E! Online: It's way up there along with the top entertainment news Webzines, but E! Online also takes a "turn it all the way up and pull off the knobs" approach to salacious gossip from time to time, which should make most vultures hungering for low culture salivate with anticipation. Features with tantalising headers like 'The tackiest celebs of '99', 'Top 10 Books on Greed, Lust' and 'From hospital blues to black, plunging neckline...' are definitely not going to clue you in on the meaning of life, but they're guaranteed to reassure you that you wouldn't want to own the superstars' dirty linen. Of course, it's not all hype and sensation, so more serious-minded pop-culture buffs will find what they're looking for in the movie, TV and music sections that offer reviews and news updates. The writing style is engagingly upbeat and punny (occasionally funny, too) but showbiz cliches are pretty inescapable. Though it's info-packed, the home page loads up pretty fast, and most of the links can be accessed in full within seconds.

Home @ nationalgeographic.com: Now that the prices of US magazines have risen to ridiculous levels here, you should be thankful that many of you favourite monthly publications have their own Web sites offering the contents in full or partially. The online version of National Geographic magazine won't satisfy you the way the print version does, but it still has enough features on the natural beauty of Planet Earth to make you a regular visitor. Besides such links as 'Features', 'Maps', 'Photography', 'News', 'Kids', 'Educators', 'Forums', 'Live Events' and 'Exhibitions' on the left, the home page offers connections to the latest and most interesting stories. The last time we looked, there was a special on the Mars Lander and an interactive feature on Titanic finder Bob Ballard's quest for lost ships of World War II. Most of the stuff is easy to access, and the maps are particularly useful, especially if you're thinking of exploring out-of-the-way places. You don't have to wait around long for most of what you're interested in, and the site is updated regularly, so keep this permanently bookmarked.

Horoscope Zone: Yes, there're hundreds of sites offering horoscope readings but this one seems to do the neatest job of telling you how your day's going to turn out with its frill-less 'Horoscope of the Day' feature. The GIF graphics slow down loading of the page, but once your horoscope name and sign become clear, the forecast is just a click away. Most of the readings here seem plausible because they contain a bit of the positive and the negative, though an occasional 'horrorscope' (bad forecast) should make things even more credible. I can't vouch for the accuracy of the forecasts, but like they say, if you believe it, it might come true.

Literary Kicks: If you're fascinated by the work of such Beat gurus as Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac, Neal Cassady and William S. Burroughs, this should be your starting point on the Web. Writer Levi Asher has created a site that not only offers illuminating biographies of all the bigtime Beatniks, but also provides invaluable links to some of the best Beat resources on the Internet. The text-only home page is a swift loader, and Asher's introduction is excellent because it's conveniently cross-linked. Literary Kicks was launched in July 23, 1994, and like most 'unofficial' sites with no commercial affiliations, it's extremely surfer-friendly and charmingly individualistic. Among the totally rad features here is the author's interview with John Cassady, son of Beat legend Neal Cassady, and connections to pages on 'The Beat Generation', 'Beat Connections in Rock Music', 'Films about the Beats', 'Buddhism: The Beat Religion', the origin of the term 'Beat', 'Beat Bibliography' and 'Beat News'. Go get Beat mate!

Low Probability of Racoons: Anyone who thinks he's a poet has taken to the Web in a big way, which is why you end up with hundreds of duds everytime you search for poetry sites. But there are some 'real' poets publishing their work online, and Briton Peter Howard is one of them. Howard may not be a big name but his poetry, samples of which are available here with RealAudio sound files, has a lot going for it. And because he's poet who knows his stuff, Howard's links to the best poetry sites on the Web are hard to fault. The home page also has connections to 'Torriano visits the 'Global Café', a live poetry site, and 'The Cambridge Poetry Page', and such self-generated features as 'Poetry Engine', a Javascript program for generating random poems and 'Peter's Haiku Generator', a Javascript haiku and tanka generating program. And in KidsTuff, you can sample Howard's poetry for children, with illustrations by Andrea McKenzie.

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