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Worldwide Picks: - USA - Aus/NZ - Canada - France - Germany - Spain - Italy - Norway - Sweden - Denmark - Brazil - Asia
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Worldwide Picks: - USA - Aus/NZ - Canada - France - Germany - Spain - Italy - Norway - Sweden - Denmark - Brazil - Asia
We've had fun discovering those sites that make Yahoo! UK & Ireland one of the best places to find UK or Irish sites on the Internet, and we enjoy sharing a few of them with you. Feel free to send us a note about any sites you think we should consider for a future issue or any general thoughts and comments about Picks of the Week. Click here if you only want to view the list of sites.
"Get thee to a nunnery!"
So wrote Shakespeare in the third act of Hamlet. The first site this week allows you to do just that. Yes indeed, nuns have hit the web in fine style as the Tyburn Convent in central London goes on-line. With a history going back to the start of the Millennium, and a place where martyrs lost their lives in the 16th & 17th Centuries, the convent has firm roots in the history of England. Once you've got your Flash plug-in installed (nuns are a pretty technical bunch these days), there's a chance to delve into the lives of the convent dwellers, including a virtual tour. So if you've ever dreamed of taking a peek around a nun's bedroom (affectionately called 'cells' at Tyburn), then here's your chance. You can even buy CDs of monastic hymns - well I suppose something's got to pay for all that web-design...
"Honest plain words best pierce the ear of grief"
More words of wisdom from the Bard to introduce our next site. When it comes to the world of free internet access, it can be a bit of a minefield. There's hundreds of Internet Service Providers these days, all crying out for your business, but oh which one to choose? We say Yahoo! Online of course, but Net 4 Nowt is a no-nonsense plain-talking site which provides oodles of information on all the free ISPs in the UK: how much free web space you get, how many e-mail addresses, how much the support lines cost and what kind of connections they offer. This is a great web resource which also includes news and a handy ISP FAQ, if that's not too many abbreviations with which to end a sentence.
"Life is as tedious as a twice-told tale vexing the dull ear of a drowsy man"
A line from King John this time, and a quote which may not always hold true: is a twice-told tale really so bad? Beatrix Potter wrote some great stories which have been entertaining generation after generation of children, and always stand up for repeated readings. The World of Peter Rabbit & Friends is an entertaining kid's site which explores the children's classic - a book that has been reprinted over 250 times and translated into more than 25 languages. There's a huge amount of interactive things to enjoy here including the chance to create your own Jemima Puddle-Duck greetings cards, games to play in Tom Kitten's playground, and lots of history, pictures and information on Beatrix Potter herself. There's no better source for fun with Flopsy, Mopsy, Cotton-tail and Peter, and it's good to see that this children's classic is still going strong after all these years.
"Lord, what fools these mortals be!"
Wrapping things up with a line from A Midsummer's Nights Dream and quite an appropriate one too for the final site this week has had the Picks Team slightly foxed. Mr Browne & Mr Clover's Big Orb describes itself as "a fantasy land of monsters and magic, excitement and danger" and is essentially a take on all those old adventure computer games or multi-user dungeons (MUDs) where you get to choose to go north, east, south and west and things happen. This one's very strange and it would seem Mr Browne & Mr Clover (a pair of Warwick University student radio buffs) have put on their silly hats, but the results are entertaining nonetheless. Even though I fell down a pit for answering a question about Brother Beyond wrong (80s boy-band, pop-pickers), and ended up being reincarnated as a cockroach, this is an amusing diversion for a few minutes and you're best off visiting the site because it's rather tricky to explain properly...
"Good night, good night! parting is such sweet sorrow, that I shall say good night till it be morrow."
In other words, see you next week.