I've wanted for a long time to create a REALLY HORRIBLE Web page.  Now somebody has done it, the Bud Uggly home page.  A designer has to be really good to do something this bad.  No pages could be this bad by accident.

HIGH-PERFORMANCE TEXT-- for Beauty and Power
The beautiful visions of designer John Maeda show what interactive text COULD look like, if designed by artists instead of programmers--  ¶ a looping-month calendar-- try clicking and moving the mouse ¶ a zoomable calendar (you can zoom in to the second, or less).  Both are at maedastudiocom.

Interactive 3D Animation Facility
A building system for interactive 3D worlds-- not VRML-- is at http://alice.org.  Students might consider using it for their final projects.

RIGHT LIVING DEPARTMENT
John Walker's home page, the many gifts of a brilliant and hardworking generalist.

MEDIA FOR UNDERDEVELOPED COUNTRIES -- AND US

¶ WIND-UP RADIOS!  Home page of the manufacturer, I think.  WHEN CAN WE GET WIND-UP LAPTOPS?!?!?  Maybe soon.
¶ VIDEO E-MAIL-- Internet for those who can't read and write: in India, they've worked out video e-mail. Unfortunately this is no longer at cnn.com, so I've scanned it in.  Download the Jfax file of this article.

SUPERCOMPUTERS FOR YOU: BEOWULF
The Beowulf distribution of Linux (available free on the Net, or more conveniently from Red Hat under the name "Extreme Linux") allows you to build supercomputers out of stock x86 machines, or any combination of boxes that run Linux.  I don't think anyone EVER expected that you could buy a supercomputer operating system for $29.95, the price of the Extreme Linux CD-ROM.  'TITANIC' EFFECTS WERE DONE ON A BEOWULF CLUSTER-- read the story here.

THE MAN OF THE HOUR: ERIC S. RAYMOND
Eric Raymond is the theorist of the Open Source movement, explaining why the Linux development process-- Open Source-- is so powerful in his classic essay, "The Cathedral and the Bazaar".  Now he has released The Halloween Documents, internal Microsoft memos showing that Microsoft fears Linux and wants to stop it.  Will Microsoft try to put Eric Raymond in jail?  Not likely, because everybody is so mad at Microsoft after reading the Halloween documents.  The nasty phrase "Decommodotization of Protocols" may be what crushes Microsoft in the current antitrust suit by the U.S. government.