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Best Net Missives

Don Webb's "Letters to the Fringe"

Like the revealing Essaies of Montaigne, Don Webb, local web diarist and shameless self-promoter, packs his site with candid and personal "letters." At one letter per week, 147 weeks of entries are currrently online; each generally has news about his latest published works alongside personal anecdotes about his wife Rosemary and friends, conversations with his mother. Webb thoughtfully includes Internet links to publishers, occultists, zines, and other writers. Often there are poems or short stories at the bottom of the letters. It is not until Letter #16 that he began titling them ("Hero of the Paperless Office" or "Warlord of Helium" or "How are noses and feet alike?"). Webb spills his guts for us to smell. After a few whiffs, you'll find yourself craving his weekly wonders; as Don puts it, "I've gotten fairly good at the ordinary world -- it's the extraordinary one that presents problems."

http://www.fringeware.com/tazmedia/dwebb

Best Office Space & Commute

Solar Cart

Inspired by a discarded baby jogger, local artist and alternative technologist David Santos sculpted an entirely green and mobile office by lashing together the baby jogger, solar panel, laptop, video cam, umbrella, and lawn chair. The pastoral Webmaster has trekked over 1,000 miles of Austin, pushing the cart and seeking his muse in the details of the urban and natural landscape that can only be detected at 4mph.

http://www.polycosmos.org/silicbar/solcart.htm

Best Unsung High Tech She-ro

Carlean Johnson

photograph by John Carrico

Hey, have you seen Austin rent prices lately? Yeah? So what do you do if you make $5.50 an hour? What if you're feeling the lasso of "welfare reform" tightening around your neck, trying to move out of public housing, or you just got out of prison? What if you have three kids? What if your job skills haven't been considered marketable since the Carter Administration? Go see Carlean Johnson at the City of Austin's DeWitty Employment & Training Center on Rosewood. Carlean makes sure that residents of Austin have access to technology training and job opportunities. She makes the rest of Austin take notice that folks East want a piece of the high-tech action. Carlean's life work is helping people find jobs and training. She's been through the mill herself and found her way out. She's a guide, a mentor, and she's devoted to the people of East Austin. And for all that and more, we think Carlean Johnson is "all that."

DeWitty Center, 2209 Rosewood #205, 472-5718

Best Place to Buy a Used Computer

Goodwill Industry's Computer Works

The computers here may not be top of the line anymore, but they're still very functional. Where else can you find a working Classic Macintosh for less than $100? Most IBM-compatible computers are less than $500 and come with a 60-day warranty. Check out their "Relics of the Past," a virtual museum of computing history, and their many shelves of parts, software, and books. If you are not in the market to buy a used system, consider donating your discards and participate in this most high-tech of recycling programs.

8701-A Research, 835-8839

Best Online Gals Club

Disgruntled Housewife

All us chicks need a little advice now and then, a bit of harmless camaraderie when it comes to dating, shopping, fashion, and bitching -- you know, those things that separate the women from, well ... the men. Billed as a "Guide to Modern Living and Intersex Relationships, this site's many features make you feel at home in a henhouse. Heartbroken? "Ask Queenie" gives out advice "for the lovelorn, the sloppy and the dim" (current social counsel recommends befriending ex's exes, starting up a recipe club, and instruction on how not to be so boring). Visitors can add their favorite no 'count to the "Dick List," or if he's still currying favor, fix him a recipe from the "meals men like" section. A recent "Welcome to My Neurosis" essay by webmistress and design diva Miss Lohr reveals the scary symptoms of the Costanza Complex, and it'll be hard not to divulge all after you read her "Secret Confessions." Men, log on and learn something, and if you become too disgruntled to continue, there's a fast link to the hate mail section.

http://www.disgruntledhousewife.com

Best Recruitment Campaign

PC Order

Okay, so your new Porsche Boxster may not exactly fit into your bohemian lifestyle and it may not exactly impress them down at the recycling center, but oh, the thrill of an engine that purrs and then roars, the luxury of a convertible top on a cloudless blue day, the terrible decadence of leather under your fanny and elbows and fingertips! How did this rags to riches dream happen? Thank the good people at PC Order, that upstart young technology firm whose recruitment campaign this past summer offered you big $$ to hand over the résumé of some computer genius in your acquaintence. You didn't even need to know squat about computers, only someone else who does. And so you sent in her résumé and got yourself entered into a lottery ... and now she's landed a fat new job, and you ... well, you got lucky and now you're cruising in a Boxster, aren't you? So tell us, who's the real genius here?

5000 Plaza on the Lake, #100, 684-1100

Best Secret Clubhouse

Club Pants

In the time of instant connectivity, you don't have to wait for some hard-to-find flyer to find you when you want the really big party action. Dial up some kindred souls who dwell underground in far away Tarrytown. Down a dank flight of stairs lies a gin-u-wine Fifties era bomb shelter (complete with original operating instructions) decorated with merry strings of tiny pants. The pants were there when the current residents took possession, so they took advantage of a decorating opportunity. The club was born when 1,500 surplus Jell-O shots needed a reason to be consumed. No cover, free beer, packs of rabid flesh-eating squirrels and possum, capability to burn anything, and a money-back guarantee. The rest will be dimly remembered history. Hey, Holy 8 Ball - where's your e-list?

Subscribe: clubpants@hotmail.com

Best Place to Buy Video Games

Gamefellas

In addition to stocking new video game titles for the Sony Playstation, Nintendo 64, and Sega Saturn, Gamefellas has a broad selection of used games for those systems, as well as titles for older machines, including those that have long since bitten the dust. Looking for an NES cartridge or a Game Gear TV tuner? Gamefellas is your best bet. Want a Sega Master System 3-D game or an antique Atari 2600 cartridge? This is the place to start. Gamefellas also stocks a variety of gaming accessories, magazines, and hint books. In addition, the stores have several game systems set up and for a minimal fee will allow players who can't get enough gaming at home to test a potential purchase.

Northcross Mall, Barton Creek Mall, Lakeline Mall

Best Sign of Austin Online

City of Austin Internet Services Office

We've always been impressed with Austin Free-Net, our city's cooperative effort involving educational, civic, and corporate entities to provide community computing resources and online access for the benefit of all citizens. So when we heard that Executive Director Sue Beckwith was being "kicked upstairs," we were ready to raise hell, until we found out that "upstairs" meant that the city was creating an Internet Services Office. Beckwith would still be involved in Free-Net, but now also be the main point person responsible for everything that goes out on the Internet from the City of Austin. Meanwhile, Ana Sisnett, who has worked assisting people with online and computer access at the DeWitty Center, is now the ED at Austin Free-Net. WTG!

P.O. Box 1088, 78767, 499-2415

Best Web Site for Business Research

Hoover's Online

Gary Hoover, the man who founded Bookstop and TravelFest, has taken his superstore theme online. The eight-year-old Austin-based Web site offers a well-stocked database of information on companies in every industry -- from adult entertainment to TV and radio. Billed as "the ultimate source for company information," the Web site provides company profiles written in pithy prose by Hoover's in-house staff writers, as well as current business news, stock reports, and a list of top employers. Most features on the site (such as company profiles) are free, however, "membership" is required to access the site in greater depth.

1033 La Posada, #250, 374-4500; http://www.hoovers.com

Best Used Computer Salesman

Ken Gould of Mac Alliance

photograph by Bruce Dye

They used to say the difference between a car salesman and a computer salesman is that the car salesman knows when he's lying to you -- meaning that many people in high-tech sales are, um, a little unclear on the details of the product they hawk. This is not the case with Ken Gould. The guy knows his used Macintoshes, and has he got a deal for you. He sold Mike Judge's wife a complete system and provided tech support for Vanessa Redgrave when she was in town researching a script, so he's got the Superstar Seal of Approval as well as ours.

900 Old Koenig Ln., #134, 453-3830

Best Site Redesign

Ain't It Cool News

We are proud card-carrying members of the Harry J. Knowles sychophant club. This year, he's even more so the "Best Austinite to Shake Up Hollywood" with his glitzy new redesign of the Ain't It Cool News Web site, a monstrous compendium of news, opinion, and hearsay about the film world, all rendered fiercely compelling by Knowles' unflagging passion about all things celluloid. All that information used to suffer a bit under the hard-to-navigate fledgling design, but the overhaul -- pretty, organized, more interactive, yet still infused with personality -- sucks you into Harry's world even more than before, your eyes glued to the screen for hours on end. In a world where so many Web sites get old and stale fast for lack of new ideas, creativity, wherewithall, whatever, Mr. Knowles could well add "Web Visionary" under "Film Juggernaut" to his list of accolades.

http://www.aint-it-cool-news.com

Best Way to Sell Widgets on the Web

WebZealots

Formed in 1996, WebZealots provides corporate customers with custom database solutions for Web integration. The majority of their sites are Internet replacements for legacy systems and they do it all: site hosting and development, domain registration, e-mail setup -- everything short of crawling through your customers' monitors and asking if they'd like fries with that (though they say they're working on it). You wanna move units, don'tcha? WebZealots can whip your company into a selling machine and make it look damn good doing so.

http://www.webzealots.com

Best Techno-Kids Business Idea

American Institute for Learning

Last spring an enterprising group of AIL multimedia students snagged a $1,450 grant from the Capital Area Tech-Prep Consortium as the startup money for their own Web page business. Their previous success with making videos, digital editing, and Web site design generated plenty of support documents from already satisfied customers. Browse the AIL Web site http://www.ail.org to check out student home pages and the Virtual Party, which includes work by the winning grant writers Mary Buonoamici, Kyle Herzog, Manuel Madril, Alberto Ramirez, and Jason Reynolds.

204 E. Fourth, 472-3395

Best Value-Added Customer Service

Boggy Creek Farm's E-mail Newsletter

Even if you never buy a single piece of produce from Boggy Creek, you'd enjoy the weekly e-letter, in which proprietors Larry Butler and Carol Ann Sayle (usually the latter) update friends and fans on the vicissitudes of farm life -- sexing chicks, fixing Big Red the farm truck, fending off raccoons, surviving the summer heat -- with humor worthy of Lewis Grizzard. Oh, and it tells you what's ripe 'n' ready, too. Good taste in every byte.

3414 Lyons; 926-4650; boggycrk@bga.com