No need to put your trousers on

We’ve added two new sub-categories to the Computers section of the Gateway to Websites. So I will waffle on about these rather than pick individual sites.

Give us the tools and we’ll conquer the Web

It’s not good enough to surf the Net these days, you have to be interactive. That’s b******s of course – you can have a great time just drifting about the Internet, but using interactive tools can be useful and fun.
Our new sub-category "Online tools" highlights a few of the cyber-gadgets you can use to organise your life, and other people’s lives as well if you manage to get them hooked. Del.icio.us (how stupid to clutter up a perfectly good word with full stops!) is like a set of portable favourites. Once you have set up your own list of links, you can reach it anywhere with Internet access, not just on the machine you asked to "add to favourites".
Birthday Alarm does far more than birthdays. You tell it your important dates (anniversaries, holidays, days in court…) and Birthday Alarm sends you a reminder.
Google tools include calendars and online documents (which you can share with others), and a simple way to set up your own blog (which we used to set up the WTH blog).
As for Zoho, I read an article the other day advocating getting rid of all your Microsoft Office software and keeping your entire electronic office on Zoho. You don’t download anything – you just use their word processor or spreadsheet or presentation tool online. It’s all free, and as with the other tools we’ve mentioned, you can share all your stuff with friends. You can even conduct exams online using Zoho!
Whatever next? Well don’t ask me, I’m reeling from that lot.
(From the Gateway to Websites, select "Computers". The Online Tools link is towards the bottom of the page.)

Where are they now? (in front of a screen)

If you want to find long-lost chums, keep up with the chums you never lost, or make new ones, there’s an online community to help you. We are featuring just a few of these in our "Online communities" sub-category.
Myspace has got a name for enabling kids to pretend they’re being sociable without actually meeting anyone, or even bothering to get dressed. But of course it’s what you make of it. You can keep in touch, arrange to meet, or invite all and sundry to listen to your latest music recording; they can join in or not…
Facebook does a similar job, I read at the weekend that 150,000 people a day are joining up. The mind (mine anyway) boggles.
Friends Reunited is another modern legend. You need to bear in mind that you cannot do very much with it unless you register (which is free), and that to use it to re-establish contact with all the spotty oiks in Year 10, there will come a time when you will have to pay.
Gumtree is a community for some, while for others it is just a place to find a job or a flat or a cheap holiday. It’s vast and sprawling, free to read and cheap to advertise on. It’s the nearest thing I know to the notice board in the corridor with news, immoderate opinions and small ads jostling for space, and a couple having a snog as they lean against the bit you’re trying to read. Happy days…
(From the Gateway to Websites, select "Computers". The Online Communities link is towards the bottom of the page.)

A Good Read (and so's this)

I was feeling a bit retro, so I thought I would do books.

Beebooks

It’s great fun to knock the BBC, so don’t let me put you off. But I have to say that their website is more awesome every time I look. Try to name a subject for which they haven’t got an in-depth collection of web pages. It’s not easy. Their books pages are exemplary.

If the first page of BBC Books is a bit crammed – actually it’s very crammed – this is because they’ve got so much content to present. Factual writing, fiction writing, films about writers, DIY poetry, a Dickens game, a feature about Joe Orton… the list goes on and on.

The BBC obviously sees its job as being to stimulate reading and writing rather than to flog particular books, which is refreshing. The clever thing is that they use their own resources – sound recordings, video, interactive programmes – to reinforce the attractions of curling up with a good book.

Of course relevant BBC programmes and campaigns get a good mention, but all emphasis is on helping people to read, to read more adventurously, or to write. An ace website.

(From the Gateway to Websites, select “Books”. BBC Books is a Key Link.)

Put your trust in a book

Booktrust is “an independent national charity that encourages people of all ages and cultures to discover and enjoy reading. The reader is at the heart of everything we do.” Sounds like another good bet for readers? - it certainly is.

They administer prizes for literature, baby books, teenage fiction, women and several more categories. They promote reading by giving out books to babies, appointing a Children’s Laureate (presently mega-bookstar Jacqueline Wilson), running the National Short Story competition, and sending writers into schools.

They could do all those laudable things without having a decent website. But they don’t – they use the site to suggest and review recently-published books, list author events and other news, and provide “best book” guides in different formats.

It’s not the most intuitive site on the web – you have to drift around it a bit to find the nuggets. But it’s well worth the time spent.

(From the Gateway to Websites, select “Books”. Booktrust is a Key Link.)

Late arrivals at the Biography Ball

This week a big beast which just keeps getting bigger.

Laydeez ‘n’ gennelmen, please welcome…

What do Geoffrey de Burgh, Roger of Salisbury and John the Chanter have in common. Buzz! --- "Smartypants, Oxbridge" --- "They were all bishops!"
Smartypants is quite right, they were bishops in the 12th and 13th centuries. But their recent claim to fame is that they have just made it into the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Exactly why it took John the Chanter 816 years to receive this accolade, I have no idea. But that’s the way it is with the ODNB – they’re beavering away as I type, preparing the next batch of additions, corrections and essays on themes running through the dictionary.
Don’t run away with the idea that you normally have to wait several centuries to get into the dictionary. You do have to be dead, but not usually for very long. You have to be noteworthy, but not respectable. 202 biographies have already been added of people who died in 2003, including actress Wendy Hiller, singer and share-tipster Adam Faith, and mass-murderer Idi Amin (I told you they didn’t all have to be respectable).

A year in the life

It cost a fortune for the Oxford University Press to prepare a new edition of the Dictionary of National Biography in 2004, and it costs them a pretty penny to keep it up to date. So they are naturally quite keen to get people reading it. Themed articles may not seem like most jazzy way of getting people’s attention, but they are a great way of pulling together the material from the biographies in a readable way. Let’s look, for instance, at the Summer of Love.
40 years after the first release of Sgt Pepper, ODNB have got together with the American National Biography, woven flowers into each other’s hair, and put together a fascinating slice of 60s life. They’re all there – the Mamas & the Papas, Brian Jones, Janis Joplin, Nyree Dawn Porter (in the TV smash hit, The Forsyte Saga), and all the stars of the Monterey Festival. Celebrity deaths included Joe Orton and Brian Epstein.
You can listen to podcasts of George Harrison or Jimi Hendrix, or go to an interactive album cover for Sgt Pepper – move the cursor over each figure in the picture to find out who they are (Karl Marx and Mae West pictured together, who’d have thought it…).
After all that free love and substance-abuse, I was tempted to tell you that the ODNB also has an interesting feature on Prime Ministers, but it occurred to me that perhaps you don’t share my fascination. Ah well.

(From the Gateway to Websites, select "Biography". The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography is a Key Link. It is a Westminster Libraries Exclusive Resource, which means that you will have to have a Westminster library card to access most the site, although some of the feature articles are freely-available.)