Columns: Arun Katiyar

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Considering that the Internet is supposed to end up educating everyone, we should be reading (and visiting) education sites a lot more than we currently do. I have a small question which, perhaps, you may want to try and answer: do you visit at least one site that helps advance your education regularly? For example, if you are working in the area of solid state physics, do you visit something like the Laboratory of Atomic and Solid State Physics at www.lassp.cornell.edu practically each day? Or if you are a performing magician, do you visit the magic guide at www.allmagicguide.com to enhance your knowledge? I mean, unless you educate yourself, there's little chance magic will happen.

More specifically, if you are a student, you need to attend a few classes regularly. While school sites abound -- practically every big school in India's major metros has a web site -- you may perhaps need to visit an education portal or an education site to keep pace. Indian education sites are quickly coming of age: from cheat sheets for IIT exams and tips for GRE, there's something for everyone. But a couple of sites are taking the concept of education a few steps into the future. Take eGurucool at www.egurucool.com where you can take a quick lesson in Trachtenberg maths ensuring that you multiply 1,28,945 by 12 in seconds without having to use paper. Or participate in a poll to identify the most trivial thing school taught you (how to sleep with eyes open; convert toilet breaks into afternoon strolls; mutilate desks with a compass). The site even suggests that medical transcriptions is a vocation-in-vogue, provides counselling, horoscopes, books with low price tags and an opportunity to win a Deep Forest album. eGurucool is serious and fun.

At the other end of the spectrum, all serious and on moral high ground, is the Brahma Kumaris Academy at bkacademy.eth.net which centres on "simple living and high thinking". There are inputs on how food can affect the mind, how to cope with negativity, a link to Om Shanti radio which offers good news, peaceful music, intellectual discourses and spiritual songs and counselling by an expert in Rajyoga meditation.

Clearly, between the two sites, there's plenty of ground to be covered. Given the way the Indian Internet scene is developing, every inch between them will be gone in the next few months. If you are building a Net business, this is one area that is still worth investigating.

Want to revisit Kargil with an action-packed game? Go to www.indiagames.com. The games may appear a bit crude -- the game on collecting cybermillions could do with improved looks -- but that's not the point. The site has taken the initiative to address a lucrative area on the Net: gaming. Given time, the games can only improve. Meanwhile, there is a host of puzzles, business games and simple arcade games to keep you involved for some time.

Madhya Pradesh CM Digvijay Singh's site at www.madhyapradesh-india.org gives visitors the opportunity to send ideas to him (it's not clear what happens once you submit the idea), lets you know how many days in the month the CM will be on tour (14 days in January, but to whom is this information useful?). Someone needs to tell CMs not to waste funds on maintaining silly sites that serve little purpose.

Billed as the "world's Ultimate Cricket Resource", www.cricketline.com offers live scores, the latest news, wallpapers, trivia contests, a chance to win a T-shirt of your favourite team, links to over 500 cricket sites, player profiles and records. A refreshing change for those who are tired of the same old khel.com and crickinfo.org.

Ever felt the need to view all your browser windows at one go? Katiesoft makes that possible -- to an extent -- opening four sites in the same screen space. Once you download the software from www.katiesoft.com you can execute a number of useful and stunning processes. For example, you could drag and drop a link from a page to open in another window. Or you could add an application to a katiesoft page, ensure that a page in your browser is refreshed at pre-specified intervals or capture data in a quick and efficient manner. If you love power tools, add this to your arsenal.

Sometimes, just reading what a photographer or designer has to say about his work is good fun. On the Net, a designer's site can be quite an exciting place to explore. One such place is Ozone at www.ozones.com where the designer explains the "toy value" of sites as well as the fact that having fun is important. Guaranteed to hook you.

Now that we can look beyond Y2K, how about Y3K? Explore and share provoking ideas about the future with others in an inventive manner at www.y3k.com, a site which suggests the real social threat won't be in the fact that everyone is connected but that no one's able to disconnect. The site is simple yet clever in the way it works. Perhaps its biggest attraction is that it believes -- to quote Laurie Anderson -- technology to be the camp fire around which we narrate our stories.

Arun Katiyar is Chief Operating Officer of India Today Group Online. His e-mail address is akatiyar@india-today.com