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Welcome to Scottish Picks, hand-picked by our Scottish web connoisseur. If you have a favourite site that we haven't mentioned, do drop us an email with the site's name and address and we shall despatch our reviewers to cast their discerning eye upon it. Click here if you only want to view this month's list of sites.
Last month marked the end of an era for Edinburgh-based Scotsman Publications
as it moved from its grand, city centre headquarters to a purpose-built office
beside the new Scottish Parliament in Holyrood. Perhaps more important news
to web surfers, is that the newspaper group's Sunday publication, Scotland
On Sunday, has finally gone online. The format and design of the new
site is exactly the same as the recently overhauled site for its sister publication,
The Scotsman. You can find seemingly everything that you would find in the print
version of Scotland's most popular Sunday broadsheet, including news, sport,
columnists, Spectrum (the lifestyle magazine) and a good smattering of supporting
photographs. Only you can't do the crossword online.
If the word "tweed" summons up images of chaps puffing on pipes, then
pay a visit to The Harris Tweed Authority
to have your viewpoint adjusted. This site suggests style. Using Flash, with
a lush, royal purple theme throughout, it offers a media-rich tour of the manufacturing
processes, history and development of this ancient industry. The excellent maps,
with pop-up images of island scenes, remind you why Harris Tweed has become
such an important part of life for Scotland's remote Western isles communities.
And just in case any thoughts of fuddiness creep back, you can find links to
fashion designers who have used tweed, play online games, download screensavers
and put a sample of tweed cloth on your desktop. It's quite hairy...
The bagpipes, a potent national symbol, have also been feeling the pressure
of modernity. US-based Pipe and
Drummer magazine take their piping seriously: their recently redesigned
site seems to tackle any aspect of piping, from competitions to moisture control
when playing the bagpipes. If you want to get to grips with your chanters, reeds,
and piping tunes this is a likely place to head for. The publication invites
interaction, with its polls, forums, trivia,
user survey, and "racy
joke" puzzle. It also
suggests, rather provocatively, that Scots bagpipers are late
adopters of new technology, piping away with traditional sheepskin bags
and cane reeds, while pipers with goretex bags and synthetic reeds are lifting
the trophies. This story is sure to run.
Christmas is coming, as if you need reminding. The next Scottish Pick, Webchurch,
is really an alternative to the e-commercialism of Christmas, as well as an
interesting site on its own. The subject is God. And He is everywhere on this
site. "Scotland's Virtual Church" appears to be run by a grass roots
group of Christians, keen to spread the good word. Their enthusiasm leaps off
the web pages. You can email the Webchurch a request to pray
for you or even ask for a prayer
for your pet. Trekkies may be intrigued by the Star
Trek section where previous episodes are analysed as if they were Christian
parables. And if you want to chat, there are various "side chapels"
that lead off to chat rooms and related web sites for various Christian denominations.
Have you decided where you will be on New
Millennium eve yet? If you can't make it to Scotland for the mega Millennium
Hogmanay celebrations you can still share the occasion online, in Wrap
the World, a unique global art event being run by the organisers of
Glasgow's Hogmanay. The idea is that artists in Glasgow, the States, South Africa,
India, Australia, and Portugal will collaborate on an artwork by faxing it around
the world at the eleventh hour of this Millennium. By the time, the bells strike
twelve in Glasgow, the artwork will have "wrapped the world" to reveal
the final composition. The process will be caught as it happens on webcams.
For the moment, you can find out more about the artists and the event at the
web site.
Time to bid farewell: whether you are going to one of the street party bashes,
or celebrating at home with friends, have a stupendous Hogmanay!