I drank a lukewarm ocean of cappuccinos and scoffed my own body weight in
carrot cake at Eva Pascoe’s Cyberia Cafe on Whitworth Street until a free
terminal became available.
The first web sites you stumble across are a lot like the goons you meet
on your first week at university - you spend the rest of your life trying
to avoid them like the plague.
After overloading on ambient music at the CC and in desperate need of a
diet, I armed myself with a temperamental Pipex dial account and a
ludicrous email address: 1199883374 reesuk@pipex. com, at which stage I
thought that the coolest thing to hit the internet was an animated image
on a black background with white text.
Then I got my first sound and video card from the Tottenham Court Road and
the phone bill started shooting up. My telephone line turned into a
download junkie and was using me as its gopher.
And gopher I did, trawling the net’s vast archives in search of that
ever-elusive Robert de Niro quote, pinging every movie newsgroup on the
internet in a quest to acquire the ultimate online movie collection with
the inaccurate notion that this would impress the girls.
From time to time, my hard drive would swell and fall over, but the web
proved a sustainably sexy place to be.
By Euro 96, there was a site delivering match reports, live scoring in
five languages and animated images. It was called eurosoccer.com and
everybody loved it.
There was only one tiny oversight - it didn’t work. But, hey, who
cared?
The world wide web was here to stay, it was not just a flash in the
pan.
My brother in law had even started asking me how you could make money out
of the internet, bless.
And then, the dotcom cometh. You can’t move online or offline these days
without some portal or schmortal trying to muscle in on your
interests.
Now call me a hopeless romantic, but I still get a kick out of
successfully pinning down obscure Morecambe and Wise comedy sketches
without having to log on to www.
chortal.com (remember, you read it here first).
I’m being serious, there’s no snow left to sell to the Eskimos.
Everybody’s a webhead these days. I was in a taxi the other day and I had
a live one in the front, hooked on the web.
I have to say, I preferred it when London taxi drivers bored you rigid
about politics; now, your average cabby is doing the knowledge by
navigating himself round the net - if this guy was anything to go by.
Granted, at least he didn’t say: "I had that Martha Lane-Fox in the back
of my cab once."
Napster: This does for the music surfer what the Internet Movie Database
did for the movie buff. You download a piece of groovy software that scans
your computer for MP3 sound files, the program turns your computer into a
mini MP3 server, and here’s the pay-off, you get access to loads of
like-minded napsters’ sound libraries. It’s an extensive, eclectic mix of
tunes and soundbites that is causing the music copyright monster to raise
its ugly head.
Web address: www.napster.com
Developer: In-house
DoBeDo: Have you ever walked passed a cybercafe filled with armies of
teenagers and wondered what they could possibly be surfing? Well this is
it: a great-looking chat interface with avatars that is nurturing a
community of gossips. There’s even an ’emote’ button that enables you to
choose from feeling nothing, confused, hate, love, happy or horny.
Limited, I grant you, but as the chatterati are all under 15, it’s
probably a sufficient span of emotional expression.
Web address: www.dobedo.co.uk
Developer: In-house
APBnews.com: It’s great to see a news site making the most of
technology.
The APBnews.com Scanner is a live, 24-hour audio application which
broadcasts actual police scanners from major US cities. Pumping out audio
for Windows Media Player and Real G2, this is indeed a moreish web
product. The display looks like a police radio hub and delivers you US
tabloid-style headlines and APBs from around the States.
Web address: www.apbnews.com/scanner/
index_blank.html
Developer: In-house
Seasiders.net: This is the Blackpool fans’ web site that I have to admit I
am addicted to. Apparently, the site is produced by a civil servant in
Hull. This tangerine online organ tells me everything I need to know about
Blackpool Football Club. As well as results, statistics and all the latest
news and video clips, there is also a wealth of content here, including
one of the fastest online question-and-answer forums that I have seen on
the web anywhere. All I can say is that this guy must have a very tolerant
wife.
Web address: www.seasiders.net
Developer: In-house.
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