Welcome to this week's Picks. Like most, when we were younger, we harboured dreams of super- stardom. There we would be, emerging from a cloud of dry ice and a blizzard of lights to a pounding backbeat, strutting the stage to the delirious howls of the gathered thousands. For we were born to rock!

Alas, it was not meant to be. As the years passed it was our waistlines rather than our fanbase that expanded, and our passion for performance slowly bled away. Like reformed junkies we sought solace in pale substitutes, bingeing on rock trivia. If we couldn't have the biggest-selling album of all time, we would at least be able to reel of the names of those who did. And tell you where the cover photograph was taken. And what the band's favourite food was. And, by God, their shoe-size, if necessary.

Which is why companies like Rock Tours of London proves such a godsend. They'll show you where punk started, the video location for Bob Dylan's Subterranean Homesick Blues, where John Lennon met Yoko Ono, and even where Jimi Hendrix died. Their website also links to the official site of some of rock's biggest names.

The Sisters of Mercy, a Goth combo briefly notorious in the mid 1980s, narrowly missed falling into that category (by narrowly we mean they came close, shot straight past and ended up several thousand miles away from it). They should not be confused with the Sisters of Mercy, a religious organisation of women devoted to caring for the poor, sick and uneducated, and now available on the web with the Mercy International Centre.

This sisterhood was established by Catherine McAuley, a catholic Irishwoman born in 1778. The website will tell you about the movement's history, take you on a virtual tour of their global headquarters in Dublin, and even let you buy things from their gift shop.

Rock and religion may lie at opposite ends of the career spectrum but they have common ground. Both rely on the belief and support of a malleable fan-base and both generally require the ceaseless pursuit of excellence. The kind of thing, in fact, that is promoted by the RSA Examinations Board. This non-profit organisation is the oldest (it was set up in 1754) and is one of the three largest vocational examining boards in the UK. It provides more than 500 qualifications to candidates world-wide, offered by 8,000 approved RSA centres including schools, colleges, training organisations, universities and businesses.

Its aim is the development of a well trained and highly skilled workforce as a national priority, and it offers a range of qualifications in partnership with a network of private companies. Among these are British Steel, which provides educational material for a range of vocational courses. British Steel is the third largest steel producer in the world, with an annual turnover of £7.2 billion and an employment roster topping 55,000. Its site includes information on British Steel and the environment -- almost half the capacity of each of its production centres is given over to recycling, apparently -- career challenges, and an extensive image library.

Finally, and in keeping with the business theme that appears to have developed over the last two or three paragraphs, Ireland has a new Internet business magazine. WebIreland offers a menu of daily news stories of a largely technical nature, a 97-page guide to what people working in computing in Ireland can expect to earn, and a guide to Irish service providers and web-developers.

Well we're off to blow the dust off a guitar or two and try to revive a few dreams. Anyone remember the opening bars of Stairway to Heaven? ...

Sites featured in Picks of the Week

• Rock Tours of London - rock trivia by bus.
  
• Mercy International Centre - Dublin-based Catholic charity.
  
• RSA Examinations Board - committed to excellence in vocational training.
  
• British Steel - third largest steel producer in the world.
  
• WebIreland - technology news from the Emerald Isle.
  

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