1 VIRTUAL CONSERVATIONIST
www.arkive.org
Noble in its cause, flawless in its execution, Arkive aims to create an audiovisual record of the 15,000 species currently threatened with extinction. This self-proclaimed “Noah’s Ark for the internet era”, endorsed by David Attenborough, hums with digital life: 2,000 plant and animal species are already catalogued. Two main sections — for globally endangered species and strictly British flora and fauna — form a formidable indexed cavalcade of expertly written information, video clips and pictures as colourful as the Amazon rainforest and more diverse than any zoo. Gaze in wonder at an awesome horseshoe crab or prowling Tasmanian tiger, learn about the majestic rafflesia, the world’s largest plant, or listen to a croaking cacophony of brilliantly coloured golden toads, now extinct. This is broadband at its best — entertaining, educational and vital — and a template for future online museums. British, too.
2 WIRED CULTURE VULTURE
www.bbc.co.uk/dna/collective
The slickly styled Collective propels the culture magazine into the broadband age by the seat of its skinny-fit jeans, redefining it as an immersive audiovisual experience. At this little-plugged BBC gem, discerning trend-surfers will find weekly updated pages about the latest albums, books, films, art and computer games — and a platform for debate. In comparison, print feels so last millennium. Here, you can watch a guided video tour of the photographer Tom Hunter’s new exhibition at the National Gallery as you scan a background feature. Viewable live sessions by super-hip bands such as electronic folkists the Animal Collective and art-rockers Bloc Party are backed by fizzing articles, telling reviews and audio tracks. At the heart of the Collective lies the notion of interactive community: members have their own pages and can submit photos, upload their own music and post reviews. With this fully formed multimedia mouthpiece, the wired generation has found its voice.
3 UNDERCOVER CONSTABLE
coppersblog.blogspot.com
The blogosphere has seen an explosion of anonymous workplace exposés, with doctors, teachers and supermarket workers all spilling the beans. Coppersblog — the diary of a uniformed response officer in the provinces — is particularly notable because, with great clarity and no fuss, “PC Copperfield” gives visitors a riveting sense of the preoccupations of some- body doing one of the most high-profile jobs in the country. Copperfield complains about paperwork and endlessly dealing with stupid little crimes, but he loves his work and is a credit to it. A typical recent post saw him ask readers to match Britain’s different regional forces with their slogans: “Lots of the slogans have the whiff of the marketing consultant about them, but you can tell that the chief constable’s wife had the final say in many cases.” This is what blogging should be like: passionate, interesting, important and genuinely revealing. Robbie Hudson
4 VIDEO CENTRAL
www.ifilm.com
Effective moving pictures over the internet may be a bigger geek’s dream than Lara Croft, but iFilm came as close as we could expect in 2005. Recently bought by MTV, this Hollywood-based movie showcase offers 14 channels of free-to-view streamed trailers, television clips, music videos and advertisements, but the real stars are the hilarious amateur shorts: from a two-minute re-creation of Monty Python and the Holy Grail, made entirely from Lego, to Office Space Wars, which features Darth Vader as a David Brent-alike middle-management exec. How apt. The slick media player makes it a joy to view Green Day’s latest music video or bloopers from the television series Seinfeld, which you can paste into your blog, while a new tool called Instant iFilm displays choice clips in sumptuous high resolution. Parents should be wary of leaving children to surf unsupervised here, as there is some unsuitable content.
5 CONSUMER CHAMPION
moneysavingexpert.com
This thrifty site deserves to be your financial best friend. What makes Moneysavingexpert exceptional is that it is on the side of the consumer. Run by Martin Lewis, a UK journalist and broadcaster, it combs the terms and conditions of every financial deal around so you don’t have to — and Lewis almost takes offence if you spend over the odds. The basic design may not look much, but the invaluable advice on reducing problem debts alone is worth a visit. You will also find the best deals on purchases from mortgages to nappies, and a devoted forum of money-saving followers keen to share. An e-mail arrives weekly with the latest deals. Short of bashing you over the head with a brick, Lewis could not try harder to save you money. Sally Kinnes
6 HUNGRY NEWSHOUND
news.google.co.uk
In the crowded kennel of aggregated news sites, which sniff out stories from online sources worldwide and repackage them in one place, Google is top dog. By scouring 4,500 sites — from Reuters to Vogue.com to Radio Netherlands — and updating every 15 minutes, Google News provides a snapshot of the day’s events unmatched in its breadth. Eschewing the snazzy video content and abundant pictures of its competitors, this fast, bare-bones hound does its job without fuss, and because you can instantly read what a wide variety of sources says about each story, you can skim the ideological spectrum with a click. Whose version of the trial of Saddam Hussein, Iraq’s former dictator, do you wish to read: The Scotsman’s or China’s Xinhua’s? Another boon is the easily customisable home page: choose which topic areas, subjects or sources you want to read about, and the Google news sleuth becomes your best friend.
7 INSPIRATIONAL SCIENCE
www.phys.unsw.edu.au/einsteinlight
This cracking exploration of Einstein’s theory of relativity is a model of how to make science accessible and fun: a welcome stimulus as the number of pupils taking A-level physics declines. Five easily digestible multimedia pres- entations — on Galileo, Maxwell, Einstein, time dilation and E=mc2 — quickly familiarise you with the key elements of a cornerstone of 20th-century thought. This commendable project from the University of New South Wales, in Australia, feels like the best kind of Open University repeat: simple, quirky animations and video clips of an earnest- looking scientist explain core subjects such as electromagnetism; and extra modules on conundrums such as the “twin paradox” will satisfy more inquisitive minds. Here, Einstein is made simple not by dumbing down, but through clear explanations that transform complex physics into manageable lessons. More ambitious sites should take note that swish graphics are not always the answer: content tends always to be king.
8 VIRTUAL VIRTUOSO
www.soundjunction.org
Tear away the outer garments of many rich-media sites and you will find a laughable lack of content — all bells and no whistle. However, this music-teaching site combines style and substance in perfect harmony. With its 50-hour database of audio and video clips, you can explore the roots of music, learn how it works and create compositions. Developed by Britain’s Associated Board of the Royal Schools of Music, it is an absorbing masterclass delivered with the panache of a virtuoso instrumentalist. Articles on playing the trumpet and the history of the udu, a pot-shaped Nigerian instrument, sit alongside the wonderful Explore tool, with which you can listen to an orchestral piece instrument by instrument. Compare percussion in Shostakovich with drum’n’bass beats, or follow one of 61 “learning trails”, with clips of professional musicians describing their instruments. Music lessons were never this much fun.
9 GATEWAY TO THE WORLD
www.vrmag.org
The growing sophistication of 360-degree panoramic photo-graphy transforms any couch potato into an armchair traveller, and this “virtual reality” magazine brings together the best images, amateur and professional. Quality may vary — from fisheye-lens photographs, stitched together digitally, to sweeping perspectives — but all are fascinating. Mount Fuji comes to life on your screen as you move from one vantage point to another; and visitors can marvel at St Paul’s Cathedral in a multimedia tour enhanced by audio narration and an isometric map, so you don’t get lost. As if the featured stories were not enough — they include a visit to Médecins Sans Frontières in Mali, reviews and a day-trip section — an easily accessible archive will sate your appetite for adventure, at least long enough for you to get to the travel agent.
10 ONLINE LEFT BANK
www.ubu.com
Want to watch Buñuel’s surrealist masterpiece Un Chien Andalou? Or listen to 40 years of experimental Polish radio, or Mick Jagger’s soundtrack to Kenneth Anger’s film Invocation of My Demon Brother? Or read Robert Morris’s conceptual piece A Method for Sorting Cows? UbuWeb, a wondrous digital archive whose curators trawl the web for such cultural treasures, does not pay the artists, who are usually just happy that their uncommercial works have found a home (if not, the material is removed). Here is a free, voluntary and idealistic paean to freedom of expression, playing host to avant-garde materials you will find nowhere else. UbuWeb has been going since 1996, but, last autumn, the site moved to new servers, offering the bandwidth needed to distribute even more of its extraordinarily large audio and video files of film, music and spoken poetry, as well as PDFs of experimental literature. As a result, it has blossomed into a still more inspiring haven. RH
