Wednesday, September 23, 1998

Make the most of web sites with free technology

By Doug Williamson / Business Editor

Some of today's sites use some of the technologies available on the Internet to enhance their look and sound.

The innovations are available for free online from links at the sites mentioned below.

-- We all know that Wheaties is "The Breakfast of Champions." The cerealmaker now has taken to the Information Superhighway with the "Radio Show of Champions." Utilizing RealPlayer technology, the one-minute program gives a quick glance at athletes, famous and obscure. Listen at http://www.wheaties.com.

-- Flash 3 technology, the latest addition to Shockwave, found a good application at http://www.shastapop.com/home.html. I must warn you, the Shasta Kids Organ can play tunes like an organ, or with the sounds of a laugh or ... a burp. You can thank the bottlers of Shasta for this.

-- If you go to http://www.shockwave.com, you will find Macromedia's set of links to sites using its Shockwave application.

-- I had the opportunity to share some Internet sites with Cooper High School English teachers this week. After the presentation, I stumbled onto another good one. At http://www.nytimes.com/learning, folks from the <I>New York Times<I> give students and teachers a daily look at several stories in the national newspaper. Teachers can find lesson plans to help them teach from the stories.

-- Look up. "Stars: Portraits of Stars and Their Constellations" is a site created by Jim Kaler, an astronomy professor at the University of Illinois. Go to http://www.astro.uiuc.edu/(tilde)kaler/sow/sow.html to look into the heavens.

-- Have you ever come on to a acronym you didn't know? Well, http://www.mtnds.com/af/ can solve that problem. It is the "Acronym Finder." Type in the letters of the acronym and the search engine will give you all the groups that use that letter string in its acronym. Pretty handy.

Doug Williamson can be reached at 676-6707 or williamsond@abinews.com.