Caught On The Web

Lately the web seems like a mass of information that goes on endlessly. Anyone who has done any surfing lately knows that there are plenty of interesting sites out there; unfortunately you have to weed through masses of inane garbage to find them. We're starting this column to perhaps show a little light at the end of the cyber-tunnel. Every issue we hope to bring you a review of some site that is worth waiting to download (especially if your computer is as slow as mine). If you have any suggestions or comments, or know of a site worth looking at, your input is welcome and encouraged.

Of all the on-line magazines that are floating around on the web, few offer a different perspective on information, and even fewer combine this with decent layout and design. Like a lot of folks I know, Im still not hip to going on the web to read People, when I could just throw out a couple of bucks in the impulse buy section of Fred Meyer and kick back on the couch. Www.word.com, however, turns the idea of putting a magazine on the web upside down. By utilizing the web as a unique medium, Word provides information, entertainment, and art in one place; and you dont have to shell out the extra bucks.

Essentially, Word is an on-line magazine run by a group of young people, mostly in New York City. Each week Word has a new feature story, a comic strip, and various other columns on such things as work, habit, and place. The front page takes quite a while to download, and some of the columns occasionally require Quick Time, but generally its worth the wait. The art director, a guy named Yoshi, has won a few awards for his unique perspective on design.

One of the more entertaining areas in this magazine is the section on work. Here people write about different jobs they do, from waiting tables to this weeks Web Mistress. Although these columns arent always well written, they can usually get you to feeling better about whatever meaningless job you use to pay the bills (unless of course youre a web mistress, in which case your job is anything but meaningless). Hop over to the section called habit and you can view some original artwork described as seamy images of world-heavy phantasmagoric suffering painstakingly detailed in garish color provided here for your pleasure. What rational human could pass up such a temptation?

But Word has more than just aspiring artists and writers looking for an audience. This week in place you can read an excerpt from Haruki Murakamis new book The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle. Murakami is a Japanese writer who recently won the Yomiuri Literary Prize and has published books that have been translated into fourteen different languages. Not bad for some free entertainment.

Jenn Wagaman