As you might guess by its slogans The Magazine That Thinks Its Funny But Its not and The Magazine That Makes A Little Love, That Does A Little Dance, That Gets Down Tonight. Yellow Dog offers mostly sophomoric wit, and even on that level, its no laugh riot. The zine does deserve some credit, however, for attempting to provide social and political commentary with a sense of humor. The spirit behind a recent issues Dont Eat The Yellow Snow: The Legacy of Frank Zappa and Will We Ever Get Rid of Gingrich? is admirable, and Yellow Dog occasionally scores a hit. A visit is basically a waste of time, but the site has potential. - Sandra Stewart
Lets give this one the most-improved award. You, another glam-seeking, fashion-loving online zine, learned at least one thing in the transition from its first to its second issue: 400K images just dont work. Issue One presents an ode to being nude that will titillate your beauty button, a set of gorgeous portraits of homeless teens, and a lot of other excellent photomontage work that would look great in a print magazine but that takes forever to load on your computer. In Issue Two, dedicated to the 10th anniversary of Amok Books, the zine scales down the graphics a bit and beefs up the content, providing a less glamorous but more realistic approach to online presentation. - Jeff Titterton
I was quite unhappy reading this zine, but dont think thats where the name comes from. The issues are filled with sci-fi/cyber-punk stories that envision a future so bleak they make Orwells 1984 look like paradise. Splitting necks, falling heads, giant brains, and rat burritos abound, as do such sentences as The hermaphrodite was gone; in its place was a smoking personality Grapefruit. This is pure Gen-X techno-boy fiction, where if women characters do exist, they do things such as host the 10 oclock news in a string bikini. Horrifying, but for all the wrong reasons. - Dorrit Tulane Walsh
Lack of decent content is the biggest of many problems at Yazone. In Your Ear, the only decent part of the site, contains pics, videos, sound samples, and reviews of bands ready to hit it big. You have to register (and provide your favorite TV show, your age, your favorite musical group, and so on) to gain access to the other lame sections. And that leads me to another problem: The creators say this site is for Generation Xers, some of whom are in their 30s by now; but the Question of the Week when I visited concerned having to wear school uniforms, a topic slightly too juvenile for the 20-plus Gen-X crowd. isn't that more Gen-Y (as in youngster)? - Dorrit Tulane Walsh
2600 is the quarterly trade journal for the hacker underground. Started by Emmanuel Goldstein, it features technical information, news reports, case updates, and hacker lore galore. The writing is intelligent, informed, and adult; these people are not pimply-faced geeks trying to scam free long distance calls (well, not all of them). At the Web site, you can find out the latest on the sagas of busted legendary hackers Kevin Mitnick and Bernie S., browse the gallery of pay phones from around the world, and plan your visit to Beyond HOPE, the sequel to the HOPE (Hackers On Planet Earth) conference. Information wants to be free, and 2600 is part of the liberating force. - David Pescovitz
Hazardous Media is the cyber-cast and -crew behind the online birthday party of Hal (2001: A Space Odyssey), with Arthur C. Clarke; the Timothy Leary memorial in Los Angeles; and the documentary Timothy Leary's Last Trip, which premiered at the 1997 Slamdance International Film Festival. At this site, you can view clips of past events (Winona Ryder's eulogy for Tim, for example), keep tabs onHazardous doings, and order a copy of the Leary documentary for your very own. Or you can tune in to the original "story of two lowly cyber-janitors who found themselves trapped in the basement of cyberspace where the digital revolution frolicks [sic] and cyber-shenanigans abound...." Umm, I'll stick to the Leary sound bites. - David Pescovitz
This magazine is dedicated to putting little devil horns and tails on everythingand lets face it, some of us would look better in devil horns and tails. Ooze is meaner than the Beastie Boys Grand Royal mag, with much less Kung Fu action, and every back issue the culmination of all human history boiled down into one file is available here, for those who cannot be offended enough. Back-slid born-agains and ex-churchies will especially feed hungrily on these irreverent pages. Finally, remember that with Ooze, youre never alone, as long as you have Drinking Games for the Solitary Alcoholic. - Ismael Marrero
This is a labor of love by some people with very high-end multimedia- and design-production skills. They'll probably get rich doing something else, but an air of integrity suggests they wouldn't dream of getting rich from this. Spoiler is devoted to the whole DIY phenomenon, and it hopes to expand that phenomenon beyond its current musical- and underground-publishing boundaries. Here you'll find album reviews, interviews, graphic design advice, a design gallery, fiction, DIY Search (an Internet-wide search engine with connections to Spoiler), Web site reviews, six threaded discussion groups (JavaScript, design, HTML, zines, music, Spoiler), a live chat room, eight categories of free ads, and more. - Gary Barker
Retro-future design sets this site apart from many others on the Web. The graphics are very high qualityeven though they aren't made with a browser-safe color palette and so dither improperlyand there's a pretty good amount of information here. Find out about high-tech clothing, holography, fashion, England's hot rod renaissance, a schizophrenic lyricist, the Chunnel, soccer, various unsigned bands, San Francisco's Noise Pop Festival, comic books, bOing-bOing books, jazz, computer recycling, and counterculture in general. Anybody who's curious about what'll be mainstream five years from now should strap on a JetPack and peruse the future of fun. - Gary Barker
Site of the month!!
Part guide book, part satire, and part illustrators' showcase, the (virtual) Baguette takes a colorful and often irreverent pop at all things French. Francophones, Francophiles, and just regular folks will appreciate the site's bilingual format, which allows for quick jumps from each page to its corresponding translation. And slang hounds will enjoy a "crotte" load of argot, including the always handy, "J'ai mal au bide mais je me soigne," which translates as, "My tummy hurts but I'm working on it."A few of the features rely too heavily on puerile satire to be very amusing. In the Feel section, for example, a page presenting a mock summary of the history and uses of the corkscrew just isn't that funny; maybe something gets lost in the translation, but I couldn't stick with it. The same treatment gets slapped on a mock history of the Egyptian obelisk at the Place de la Concorde, a spoof on the The X-Files, and a send-up of "the French Harley-Davidson," a.k.a. the moped. The (virtual) Baguette works best when delivering straightforward information on France and French life. In the Communicate section, you'll find classifieds offering everything from a rental in Provence to an invitation from a very sincere Belgian who just wants to share his appreciation for rubber with you. The Look section leads to a page devoted to a recently released "BD" ("bande dessinée, or comic book), with an intelligent review and profile of its creator wrapped around impressive illustrations. And the French Surf page really does hook up to a lot of interesting French-related sites, ranging from politics and current events to entertainment and museums. Above all, the site deserves a hearty "Chapeau!" for its spoof on the most sacred of all French topics: la cuisine. In the Taste section, a page entitled Reverse Cooking offers a recipe for "Jugged Rabbit," the preparation of which requires, among other things, a powerful centrifuge, a butterfly net, and some strong glue. Bon appetit. You've got to hand it to the sites creators for avoiding the obvious: In the couple of hours I spent scanning the site, I didn't come across a single baguette. Not one tartine, chocolatine, ficelle, or flûte. No bread. Just another indication of how the (virtual) Baguette succeeds in serving up a cyber-sandwich that doesn't skimp on the good stuff between the slices.
- Phillip LeVine