Stay Surf-Current on the Quake
For the past two days, conversation here has turned frequently to Kobe, Japan. The shaky ground on which we stand in San Francisco caused news of the Kobe earthquake to hit hard in HotWired's fourth-floor offices. But even those far from earthquake territory turned horrified eyes toward Japan this week, as news of overturned freeways and lingering fires made its way across the Pacific. Responding to the surge of interest, several Web sites began carrying updates on conditions in Kobe. Some have already shut down due to user overload, but the following are up and running. The Nando Times, published by the News & Observer Co., posts updated articles from Reuters over the course of the day. And the Kobe page on Time Inc.'s Pathfinder site offers daily dispatches from Time correspondents in Japan. For photographs of Kobe, the best working site right now is the Kobe City University of Foreign Studies, offering 13 JPEG images for download. As always, news, gossip, and stories about the Kobe quake can be exchanged the Usenet way. For scientific information, try sci.geo.earthquakes; for first-hand information from Japanese sources, look to soc.culture.japan; and for interesting, though perhaps less-informed discussion, hit alt.current-events.kobe-quake.

Surfing The Whitewater
Let's see, the Clintons formed the Whitewater real estate parternership with the McDougals; there were strange loans . . . something about a S&L . . . and where does the Rose Law Firm fit in? If piecing together the Whitewater scandal is enough to make you reach for Excedrin, then Dartmouth grad student Preston Crow may save your aching head. Using information borrowed primarily from major news sources, Crow compiled the Whitewater scandal page - offering one-stop shopping for inquiring minds. You can follow a time line of who did what and when, read up on the major players (both individual and corporate), browse the status of various probes and investigations, and head off on links to other sources, such as articles from the New Republic and papers from the White House itself. Crow takes a skeptical view toward the White House's official statements, without resorting to gratuitous swipes. His motivation for compiling the pages: he believes widely accessible information makes it harder for those in power to obscure their abuses. Regardless of your political bent, these pages are worth a look, if only for the example they set in enhancing, rather than just repurposing, content.

A Cancer Survivor's Lifeline
By Nancy Oster
It was a Thursday, less than 24 hours after my outpatient biopsy. I was seated on the edge of the examining table, facing my surgeon. He excused himself to make a phone call, and I glanced around the small examining room but saw nothing interesting to read. Looking down at my chest, I wondered how much of my breast remained under that bandage....

Make-Believe Investing
It's true that you can't serve God and Mammon, but Jon Orwant has done good work all the same by creating a site that lets you to play the market without selling your soul. Mammon allows you to manage a virtual portfolio of stocks and currency without endangering your material possessions or spiritual status: the $100,000 buy-in is as worthless as some traders on Black Monday, so the riches you acquire won't go to your head. Though Mammon is clearly a work-in-progress, it's already impressive. In addition to buying and selling stock or currency at real-world prices, the system allows you to short stocks and even create and invest in mutual funds (a Dow Jones Industrial Average index fund is in the works). A "realistic" portfolio, charging brokerage fees and paying interest on unspent cash, allows you to test various strategies for use in serious money-grubbing activities. Whether you use Mammon as a tool or as a game, it gives life to those dreary market updates. The "rank" and "top" commands let you see how well you're keeping up with the Joneses: Will it be "We're in the Money" or "Stormy Weather" for the HotWired surf team? Come join us on the trading floor and find out . . .

CD Shopping in the Buff After a long day of shuffling through the rat race, you like to relax to some tunes; who doesn't? But why walk all the way to the local record store to follow up that hot tip on rec.music.your.favorite.group.here just to find out that the CD you want is out of stock? No matter how battered your browser may be, you'll probably fare better at CD-NOW. This Web store boasts a wide variety of pop, jazz, and classical recordings on CD and cassette - and they're all yours with a credit card and the click of a button. True, you won't find obscure bands like Einstuerzende Neubauten or The Swirling Eddies here, but the selection is sometimes surprising: Charles Mingus and Yello fans alike will find much on which to spend their hard-earned bucks, and even relatively unknown artists like The Lost Dogs and The Seventy Sevens have a place here. Needless to say, more pedestrian tastes are sure to be satisfied. The search process is fairly flexible, though the classical section could be better organized. And given the descriptions and track listings that accompany most of the CDs, you may not miss the knowledgeable nerd behind the counter as much as you expected. The price is right, clothing is optional, and the best part is: no one will ever see you buying those Donny Osmond collections you've been craving.

Hello, Operator, Give Me Memphis, Tennessee
Announcing the world premiere of a much-anticipated Web service: an Area Code Finder . . . Huh? Say you miss a call from a friend who moved to Joe, Montana. She leaves you a message with her new number, but - Doh! - no area code. What do you do? Flip through the phone book? Good luck. Call the operator? How passe. Maximize your digital potential, and use the Area Decoder, a free service from Americom Long Distance. Plug in the city and state, and it spits out the area code (as well as Americom's per-minute rates to that city, of course). To its credit, Americom doesn't demand your name, number, and income bracket in exchange for the service, so next time you're strapped for a number, turn to the Web.

Stop Spamming Santa!
At times, the undiluted materialism of the holiday season can turn the stomach of the most ardent capitalist. Take a break from "Gimme, gimme, gimme!" Visit Santa at the North Pole, where four charitable causes have set up shop. Each time you hit one of the groups' pages, a corporate sponsor will donate 10 cents to that cause (Second Harvest Food Bank, Chesepeake Wildlife Heritage, Harlem Educational Activities Fund, and Plugged In). Newsflash: contrary to the advice in those 17 email messages you received, urging you to "do good" for the holidays, you can't tally up donation dollars by sending Santa email. A rumor, claiming that a corporate sponsor had promised to make a donation for each message received, proliferated on the Net this week, causing an overload for the poor elves. So stop spamming Santa. Visit his Web site instead.

HotWired Surf Team:
Justin Hall (justin@hotwired.com)
David Levinson (levinson@lfmail.lfc.edu)
Jonathan L. Neuenschwander (jonathan@ecn.purdue.edu)
Rob Szarka (mrnoise@econs.umass.edu)
Jim Ure (ure@lfmail.lfc.edu)