Mousetrap - 120

Wikid World
Wikiscanner
As Wikipedia gets bigger, more and more people are looking up things on Wikipedia, unreliable as it can sometimes be. And more and more organisations and special interests find themselves being written about. Not always to their, er, delight. Companies like to be able to control what’s being said about them, put their own spin on things, with entire departments devoted to the task. Now, the thing is that Wikipedia doesn’t like people or organisations creating pages their own pages or editing them. The sheer size of it means that it isn’t exactly easy to monitor this. Well, this young geek’s site tracks and lists “interesting” wikipedia edits. I.e., edits that are made on pages about organisations by users with IP numbers that originate in that organisations network. In simpler words, edits possibly made by companies trying to massage their own listings. Ah, what a tangled web we weave... [Via Jugal Mody]

The Doctor is online
WebMD
Change of season affecting your health? Worried about the next potential global pandemic? Want a clearer explanation of jargon your doctor has laid on you? Go visit the WebMD. Loads of information here enough to keep even the most determined hypochondriac happily occupied for hours at a time. Treatments, info about drugs, sections for men, women, and children. Really everything you could want. Except, perhaps, something that will read a doctor’s prescription.

Pointed
Willard Wigan
This is an artist’s website. A rather unusual artist. He specialises in sculpture that could fit, quite literally, into the eye of a needle. You get to see extreme blowups of his creations, with objects like match-heads, and yes, that eye of a needle, for comparison. The site seems to be in a state of flux the last time I looked, with incomplete content, but there’s still enough there to feast your eyes on.

Girls just wanna have fun
Shiny Shiny & Techie Diva
So many people seem t think it’s the male of the human species that is gadget happy, getting all his jollies from technology. These two blogs turn that logic on its head. They’re all about the tech and gizmos that women love. Where else would you read about an Armani phone? Floral USB hubs? Designer laptop skins? I must warn you that one person of the female persuasion that I know didn’t think much of these sites; she says they perpetuate outdated gender images or some such. I may have misheard. I was too busy checking out the übercool stuff they cover.

Reader suggestions welcome, and will be acknowledged. Go to http://o3.indiatimes.com/mousetrap for past columns, and to comment, or mail inthemousetrap@indiatimes.com. The writer blogs at http://zigzackly.blogspot.com.

Published in the Times of India, Mumbai edition, 30th September, 2007.

Tags: The Times of India, Mousetrap