Sore eyes

TV Eyeshttp://www.tveyes.com/

TV Eyeshttp://www.tveyes.com/

Unlike the Web, old-fashioned steam television must be viewed in sequence in order to pick out those rare bits of useful information. This new site, however, enables users to extract the data they need without actually gluing themselves to the box.

"We're watching when you're not," is the motto of this site, with what is basically an online clippings service for TV news. Users can type in a series of keywords and the site will then log uses of the requested terms as they are spoken on-air in real time.

The results are e-mailed one by one, with a sentence or two of context. Unfortunately, the service seems restricted to US TV current affairs coverage, but if you want an e-mail alert every time a newsreader on MSNBC or CNN says "Syria" or "Hillary", this is your chance.

Lots of potential in this intriguingly different take on the idea of Web TV.

Unmissable TVhttp://www.unmissabletv.com/

Serious sofa spuds will love this most comprehensive of online programme guides.

The recently launched site from IPC, publishers of TV Times, offers lots of background on individual shows, including an EastEnders episode guide and gossip ("As Kathy prepares to fly out of Phil's life again, can he persuade her to stay?") and selected press clips, including the latest on Liam and Patsy.

But the heart of the site is a viewing schedule covering the whole range of output, including cable, satellite and digital options - some 200 channels in all. This can be personalised in a number of ways, and users may also choose to be e-mailed with details of their favourite programmes, selected according to type of show or even thematic preferences.

The site does pretty much everything for the TV addict except programme the VCR (coming soon, no doubt).

UbuWebhttp://www.ubu.com/

Named after Jarry's anti-hero, this huge compendium of visual and sound poetry marshals a century or so of fractious avant-garde experiment into an incongruously neat, but valuable online archive. These word-and-image "multimedia" adventures and random-access approaches often seem quite at home on the Web.

Historical texts and recordings include key works from Artaud to Zukofsky, and new to the modern section is David Daniel's immense 390-page Gates of Paradise sequence, dedicated to the "unbound human self".

Plus useful criticism and exegesis, a choice of "found + insane poems", and our own veteran sound poet Bob Cobbing, live in Lewisham with his inimitable Real Audio vocalisations of a piece called Alphabet of Fishes.

University of Bums on Seatshttp://www.cynicalbastards.com/ubs/

Uncompromising in its mission to extend access to higher education, this online college has a principled "character-over-qualifications" admissions policy, which ensures that no one will ever be rejected on any grounds except non-payment of fees.

Course options include navel philosophy, post-feminist needlework, reflexive perspectives on postmodern verbosity, post-rational discourse and melon studies.

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