Reviews

In-Sites

Web sites review by Annette Hed

Squall 16, Summer 1998, pg. 48.

[* The websites listed here have been linked to Wayback Machine archived snapshots of the sites where available, so they can be viewed as they appeared in 1998, or thereabouts].

Absolutely everything you could possibly want to know about genetic farming and how to fight it. SHAG (Superheroes Against Genetix) have been regular stars of the Squall Underground Update website page in recent months, their most recent protest being the dumping of a big pile of bullshit on the doorstep of Monsanto (the genetic farming company who first manipulated soya).

The site is easy to get around and looks good. There’s a history of genetic farming, names and addresses of the major playing companies involved and details of forthcoming actions etc. (the leaked internal documents from Monsanto make interesting reading).

Humour and imagination run throughout the site meaning that it’s not just dry information (see the amusingly captioned photos of actions). There’s also a debating room and a list of useful newsgroups.

www.envirolink.org/orgs/shag *

Bringing the underground dance sounds of London to the world, the interFACE pirate page broadcasts live between 6pm and 2am (British time) every weekday and all day at weekends. It boasts regular sets by pirate radio ‘name’ DJs and when they’re not going out live you can always listen to the recorded sessions from the night before.

There’s even a box in the Real Player viewer where you can see the DJ at work (tough luck though trainspotters, it’s not a good enough quality picture to see the labels!!). You can also leave it running while visiting other sites.

Elsewhere on the site there’s a chat room and a chance to show yourself to other visitors by sending in a passport size photo. Judging by the current selection though you’d only want to do this if you were 14 and living in Vancouver etc!

You will need the Real Player plug in, which if you haven’t got it already can be downloaded from the pirate radio site.

www.pirate-radio.co.uk *

On a more web-based tip three sites that have caught Annette’s eye recently are:

www.head-space.com * is a great looking site which really makes the most of the tools available these days. Although it has a bias towards and looking at the state of new media, there’s plenty of interesting stuff for those who think Java is a place in Indonesia.

Set up as a kind of creative bulletin board Head say: “We’ve sold out in our day jobs and this is our chance to give something back.”

Amongst the design for design’s sake there’s stuff about crop circles, fractals, Club 414 in Brixton (bastion of ‘avin it acid trance) plus an interactive story.

www.thenvelope.com * is another site that really uses the medium to it’s full capacity, thenvelope is again design-led with a cyberpunk attitude.

‘Two Logos in the Garage’ sees logos eating each other in a battle for supremacy while ‘this is an illegal message’ looks at clicking on things as a lifestyle choice! ‘Citizen 4.5’ (“democracy isn’t a right - it’s the law”) presents you with a mock up of how internet referendums could be a part of life in the future (and how they could be just as trivial and meaningless as they are now): “The National Condiment advocacy group has recently expressed outrage after the president’s use of French Dijon Mustard at state dinners. As of March 15th he will use a domestic brand. Which brand should he use?”

And there’s plenty more where that came from. Be warned though you will need a Java enabled browser with a shockwave plug-in and a bit of patience!!

http://cadre.sjsu.edu/meta/ * Who knows what kind of subversive/obssessive/genius/fool (delete where applicable) is behind this? One thing seems to be sure, the hosts at Cadre educational establishment in San Jose probably don’t.

Clicking around this masterpiece of wierdness is compelling - just in the hope that somewhere there’s an explanation! With a home page that may or may not be based on Microsoft’s home page covered in ‘xxxxxxx’s you begin a journey clicking on the random links hidden amongst the nonsensical textual graffitti littered over the home pages of the Lycos search engine or Macromedia (basically any large company on the net).

There’s hoax links like http://microsoft.com/military/ and http://www.psispy.com/para/ * or the one that offers “Internet surfer’s guide to hacking” which takes you to a spoof page full of syringes and the message that you have just downloaded a virus. One ‘crime’ link will take you to http://members.xoom.com/fyhs/ which could be real or maybe not, either way it’s all pretty dry humourous cynical stuff and not a little disturbing!