Simon Drake – Writer

Let’s hark back to the old web, Web version 0.253 to be correct, when the very few HTML literate people with a desire to communicate their findings on the new newfangled World Wide Web would post a Hot Sites page on their website, complete with a critique, before the days when critiques were an identifier of how super cool you were and in touch with all things digital when not fondling your over-branded and over-priced iPhones.

FaceChook just makes things too easy, and Twatter is like a 1000 imaginary voices injected in a microchip into your head.
In ye olden online days those Hot Sites pages gave inspiration and a sense of discovery, and as this was the mid-1990s, when TV reigned supreme and was unaware of it’s obesity, a link to a cool website opening a door to another realm of published reality really was an eye and brain opener.

These days, any grandma can mix and mash Web content and not have the slightest idea of the technology squirrelling away behind her flat screen. She can become a social media queen thanks to  stupid cooking tips posted on YouFools. Today the tools are just a click away, no need to get your frontal lobe bunched up in a knot trying to understand code, but in the days when things were difficult, a hyper link meant a lot more than a search engine optimisation trick.

Call me old fashioned, but I thought it’s time to re-release a list of Hot Sites….

Note: While compiling this list, I noticed a few sites are dead or dormant. I guess that just shows may age / obsoleteness…

Failblog.org – If you make it to this site, congratulations!

DisInfo.com – Formerly disinformation.com. ‘everything you know is wrong’ – Oh no, how long has this been going on!

Spacevidcast.com – It’s like Wayne’s World for Space 2.0

Adbusters – Carrying the torch of racy culture jamming.

WikiLeaks – Information wants to be free, but children, please weigh up the facts before putting on horrified faces at truth revealed .

TheRegister.co.uk – The Register, techy meets upbeat and *ha-ha funny*, whereas TechCrunch – Group-edited blog about technology start-ups, particularly the Web 2.0 sector’ I find a touch drier.

1913intel.com – Gosh, the world is slipping into an apocalyptic abyss! Get all the reasons why in a digestible website.

Exitmundi.nl - EXIT MUNDI, a collection of end of world scenarios

Chavtowns.co.uk – Chav towns are Britain’s worst places to live! Vital reading for Town Planners, Politicians, and people moving to Great Britain.

Suck.com – Pioneering satire, but now disregarded and DEAD.I guess Suck just stopped, well, sucking.

FuckedCompany.com – Yes, out of business! But at the height of the Dot Com Boom this site kept check on the reality – most of it was Doomed.

 
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Adam is the Captain of a Space Explorer, he is a neo-human specifically designed for space travel, and is sent to seed life on a planet orbiting one of earth’s closest stars, Sirius. After a 99 year voyage he returns to earth, crash lands in Berlin, and is the sole survivor.  Earth has changed and unexpectedly lurched backwards: He is imprisoned by the New Revolution, a hybrid Environmentalist and Communist Regime controlling much of Europe, who treat him, a survivor of the Golden Age of a century ago, as a cause of earth’s current Global Freezing.
Traumatised by space, isolation, death and the mutiny of his own crew, Adam has many secrets to hide, and the only person to confide in is Lothar, a fellow prisoner. Together they form a friendship that is tried through a daring escape, a Counter Revolution, passage to London as refugees, greed and the keeping of a simple pact: To look after your friend.