corporate crowd. Here are the necessary elements: content, information design, performance, compatibility, visual design, and interaction design. Not sure what we're talking about? Read these lucid essays for nourishment, then surf the examples for dessert.
This breathtaking collection, developed by Cartography Associates, focuses on 18th and 19th century North and South American atlases, globes, school geographies, maritime charts, and maps. Special state-of-the-art imaging software is built into the viewing experience, but you'll need a late model browser, a fast computer, and a fast connection to explore this map enthusiast's dream site. Alternatively, you can download a Java software viewer for advanced image browsing. Either way, enjoy the incredible quality of these historic documents.
This isn't your average puff-pastry celebrity site -- you know the kind, full of headshots and press releases, signifying nothing. Sir Ian McKellen regularly updates his site with postings on everything from movie theme parks to homophobia in online chatrooms. Fans of The Lord of the Rings will enjoy his descriptions of the current production in New Zealand, while comic book enthusiasts will dive into his "X-Men" stories. In last week's Q and A, a fan writes, "I've just seen Gods and Monsters for the third time and it only reinforces my belief that Sir Ian should marry me." To which Sir Ian responds, "But John dear -- we are not allowed to get married."
Janet Maslin describes filmmaker Errol Morris as "a one-of-a-kind filmmaker capable of melding science, philosophy, poetry, and sheer whimsy into an elaborate meditation on mankind's mysteries." In his new Bravo series "First Person," Morris talks to the kind of people who occasionally make it into the local paper. For instance Doctor Clyde Roper, who is currently scouring the oceans for a living giant squid. Or Temple Grandin, an autistic university professor who has designed over a third of the slaughterhouses in the United States. Or Joan Dougherty, professional crime-scene cleaner.
Kurzweil CyberArt Technologies
April is National Poetry Month, so there's no better time to check out the Cybernetic Poet, software brainchild of Ray Kurzweil, prolific author, inventor, and futurist. We read some of the software-generated poetry, and understood how audiences could mistake these poems for the work of humans. Consider "Double Dreams," a poem written after the software processed poetry by Keats: "Double dreams/hover'd about,/a lamp from my soul." Marvel at the artificial intelligence, take the Turing Test, or download the program and see for yourself.