Websites

North Carolina Moonshine

http://metalab.unc.edu/ moonshine

The Web is awash with home-made hooch, from the bath-tub-brewed absinthe favoured by sophisticates to the downhome alternatives at this site. Take cornmeal, sugar, water, yeast and malt and mix together in a large container... these communications students at the University of North Carolina will take you through the rest of the process, if they are still standing up. Informative historical context starts with the Whiskey Rebellion of 1794 and continues through Prohibition, with audio from the folk archives ("Carolina Moonshiner", "Kentucky Moonshiner", "Memphis Moonshiner", etc) as well as a film clip of Bob Mitchum as a young bootlegger in the Bruce-inspirational Thunder Road. A warning, too, about the dreaded Jake Leg Syndrome, together with a sound file of the relevant Blues.

ArtMuseum.net:

The American Century,

Part I

http://www.artmuseum.net

Jackson Pollock's propaganda uses are a bit of a cliche, but now here he is again, this time promoting microchips at Intel's showcase art site. A collaboration with the Whitney Museum of American Art, this march-past of masterpieces begins each decade with a snatch of popular song and gung- ho textual acrobatics: "1900: America becomes the world's largest industrial power". A multi-layered time line then allows individual works and artists to be picked out for full critical and biographical once-overs. It all works splendidly, though the Live Picture zoom tends to make even Georgia O'Keeffe look a bit blocky. As if to counter claims of technological overkill, low-tech family fun includes advice on building a Calder mobile from pipe-cleaners, and even trying your own kiddy Pollock: "Drip swirl spatter - make a mood drawing - choose five or six different crayons, use two colours or close your eyes if you want!" Click on the Jasper Johns to enter.

Sony Music Licensing

http://www.sonymusic.com/ licensing

Intuitive browsing for mood music is offered by this Sony site, aimed at industry professionals in search of suitable sound-tracks. Directors and others looking for an accompaniment for their film, TV programme or ad can search through Sony's huge back catalogue and take their pick from thousands of performances, from Louis Armstrong and Billie Holliday onwards. They can then forward a customised shortlist to Sony's licensing people, who will tell them they can't afford it. The gimmick here is a "thinkmap", overlapping conceptual circles designed to help users find the most appropriate subject or musical colour. Click on "cowboy", for instance, to reveal not only hundreds of song titles (starting with Gene Autry and, less obviously, Aerosmith) but also a constellation of related ideas: heroes, horses, the American West and "Women in General". In the FAQ, the query: "Can I put a Dylan song on my personal homepage?" is left unanswered, by accident or by exasperated design.

The Spud Gun Technology Center

http://www.goldmann.com/spud.gun.html

You say potato... I say duck. The ingenious "tater tosser" behind this site is currently working on an automatic, gas-combustion-based launcher for his King Edwards (or US equivalent). All you need to know about ballistics, barrel-rifling and other essentials of "starch aeronautics", including a glowing depiction of the hi-tech aluminium SP90004 with optional backpack control centre. A links page reveals a whole online spud-projectile and pneumatic cannon community.

onedotzero

http://www.onedotzero.com

This showcase for "the cutting edge of digital cinema" runs all week at the ICA. The third such survey of recent on- and offline digital/ cultural product, still laced with old-fashioned celluloid, includes a Radiohead documentary, socially conscious anime from Japan, and a live performance by Antirom - plus crucial compilations of promo, commercial, and FMV (full-motion video) computer game graphics. Onedot's own rather low-key pages trace the history of the event, with some polemic from the organisers and Quicktime versions of some of last year's submissions. The ICA's New Media Centre site (http://www. new mediacentre.com) is currently in the throes of a long-awaited revamp, but the interim version hosts a network page specially curated for the festival, with links to "classic" sites - so called only to "jokingly address the notion of a medium with no history".