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QAZ.com
This new UK site directory offers a fast and intuitive approach based on "the search engine in your head". Users can type a required topic directly into their browser followed by qaz.com, so that, for instance, "houses.qaz.com", brings up reviews and ratings of property pages, with pop-up windows offering a more detailed assessment of each. QAZ itself stands for Quick Access Zone but are also conveniently the three leftmost characters on the keyboard. Only 1,500 sites covered at launch, but the approach is useful and personal, including phone numbers as well as URLs where necessary, and not without a sense of humour: a search for Sex produces the response "no sex please, we're British", while the Adult topic includes links to The Oldie and Saga Holidays. DVD players and wine are on offer as launch prizes. Katherine Tarbox
This promotes a new book, Katy.com, claiming to be "the first memoir to address teenage life online". Katy's life online started at age 13 when she struck up a chatroom friendship with a "friend" who turned out to be a 41-year-old paedophile. The predator subsequently became the first to be successfully prosecuted under the US Communications Decency Act. The first two chapters - a child's-eye account of the pressures of growing up in a wealthy Connecticut town - are available here, along with a sometimes alarming message board addressing the complex issues raised by her story. Art and Culture
This site has the modest ambition of becoming the web's first interconnected guide to all the arts. Well, it is, in a highly selective sort of way, curating a webful of artistic endeavour with sections on design, film, literature, music, performance and visual arts. The linking factor is a variant on the Thinkmap approach, conceptual clusters called "data clouds" grouping other artists allocated similar keywords. This leads to some unusual associations - keywords for Hanif Kureishi (cool, gritty, quirky, urban) lead to filmmaker John Woo and singer Patsy Cline as possible fellow-spirits. The range is hugely limited - the "non-fiction" section consists of Montaigne, Hunter S Thompson and two others - but it's a heroic attempt at a new kind of "culture portal". iToke
Clouds of a different sort emanate from this mysterious site, with huge potential but for the inconveniences of the Law. The web-based pot delivery service distances itself from stoner sterotypes and instead seeks to apply commercial models such as Starbucks and FedEx to cannabis distribution, with initial roll-out, or roll-up, planned for Amsterdam next month, the only market conceivably ready for it. The only things really on sale here are T-shirts - and even those are sold out. The site stresses it "does not condone or encourage illegal activity". DigiScents
After the web portal comes the web snortal, according to this plan for online digital smell technology. No scratch and sniff cards here: although it is still under development, this odiferous peripheral will synthesise smells from a palette of 128 primary scents and allow sites to be downloaded complete with a specific aroma. Perhaps luckily, olfactory web browsing still seems to be some way off, though a merger with iToke suggests interesting possibilities.
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