Internet answering machine. If you have only one phone line
and you’re connected to the Internet a lot, you’re probably missing some
phone calls. Now you can surf to your heart’s content without having to
sign up for a second phone line. A free download called the href=http://www.callwave.com>Internet answering machine answers your
calls when you’re online and lets callers leave a brief message, which
you can hear through your computer speakers.

Rate your boss. If you ever wanted the boss to know what you
thought of his/her management style — but didn’t want to get fired for
your opinions — head to href=http://www.improvenow.com>ImproveNow. There you can fill out an
anonymous multiple-choice assessment on your company and boss, offering
constructive criticism. Then the manager is e-mailed and invited to look
at the results (in the form of a report card) and is given a list of
ImproveNow’s recommended resources for improving areas that need it.

Want to save some money? Find the best rates for checking
accounts, automobile loans, mortgages and credit cards from href=http://www.bankrate.com/brm/default.asp>Bankrate.com. The site
surveys 4,000 financial institutions in numerous cities nationwide to
help you locate the lowest charges.

What’s a dollar worth? Not much, you say. But what’s fun is to
find out how much a dollar’s worth of goods or services in 1913, 1940,
or whenever would cost today. Or you can compare prices in one year to
any other year, thanks to the href=http://woodrow.mpls.frb.fed.us/economy/calc/cpihome.html>CPI
calculator from the Minneapolis Federal Reserve Bank.

Kids from about 8 to 11 can learn economic lessons by running a href=http://www.coolmath4kids.com/lemonade/index.html>virtual lemonade
stand at Cool Math for
Kids, while older students may enjoy a pretend stock market game
called Buy Lo/Sell Hi from Fleet
Kids.

Cyberspace lost and found. Whether you’ve lost that pearl ring
given to you by your favorite Aunt Jill or your 8-year-old German
shepherd has wandered away from home, who are you going to call to see
if they’ve been found? Surprisingly, many people are turning to the
Internet. Specifically to the Lost &
Found Directory. It has developed links to animal shelters, radio
stations, airports, newspapers and law enforcement agencies in 140
countries to help you find what you’ve lost — or to aid you in locating
the owner of whatever you’ve found.

Her car. Women who would like to know more about their cars
have an ally in HerAuto.com. It
contains lots of articles on everything from negotiating a fair
insurance settlement when your car’s been totaled to buying a car on the
Web. You can test your auto IQ and take part in polls, such as the 10
ugliest cars.

Sweet 16. It’s an exciting time for teens, but much dreaded by
parents — the months leading up to getting that first driver’s license.
Drive Home Safe can help. It
features a free teen driver-training manual for parents that contains 40
practical lessons and a free parent’s survival kit, as well as advice to
heed from teens to parents.

Getting away from it all. Planning a vacation? href=http://www.concierge.com>Concierge.com can help. It provides
insiders’ guides to several large cities around the world (Barcelona,
London, L.A. and Sydney among them), plenty of travel info from Conde
Nast Traveler magazine, excellent sections on a number of travel topics
(the one on taking kids on trips is especially good) and the opportunity
to e-mail questions to travel experts.

Know thyself. What makes you tick? Answer some questions and
find out, promises Rate
Yourself.

Crafty fun. Elementary-school kids will enjoying making a href=http://www.faa.gov/education/resource/1903fly.htm>model of the
1903 Wright Flyer from a couple of Styrofoam meat trays.

Old Yeller. Did Henry Ford really utter that line about
customers being able to have a new Ford in any color they wanted as long
as it was black? Well, he soon learned that people did want a choice of
colors. And someone with an affection for automobiles painted yellow has
put up a site in their honor, href=http://yellow.freeservers.com/index.html>The Yellow Car Page.
It’s mostly a gallery of old (and some new) cars that are the color of
sunshine — including a 1939 Dodge, a 1955 Corvette and a 1982 hearse.

Sing along. What do “Home on the Range,” “The Happy Wanderer”
and “My Bonnie Lies Over the Ocean” have in common? If you ever went to
summer camp, you probably sang them all. Find the words at href=http://www.michcampgrounds.com/songs.html>Campfire Song Book,
which offers lyrics in several categories — religious, traditional,
short classics, pop classics and audience participation.

Seeing orange. ‘Tis the season for Jack-o’-lanterns. Learn to
carve a creative gourd at Pumpkin
Carving 101. Or follow some of the choices on ByRoads magazine’s
five pages of Jack-o’-lantern
printable patterns.

Special delivery. Forget surfing the Web; let the information
come to you. Sign up at Spyonit.com
to have an Instant Spy let you know when your favorite old movie is
going to be rerun on TV in your area, if there’s a job listing on the
Web that’s exactly what you’re looking for, news and comments about a
stock you’re following, a recipe you’re trying to find, recall of a baby
product you’ve bought … well, the possibilities are endless. You can
choose to be notified by Instant Messenger, cell phone, Palm Pilot and
pager, as well as e-mail.

If you’d like to keep up with all the new websites devoted to
something that interests you, ask Axie
to let you know what it finds. It searches the more than 30,000 new
sites that are launched each week and notifies you with URL and
description when it finds sites that match your hobby, profession or
other enthusiasm.

The eyes have it. The premise at href=http://www.hillaryseyes.com>Hillary’s Eyes is that the reason
so many people don’t like Hillary Clinton isn’t her views on health-care
reform or any other topic, but her eyes. There’s a gallery of more than
50 Hillary photos that feature the first lady with various expressions
and funny (but sometimes R-rated) captions underneath. You can also try
writing your own caption or play kooky games.

College fairs take to cyberspace. In the past, college fairs
traveled from one city to another to let high schoolers around the
country talk with representatives of various colleges. Now 200 colleges
and universities have signed up for a series of href=http://www.onlinecollegefair.com>national fairs to be held on
the Web — where many teens feel most at home. College-bound teen-agers
can chat online with students, professors and admissions officers at
schools they’re considering. The first Internet college fair takes place
Thursday, Oct. 19, from noon to 3 p.m. EDT (9-noon PDT), and there will
be 10 more between now and April 18, when they end.

Speaking of choosing a college, did you know that students can sign
up for the SAT online and get quick e-mail confirmation of where and
when they’ll be taking the test, instead of anxiously waiting for a
letter to arrive? Find out more from the href=http://www.collegeboard.com/sat/html/satform.html>College
Board.

Around the world in 300 days. The BT Challenge has been
called the world’s toughest yacht race. Twelve boats set out from
Southhamton, England, with the goal of sailing around the world in 10
months. To make it more difficult, they’re going “the wrong way.” That
is, they’re going west to east. The first of their seven worldwide ports
of call was Boston, the only stop in the U.S. There, I got to see the
yachts and talk with some of the crewmembers before they left yesterday
on their way to Buenos Aires, Argentina. This is pretty much of a
British Empire effort — lots of English, Scottish and Australian
accents. One crewmember told of hitting the end of a hurricane in the
Atlantic and having the boat lie flat on its side. On the BT Challenge
website you can see pictures and
video of such exploits as well as track the progress of the yachts, read
journals of team members.

Gone fishin’. Ken Schultz, the fishing editor of Field and
Stream, points out that there are more than 50 million recreational
anglers in the U.S. And he aims to help them with every conceivable
aspect of their hobby at his new website, href=http://www.kenschultz.com>KenSchultz.com. The site is divided
into sections — species of fish, equipment, techniques, destinations,
new anglers and so forth, with new articles on each topic every week.
Currently, there are more than 500 articles in the Miscellany, ranging
from “What’s a lunker?” to all about fish attractors.

I hear voices. Text-to-speech technology is still evolving,
but that doesn’t mean you can’t have some fun with it, thanks to the
folks at Bell Labs/Lucent. At their href=http://www.bell-labs.com/project/tts/voices.html>Text-to-Speech
Synthesis site, you select a voice from eight choices ranging from
woman to gnat to coffee drinker, type in some text, choose your audio
format, then listen — and probably laugh. There are also German,
Mandarin, Spanish, French, Italian and Pig Latin(!) text-to-speech
pages, as well as presynthesized files you can listen to, including
songs (you haven’t lived until you’ve heard “Country Road” in Chinese).

Upstairs, Downstairs and beyond. “Masterpiece Theatre”
(actually, it’s now “ExxonMobil Masterpiece Theatre”) has launched a href=http://www.pbs.org/masterpiece>website that explores the
long-running TV series’ 30-year history. You can get information about
current productions, enter the interactive archives to find out more
about any program aired in the series and even listen to the theme
music.

Spooktacular costumes. If you’re interested in making
Halloween costumes instead of buying them, FabricLink’s href=http://www.fabriclink.com/closet.html>Halloween Costume Closet
offers plenty of ideas. You can even sign up to have 14 easy, no-sew
suggestions e-mailed to you instantly.

Today’s column ignores Christopher Columbus and his holiday in favor
of smashing political pies and hopping into the car to follow the
leaves.

Take that! It’s pie in the sky … uh, face. At href=http://www.apps.com/contrapptions/piepollconfig.asp?ContentID=10001>Take
the Pie, you can throw a virtual pie in the face of either George W.
Bush or Al Gore. (So far, more folks have chosen to have the whipped
cream end up on the vice president’s visage.) You’ll need to have Flash
installed to appreciate the satisfying splash.

Help from the government. OK, you there in the back of the
room, stop that laughing. When you need to wade through the bureaucracy
to replace a lost Social Security card or to apply for a new passport,
government websites can be helpful. But there are so many of them –
millions and millions of pages, as a matter of fact — that it’s hard to
know where to go to find what you need. href=http://www.firstgov.gov>FirstGov was set up to remedy the
problem. It consolidates 28 million pages and allows you to search by
subject instead of agency.

At the same time, the guv’mint set up href=http://www.workers.gov>Workers.gov, which has the stated
purpose of “connecting American workers and their families to government
services and information.” It’s awfully basic — using the Net (how do
they think you got to their site?), resumes and cover letters, money
management, rights and protections, home ownership — sorta like those
little booklets that used to be churned out of the Government Printing
Office in Pueblo, Colo. — useful if you happen to need the
sometimes-obvious information, but dull.

More interesting, but not of interest to as many people is href=http://www.fedstats.gov/mapstats>MapStats, which — along with
Workers.gov — can be accessed from the FirstGov home page. It provides
statistics and links to other data produced by more than 70 government
agencies.

Making government easy. That’s the goal of href=http://www.hicitizen.com>HiCitizen, which is sort of a
privatized FirstGov. You may find its interface easier to use. If you’re
changing addresses, click on “moving and mail,” for instance. If you’re
ready to give up your job and wander the country in an RV, click on
“retirement.” It also connects to state government websites and lets you
easily access the top government forms (applying for a Social Security
card, applying for a student loan, registering to vote, renewing your
driver’s license, etc.).

Chatting about skyscrapers. On Wednesday, Oct. 11,
author-illustrator David Macaulay — who has those wonderful illustrated
books that explain how a bridge is built and a castle was constructed –
will chat at 8 p.m. EDT (5 p.m. PDT) at href=http://chat.yahoo.com>Yahoo chat. This is in conjunction with
the “Building Big” TV show, which airs every Tuesday night this month.
It’s fascinating if you like to learn how things work.

The Rising Sun. You know the haunting music of “The House of
the Rising Sun” and probably connect it to the Animals (a rock group
from the ’60s, for those of you too young to remember). Fans of folk
music may recall that Bob Dylan recorded it earlier, but recently the
Associated Press ran a long story that traces the origin of the song to
the hills of Kentucky in 1937 (and maybe much earlier). Seems that back
then the Library of Congress sent a researcher into the mountains to
record old songs before they were lost. My kids will tell you that
“House of the Rising Sun” is my least-favorite song (tied with “Hotel
California”), but I was intrigued by this tale, pulled it off the wires
and e-mailed it to several people I thought would be interested. Now the
AP has put the package of articles, photos, and some audio together on
the Web. href=http://wire.ap.org/APpackages/rising_sun/american_tune.html>“The
House of the Rising Sun” in Flash, of all things.

Leafing nothing to chance. Fall foliage season is in full
swing in many parts of the country and the Net helps you quickly locate
the latest on which areas are approaching peak. href=http://www.weather.com/outdoors/fall>The Weather Channel lets you
see maps of areas at peak, near peak, patchy or past peak and select a
detailed report for more than 40 states. You can choose audio reports
and also see videos of fall foliage in New York’s Central Park, New
England and on the Appalachian Trail.

Yankee Magazine’s Foliage Central offers the href=http://www.newengland.com/foliage>“ultimate guide to autumn” in
the Northeast, which is famous for attracting leaf-peepers. There’s a
map of foliage times, toll-free phone numbers and Web links for
individual areas, a list of some of the picture-postcard New England
towns that are perfect for fall foliage trips and 20 dos and don’ts for
leaf peeping.

Intellicast adds
to the usual peak foliage map and current state reports fairs and
festivals connected to the leaf season and leads you to some of the best
scenic routes to see the show.

Those of us on the East Coast don’t think of California as prime
leaf-viewing territory, but there’s a website that proves us wrong, href=http://www.calphoto.com/fall.htm>Fall Color in California,
designed for photographers.

Today’s Web column asks questions and points you to the answers.

What’s in it for me? A reader recommends Brian Kirkby’s href=http://www.taxclarity.com>Tax Clarity site. It analyzes Bush’s
and Gore’s plans for tax cuts in various areas — education, retirement,
estate tax (Bush) and environmental help (Gore). It also helps you
figure out which candidate’s plan will benefit you personally.

Is that someone you know? The FBI’s list of href=http://www.fbi.gov/mostwant/topten/tenlist.htm>10 most-wanted
fugitives is 50 years old this year and still going strong, with no
shortage of criminals to fill the ranks. Instead of hanging posters on
post office walls, the bureau now posts the list on the Web. The site
tells you all about the list, the rewards offered for the apprehension
of anyone on the list and, of course, the pictures, names and
information on the bad guys the FBI hopes to catch.

Need help with algebra? If so, a professor has set up a site,
Math911 Online that has free
tutorials that might help. Although href=http://www.kevinsplayroom.co.uk>Kevin’s Playroom is a British
site, it has some excellent links to homework helpers that will be
useful to students in any country.

Got time for a game? If so, href=http://www.flipside.com>Flipside has 90 of them for you to
play, ranging from board games and puzzles to word games and card games.

Hungry for sushi? The Asia Society has launched an Asian
cooking and food site, Asia Food.
Try the recipe of the day or search for a particular type of dish (from
appetizer to vegetable), a region such as Southeast Asia, or by keyword.
Articles cover various Asian cooking techniques and food of various
countries (including Australia). In each recipe, any ingredients that
are out of the ordinary (in non-Asian countries) are underlined. Click
on them and you go to a glossary of terms that explains the ingredient.

What’s a marine sanctuary? It’s an underwater site chosen by
the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to protect its
environment and the creatures that live in it. At href=http://www.sanctuaries.nos.noaa.gov>National Marine Sanctuaries
you’ll learn more about what they are, how they were established and
what they do. On Saturday, the latest will be added to the list –
Thunder Bay National Marine Sanctuary in Michigan, which contains many
historical shipwrecks.

How do they do that? At href=http://magic.trendy.org/interactivemagic.shtml>Trendy Magic,
you can enjoy two sleight-of-hand games, the original Mysterious Rabbit
and Color Theory.

What do you know? You choose the subject — geography,
history, literature, TV, movies, science, games — and the level of
difficulty of the quizzes at the Quiz
Site.

Are you calling me? You sit down to have dinner and inevitably
the phone rings. Why do you automatically know it’s someone trying to
sell you something? Well, instead of getting angry, try some
anti-telemarketing href=http://www.antitelemarketer.com/teletech2.htm>techniques likely
to scare the caller off. Just choose the type of item being sold — from
credit card to light bulbs — and see what’s worked for others. Although
the best idea of all is simply tell the person to put you on the list
for his company never to call again, it’s still fun to see some of the
smart remarks that worked.

Do you want to give? When you’d like to donate to a charity,
but don’t have the money, the various websites that let you click to
give (while a business actually donates the funds) are helpful. href=http://www.stargiving.com>Star Giving goes them one further.
When you click, not only are you aiding a charity of your choice, but
you might win a fashion shoot with supermodel Niki Taylor, an appearance
at a New York benefit with Muhammad Ali or spend a day on the ESPN set
with Dan Patrick.

Can you afford it? It’s not widely publicized but many
pharmaceutical manufacturers have special programs to help those who
can’t afford the medicine they need. As you might imagine, the
process of applying can be complicated and it varies from company to
company. Prescription Drug
Help.com helps you find out if you’re eligible for a program and
aids you in filling out the paperwork. It’s free except for a requested
donation to cover mailing and copying costs, and that’s waived for those
who simply can’t pay. While this seems like a great idea to help the
people who need it the most, I gathered my info strictly from the
website and so can’t vouch for their legitimacy. Their privacy policy
simply says, “All information provided will be kept strictly
confidential,” without providing any details or independent verification
(such as trustE). My advice is that if you know someone who needs this
help, look into this service, but proceed with caution.

Reference resource. Oftentimes the Internet is compared to a
library. The best site that I’ve ever seen live up to that analogy is href=http://gwis2.circ.gwu.edu/~gprice/listof.htm>Price’s List of
Lists. Compiled by librarian Gary Price of George Washington
University, this is a mind-boggling compilation of information available
on the Net. It’s divided by categories (business, education, politics,
science, sports, legal, as well as topics you might not expect –
furniture, restaurants, Singapore, metals). But as you click your way
through the lists, you’ll find yourself stopping at the 75 greatest
management decisions ever made and the biggest jury verdicts of last
year, then wondering who needs to discover what the top 50 upholstery
manufacturers are or how catfish consumption ranks by state.

But should you need — or want — to know the 200 richest towns in
the U.S. or the average costs of taking a family to a professional
baseball, basketball, football or hockey game, it’s all here. A warning:
Don’t access this site unless you have some free time. You’ll start
wandering around and first thing you know, it’s an hour — or two –
later. This is one of my favorite Web places to visit to find the
unexpected.

What’s the word? You’re searching for a phrase to use in a
talk or article and it simply eludes you. Don’t despair; head to href=http://www.shu.ac.uk/web-admin/phrases>The Phrase Finder. Type
in a word and it returns a list of phrases that may fit. It will also
jog your creativity so you’ll recall others, too — probably just the
one you want. But watch out for the British spelling (colour, for
instance). The site also has a discussion forum about the origins of
various phrases and where you can post a request for a phrase you
haven’t been able to find.

Habla instant messenger? Lots of folks love to be connected by
the various instant messenger services. But while they’re great if you
and the person you need to talk to speak the same language, what do you
do if her native language is French and the only foreign language you’ve
studied is Spanish? You let href=http://www.gotoworld.com>GoToWorld.com provide your instant
messenger service. It provides free, instant translation between any of
12 languages (Japanese, Chinese, German, French, Spanish, Indonesian,
Swedish, Norwegian, Italian, Korean, Russian and English) and soon
hopes to provide video-conferencing translation and instant Web page
translation. The site also plans to add other languages.

All Africa all the time. Unless there’s a famine, civil war or
a high-ranking American official is traveling in Africa, it can be
difficult to find much news about what’s going on in the continent’s
various countries. AllAfrica.com
overcomes that news dearth by posting approximately 300 articles a day
– from 60 African publications — about what’s happening. You can
search by topic (arts and entertainment, books, travel, and much more)
or move through the headlines by country.

Keep it simple. Here’s one of the easiest to use movie-review
databases you’ve seen. Check the
Grid has collected a couple thousand movie reviews from 14
newspapers, four websites and two magazines, then converted them to a
simple system. Green light under the publication’s name means “go” (they
recommended it), a red light means “don’t go” and a yellow advises you
to “proceed with caution.” You can change the colors, select the critics
you like best and find reviews of movies on video as well as currently
in theaters.

Word play. If you’re a fan of the TV show “Jeopardy!” you’ll
enjoy Boxerjam. Originated by the
co-creator of the popular game show, Boxerjam lets you play four free
word games — Strike a Match, Out of Order, Take 5 and Napoleon –
against competitors and win prizes.

Did they get it? Some of us are paranoid about whether or not
our important e-mail was received or not. (I, for instance, almost
always send this column to WND twice — just in case.) The vast majority
of e-mail does arrive at its destination quickly and safely, but it
always seems as though the things that don’t are the ones that matter.
ZixMail offers a free download that
provides secure document delivery (only the recipient can open it) and
the sender gets a time-stamped digitally signed receipt. While it’s not
for everyone or every situation, it may be handy for financial or
business transactions.

Political quiz. For undecided voters, or to teach students
more about the democratic process, Associated Television News is
offering a Bush vs. Gore
Quiz. Answer 20 questions about your views on various issues to see
which candidate matches your opinions most closely. The site also has a
good section on the most recent href=http://www.atinews.com/gorebush>polls — not just in the
presidential race but also congressional candidates, listed by state.

Since the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta — the first Games to have a
strong Net presence — the Web has come a long way. You will be able to
find much more Olympics-related information now, get to it easier, have
more of the feeling of being on the scene — and not have to put up with
all of TV’s wandering off to tell you about some Russian athlete’s
childhood when all you want to see is a particular event. Here are some
sites that will allow you to keep up with as much of the Olympics as you
like, find out more about Sydney and Australia, send fan mail to
participating athletes, even laugh a bit at the whole shebang:

G’day mates. Welcome to href=http://www.csu.edu.au/australia/tourism.html>Australia and be
sure to check today’s weather in href=http://sydney.citysearch.com.au/Sydney/Weather/Sydney_Web_Cam>Sydney
by glancing at Darling Harbour. You can also take a href=http://www.citysearch.com.au/virtual_tour>virtual tour of
Sydney, Melbourne and Olympic venues. Global Photo Tours offer an online
audiovisual tour of the city.

On with the Games. IBM is doing the href=http://www.olympics.com/eng>official site again this time and
will offer real-time results, event statistics, news, and just about
anything else you want to know about what’s going on. We can only hope
they learned their lessons from the slowness and other flubs in ’96. One
popular return feature is the ability to send href=http://www.fanmail.olympic.ibm.com>e-mail to any of the
athletes participating in the Games.

NBC, which, as you know, has the U.S. TV rights, has set up its own
Olympics site.

More, more.And if you simply can’t get enough Olympics between
now and Oct. 1, when they end, you’ll find excellent sites set up by The
New York Times, Yahoo, The Christian Science Monitor, CNN and the BBC,
among others. Most of the sports federations will also have Olympics
sites — a good example being the International Tennis Federation’s href=http://www.tennisgold.com>Olympic Tennis 2000. It offers a
player database, results as they happen, schedule info, historical data,
news, articles and the opportunity to take part in a quiz and a poll.

Silly season. On the other hand, if you’re already sick of the
Olympics, what you need is a laugh. The Australian website href=http://www.silly2000.com>Silly 2000 joins you in counting the
days until the end of the Sydney Games. The whole site’s a spoof
– with realistic-looking articles that take sly digs at all the hoopla.

The first Americans. If you think you know who the first
people to inhabit our country were, you’re probably wrong. So says an href=http://www.sciam.com/2000/0900issue/0900nemecek.html>article in
the current issue of Scientific American magazine on the latest in
archaeology.

Metal memories. Remember those lunchboxes you used to tote to
school? The ones with Fred and Barney on them, or maybe the Beatles or
Barbie? And how aggravating it was when your mother picked one out for
you rather than asking what kind you wanted? So do lots of other folks.
Whole Pop Magazine Online asked 20 writers to share tales of their
lunchpail days and has added the history of lunchboxes (“paileontology”)
and even videos of lunchboxes in action at href=http://www.wholepop.com/features/lunchboxes>Heavy Metal
Memories.

Political laughs. It’s less than two months until the
presidential election. Take a breather from the charges being tossed
back and forth with href=http://cagle.slate.msn.com/politicalcartoons>Political
Cartoons, which also has links to the sites of Canadian and
worldwide editorial cartoonists.

Learning the Web. The Cyberlibrarian has a six-lesson href=http://www.thelearningsite.net/cyberlibrarian/searching/ismain.html>tutorial
that will be helpful if you’d like to learn how to search the Net more
effectively.

Digital art. Duncan Long makes his living as a href=http://duncanlong.com/science-fiction-fantasy-short-stories/index.html>writer,
but he’s also a talented digital artist. If you enjoy science fiction
and fantasy, check out the online href=http://duncanlong.com/art.html>gallery where he displays much
of his artwork, which, surprisingly, is created on a PC, not a Mac.

The world of news. Finding the latest news in other countries
isn’t always easy, even on the Web. One site that makes it easier is href=http://www.lastminutenews.com>Lastminutenews.com, which calls
itself “your two-clicks-away site to the world of news.” On any given
day, it may link you to stories in The Times of India, People’s Daily in
China, The Scotsman and many more online newspapers, as well as TASS
news service and publications that specialize in IT news, sports, music,
politics and the economy.

Searching for a shipmate? Edward C. Reese, retired from the
U.S. Navy, has set up a site, href=http://www.geocities.com/CapitolHill/9703//locator.html>NAVetsUSA
that will help those who served together find each other.

We’ll travel — via Web — from one coast to the other: Ellis Island,
where so many of our ancestors set foot on U.S. soil for the first time;
slowing down to watch corn grow in Iowa; and then ending up watching the
sun rise over San Francisco’s Golden Gate Bridge, while taking a few
educational and fun side trips along the way. Join us for today’s
journey, as we explore the Web world.

Could you survive? Millions speculated on what they would do
if they were contestants on the ‘Survivor’ show. But have you ever
wondered how you would react in a real-life situation where you were
away from civilization and temporarily cut off from help? How long do
you have to boil water before it’s safe to drink? And if you were lost
in the woods and unable to find your way out, what’s you best move? Take
the WebSportsman.com href=http://www.websportsman.com/eoutfitter/survivor/index.html>survivor
quiz to find out how survival-savvy you are.

All ears. OK, it’s a bit corny, but Iowa Farmer Today’s href=http://www.iowafarmer.com/corncam/corn.html>corn cam is even
getting fan mail. Lots of city slickers, farm folks and former Iowa
residents enjoy seeing how the corn is growing in a field in
Prairieburg. Thanks to the corn cam’s popularity, the site has also set
up a Soybean cam
in a field in Linn County. Somehow soybeans don’t have the romance of
corn, but most of us have never seen soybeans up-close on the plant
before, so it’s worth a quick glance.

I left my cam in San Francisco. If you think all cams are
corny, you can skip to the next paragraph. But San Francisco’s
Exploratorium has one that’s a little different — it’s
viewer-controlled. You can point the href=http://events/exploratorium.edu/CAM2/index.html>camera at the Golden Gate
Bridge, Alcatraz Island, the Marina, Palace of Fine Arts and other
nearby sites. All you need is to be Java enabled.

The Exploratorium also offers href=http://www.exploratorium.edu/solarmax/index/html>Solar Max 2000, a
site devoted to exploring the science of the sun during its current
sunspot phase. This would be great for homeschoolers and classroom use,
but fascinating for adults, too. Check out the cool (hot?) images.

Searching for pictures. If you’re looking for images on the
Web, regular search engines may or may not be much help. The fastest way
to find what you want is to head to href=http://www.ditto.com>Ditto, which is a visual search engine
(and, they say, family-friendly, too).

Search with kids. Every parent and teacher knows the pitfalls
of letting youngsters have unrestricted use of the most popular search
engines — it’s hard to tell what filth might turn up in an ordinary
search. That’s why there are kid-friendly search engines. One that lets
you search four of them (Yahooligans, AOL Kids, Kids Click and Saluki
Search) with one click is href=http://www.familyfriendlysearch.com>Family Friendly Search.

America’s Gateway. From 1892 to 1954, millions of immigrants
passed through Ellis Island in the New York harbor near the Statue of
Liberty, on the way — they hoped — to a better life. Take a virtual
tour and find out what it was like at the International Channel href=http://www.i-channel.com/features/ellis>Ellis Island site,
which offers a historical overview, oral history project and an Ellis
Island cookbook. The Statue of
Liberty-Ellis Island Foundation has an interesting immigration
museum.

Sailing the ocean blue. While poor immigrants were gathering
their savings for a trip to the New World, those with money were living
it up on luxurious ocean-going vessels such as the Normandie, Andrea
Doria and, of course, the Titanic. href=http://www.lostliners.com>Lost Liners explores the golden age
of ocean travel, with pictures of these fantastic vessels and
information on how they were built.

Educational materials. Current teachers are likely to know
about these sites, but homeschooling parents may not have discovered
them yet. The Gateway to Educational
Materials (GEM) provides links to thousands of lesson plans and
other educational resources, by grade level. href=http://www.education-world.com>Education World is rich in
educational content, which can be searched by subject. The lesson plan
of the week is helpful and be sure to check out (in the left column
under Reference) the “best of” series.

Just for fun. You’ve gotten those e-mails that “translated”
common expressions into redneck “language.” Well, now you can do the
same with entire websites and not just redneck, but jive, Cockney, Elmer
Fudd (one of my favorites), Swedish chef, moron or hacker. It’s all part
of the fun at The
Dialectizer. Just type in a URL and have the page show up as if
written by the Muppet’s Swedish chef or Eliza Doolittle. Or take
Rinkworks’ special tour in the language of your choice.

9 to 5. Celebrate Labor Day by making plans to chuck that job
you don’t like and get a better one. Whether you’re a student looking
for part-time work to help pay your bills or an accountant who’s still
searching for that dream position, if it’s about jobs, the href=http://www.careers.org>Career Resource Center — the Web’s
directory of career directories — will link you to it. It features
major job-finding sites, employer directories, home business
opportunities, career planning resources and much more. It’s a great
first step on the way to a happier working life.

Job hunters may also want to stop in at href=http://www.careerbuilder.com>Career Builder, which asks what
kind of job you’re looking for and where you want to work, then takes it
from there.

Do you want fries with that? For some incentive to take you
from talking about changing careers to actually doing it, stop by the href=http://www.conceptlab.com/simulator>Simulator. Imagine doing
that minute after minute, day after day. …

Take this job. … If your job search is successful, you’ll
need I-Resign.com, where
you can get ideas for straightforward resignation letters while
chuckling over some examples that probably never should’ve been sent.
The href=http://www.p45.net/workomatics/resign.shtml>Resign-o-matic of
an Irish site is also funny, although it includes a number of
“Britishisms.” (But watch out for the rest of the site, where the forums
aren’t moderated and off-color comments predominate.)

Goofin’ off. When you have time on your hands, you can win
prizes by playing Family Feud, Abstraction, music or TV trivia, video
poker and other games online at href=http://www.uproar.com>Uproar.

In the Palm of your hand. Want to know how to make your Palm
Pilot even more indispensable? href=http://avantgo.com/frontdoor>Avant Go offers more than 400 free
content channels optimized for the small screen — everything from stock
quotes to The New York Times, Expedia to the Weather Channel. It also
works on other hand-held PDAs as well as Web-enabled cell phones and
doesn’t require a wireless modem.

The sound of silence. It’s the silly season. Brett Banfe, an
18-year-old in New Jersey, has decided not to speak for a year — and
for this great feat, has a website, a
sponsor (which will donate money to a charity if he actually succeeds)
and a fan club (where you’ve
never seen so many exclamation marks).

Back to Bach. This is the 250th year since the death of
composer Johann Sebastian Bach and in
the land of his birth, they’re celebrating with href=http://www.deutschland-tourismus.de/e/1585.html>Bach Year 2000.
If a trip to Germany isn’t in your future, drop by href=http://www.bachdigital.com>Bach Digital. You’ll need a speedy
modem (at least 56 K) and the Flash plug-in, but the site lets you hear
old instruments and Bach’s music as it has survived from his handwritten
original copies. The arrangement of the site isn’t all it might be –
you’ll know to click on English on the right side of the page, but after
that, put your cursor over the musical note to make sure you hear a
flute playing or click on guided tour at the bottom of the page, musical
instruments at the top of the screen.

Find Midi and MP3 files of Bach music at href=http://student-www.uchicago.edu/~mao2/bach.html>Johann Sebastian
Bach Midi pages and recommended recordings at href=http://www.jsbach.net>Dave’s J.S. Bach Page

Reference books. One of the best things about the Web is the
easy access you have to hundreds of authoritative resources. At href=http://www.xrefer.com>Xrefer, which calls itself the Web’s
reference engine, I typed in Bach and up popped biographical information
from the “Penguin Dictionary of Music,” and many other details of his
music and career from respected sources. A great bookmark when a school
report is due.

Find a pet. Lots of loving dogs and cats are looking for good
homes. Find them through the Pet
Shelter Network. In addition to its adoption center, it also has a
lost-and-found section (where you can post a notice or search the lists)
and an area where you can try to find a new home for an animal you own.

Bob Vella’s Pet Talk America lets
you ask questions about dogs, cats, birds, fish, ferrets, rabbits and
other small animals. You’ll also find pet tips and even humor — href=http://www.pettalk.com/9steps.html>nine steps to cat bathing.
Warning: The home page loads slowly.

Electoral choice. If you’ve reached the point in the political
process where you wish there was a line on the ballot that says “none of
the above,” now you have another choice: Team J3 2000, Team Jesse. And
that is: Jesse Helms, Jesse Jackson and Jesse Ventura. Mind-boggling,
right? Read all about it at href=http://www.dumbentia.com>Dumbentia, “the parody place.”

Also funny is the site’s parody of ads through the decades (from the
mythical “Cylindrical Meats Council”). A few of the other spoofs (check
the gallery) are off-color or in poor taste — but they’re fairly easily
avoided since you can usually guess from the title.

This week we take a peek at sneakers (a.k.a. “athletic shoes”),
ancient myths, foreign films, football and personalized TV listings,
among other Web offerings.

Cheaper textbooks. It’s time to head back to college, but –
ouch! — the price of books. The college bookstore may or may not have
what you or your student needs in used editions — but you increase your
chance of finding it by 20 when you use href=http://www.textbookhound.com>TextBookHound. You set the search
criteria — author, title, keyword, ISBN — and it searches the stock of
20 online college bookstore merchants to let you know what’s available
and at what price.

SkipClass.com is a free site to
match up students who have used textbooks to trade or sell with those
who need them. Click on a state, enter a subject and key words in the
book’s title, and see if what you need is available. This was set up by
an Atlanta-area community college student for those who are “tired of
being overcharged for textbooks.”

“72 channels and nothing’s on.” That’s the way it seems
sometimes when you’re clicking through the cable offerings at a
lightning pace. Instead, find what you want to watch courtesy of href=http://listings.clicktv.com>Click TV, which promises the most
accurate and up-to-date TV listing info on the Web. Enter your ZIP Code
and type of connection to get two weeks’ worth of satellite, broadcast
or cable lineups. You can also search for shows by type (sports,
cooking, kids, movies) and, if you register, customize your listings.

What’s your ideal vacation? I know, summer’s almost over –
but not quite. And who says you can’t begin thinking about your next
getaway? Before you begin planning, take Third Age’s href=http://www.thirdage.com/travel/tips/personality/index.html>personality
quiz. Answer a few questions and they’ll tell you the type of
holiday that will make you happiest. (It worked pretty well when I gave
it a try — they pegged me pretty closely, even though I found a few of
the multiple-choice questions impossible to answer.)

For kids. The British Broadcasting Corp. has several websites
for children and while they’re heavy on the BBC’s children’s TV shows,
there’s still enough there to keep American youngsters interested. href=http://www.bbc.co.uk/cbbc>BBC Online Kids is for preteens and
Little Kids is for
preschoolers.

Pigskin time. It’s almost fall and that means football. Get
your fix of NFL and NCAA games through video or audio, as well as
up-to-the-minute reports at Maxfootball.com.
Or, if you insist, there’s always the official site of the NFL,
which offers everything from films to
fantasy football and features to polls. One of the most interesting
sections is the NFL classics.

Very sneaky. Once upon a time, boys and girls, going to school
in the fall meant buying a new pair of sneakers, not deciding among 20
different kinds of “athletic shoes” that can be pumped up to perform
miracles. Charlie’s Sneaker
Pages looks at the history of sneakers (1908 Converses, 1917 Keds,
1960s Adidas, 1970s Nikes and other pioneering models) and just about
anything else you can imagine on the subject, including technology (Nike
AIR technology explained), jokes, the top-10 sneakers (as well as the
biggest duds) and “a dissertation on the size of sneakers.” Fun.

Live like a king. I’m house-hunting at the moment, and I can
tell you I sure haven’t been shown anything like href=http://www.balmoral-castle.co.uk>Balmoral Castle, originally
the Scottish home of Queen Victoria (not that I could afford it anyway).
The last time I had the privilege of visiting Balmoral in person, I
devoted quite a bit of time to imagining what it would cost to heat to
American standards, but on the website, you can spend time admiring the
estate’s red deer, summertime pony trekking and wondering what Queen
Elizabeth does with the honey produced by the 450 hives of bees.

Cupid and Pandora. I confess that mythology was not one of my
favorite subjects when I was in school back in the Dark Ages. But much
of mythology has entered literature and our common consciousness — Hero
and Leander, Minerva, the original Hercules, Pandora’s box, Psyche, the
Golden Fleece — so it’s good to know where you can go to look up more.
The best place is the online version of href=http://www.bulfinch.org/>Bulfinch’s
Mythology.

Subtitles included. If you’re a fan of foreign films, head to
ForeignFilms.com. You can search
for a film (by name, country or genre), discuss the latest releases to
reach these shores and rate films by category. It also links to the
top-10 independent or foreign film pages.

Today’s column shows how you can listen to Thomas Edison’s rare
recordings from the turn of the century via today’s MP3 technology and
leads you to a website that tells you what people doing the same type of
job as you are earning.

The world at your fingertips. Websites that have thousands of
links of all kinds make surfing easier — you just head to one place and
click away, whether you’ve looking for a “people finder” or financial
advice. One that does an excellent job at this is href=http://www.geoportals.com>GeoPortals, which says it offers “the
world at your command.” I particularly like the fact that the various
topics are organized as separate websites. A few are e-commerce, but
most offer great links to good non-commercial sites. You can try href=http://www.geotravels.com>GeoTravels, href=http://www.geowomen.com>GeoWomen, href=http://www.geonerd.com>GeoNerd, href=http://www.geohistory.com>GeoHistory, href=http://www.geofinder.com>GeoFinder (lots of search engines;
many you may not know existed) and plenty more.

Great for kids. You might also think of href=http://www.beritsbest.com>Berit’s Best Sites for Children as a
mini portal for kids. It connects to thousands of excellent websites for
the younger set. To lessen the overload, you might want to start with
the 25 links that are most popular with visitors, then bookmark the main
page, to return again and again.

Did you see that one, Joe? Anyone who watches sports on TV
eventually ends up shaking his or her head at the commentator’s and
play-by-play announcer’s remarks (or maybe this is just something that
drives us English-major types nuts). In any case, you can’t have tuned
in, even casually, without hearing such inane remarks as “He’s some kind
of player,” “They’re better than their record indicates,” and “He always
gives 110 percent.” A huge list of these are collected at href=http://www.sportscliche.com>The Sports Cliché List, which adds
a few funny comments along the way.

Of course, sports enthusiasts aren’t the only culprits when it comes
to clichés. Steve Lautenschlager has collected more than 1,600 general
clichés at href=http://www.phy.duke.edu/~stevel/cliches/cliche_list.html>Steve’s
Cliché List. The mixed clichés are hilarious.

I’m a poet and don’t know it. Anyone who’s ever attached one
of those magnetic poetry kits to the refrigerator door will appreciate
the online version, href=http://www.phys.ocean.dal.ca/~dwalsh/myPoetry.html>Electro-Magnetic
Poetry. All of the words are there, scrambled up, waiting for you to
click and drag them into whatever sentences or poems you’re inspired to
create. Don’t think of it as wasting time; instead, consider it a
creative diversion.

Are you making enough money? Salary.com’s href=http://swz.salary.com/layoutscripts/swzl_newsearch.asp>Salary
Wizard will search its database of thousands of jobs — and what
they pay — to tell you if that job offer is what it should be, or if
you ought to be asking for a raise.

A smile a day… When you want less-serious fare, see if you
get a chuckle from Cats Are From
Mars, which “proves” its point with all sorts of “scientific”
babble.

Art in the park. When I travel, I like to visit public gardens
and if they contain sculpture, so much the better. (My favorite is
Holland’s Kroller-Muller Sculpture Park — the flowers and the outdoor
art are both stunning; the “indoor” art is by van Gogh, and it’s pretty
neat, too.). Now, San Francisco sculptor Benbow Bullock makes it easy to
find these gardens with his new href=http://www.artnut.com/intl.html>International Directory of
Sculpture Parks. The several hundred choices range from West Point
to a French prison.

Who Threw the Overalls in Mrs. Murphy’s Chowder? Well, I don’t
think that song is likely to knock Britney Spears from the charts, but
in 1901, it was the bee’s knees, as the saying went. And you can listen
to it — and many more songs — through today’s technology. From 1888 to
1929 Thomas Alva Edison made thousands of recordings to demonstrate his
invention of the phonograph — Tin Pan Alley, opera, brass band marches,
jazz, ragtime, spirituals, political and documentary speeches and
vaudeville comedy sketches, among others. About 37,000 of these rare
recordings survive and you can download and listen to many of them
(“Some of These Days” by Sophie Tucker, for instance) at the Edison
Historic Site’s Sounds.
And you don’t need an MP3 player; each file has its own player (or, if
you do have an MP3 player, you can just download the file).