Web Sites

Experience the Dome in 3D

http://www.dome2000.co.uk/ 3Ddome.htm

After detailed, Pentium II-optimised 3D tours of Stonehenge and the Forbidden City, Intel has now created a similar panorama of developments in Greenwich.

A lengthy download of Viscape technology enables tours round the Dome by helicopter, boat or taxi, each with sound effects, and nightfall may be summoned with a click of the mouse.

It is a chance to get a look at what the New Millennium Experience Company calls the "magnificent gleaming white dome", ahead of the 1 January 2000 rush.

The idea is to give a realistic sense of the structure's size, and show off the latest Pentium chips, though a modest AMD233 coped adequately.

Action for Smoking

and Health

http://www.ash.org.uk

"Hi, I'm Mr Fagash from the cigarette industry and I want to take you for a ride."

This new update to the ASH site adds a lurid, Java-powered overlay to its impressive campaign database of hard facts and corporate evasions.

The Tobacco Explored game displays the nefarious strategies of the tobacco industry over the years, using extracts from internal documents as dialogue in a merry-go-round theme whose elements are recruitment, addiction, money, death and replacement - this last referring to the 300 new recruits a day needed to replace existing smokers who have died. A grotesque representation of the "smoking body", like an eviscerated surrealist doll, outdoes similar efforts by the Health Education Authority and others.

Trendy Magic

http://trendy.org/magic/ index.html

On a first visit here, some may be convinced that computers can read minds, or at least that their monitor has suddenly acquired touch-screen capabilities.

This slickly designed magic site offers a number of Net-based tricks, puzzles and memory games. Choose one of six onscreen playing cards, muttering abracadabra or other incantation of choice, and that particular card will disappear, seemingly devoured by a hungry animated rabbit.

Only a curmudgeon would spoil the effect by pointing out that the five remaining cards in the row have all changed as well.

Other tricks work on similar principles, though the latest version of Netscape is apparently more magically inclined than rival browsers.

Lots of links - from the official David Copperfield message board to a Harry Houdini tribute - and a stern warning: do not steal the images, or the Attack Rabbit will get you.

Send interesting, quirky or even, at a pinch, cool site recommendations to websites@dircon.co.uk