CLICK & DOUBLE CLICK: AND THE NOMINEES ARE: WEBBIES OFFER GLIMPSE OF INTERNET RANGE

People often wonder, with so many Web sites out there, which ones are worth a visit. One way to know is through the annual Webby Awards.

The awards won't be presented until March 18, but you can get a sneak preview of the nominees and cast your own ballot in the People's Voice award. The Webbies are called the "Oscars of the Internet," and this marks the third year.

Last year, more than 100,000 online fans participated in the voting or watched the live Webcast.

Nominees are found in 22 categories: arts, commerce, community, education, fashion, film, finance, games, health, humor, living, music, news, politics and law, print and zines, radio, science, sports, technical achievement, TV, travel, weird.

www.webbies.com

Joni: We've looked at some of them. Each category has five nominees. You can see, it would take a long time to visit all these sites.

Peggy: If you visited a few in each category, it would give you a view of the wide variety available online. I think we visited and voted last year.

Joni: Yes, we're still in the system. You must register, and they send you a secure URL for voting.

Peggy: If you want to check out a few, the Webbies have handy links.

Joni: After looking at some categories, we were frightened to even look at what earns a listing in the "Weird" category.

Peggy: Well, look at this. Some of our favorite sites are listed as Webby nominees. Looks like we're influencing the Internet, huh Joni?

Joni: Right here in River City. Here's a site I recently discovered called Talk City. It's a big chatting community where you can meet people and talk. The chats are organized by categories, and many are moderated.

www.talkcity.com

Peggy: Talk City has rooms or you can make rooms. They have scheduled events and moderated rooms, over 10,000 a month. You can talk about John Travolta or your funniest college moments or stress. Talk City is home to more than a million home pages and right now more than 7,000 people are chatting. Pretty good for a Monday afternoon.

Joni: They also have a code of conduct. Conversations must remain G-rated, or you're out of there. In addition, the chat is Java-based for those with browser versions 3.0 or better. You don't have to download a special program. I like that.

Peggy: Here's a site, under the education category, brought to us by the Discovery Channel. It's an Internet guide for educators by Kathy Schrock.

discoveryschool.com/schrockguide

Joni: You can find information in many subject areas, including one for holidays with lots of choices. It is a great place for links to the Web.

Peggy: They also have slide shows for training, including a teachers' guide to the Internet.

Joni: We took a look at their Beginning Internet slide show, it was pretty good. They also offer lesson plans.

Peggy: Here's another education site, The Global Schoolhouse. It connects with classrooms around the world to help teachers find global learning projects.

www.gsn.org

Joni: This site offers a lot of educational resources for both teachers and parents. They also have a lot of ideas on projects you can try. They also have links to education-related sites, including several from schools.

Peggy: The links are organized into categories -- lots of categories with lots more links. There are 42 social science links and 58 science links.

Joni: Under the Webby film category is Film.com, which has movie reviews, previews, showtimes and more. You can also view the clip of the day. Here's one from the new movie with Brendan Fraser, "Blast from the Past" to be released later this month.

www.film.com

Peggy: You can also see the box office results and video news and releases. They also have a section on movie music. You can hear clips.

Joni: Under finance is one of our favorites, Motley Fool. If we had any money to invest, I'm sure we'd use some of that famous "Foolish" advice. You can also find Motley Fool every Monday in the Southeast Missourian.

www.fool.com

Peggy: The big special today is how to dig yourself out of plastic debt. Last year Americans charged up $400 billion on their credit cards. That $50 billion in finance charges could have paid 2,000 seasons with Michael Jordan or purchased Nike, the company, with $34 billion to spare.

Joni: That puts it into perspective. They have lots of advice and tips on paying it back and getting out of debt. With your extra money, you can get information on portfolios. You can converse with others on the Fool's bulletin boards. What's nice about these guys is they give real down-to-earth information in a fun way.

Peggy: Their motto is educate, amuse, enrich. Under the Webby category "Humor," we took at look at Bezerk and its free online quiz show "You don't know Jack."

www.bezerk.com

Joni: It's an irreverent quiz show played online. You can also play "You don't know Jack, the sports show." And another called "What's the big idea?"

Peggy: You can see a demo on the site, but you have to download the game installer to play. It can take up to 30 minutes on a 28.8 modem.

Joni: You can also read reviews of other Net games and an assortment of other activities. Here's another Webby nominee, under "Music." It's the Ultimate Band List.

www.ubl.com

Joni: Learn about new artists and music. You can choose from 881 free, full-length music videos online. You have to register, but it's free.

Peggy: Now it's time for us to vote. You can vote for a few categories at a time. The Webbies keep track. Don't forget to submit your own favorites. You could win a trip (in real life) to the Webbies in San Francisco, Calif.

Joni: Check out the Webbies for yourself and let us know your favorites. E-mail us at click@semissourian.com

See you in Cyberspace.

~Peggy Scott and Joni Adams are members of the Southeast Missourian online staff.