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God alone knows what took me on to the internet. When I first logged on it was a pretty sad place - a black-and-white world of FTP, SMTP, Archies and Gophers. And it was sl-o-o-ow ... especially over the crummy 2,400bps modem I'd been hoodwinked into buying.

There was no embedded audio, no streamed video, no Java chat and hardly any pictures. All I could find was loads of files to download.

And they were FREE.

Looking back, that's probably when I became a download junkie. I FTP'd and gophered everything I could. Within days of hooking up, my Macintosh's hard drive had succumbed to terminal illness. It was crashing faster than I could reboot it. My phone bill made Mexico's national debt look respectable.

Four years later, despite all the zillions of web sites offering much more than free files, I still spend a lot of surfing time watching the download bar inch across the screen. But these days, I surf with a purpose.

Perhaps it's the quest for something for nothing or, more likely, the fear of missing something important that keeps me going. If you're working in web publishing, you can't afford to lose touch. It's important to understand the latest web browser, the hippest HTML editor, the best animation program.

For run-of-the-mill utilities, Simtel.Net is unbeatable, being one of the few major archives on the net that allows you to 'http' files, so you can download essential stuff from behind a firewall.

I also like to check out Space Rogues Whacked Mac Archives (http://www.l0pht.com/ spacerog/) which has a whole lot of naughty hacking stuff to play with, as well as fun items - like a Virtual Gameboy for the Mac and an alternative to PGP which uses something called the Elvis Encryption Algorithm!

To keep track of the opposition, I find myself trawling sites such as Editor & Publisher magazine in the States (http://www.mediainfo.com/), which keeps a regular index of online newspapers - there are currently 2,445 of them around the globe. The British equivalent is the UK Media Directory (http://www.mediauk.com/).

If we get stuck with a JavaScript or CGI there are two excellent sites worth a peek. The Javascript Planet (http://www.geocities.com/SiliconValley/7116/) has hundreds of standard scripts to download, many of them public domain, so there's no need to re-invent the wheel.

Selena Sol's archive does the same for CGI scripts at www.ult iconn.dyndns.com/selena/.

Search engines are infuriatingly American in outlook and drive me bananas.

Best of the bunch is www.yahoo.co.uk, which at least seems to bring back plausible links.



Jennicam - It doesn't matter what you do on the net, if you do it live.

Jenni's site is proof of this. She is a young US web designer who has a series of video cameras in her house permanently connected to the net.

You can watch her eat, slouch on the sofa, brush her teeth ... oh, and undress of course, all in real time. But it's not a porn site - and Jenni has a remarkably offhand way of treating the users. The site is now charging for subscriptions, although you can get a sneak preview in the Picture Gallery area.

Web address: www.jennicam.org

Developer: Jenni herself



Search Voyeur - So you thought the internet was all about education and enlightenment? Think again. Call in at the Search Voyeur, part of the Magellan engine, and you can watch real-time search words being input by other web users. You'll find everything from 'Men In Ties' to 'dragons mating' flashing before your eyes. It's blindingly obvious from even the briefest look-in that however slick the technology, sex and money will always be top of most people's priority list.

Web address: voyeur.mckinley.com/cgi-bin/voyeur.cgi

Developer: The McKinley Group



Malaco Records - I only discovered this site the other day when snooker ace Steve Davis came in for a live chat on MegaStar. After the chat, Steve talked about his interest in classic soul music ... so we did a quick web search and found Malaco. It's a mega site and a perfect vehicle for e-commerce. There are terrific download tracks from artists like The Controllers, Tyrone Davis and Little Milton and loads of background stuff on the artists, tours and new releases. The order forms are well handled too - nothing too pushy.

Web address: www.malaco.com

Developer: Internet Solutions



Internet Movie Database Never mind how obscure the movie you want to track down, you'll find all the details here. It is no surprise to find it generates almost a million pages a day. You can search by actor, by keyword, by director. You can even search for movie quotes. The site is easy to navigate, contains a mass of quality information - featuring more than 120,000 movies - and does it without any flashy gimmicks. It's also almost entirely interactive. Content is king, alright.

Web address: www.imdb.com

Developer: In-house.