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 Australia and be
sure to check today’s weather in Sydney
by glancing at Darling Harbour. You can also take a 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 Political
Cartoons, which also has links to the sites of Canadian and
worldwide editorial cartoonists.
Learning the Web. The Cyberlibrarian has a six-lesson 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 writer,
but he’s also a talented digital artist. If you enjoy science fiction
and fantasy, check out the online 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 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, NAVetsUSA
that will help those who served together find each other.
Let’s curb the kangaroo court of anonymous sources
Tim Graham