Welcome to this week's Picks. When we're not scouring the nether regions of the net to bring you the best in up-to-the-minute world-wide-webbery, our thoughts often turn towards what might have been. Marlon Brando's famous phrase: "I coulda bin a contenda", lurks uncomfortably close to the top of our collective consciousness as we sadly recognise that we're unlikely to ever score the winning goal in the dying seconds of a test match. The God of sportsmen blesses some with the physiques of an adonis. To us he granted the body of a donut. Well, that's life.

Unfortunately, total inability, and a laziness that attains almost epic proportions (or would if it could be bothered), prevents us from morphing from lardbutts to hardbodies. We must therefore live out our fantasies vicariously, using any aids that come to hand. At the moment, therefore, you're more than likely to find us clicking through local London broadcaster Capital Gold's Sportstime -- which offers up-to-the-minute news on most fields of sporting endeavour.

As you would expect from a radio broadcaster, heavy use is made of Real Audio, including a live stream from the station. There is an exclusive interview with England test wicket-keeper Alex Stewart, and motor racing driver David Coulthard was due to pop in for an interactive chat. It also includes a comprehensive tennis section and, during the late, lamented Wimbledon, offered game-by-game updates on leading matches.

While we are on the subject of Wimbledon, we may as well mention that this year the tournament had its own official shoe. The Hi-tec Sports trainers were worn by some 200 ball-boys and girls (although the company is less than forthcoming on how many players actually donned the footwear). Hi-tec is currently birthing its own site and doing a good job of treading the thin dividing line between naked commercialism and fun. Regular competitions are promised and the site is dotted with odd facts, such as the one about the Norwegian lady who wore the same pair of trainers for 19-years. (We bet her odour-eaters put on a lot of weight!) The company also counts Nelson Mandela among its satisfied customers, apparently.

Of course, as sports fanatics we never like to miss an opportunity to blat on about our favourite players and their greatest games. Which is why we feel Talk TV could become a lifeline. Available in six million homes nationwide, Talk TV is broadcast daily between 6am and 6pm on cable and satellite -- but is now available to millions more over the Internet. Our eye was caught by the descriptively named Sportstalk, which promised a mix of guests, (some of whom we'd actually heard of), and keep fit. You can also watch streamed video of programmes, vote on issues of the day, and find out about the station's broadcasting talent. Somehow, former model Jerry Hall is there too.

It is said sportsmen (and retired models for that matter) often find it difficult to adjust to a life shorn of the constant adulation they experienced at their peak. In fact, medical research suggests their blood pressure and stress levels increase and they live several years less than the average. We've found that you can achieve much the same effect without all the needless expenditure of energy in your youth. Simply ingest inhuman amounts of coffee and you'll eventually get all of the above -- plus mild paranoid delusions caused by several days without sleep into the bargain.

This must be the reason that Prussian Emperor Frederick the Great banned coffee-drinking amongst the common people, while brewing up a noxious mixture involving coffee and champagne for his own consumption. And French politican and author Tallyrand wrote it was: "As black as the devil, as hot as hell, as pure as an angel, as sweet as love", which indicates a certain ambivalence towards the drink invented, as far as anyone can tell, by Muslims in the mid-ninth Century.

If we appear to know a suspicious amount of coffee-related arcana -- the first person to drink it with milk may well have been the Dutch ambassador to China in the mid-1600s -- it's because we've found the Rombouts homepage. Rombouts, for those that don't know, introduced the individual coffee filter -- the plastic hat filled with boiling water on top of your mug. Their site is vacuum-packed with information about the bean, including how to make the perfect cup (ideally get someone else to do it).

Coffee effectively changed the world. One of the three main plantation crops -- along with the equally addictive tobacco and sugar -- it helped provide the fuel which powered the industrial revolution -- on one hand stimulating a more efficient labour force and, on the other, creating the capital for industrial might. It also created a cafe culture -- as early as 1674 women were complaining that men were taking refuge from domestic crises in coffee houses -- which, thanks to web projects like Cafe Magazine, is now migrating on to the Net.

Cafe Magazine introduces the concept of cyberbohemianism and is a relaxed aggregation of articles more or less to do with coffee and coffee-drinking. It has Koba, its own online thriller, information on the latest technological advances in coffee production, and a wealth of other anecdotal and historical stuff, including a guide to London's best coffee houses.

Our nomination list would include London's South Bank Centre on a sunny summer Sunday. Covering some 27 acres, it qualifies as the world's largest arts centre and was built of concrete cast to resemble planks of wood in the grim, grey years of post-war Britain. It also has a spectacular view of the city and the River Thames. It's web-site is a compendium of artistic experience -- with details of hundreds of events scheduled for the next two or three months.

One which particularly caught our eye was the current Meltdown festival, programmed by avant-garde performance artist, Laurie Anderson. It features the UK premiere of her one-woman show dealing with cybersex, therapies for people who have used too much technology, and, with convenient circularity, coffee.

Sites featured in Picks of the Week

• CapitalGold Sports - online magazine for the sports-mad.
  
• Hi-tec Sports - this site is a shoe-in.
  
• Talk TV - you talk to it ... if it talks back you're in trouble.
  
• Rombouts - all you need to know about individually-filtered coffee.
  
• Cafe Magazine - cafe culture arrives on the net.
• The South Bank Centre - events guide and history of the world's largest arts centre.

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