Cybersurf

Hello, good morning and welcome to Cybersurf – news flashes from the virtual side of the Internet. I am Steven Lang.

Only yesterday, the country’s prime Cinema and TV festival drew to a close with the announcement of the jury’s awards. The Sithengi festival appears to have been a huge success that you might want to read about on the sithengi.co.za web site.

So you couldn’t make to the festival itself, no problem, visit the site and you will feel as if you have just been there.

Staying with a film theme, the movie I have been dying to see is the one where Borat visits the USA. You can visit the movie site at http://www.boratmovie.com/ - it is a fairly routine movie promo site, but the short, downloadable trailer is hysterical and whet my appetite even more.

The next two sites, I will tell you about provide a classic example of when the UNofficial site is better than the official one. What’s the difference between an official site and an unofficial one? – We presume that in the case of an official site, the site owner and the product have some kind of agreement with each other. Most often, the unofficial site is simply put up by fans without an OK from the celeb in question.

The official Borat site – at Borat dot tv is an ugly mess, with a few peculiar photographs, flashing links and an advert for Ali G videos – it is disappointing.

On the other hand, the unofficial site at boratonline.co .uk – that is boratonline dot co dot UK is neatly organized, content rich and appropriately over the top. In fact, whoever designed this site has an unhealthy obsession with the fictional, boorish reporter from Kazakhstan.

There are glowing articles about the cult status of the movie, gloating reports about how the movie outstripped all competitors at the box office and many links to other Borat sites.

Let’s take matters a little more seriously now.

The Genographic project has one of the most incredible sites on the internet. It has quite a complicated web address, so it is easier to get to the project site by navigating to the national geographic site at nationalgeographic dot com and then finding the link.

The Genographic project is a five year effort aimed at understanding through our DNA, how humans evolved over the last sixty thousand years or so. Project coordinators sample the DNA of thousands of people from all over the world, and in this way build up an Atlas showing how humans evolved in Africa and then migrated to all corners of the earth.

The Genographic site is fascinating – it explains how the scientists are able to use DNA to calculate a person’s probable lineage. It also invites users to participate in the project by purchasing a Project Kit – but my favourite part is the Atlas of the Human Journey.

It is a beautiful flash presentation, with embedded video clips, that begins 200,000 years ago when the first modern humans are believed to have lived. It then moves through various periods that correspond with important paleontological finds over the last hundred and fifty years.

The Genographic site is essential viewing if you are at all interested in human evolution, or if you just want to see a well designed web site.

And so we come to the end of another Cybersurf. All the web sites mentioned in today’s program will be published on the Cybersurf Blog, at Cybersurf dot blogspot dot com. One more time, Cybersurf dot blogspot dot com. Thank-you for listening and please join me again next week for more on the best of the web

// posted by Steven Lang @ 7:02 pm