CLICK & DOUBLE CLICK: SOME OF THE HOTTEST SITES EARN DESIGNATION OF `COOL' ON INTERNET (COLUMN 2)

Sometimes it's hard to know where to go on the net. Several of the major players give us a push: Their cool sites. On the net, cool is often worth a second look. Sometimes cool means really well done, sometimes really wacky, sometimes downright weird. But of the millions of web pages out there, a few rise to the top. They are crowned cool, at least for a day.

Netscape is a good place to start. With millions of visitors a day, earning their cool designation means something.

http://www.netscape.com

Click on the What's Cool! button near the top. The Netscape Cool Team looks for sites that "catch our eye, make us laugh, help us work, quench our thirst ... you get the idea." On this particular day, the team listed 92 cool sites to pick from, a bizarre collection of commercial, personal and governmental sites.

Joni: I was intrigued by the Alfred Hitchcock page.

http://nextdch.mty.itesm.mx/~~~~~~~~~~~~(tilde)plopezg/Kaplan/

OK, I like mysteries. This site has such useful information as to Hitchcock's cameo appearances in all his films. For example, in "Dial M For Murder," (1954), he was on the left side of the class-reunion photo, 13 minutes into the film. Cool.

Peggy: Next we're off to

http://cool.infi.net/

Here we find Cool Sites of the Day and the Cool Site the Year. Net users pick. Voting for the 1996 winner begins in August.

And the 1995 winner was an online soap opera.

http://www.thespot.com

Here are a few tips -- that save you A LOT of time and pain -- to help you enjoy the spot: Start at Spot Virgins to get a general overview of what's happening.

Joni: From what we can gather, it's a story about a handful of Generation Xers who live in one house. The girl who started it, Tara, apparently was recently killed. It took us a while to figure out if she was real or not.

Peggy: Well, we didn't really figure it out. We think she's a character, but it's tough to tell reality from writing.

Joni: Each day some of the characters update the story line, and then spotters (those visiting the site) post comments to the characters and to each other. It looks like it could get pretty involved.

Peggy: The story started in June 1995, but a search engine named Spot (complete with dog bone clues) helps you catch up. It's worth a look. You might get hooked.

Joni: Three separate sites, Yahoo, Netscape and InfiNet, sent us to Mr. Showbiz as a cool site. We agree.

http://www.mrshowbiz.com

Peggy: Here you can practice plastic surgery on characters from the television show "Friends." You can combine Monica's nose and Chandler's eyes. Operate and instantly you have a new Friend.

Joni: The whole site is full of entertainment tidbits from movies and television. There's even a spot to see tabloid headlines from New York, London and Australia, if you don't want to get caught gaping at the grocery store.

Peggy: Once you get your fix of entertainment news, you can turn it into a poetic comment. The page features Haiku poetry (you remember -- five syllables, seven syllables, five syllables) on current topics such as Robert Downey Jr., the Unabomber and Elvis. Very bizarre.

Joni: Almost every major site offers its cool suggestions. But cool is definitely a matter of taste. At more than one place the Glen Campbell Goodtime Show from Branson came up.

http://members.aol.com/glenshow

We went there, and other than learning Glen was a Beach Boy and seeing a number of Branson links, we were unimpressed.

Peggy: Our personal cool site of the day is the New York Times' Gallery in the Round. Here, you can find 360-degree photographs that put the viewer in the center of the image.

http://www.nytimes.com/specials/gallery

Joni: You must download the viewer software, which took 10 minutes on my home Packard Bell 14.4 modem running Windows '95. Then you download one of four images: high in the stands of Yankee Stadium, inside a moving ambulance, aboard a speeding subway train and standing in a doughnut shop in Manhattan. We downloaded the diner, installed the software and thought it was so cool, we downloaded the other three. Each took about 2 minutes.

Peggy: You can move completely around the photo as well as up and down. You can also zoom in and out.

Joni: We want more photos. Get to work, New York Time photographers. We'll talk about newspaper on the net later.

Peggy: Sometimes cool really is cool. But not always. Let us know what you think is cool. E-mail us at movn@ldd.net.

See you in Cyberspace.

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

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