CLICK AND DOUBLE CLICK: IT'S NOT TOO LATE TO VOTE FOR THE BEST WEB SITES

Award programs are pretty much a dime a dozen. On the Internet, it's the Webby Awards. In its fourth year, the May 11 ceremony in San Francisco will honor the best and the weirdest on the Internet. You can watch the event via a live Webcast. (I like the part that they limit acceptance speeches to five words.)

But first, it's not too late to cast your ballot and have a hand in who wins. In each category, the judges award The Webby Award and The People's Voice Award.

www.webbyawards.com

The 2000 Webby Awards will feature 27 categories: Activism, Arts, Broadband, Commerce, Community, Education, Fashion, Film, Finance, Games, Health, Humor, Kids, Living, Music, News, Personal Web Sites, Politics & Law, Print & Zines, Radio, Science, Services, Sports, Technical Achievement, TV, Travel and Weird. There are five nominees in each category.

You need only to register to vote. Last year, 110,000 people cast their ballots. In each category, you can vote, rate a site or review it. You can return multiple times to finish the job.

As an added incentive, I'm going to visit some of the great sites nominated this year.

www.pbs.org/wgbh/aso/

The folks at PBS bring us A Science Odyssey, which is actually an education nominee. It takes an in-depth look at how science and technology has changed in the last 100 years. In 1900, doctors can do little more than counsel and comfort patients and keep them clean; the Milky Way galaxy is the known universe; and the only way to view the Olympic games in Paris is in person. My how things have changed.

You can play the "That's My Theory" gameshow or read comic-book style stories about famous scientists. There's also some fun hands-on "You Try It" games: Technology at Home, Mountain Maker, Earth Shaker; Probe the Brain; Atom Builder; Human Evolution; Radio Transmission; Doctor Over Time; and the DNA Workshop. You need Shockwave to play. I love this fact from Technology at Home: Sony Betamax VCRs were introduced in 1975. Pricetag? $1,300.

There's also a really neat database of 120 people and their discoveries of the last 100 years. This would be a great resource for students.

www.wordcentral.com

Another entry in the education category is brought to you by the folks at Merriam-Webster Dictionaries. You can look up words fast in the Student Dictionary, or you can build your own dictionary. You can also stump your friends with the Daily Buzzword.

The daily buzzword for Monday was "turnpike." You can even listen to someone pronounce it. Then they tell you what it means, how you use it and what it meant when first used in the Middle Ages.

You can also check out the Science Lab's English experiments, where you can change your writings to: Morse Code, Vowel Monster, Space Jumble or Pocatenate and even e-mail it to a friend. In the computer lab's coding changer, you can encode and decode messages from friends.

This site is strictly geared to kids, but you can link over to other Merriam-Webster online resources that were edited for adults.

I had been to several of the game sites, but one of the places new to me was GamesSpy.

www.gamesspy.com

You can download GameSpy free to participate in online gaming. There were an impressive 11,500 users in the last hour when I visited Monday morning.

The site looks jampacked with game tips and advice. They also provide stats on the top games played recently. I like the Gaming Basics section that you can click to from the front, for people who are just getting started with online gaming.

They predict that someone online gaming will be as easy as turning on your TV. But since that's not the case today, they provide you with "hardware," "getting online" and "setup" guides. This is practical, easy-to-follow information.

You can preview the latest games, such as Ground Control. You can also chat with others about the hottest games and tips for success. They also provide gaming news such as the fact Illinois is cracking down on video games by enforcing the rating system.

All five of the nominees for kids are great. I had a hard time choosing. But I think the one I liked best was MaMaMedia. It was full of games and activities.

www.mamamedia.com

Warning: My Macintosh did not like this site, which is often the case with sites that depend on Java technology. The site worked just fine on my office PC.

Under the play button, there are tons of interactive games.

I know my kids would especially like the Stamps and Stomps games, which allows you to place noisy stamps all over a picture. I know I had fun.

There are jigsaws and jumblers. There are story games and art creations. There's plenty to keep kids busy for a long time.

There's also a lot of suggestions for great sites geared for kids under the Romp category. You can explore tons of Websites with a picture directory, find great sites divided by topics, take an online tour of the world or collect and share your favorite sites.

I recently visited a site that had been nominated for a Webby in the science category. My visit reminded me it was time again to do a story on the awards. But let's not forget the site that provided my reminder: The Monterey Bay Aquarium, which offers an E-quarium online.

www.mbayaq.org

You will learn a lot about ocean creatures and have a little fun along the way at this site. I like the game called "Crunch, Nibble, Gulp, Bite." Coral fish eat in different ways and you can look at their mouths to get a clue. Read riddles to match fish with their food. Your "prize" is a video clip of dinner time. Don't forget to check out the Penguin cam, but you need Media Player 6.4 for viewing. This is not a still photo, it's live video.

Let me know what site you'd pick for a Webby "Best of Show." Many of these are really the best that that Web has to offer.

See you in Cyberspace.

Joni Adams is managing editor of the Southeast Missourian. You can e-mail her at click@semissourian.com.