Return to fun in 2001. Has a nice ring to it, doesn't it? If you're about to turn the page, you, of all people, need to read on. I know you. When you go on the Web, your chief destinations are Google or your personalized news page. Gotta find that white paper, buy that plane ticket, make that stock trade. Yaaawn. When was your last great Web adventure? Uh-huh, I thought so. You with the fancy broadband access-use it or lose it. Make a New Year's pledge to rediscover one of the essential joys of the World Wide Web: goofing off.
A couple of supreme time-wasters for anyone into hip, sarcastic cartoons, videos, music and news can be found at Icebox, a site dedicated to original animation, and Heavy, an MTV-style, anti-MTV site. Highlights at the Icebox site: independent cartoon movie strips such as Zombie College (the best one I've seen), where the story follows a young man's adventures at zombie-riddled Arkford College. Or play DJ in Icebox Interactive's Dancing Queens game. Mixing beats and samples and "scratching" is pure, giddy joy for about five minutes. Billed as suitable for ages 15 to 40, this site's vulgar humor is not for everyone.
Heavy is worth visiting for the roughly 90-second Flash-driven intro alone, which changes daily. This site looks, moves, and sounds as good as--and sometimes better than--TV. It's the "multimedia experience" the Web is supposed to be; there's no "about us" section, almost no text, and no audience ambiguity. If you're in the target demographic, you're mesmerized. If you haven't heard of Dilated Peoples or Fatboy Slim, you may be clicking quickly elsewhere. Dedicated mainly to parodying "things that suck" in popular culture, Heavy's sections include Behind the Music that Sucks and American Suck Countdown--send-ups of VH-1's "Behind the Music" and the legendary Top-40 countdown with Casey Kasem, respectively. There are also games, television, music, and a slick animated comic strip. Heavy's so-cool-it-hurts humor can wear thin quickly, and I was sometimes disappointed with the quality of the QuickTime videos. But even if you hate the content, check out this site for a glimpse of where the Web is headed.
After all that eye candy, you may crave something more substantial. What could be better for your brain than a trip to an art museum--one where you're the curator? At ArtsConnectEd--a joint effort of the Minneapolis Institute of Arts and Walker Art Center--you can assemble the art collection of your dreams for free.
Under the "art collector" section of the art gallery, take five seconds to type in your name and e-mail address and choose a password. Now you are registered to start your own collections. Then type in a search for art you like (if you don't have a clue, click around in the art gallery for a bit). Choose paintings, sculptures, and photos, add text descriptions; and edit and delete pieces in your collection on a whim. Substitute a blown-up version of an image instead of a thumbnail. Of course, a patron of your personal museum can click on any of your thumbnail images to get a bigger view and a complete description of the work.
The navigation is superb--you can easily click back to where you left off in your search as you're adding pieces. The only glitch I ran into was discovering that a couple of my thumbnails depicted the wrong work, but when I clicked on them, the link went to the correct picture. When you're all done, click Publish to create a Web address for your collection. If you want to take it down, click Unpublish, and voila, your collection is once again private and yours to revise at will.
I hope you've enjoyed your first tour through Sites, a new column dedicated to worthy Web destinations. Every month I'll aim for serious, curious, and fun sites that appeal to your parietal lobe and solar plexus. Please tell me saase@computeruser.com if you stumble across a site that's worth sharing. If you're like me, there are plenty of sites you've heard of, but haven't taken the time to visit. Now's your chance: Unleash the virtual tourist within.
