Web sites

Atlantic Frontier

http://www.greenpeace.org.uk/atlantic

A time-travel plug-in may still be some way off, but this imaginative Greenpeace site is perhaps the next best thing. Greeted by a view of desolate, desert-bound Stonehenge in the year 2050, the visitor has the opportunity to travel back to the same scene in still-verdant 1997 and avert global warming and biblical variants such as a plague of locusts. A distinctly sub-Tardis, but solar-powered, time machine displays changing carbon dioxide and temperature levels while in transit through the years, and there are news broadcasts to drive home the message: leave oil reserves in the North Atlantic where they belong. Those without Shockwave or Real Video will miss half the fun, though there's always the tie-in cinema ad featuring a computer-animated pickled squid.

License Plates of the World

http://danshiki.oit.gatech.edu/iadt3mk/index.html

This collection of thousands of number plates from all over the world beats trainspotting any day, and threatens to become seriously interesting. Vintage and current plates are meticulously indexed and displayed in close- up: click on the world map to inspect diplomatic plates from the Cape Verde Islands, classic hand-painted styles from the Ashanti province of Ghana, the white-on-red squiggle identifying a Burmese pedal-rickshaw, or a cute, bear-shaped number from Canada's Northwest Territories. The author has included a self-portrait that shows him lounging against a Model "A" Ford. No anorak in sight, though he does hoard his materials like a true obsessive: don't use the plate images without asking.

Form Art

http://www.c3.hu/hyper3/form/

The familiar Windows screenscape of panels, bars, cursors and option buttons is wittily subverted by this fascinating site. The Russian artist Alexei Shulgin takes the unctuous symmetries of browser and e-mail "forms" and scatters them across the screen, turning them into inspired doodles and games. In the process, a message window becomes a little wagon trundling back and forth; check boxes become constellations, and blue and white slats strobe hypnotically; it's like an LSD version of a berserk venetian blind. Form Art really is the birth of a new art form, and contributions are invited. Now, where's the screensaver?

The Center for Shopping Cart Abuse

Prevention and Study

http://www.sfo.com/cart/index.html

A site for those taking a walk down the aisle, of the supermarket variety. The indignities suffered by the humble shopping trolley are listed and mourned, with poignant shots of damaged wire frames abandoned in ravines and hurtled over bridges, and tales of damsels cynically seduced merely to gain access to their groceries for nefarious purposes. The villains - including the notorious Malcarta, who speaks only in Esperanto - are identified, and offered help via a 12-Step programme: "I will make moral amends with the carts I have offended ..." Needless to say, everyone involved in this project is completely off their trolley.

Crash

http://www.flf.com/crash

Perhaps more fun than the movie itself, this site from the US distributor deems itself unsuitable for minors and offers stills, interviews, and more creative variations on David Cronenberg's autoerotic epic. Claims to seriousness are somewhat qualified by the screeching metal soundfiles, a repeating graphic of a body hurtling through a windscreen and a Java- assisted, arcade-style traffic-dodging game - competitors are allowed three lives only. An animated Arquette wriggles back and forth in leg braces, and a page for visitors' own crash experiences harks back to the high school thrill of totalling Dad's pick-up: "There was blood streaming across my face. It looked pretty sexy".