Numbers up
British Telecom has finally put its phone books online. Users tired of paying high prices for BT's limited directory enquiries service or CD-Rom directories can now go to www.bt.com/phonenetukor www.phonenetuk.bt.com:8080 and search for either a business or residential number.
Harpy
SSEYO has "discovered" two "powerful ultra-compact commusication devices from the planet VulKoan". Both Harps are less than 100K, but to play them, you'll also need Macromedia's Shockwave Flash and Sseyo's Koan 6.1 music plug in for Windows, or Netscape Navigator and Apple's Quick Time Musical Instruments (QTMI) for the Macintosh. The harps are played using a mouse to pluck on-screen strings.
Ambushed
George Bush Jr, possible Republican candidate for the US presidency, does not like the site at www.gwbush.com but hasn't managed to shut it down. Content for the parody site has been provided by RTMark (see http://rtmark.com/gwbush.com for an earlier version), while the official site is at www.georgewbush.com
Vote for me
Closer to home, Elections '99 is hoping that 300 million voters in 15 European Union member states will go to the polls on June 10-13 to select 626 members for the European parliament. Most of the site at is available in 11 languages, and all of it in English and French.
About this
The Mining Company has just changed its name to About.com and introduced a new design, "channels" (AboutHobbies, AboutTravel etc), personalisation facilities and free home pages. Otherwise the basic offering is the same: more than 650 human guides provide personal guides to different topics on the Web. The new address is http://about.com
Cyberbabe
Diki has released her first CD in Korea and is apparently becoming popular with the local teens. Deprived Europeans can listen to her songs, watch her videos and become a fan at www.diki.co.kr (or skip the Shockwave and go to www.diki.co.kr/main_b.html). You can watch streaming video clips in RealPlayer format, or download a whole AVI (49.5 megs) Long-time Netwatch readers may, however, recognise this cyberbabe as Kyoko Date (DK-96), who first came to fame with a pop song, Love Communication, launched in Japan in 1996. In sum, she's an artificial idol, like Lara Croft. She's in Korea promoting Japanese culture, which has been banned since Japan occupied the country during the second world war.
Unglued
What a difference a letter can make. In this case the Cluetrain manifesto, mentioned recently in Netwatch, has been subverted at www.gluetrain.com "Through the Internet, people are discovering and inventing new ways to waste time at work, download naughty pictures, and build pipe bombs. As a direct result, things are getting weird faster than the parking lot at a Grateful Dead concert," etc etc.
Sporty
The playing schedule for the 37-day final tournament of the next Rugby World Cup has now been posted on the BT-sponsored official site at www.rwc99.com. The finals, hosted by the Welsh Rugby Union, will kick off with a game between Wales and Argentina in Cardiff on October 1. Meanwhile The Sport Archive is offering prints of a range of agency sports pictures for sale at www.thesportarchive.com
