ShakesBeer.com - Online College Hangout
This site abandons HTML and uses Macromedia's Shockwave FlashT technology exclusively, to "create a new and refreshing web experience." ShakesBeer.com is an online community for college students, with chat rooms and discussion boards on college life. You can look up your own college town to find campus info, local jobs, local bands, and messages posted from your area. Students will find the book exchange and online store useful as well. http://www.shakesbeer.com

Supernews - Discussions Start Here
This Usenet services page has a web-based newsreader that can be used to read news articles, thread articles, post, and decode binary attachments (sound and image files). Users can search here for articles on a particular topic, or for Usenet newsgroups organized by category. Popular subjects are business, computers, recreation, food, games, hobbies, jobs, marketplace, news, people, travel, sports, and hot discussion topics. Users are allowed a free trial and then can sign up for individual or corporate NNTP accounts, and get access to over 30,000 newsgroups and nearly 28 million articles daily.
http://www.supernews.com

MaxiChat
"Two young French in a garage" started this international site dedicated to free web-based chat. Seven national sites within make it possible to chat with others from the USA, Canada, Australia, the United Kingdom, France, Quebec, Belgium, or Switzerland. Users can register free, choose from a list of chat topics, post a self-profile and select a buddy list, find friends who are online, access a mailbox, and even create a one-to-one chat room. MaxiChat opens immediately at the main chat room, is easy to use, and has clear enough explanation that newbies can jump right in.
http://www.maxichat.com

The Palace, Inc.
Visit and enjoy this cool graphical chat environment. The Palace is virtual world chat with real-time pictures and sounds. Users create a personal appearance, or "avatar," by importing their own pictures or selecting from images included with the software. At this web page you can watch a slide-show preview to see what a Palace is like. Users can download the software here, register, and get official online documention for the Palace Client, Palace PServer, and Palace scripting language (IptScrae). Registered users can create their own Palaces on the Internet. Several forums and newsgroups here provide the latest news on the Palace, show how to create a Palace site and help with technical problems. In addition, there are mailing lists for the Palace User Group. The Palace Directory lists examples of websites you can visit if you have the software. Try Marathon Palace, which is inspired by the 3D game Marathon; the House of Blues, where you can have a drink or join a jam session; or Palace In Wonderland, where Alice chases the digital rabbit into the CPU and ends up in a mad place where Wonderland and Cyberspace connect.
www.thepalace.com