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THE WINNER |
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here to see which site TIME picked as the best Multimedia Feature Our Interactive World, an hour-long special hosted by CNN's Michael Holmes and Tumi Makgabo, featuring luminaries from the world of information technology 
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A guide to intelligent interaction, featuring 40 sites you've (probably) never heard of
| Smart Sites |
IRONMINDS www.ironminds.com
Crisp writing, a clean design, fresh thinking. A younger and edgier—some would say rawer—Salon. Its handsome, slick design trumps other content sites
THE ONION www.theonion.com
The news is almost never funny. The Onion, however, is. Always. Though hardly unknown, it's the best satire of current events money can buy. And because the site is free, you can laugh all the way to the bank
ARTS & LETTERS DAILY www.cybereditions.com/aldaily
Links to the most eclectic mix of essays, columns and articles on the Web. Sure, none of the stories is original, but are you going to trawl more than 40 newspaper, magazine and literary websites every day?
MOREOVER www.moreover.com
Information on the Web is like an iceberg—most of it lies beneath the surface. Moreover's search engine does a sweet and swift job of ferreting out the top stories on the world's news, research and business sites
McSWEENEY'S www.mcsweeneys.net
You'll find fiction, nonfiction, drawings of hairy people and a little poetry at this witty, literate site. It's a self-proclaimed must-read "for the junior Harper's set"
WORLD WIDE WORDS www.worldwidewords.org
Edited by Michael Quinion, a researcher for the Oxford English Dictionary, this quirky, surprising site explains the meaning of obscure words (like astrobleme) and traces the origin of phrases
KIDON MEDIA-LINK www.kidon.com/media-link
A Netherlands-based site with links to newspapers around the world. You can search by location and language. It's not pretty, but it's functional and thorough
| Useful Sites |
UDDI www.uddi.org
Universal Description, Discovery and Integration (now that's a mouthful!) is forging common protocols for identifying, describing and connecting companies wanting to do business on the Web. Dry as dust, but potentially important for the B2B market
MY STOCK OPTIONS www.mystockoptions.com
Back in 1999 you were a millionaire on paper. Use the handy calculators and expert advice (buy low, sell high!) to make sense of your post-bubble stock options
PAYPAL www.paypal.com
Wire money without hassling with foreign-money senders. Currently available for six currencies
OANDA www.oanda.com/converter/classic
Forget about options; cash is king. Use this sturdy currency converter to see how the Turkish lira is doing against the Indonesian rupiah. A godsend for frequent travelers
HOW FAR IS IT www.indo.com/distance
Calculate the distance between any two points on Earth and plot the locations on a map, courtesy of Xerox
ACTION ASIA www.actionasia.com
Plan your next diving adventure in Thailand or trekking excursion through Nepal. The "where to go when" tool is especially helpful: match an activity with a location and date and the site tells you what the weather will be like
HOW STUFF WORKS www.howstuffworks.com
Everything from the serious—how jet engines work—to the silly—does drinking ice water burn calories? (The answer: sort of. But you should still go to the gym)
WEBMONKEY hotwired.lycos.com/webmonkey
Learn how to design and build websites. We know, this is so 1997. Deal with it. Your seven-year-old niece knows this stuff, so should you
INFOPLEASE www.infoplease.com
An almanac, atlas, dictionary and encyclopedia rolled into one. Bookmark the weather fact of the day. Fantastic fodder for small talk
ZING www.zing.com
Share photos with family and friends by posting them to free albums. Members can order and charge prints, cards and gifts. Now all you have to do is get grandma online
EPICURIOUS www.epicurious.com
It's what's for dinner. Search for recipes from Gourmet and Bon AppEtit and review reports from around the globe. Won't fill you up but will definitely leave you satisfied
ASIA FOOD www.asiafood.org
Recipes, discounts on Asian restaurants in New York City, video clips of conversations with chefs like Martin Yan (of Yan Can Cook fame), plus an extensive glossary of ingredients
INTERNET MOVIE DATABASE www.imdb.com
Full of film facts that are guaranteed to settle nearly any argument. Go to PayPal to collect those debts
RADIO LOCATOR www.radio-locator.com
A simple, no-frills site with an excellent database of links to more than 10,000 radio stations
| Slick Sites |
BROKEN SAINTS www.brokensaints.com
It's a hip, fashion-forward animE adventure-cum-online literary event. The artwork, music and plot hardly break new ground, but the (almost) cinematic quality of the whole package is pretty cool
SUPER BAD www.superbad.com
Thousands of pages of design, abstract games and freaky graphics. Don't worry if it borders on being impenetrable: we can't figure it out, either. But it's a heck of a way to waste time
SIMIAN www.ikda.co.uk/simian
A high-bandwidth music and design extravaganza. It's a little out there—has Earth been overrun by monkeys?—but it proves the Internet can enhance listening to music
SOLEMATES www.centuryinshoes.com
An elegant site chronicling the past century in shoes. Now we know what Imelda Marcos has been doing to keep busy
| Thoughtful Sites |
THE HUNGER SITE www.thehungersite.com
One click and a corporate sponsor will donate a cup of food to someone in one of more than 74 impoverished countries. There are also links to other charities fighting everything from aids to breast cancer
FERTILE THOUGHTS fertilethoughts.net
Support groups, personal histories and schedules of networking events for anyone struggling with infertility or hoping to start a family through adoption or surrogacy
GREAT BOOKS ONLINE www.bartleby.com
Unlimited, and free, access to nearly all the classics. Kids, listen up: forget about pretending you lost your copy of King Lear. It's all here. You'll just have to search for it
BIBLE GATEWAY bible.gospelcom.net
Search passages and keywords from nearly a dozen versions of the Bible. Click on options to show footnotes or cross-reference other editions
FOLKLORE AND MYTHOLOGY www.pitt.edu/~dash/folktexts.html
Read the original story of Hamlet—it's weird!—and find a Japanese Cinderella from this exhaustive compendium of legends and myths
| Fun Sites |
EARTHCAM www.earthcam.com
A Yahoo!-like directory of webcams. From newsrooms and bedrooms to the beaches and the slopes. There's even an ashtray cam for anyone needing a reason to stop smoking
OPERATIONAL SIGNIFICANT EVENT IMAGERY www.osei.noaa.gov
See floods, volcanic eruptions and other disasters from the eye of a satellite. Beautiful pictures of frighteningly catastrophic occurrences
SPACE IMAGING www.spaceimaging.com
Browse and buy satellite images from around the world. Find out if your neighbor is up to anything illegal in his backyard
SOCCER NICKNAMES home.wanadoo.nl/ejgvanloon
No bells, no whistles, just nicknames of more than a thousand soccer players from all over. It's a nice site for anyone who doesn't know what a penalty kick is but wants to sound like an expert in time for the 2002 World Cup
CYBERKIDS www.cyberkids.com
Good, clean fun for kids 7 to 12. Educational, too. Aspiring Rembrandts can publish their art and poetry online
RUMPUS www.rumpus.com
A high-energy, sugary site for kids with short attention spans. The site is bursting with educational cartoons and games. Bold colors, crazy sounds and wacky animations make for a captivating experience
HOT OR NOT www.hotornot.com
Rate people's beauty on a scale of 1 to 10. Cruel, but shockingly fun. If you're really daring, submit your photo and see how hot you're not. Tip: swimsuits improve scores tenfold
JONATHAN'S WEB SCRABBLE scrabble.boinkable.com
A free site where up to five people can play long-distance (and long) games of Scrabble
| Most Self-Involved Site | Most Addictive Site |
| EMODE www.emode.com A narcissist's delight—this site is all about you. Personality tests. IQ tests. Determine the color of your aura or find out if you're millionaire material. It'll make you neurotic but, hey, it's fun |
HEROMACHINE www.heromachine.com Design your own cartoon superheroes. Choose a basic body type, then dress, arm and color your creation. Incredibly juvenile and riveting for eight-year-olds and their parents |
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