************************************************************** * * * CYBERSPACE * * A biweekly column on net culture appearing * * in the Toronto Sunday Sun * * * * Copyright 1999 Karl Mamer * * Free for online distribution * * All Rights Reserved * * Direct comments and questions to: * * * * * ************************************************************** I like to compare the web to a 50 million volume library that houses its collection in one huge pile, leaving it up to patrons to figure how to find needed material. Indexes like Yahoo! (www.yahoo.ca) have helped bring organization to this huge, chaotic store of information but you still have to slog through a farrago of crud to find a page that reminds you why you're paying for net connectivity. About the same time Yahoo! started taking off, Norfolk, VA resident Glenn Davis got the idea of helping web surfers find the good stuff by directing them each day to a cool site. The "Cool Site of the Day" page (cool.infi.net) went online in 1994 and soon spawned numerous imitators. Netizens generally know when to back off and let someone run with a good idea, but after many users got over the shock that someone could actually devote himself to the net on a daily basis, they started paying attention to what sites were being picked. It became apparent that "cool" was a matter of taste and there was room for improvement. Given the form's popularity, it's only a matter of time before someone starts a Cool "Cool Site of the Day" of the Day page. My first pick would be the Geek Site of the Day (www.owlnet.rice.edu/~indigo/gsotd/). A big, evil corporation can throw lots of money at a site but nothing can match a brilliant, disenchanted student skipping classes to develop a freaky page. My second pick would be Mirsky's Worst of the Web (mirsky.com/wow/). Unfortunately, he stopped adding sites back in November. It's a tragic loss but you can still read what's there. Mirsky, a virtual truffle pig, had the uncanny ability to sniff out pages a couple clicks deep that were so odious to one's sense of intellectual propriety that they had to be celebrated. Although I can't recommend it because it spikes the frat boy humor meter once too often, an ongoing worst of the web page can be found at www.worstoftheweb.com. I do recommend the Tres Bizarre site of the day (ucunix.san.uc.edu/~solkode/tres_bizar) even though the creator doesn't bother to explain why he finds the sites bizarre. But most don't need justification. For example, there's a page that shows users how to launch peaches with liquid nitrogen. Canadians are no slouches when it comes to building sites or celebrating made-in-Canada pages. Yahoo! Canada publishes a respectable list of picks for the week at www.yahoo.ca/picks/. The Cool Canadian Site of the Day at web.idirect.com/~canadian honors remarkable pages. To toot my own html, since 1995 I've been developing a site at www.netizen.org/awards that bestows a daily Good Netizen Seal of Approval on Canadian pages offering outstanding content.