CLICK & DOUBLE CLICK: GO FOR THE GOLD: NET SURFING SHOULD BE AN OLYMPIC SPORT IN 2000 (COLUMN 1)

Internet usage is growing by leaps and bounds, but guess what? Most studies show that people return to the same 10 sites again and again and again.

Hey surfers: It's a World Wide Web. We've seen it. Let us be your virtual tour guides.

Who are we?

Newbies. OK, we admit it. But we're willing to learn and take you along.

Click and Double Click is a new column of the Southeast Missourian written by Joni Adams and Peggy Scott. We have a combined total of 10 months experience on the net, but we're hooked. We read a lot. We talk to experts and we've attended some conferences. Hey, we even have e-mail at home and at work.

But let's get to work. Each week we plan to visit three or four sites and let you know what's hot and what's not.

What's hot this week? The Olympics -- all 271 events, 1,838 medals and 171.5 hours of televised action to be exact. If you can't get enough, the World Wide Web is a great resource. Just type Olympics on your favorite search engine and you will find nearly 100,000 suggestions. Ouch!

A good place to start is the official Olympics site:

http://www.atlanta.olympic.org/

Joni: It's flashy. IBM helped create it and you can tell. There are stories. There are up-to-the-minute results and schedules, bios on all 10,700 athletes and information on their 197 countries. There are also sights and sounds of the Olympics.

Peggy: Talk about sights. The page features one of my favorite things, a sneak peek cam. You start with a menu of changing choices. Pick a sport. We picked swimming and got nine shots at the pool. These images are being grabbed live at the 1996 games and are posted in real time. Sometimes there are great sights you'll never see again, so they say.

Joni: To hear the audio clips, you must have an audio extension such as Real Audio. IBM suggests we download Bamba, a streaming audio and video player that allows you to play audio as you are downloading it. It's been tested on Windows 95 and Windows NT platforms. That's fine if you have an IBM compatible, which we don't at work. The Web can be frustrating.

Peggy: I hate to wait. Let's move on to the NBC web site.

http://www.olympic.nbc.com/

When we first tried to access this page we got a message we are unable to locate the server. What this usually means is that the page is overloaded with users. Some of these web pages get millions of hits every day. After three tries we gave up and moved to

http://www.olympic.ibm.com/

Joni: Here, you can find out up-to-the minute weather for the Olympic games, no doubt a big favorite. (Not.) They have a place to send fan mail to your favorite team, athlete or even to all Olympians. More than 50 athletes from around the world have their own home pages. So if you want to chat with Mostafa Hussien of Egypt about Greco-Roman wrestling, go for it.

Peggy: We also found a back door way to the NBC page. A link is an easy way to jump from page to page by clicking on a button or a name. But NBC was still busy. So we headed to

http://www.olympic.att.com/

AT&T has its own cameras at the village and the games. No fighting the crowds. The page also features an Olympics game switchboard that requires you to register. After debating about whether we should spend time filling out our name, address and favorite Olympic sports, we decided to go for it. Maybe it will be great.

Joni: We're intrigued. In the Olympic online games we can challenge the world to basketball, hurdles, diving or pole vaulting. We picked diving. You need the Shockwave plugin to play. You can also do a virtual Olympic museum tour, but it requires the Quicktime VR plugin. They advertise free admission. I guess they don't count our monthly access charge.

Peggy: Finally success. We are on the NBC page. You can download the Olympics theme, "The Bugler's Dream," as either .wav or aiff sound file formats. I think I'll download that at home and have it play every time I start my computer. Olympic Web surfing in 2000. I'll start training now.

Joni: Under chat, they have "A Golden Moment." Every afternoon from 1 to 1:30 you can talk to an Olympic great. There's also a trivia game you can play by e-mail and an interactive poll.

Peggy: Talk about interactive. Nations Bank invites you to send an e-mail postcard from the games featuring one of six Olympic designs. We sent the swimming symmetry card to friends. It's free at

http://www.96Games.com/olympic/postcard.htm

Joni: And if you're tired of this Olympics, move on. Sydney, Australia -- the site of the 2000 games -- has its own home page at

http://www.sydney.olympic.org/

You can reach us at movn@ldd.net. MOVN stands for Missourian Online Virtual Newspaper. Send us your favorite sites.

See you in Cyberspace.

~Joni Adams is managing editor and Peggy Scott is a graphics editor/staff writer at the Southeast Missourian.

CYBERTIP: Typing counts when surfing. The World Wide Web is picky about spelling, but not capital letters. E-mail, however, is case sensitive. Most e-mail addresses are lower case.