Locate info on 300,000 companies

Corporate Profiles. Whether you want to find out more about a
business because you’re thinking of doing business with them, are
interviewing for a job, or some other reason, the first place to head on
the Web is Corporate
Information.com. It helps you locate company profiles on firms in
France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Canada and the U.K. as well as the U.S.
You can also search for profiles among dozens of market sectors — from
advertising to banking and broadcasting.

Do Frogs Sleep? That’s the sort of question answered by Ask Dr. Universe. A new question
is answered each day and you can submit your own query via e-mail.
Although the site is for elementary school kids, the answers can be
intriguing for all ages.

Chatting With Celebs. Tuesday evening, Sept. 21, brings two
well-known personalities to the Web to chat with fans. Country music
star Garth Brooks will be on Yahoo!
Chat at 5 p.m. PDT (8 p.m. EDT). And SF author (“Hitchhiker’s Guide
to the Galaxy”) Douglas Adams will be at Zine
Zone to talk at 6 p.m. PDT (9 p.m. EDT).

Also on Tuesday, David Bowie’s new album, “hours…,” will be
available for download from a number of the Web’s best-known record
retailers. What’s unusual about this is that the album doesn’t go on
sale in Britain until Oct. 4 and in the U.S. until Oct. 5. The price
hasn’t been announced, but speculation is that the download will be less
costly than the conventional CD. You may recall that David Bowie released a single,
“Telling Lies,” only on the Internet.

For more information about obtaining the album on the Web, head to Virgin Records.
You can also sample some of the songs; give them your e-mail address and
they’ll send you the URL of the album’s preview site.

All About The Government. The newest portal in the Start Spot
family of sites is GovSpot. While
there are other sites that connect you to government information and
agencies, this is one of the simplest to use. It starts with the three
branches of the federal government — legislative, judicial and
executive — then moves on to local, state and world governments,
government departments (social services, commerce) and even gets into
politics, from polls to political humor sites. Its diversity covers
everything from states’ home pages to the FBI’s Most-Wanted list.

All The Embassies. In the same vein, should you need to
contact one of the foreign embassies in Washington, D.C., The Electronic Embassy contains all the
contact information. (Just scrolling through the list is pretty amazing
— who knew all those tiny embassies were there?)

Doggone Good. It may be that I’m easily surprised, but it
never occurred to me that some people collect fire hydrants until I
stumbled on the home of the FireHydrant.org. It’s filled with
photographs of white, yellow, red, gray and two-tone hydrants and
includes technical data on the plugs as well as their manufacturers.
FireHydrant.org also features links to related sites (New York City’s
fireplugs have their own “official” site!).

Wedding Attire 6,000 Years Ago. Everyone in the media is
looking to the past for millennium stories and the Wedding Channel is no different.
It has traced the evolution of wedding attire from 4000 B.C. until today
and tracked down some (humorous) 19th-century etiquette while providing
a look at some of the most publicized weddings of this century (Elvis,
Grace Kelley and the Duke of Windsor among them).

Because of the way the site arranges its pages, it’s about impossible
to give you a direct link to these pages. So after you’ve accessed the
Wedding Channel, you’ll need
to scroll about three-fourths of the way down the initial screen and
click on “Weddings Then and Now” under “What’s New.”

More History. If you’re a history buff, you know about the History Channel, but are you
aware of The History Net? It
has extensive archives devoted to American history, world history, the
U.S. Civil War, World War II, great battles and eyewitness accounts, as
well as lots of interesting articles.

Fun For Kids. The educational games at Fun School are divided by age groups
— kindergarten/preschool, first grade, second grade and third-sixth
grades. Youngsters can visit here often without getting bored.

Sports Junkies. As baseball season heats up (and winds down at
the same time), football — college and NFL — takes over. If you’re a
sports fan, you have your favorite spots to visit, but one you may not
have discovered yet is Today’s
Sports.com. Since its launch in the spring, it has rapidly climbed
the Web popularity charts.

Yom Kippur. In the Jewish calendar this is the month Tishri in
the year 5760. Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, is a day of fasting,
reflection and prayers. Learn more about this solemn day at High Holy Days.
Suggestions for making the holiday more meaningful can be found at OHR Somayach.