Websites

All About Parents

All About Parents

This is the first of United News and Media's "vertical lifestyle sites". And it's true, parents do tend to be up and about a lot. News, advice and expertise, with hundreds of informative articles and a celebrity section. An eye-opener for the uninitiated, with detailed dispatches from the maternity ward, latest on the Nappy Wars, and obscure but terrifying stuff about Glue Ear and grommets. All infant life is here, plus tips on how to stop older kids smoking or worse, e-mail advice on breast-feeding, and (coming soon) a benefits calculator.

NotSpeaking.com

Starting next month, this New Jersey 18-year-old has decided to be seen and not heard. Brett Banfe has vowed silence for an entire year, in order, he claims, to inspire his contemporaries with a sense of commitment. Rights to his first words upon re-entry are already up for grabs. The taciturn but media-savvy teen, who will chat only in chatrooms until September 2001, already has a fan page (brettfansite.tripod.com), but various Make Brett Talk sites are said to be plotting to sabotage his resolve.

Notting Hill Carnival

No peace and quiet here, with the still-ungentrified street festival coming up again this weekend, now into its 35th year or so and (it claims) "second only to Rio". This official site has the full schedule, including the steel band marathons in the Dome, useful maps in normal and "groovy" versions, and live webcams of the action in Powis Square and Hornimans Pleasance Park. Go with the flow, the site advises, and remember that enjoying yourself properly could be as demanding as 12 hours of aerobics. But where are the dancing policemen?

The Burgled Helpline

No doubt they are hot on the heels of the 4,500 or so burglaries committed daily in the UK. If you have just become a statistic, take refuge at this plain-looking but useful resource, with its checklist of things to do after a break-in, and partner companies on hand to refit the locks or just come and tidy up. A regional risk table will be bad news to anyone living in Hull, Manchester or other areas in the burglars' Top Ten - those in the Isles of Scilly (at number 376) can sleep more easily.

Yellowtag.com

If it has been lost, rather than lifted, this simple idea for global lost property retrieval provides little e-tags for valuable items, each with a unique ID code in the form of an e-mail address. The finder of a lost object is encouraged to notify the site, with a $10,000 prize as honesty incentive. Yellowtag then tracks down the owner and notifies them in turn, the formula being you lost it, they found it, we found you. Those reunited with their property can choose to mail a personal reward to the finder via the site, which also suggests a range of charity donations in lieu.

Intertooob

Gung-ho attempt at what claims to be the world's first 24-hour live internet interactive TV service - netcast from a room above the Ship and Anchor pub in downtown Calgary, with programmes courtesy of local actors seeking work experience (unpaid). Micro-budgeted shows include The Human Condition, So You Think Your Job Sucks, Dine and Dash, and Fred's Drunken Poets. A highly intermittent experience, even with ISDN.

Deja Vu

The term "pre-Mosaic" is wielded with biblical relish here, as the Web busily enshrines its decade or so of history. This Swedish site offers an interactive timeline, and an emulator for long-gone browsers .So here's a chance to relive it all, from old monochrome-Courier-on-black classics, through Cern line-mode, Gopher, Lynx, NCSA Mosiac, the Browser Wars of the late Nineties to advance rumours of the Semantic Web of the future.

websites@dircon.co.uk