Welcome to this week's Picks, where as usual, you find us prepared to traverse the whole gamut of human experience in just a few clicks of a mouse button. Shakespeare had the seven ages of man, T.E. Lawrence shored up his personal philosophy with the seven pillars of wisdom. We, on the other hand, muddle by with only the seven web-sites of worth for comfort.

Now, we must declare more than a passing interest in our first Pick -- AFCi, the official Arsenal website. We have followed the Gunners, as London's top football team are colloquially known, for more than a few years and, quite frankly Brian, this is as good a debut as you're likely to see.

Unashamedly pandering to the anorak tendency, the AFCi database offers statistics on more than 600 players and match reports going back to the last century. AFCi shows a football team embracing new technology with a flair noticeably at odds with their reputation for boring, defensive play. They'll sell you an Internet connection and your own arsenal.co.uk e-mail address and even, joy joy, let you mail the players direct.

In terms of sheer style, however, we have to admit that AFCi runs out behind our next choice. Channel, a collaborative arts project funded by, amongst others, the British Arts Council, takes traditional notions of web-design and turns them on their head. The end result is a coolly sophisticated area where poems aggregate interactively, line by line, then combine with images to create a top class installation. Don't be put off by the occasional dip into pretension -- a typical quote is: "A preoccupation with technological difference -- between the digital and the analogue -- obscures much greater strands of cultural continuity and transformation" -- Channel is a challenging and worthwhile experiment.

While we're "doing culture", we'd like to mention Inner Space, the online version of the Edinburgh magazine devoted to techno. This is a musical style which, while it sounds to us like dustbin lids being repeatedly slammed down on cats' heads, is currently much in vogue with the younger set. Inner Space offers an entertaining trawl through the "scene" in Edinburgh, amusingly mixing news and views and introducing novices like us to the work of bands with such names as Outcast Clan, Nervasytem and Noosphere.

We hope you remember the telephone advert in which Maureen Lipman, playing a stereotypical Jewish grandmother exclaims: "you've got an ology!", because if you don't this link will be rather nonsensical and, let's face it, it's weak enough already.

So take techno, add an ology and you've got technology (almost), which is what spins web-sites and makes planes fly. These two collide happily on the Royal Air Force site, a must for budding top-guns everywhere. (A pointless aside: The film Top Gun contains the best line of dialogue ever in: "Your ego's writing cheques your body can't cash!"). As we've noted previously, when a military mind encounters the serried ranks of tagged HTML commands, the result is often well-ordered and informative, yet somehow lacks the spark of true originality. The principle holds here; no new ground is broken but information on all aspects of RAF life is well-laid out and accessible.

Mention of matters military puts us in mind of Prussian premier Otto von Bismarck's gruff comment: "Only fools learn by their experience. I learn by the experience of others." Such experience can be particularly valuable to people battling addiction or serious illness and one of the true strengths of the web is the way it creates pools of shared testimony. Like Ovacome, a UK-wide support group for women suffering from ovarian cancer. It has chat rooms and a country-wide network of "fone friends" offering instant support and advice.

To happier subjects now with the British Toy and Hobby Fair, the most significant annual UK event in the toy industry calendar. Last year more than 16,500 people visited the 416 exhibitors at the show, which next runs from January 31 to February 4, 1998. Check out the goodies on offer at this site, then click over to The British Toy and Hobby Association, which organises the fair.

And finally, a propos of nothing at all, we notice that the current spell of hot, humid weather has taken its usual toll on our four-legged friends. Dog Baked to Death in Car headlines have made their annual appearance, prompting us, in a spirit of compassion that wouldn't shame St. Francis of Assisi, to pick Animal Welfare Charity Blue Cross as our final selection. The current site is being reworked, but the charity's main purpose: "To foster the bond of friendship between animals and people and relieve the suffering of animals", holds good.

So, there we have it: sport, culture, war, cancer, toys and animals ... what a wonderfully eclectic place our world is. See you next week.

Sites featured in Picks of the Week

• AFCi - great web debut (should that be webut?) from Arsenal F.C.
  
• Channel - artistic challenges for a digital age.
  
• Inner Space - techno, techno, techno, ran the lyrics to one recent club hit.
  
• Royal Air Force - flyboy fun courtesy of the Ministry of Defence.
  
• Ovacome - fighting ovarian cancer with friends.
  
• British Toy and Hobby Fair - the UK's biggest toy fair.
  
• Blue Cross - take care of your pets.

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