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This page was initially drafted on 31 July 1998 as a selection of the best links from the Robot Wisdom Weblog archives. A few layers of refinement have been added since then, with the aim of gradually constructing a concise introduction to net.literacy on each of these topics. So stay tuned!
The Net encourages ridiculous levels of competition among fans, often expressed in unbelievably detailed websites for stars, shows, groups, etc. You can track these down via Google (which finds the best-linked sites) or Yahoo:
(Try dropping the quotes if you're not sure of the exact spelling, so you'll get partial matches too. Adding 'FAQ' to the query will target those highly-distilled compilations of 'Frequently Asked Questions'.)
A meditation on Net fanaticism. Fan sites sometimes get hassled by 'official' sites, for copyright violations, etc
Fans all around the world chat on netnews. To find the liveliest discussion, you can search DejaNews for recent mentions:
Or use their Interest Finder for a survey of likely groups:
If you plan to read a few newsgroups regularly, you should get a serious newsreader-program, instead of using My-Deja or the newsreader module of Netscape/MSIE. See internet.literate#netnews
Online TV schedules: Although it's less convenient than the paper, I like Yahoo TV because it's free, and usually has more detailed and more current info.
Salon recommends daily TV highlights (way too much junk, imho).
TV Ultra singles out one best show: http://www.tvultra.com/
Daytime talkers guestlists
PBS's site has tons of background on their shows, plus the PBS schedule
Some especially cool TV faqs: Simpsons
You can subscribe to Aaron Barnhart's Late Show News if you want huge quantities of gossip about Jay and Dave and the rest. For lastminute lineup changes try here. Letterman's Top Ten Lists are widely circulated, too (if you think they're still funny ;^/
Skink points out that your local chat service "is the best resource for effective television watching. You can see who's on-line and available to discuss in real-time what you're watching in TV time."
A slower but more accessible source of tv chat is the Usenet newsgroups. Type the name of the show or star in DejaNews Interest Finder, above.
Vidcaps are video captures-- images (or 'frames') grabbed directly onto the computer via a special tv-in-a-window card. The card is cheap and fun, and will surely become a lot more common. (I get a lot of illustrations for my weblog this way.)
Video on demand? Downloading video with a 28.8 modem can mean ten minutes of downloading for ten seconds of grainy, jumpy video. So it's usually a big waste, at that speed.
Art TV? I haven't seen much art-tv, but if I find any I'll put it at art.literate#tv
Two dozen reality-checks about Ally McBeal
TV newsgroups: general, news, commercials, public access, interactive, satellite, UK tv, UK comedy, UK misc, CBC, game shows, ABC soaps, CBS soaps, misc soaps, talk shows, daytime talk, late talk
Some popular tv-show newsgroups: 3rd Rock, Ab Fab, Ab Fab?, Avengers, Beakman, 90210, Bill Nye, Buffy, Chgo Hope, Dawson's Creek, Dr Quinn, Drew Carey, Due South, ER, Frasier, Friends, Hercules, Hercules?, Homicide, King of the Hill, LA Law, Law'n'Order, Mad re You, MadTV, Millennium, MTV, Murder One, My So-Called Life, MSCL?, NewsRadio, Nickelodeon, Northern Exposure, NYPD Blue, Picket Fences, Politically Incorrect, Prisoner, Real World, Ren'n'Stimpy, Road Rules, SCTV, Seaquest, Seinfeld, Sesame Street, Simpsons, Sliders, SNL, South Park, Star Treks: DS9, TNG, TOS, Voyager, TV Nation, Twin Peaks, X Files, X Files 'analysis', Xena, Xena 'subtext', MST3K, MST3K announce, MST3K misc, Coronation Street, East Enders, Emmerdale
Some shows even have special groups for creative writing using the show's characters: Buffy, Due South, Quantum Leap, Sliders, Dr Who, Star Trek, X-Files
A brainiac analysis of the fan-fiction phenomena and copyright
The Internet Movie Database or IMDb is one of the greatest information resources ever created. Look up a film by title:
and then follow links to read reviews, or quotations, or goofs that people have noticed, or find out what other films the actors and crew were associated with... etc etc etc.The history of the Internet Movie Database bears comparison to Linux (But IMDb has been bought by Amazon.com, and will eventually be linked to try to sell you videos.)
The Internet community's favorite movie of all time: The Shawshank Redemption!??
Media PR (etc) is updated every 15 minutes at NewsHub
A convenient long list of forthcoming films:
Gossip about movies-in-production updated daily at Ain't It Cool. [Background on AIC.]
Salon tracks the leaked plot of the Star Wars prequel
Kubrick's next: Eyes Wide Shut gossip
A multimedia study of great shots in cinema
An unbelievably difficult movie quiz. And And the fascinating answers
The magazine Premiere has a feeble online presence (gorgeous, but horribly maintained).
A lot of famous movie scripts are even available at Script-o-rama
Francis Ford Coppola is looking for stories! Business Week report and FFC's own page
You can gamble on movies and stars with $2 million in free play money at the Hollywood Stock Exchange. For example, here's their valuation of current stars. (The design needs work, imho, but has great potential. See the history.literate#future page for the better-designed Foresight Exchange.)
Here's a simpler Hollywood-stocks approach
Offbeat video suggestions: The New Age is rich-LA sociology, Dogfight is a nice 1963 period piece, Truly, Madly, Deeply is smart, sad, and romantic, What's Up, Doc? is hilarious. Try Bollywood. I love Empire Records
Interesting actors: Lili Taylor
A heroin survivor reviews Trainspotting
A ridiculously long Scorsese interview
A brilliant memoir of Wendy O. Williams making "Reform School Girls"
James Cameron's account of his joyriding visits to film the Titanic's seafloor wreckage
Artsy film stuff is at: art.literate#film
Movie newsgroups: general, current, past films, reviews, SiskBert, lists and surveys, misc, moviegoing, movie people, newsgroup announcements
Genres: erotica, scifi, indie, monster, silent, JoeBob Briggs, Indian, Indian?, Blade Runner, Titanic
Technical movie groups: production, technical, cinematography, visual effects
Movie people:
Sam Raimi,
Tarantino,
Branagh-Thompson,
Bruce Lee,
Chaplin,
Hitchcock,
Kubrick,
Orson Welles,
Scorsese,
Spielberg,
Terry Gilliam,
Tim Burton,
Woody Allen,
Ed Wood,
James Cameron
New edition of Jess Nevins' legendary four-part digest of celebrity gossip: [A-D] [E-K] [L-R] [S-Z]
If you read alt.gossip.celebrity, Pusssykatt collects all the recent gossip columns every day
Mr Showbiz is a popular gossip site. It includes a funny hypertext presentation of which celebs have been Romantically Linked to which others. I think Warren Beatty is the obvious starting point.
A gorgeously readable, supremely catty gossip site
The Elvis Index measures the popularity of celebs compared to Elvis, based on AltaVista's word count
A giant table counts gossip-column mentions: http://www.observer.com/500a.htm
Gallows humor: the 1998 Internet Death Pool keeps a jaundiced eye on aging celebs
Nancy Sinatra maintains an emotional Sinatra family website
Salacious gossip about Nelson Rockefeller's death
Transcript of Farrah's meltdown on Letterman
Lyrics: The fastest way I know to find song lyrics, if you remember one phrase exactly, is via AltaVista. You need to put the phrase in doublequotes (ignoring punctuation) and choose a phrase that's fairly unique, and not one that's often quoted out of context.
Reader suggestion: an international lyrics server has lyrics for almost 100000 songs online.
And CD Universe has RealAudio clips of huge numbers of albums currently in print.
Good Internet radio station: http://www.gogaga.com/gogaga_schedule.html
To find fan sites, newsgroups or mailinglists, use Yahoo or Google or the DejaNews searches, above.
Understanding MP3
Christgau analyses trip-hop
A great tribute for the tenth anniversary of the Summer of Rave
A nice profile of Garbage's Shirley Manson
A detailed profile of Jane Siberry
Joni Mitchell reunited with her daughter and grandson
Pink Martini's version of Que Sera Sera sounds like Marianne Faithfull produced by Hal Willner
Madonna may have used refrigerator magnets to write a song The lyrics in question
Some of my favorite musicians: Jane Siberry, Hal Willner, Stewart/Gaskin, Incredible String Band, Hedningarna, Fiona Apple, Tori Amos, Michael Hurley, MH again
Offbeat Squirrel Nut Zippers
Some music newsgroups:
Rickie Lee Jones,
Liz Phair,
Madonna,
Courtney Love,
Elvis Costello,
Elvis Presley,
Enya,
Henry Rollins
Before venturing into the world of online porn, you might want to read about the sophisticated tricks those sites' designers use.
How adult check works
Persian Kitty [big, xxx] has emerged as the Web's best maintained 'porn portal'. [Background on PK]
Nerve offers "literate smut", including a daily nude and weekly Naughty Bits from classic lit. Their list of links is helpful. [Background on Nerve]
Webcams have revealed a huge community of exhibitionists. These usites require JavaScript to update the image every few minutes. The most popular webcam portal is The Nose's Another convenient spot is Voyeur TV. I think QuestionGirl is sweet (PG-13).
You can even make a cottage industry of it. Some dollar figures. The pros and cons of being a phone sex operator
Microsoft has unwittingly created a homebase for amateur webcam exhibitionists.
The Fake Detective cleverly debunks the sneakiest nude-celeb fakes.
Funny exhibitionism at Disneyland's Splash Mountain
There's an infinite continual stream of free porn available via the alt.binaries.erotica.*. newsgroups. You need an ISP that carries these hi-bandwidth groups, and a newsreader that decodes them efficiently.
New category: porn industry news
alt.sex.stories unmoderated spam?
Hi-tech voyeurism evades prosecution
Xena sings the national anthem
How horses are bred: http://www.nervemag.com/JacksNaughtyBits/Wolfe/
Games are converging on movies in terms of budgets and profits.
Game zine site:All About Games
The major titles of the last few years include: Doom, Quake, Duke Nukem, Tomb Raider (free demo)
X-Com, Warcraft, Command and Conquer, Close Combat (free demo)
SimCity, Civilization
Myst, Starship Titanic
Douglas Adams' Starship Titanic game finally arrives
An okay profile of Douglas Adams
A nice interview with Douglas Adams about Starship Titanic
Infocom, Tetris
free games: text adventures
cd samplers
zines
design
Lara Croft nude
The war games (computer and not) of 1997, in review
Duke Nukem level based on "The Shining"
Yet another Virtual Valerie
Sid Meier's next game will be called Alpha Centauri
Bestselling game in January: a deerhunting sim!?!?
Another lively Deer Hunter page
A school for game programmers/ designers
There's never been a better time to be a toy inventor, because you can easily start a cottage industry via the Web (aka 'the merchandising model' of web.money).
Flexible domelike things
Chris Johnson is a hi-tech watch enthusiast, including the Ruputer, the Timex DataLink, and a series of smartcard Swatches
Seiko's 102-by-62-pixel wristwatch-computer page
The Franklin Rex credit-card pc
And the PalmPilot
3-D jigsaw puzzles of castles, cathedrals http://www.wrebbit.com/english/canada/products/world/tajmahal.html
From the land that dreamed up Tamagotchis, a matchmaking beeper called a Lovegety. More details. A great longish piece on Japan's so-5-minutes-ago youth culture
The GameBoy camera
Geek pranks, with QuickTime how-tos
eToys online toy store: http://www.etoys.com/html/et/et_fav_xea0019_001.shtml
Toys newsgroups:
general,
high tech,
low tech,
misc,
vintage,
cars,
Lego
action figures,
GI Joe,
Transformers
The Onion has everybody else beat by a mile, for hip satirical news stories. WPost backgrounder
If you like Zippy the Pinhead you'll probably like net.deity Kibo, but to really appreciate him you have to follow his daily postings to alt.religion.kibology. Underneath the 12yo-geek persona, he's got an infallible radar for pop-culture's nadirs, and he's generated more net.memes over the last ten years than everybody else combined. Lots of other very funny people post to a.r.k, too. Kibo's legendary 1000-line sig
A huge collection of links to online comics
Daily jokes of the water-cooler variety can be found on rec.humor.funny
Dave Barry doesn't seem funny to me online, for some reason.
idiot busy
Snoot has a pretty funny Infinite Book of Knowledge text-generator
afu faq
Kids' Frequently Asked Questions about the death penalty: [TN Dept of Corrections]
Silly religious gear
I'm gonna be sick: http://www.twinkies.com/
My favorite piece of writing on the Web is Phil Greenspun's long, wise, funny tale of publishing a computer book
Matt Groening interview: http://www.motherjones.com/groening/
The winner of Salon's haiku-error-message contest
Bill Gates's 1977 mugshots (for speeding)
A hilarious profile of the Bill-Gates pie-thrower, the truly heroic Noel Godin
Pranks by the Cacophony Society
Prank, or hoax? http://www.amspec.org:80/archives/99-01_lastcall.html
Trudeau's FAQ of Doonesbury trivia
You can see my house from here![maps limited to big US cities]
My favorite cartoon character of all time is the Simpsons' Ralph Wiggum. He's got a dedicated site
An okay piece on Web-based personality tests
Harper's offers two recent Indexes online
And a dead-on parody of gizmo-porn
Get a free reading using the Silicon Valley Tarot
A fun site with lots of favorites-polls: [bandwidth hog]
A great Onion interview with Penn-not-Teller
I always assumed that "Broadcast News" was about Tom Brokaw. Harry Shearer's satellite-feeds site seems to confirm this: [RealPlayer]
Random humor newsgroups: rec.arts.wobegon alt.comedy.firesgn-thtre, alt.comics.alternative, alt.fan.cecil-adams, alt.fan.douglas-adams, alt.fan.firesign-theatre, alt.fan.howard-stern, alt.fan.pratchett
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