Other hot sites

It's empowering, in a way, for people to be able to use the Web to satisfy their need for self-expression by showing off snapshots of their cats, expounding on their views of the universe, or sharing photos of themselves in the throes of orgasm.

And because the Web is a cheap publishing medium available around the world, 24/7, it has quickly established itself as the perfect repository for specialized information on subjects ranging from Finland to physics, from Dylan to dwarfism.

But if you're looking for quality, general-interest content, you're going to come up with a mighty short list of sites. The following is a guide to the best of the webzines on serious political, social, and cultural topics.

HotWired

>Perhaps the first high-profile, commercial webzine (it debuted in late 1994), HotWired continues to reinvent itself with new looks and new passions. Despite close ties with its parent magazine, Wired, what you'll find here is entirely original. HotWired is both wide and deep. My favorite stops include Netizen, a political 'zine-within-a-'zine; "Net Surf," a daily guide to the best (and weirdest) of the Web; "Flux," a bitchy gossip column by Ned Brainard, who's devoted his life to making America Online honcho (and "former soap salesman") Steve Case miserable; and "Muckraker," by technolibertarian Brock Meeks.

Downsides include an oversupply of attitude (made worse by the sophomoric use of the F-word) and a slow, complex new interface that not only divides your screen into frames, but actually opens a second browser window filled with cryptic navigation tools.

Location: http://www.hotwired.com.

Urban Desires

Very hip, with a fast, elegant interface, Urban Desires fancies itself as "an interactive magazine of metropolitan passions." Here you'll find very short fiction, book reviews, photography, art, music, food, travel, movies, and talk. You'll also find "The Rant," an aptly titled exercise in scatology, formatted like a ransom note, that includes a sound clip of someone with a Texas twang yelling, "Shut the fuck up, asswipe!"

Urban Desires is also a favorite destination of cybernauts who want a little sex but who don't necessarily want to look at the photos in, say, alt.binaries.pictures.erotica.bestiality. The current issue features "Untrue to You: 12 Conversations About Cheating," Q&As with the likes of Nicholson Baker, Katie Roiphe, and Xaviera "The Happy Hooker" Hollander.

Location: http://desires.com.

Salon

Started last fall by refugees from Hearst's almost-dead San Francisco Examiner, this is far more like a traditional magazine than most web-zines. With a fast, simple interface, Salon emphasizes good writing by big names, such as social critics Camille Paglia and Todd Gitlin. The orientation is toward arts and culture, although there's a fair amount of news and media criticism, too, especially in the two-month-old "Daily Clicks" section. (Full disclosure: I write an every-other-week column for Salon's "Media Circus.")

What's missing, with rare exceptions, is real journalism: feature stories heavy on research and interviews. Taken one at a time, the essays on Salon are quite good; together, their self-indulgence grates. A recent piece by Jerusalem Report's Washington correspondent Jonathan Broder on Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's American supporters was a welcome departure. Perhaps Slate will push Salon to do more.

Location: http://www.salon1999.com.

Suck

With its non sequitur slogan of "a fish, a barrel, and a smoking gun," Suck has built a reputation as one of the hippest reads on the Net. Suck's m.o. is to publish a daily rant trashing some corner of cyberspace that it considers insufficiently cool. But its promise of "provocation, mordant deconstruction, and buzz-saw journalism" is often more than it can live up to.

Suck's original, samizdat-style appeal -- text-only screeds presented in the ugly Courier typeface -- has been supplanted by a slow-loading, slick new design. Moreover, the Sucksters sold out to HotWired only a few months after going on-line. Worth a look, but Suck's 15 minutes may be just about up.

Location: http://www.suck.com.

Word

At one time Word's interface was spare and elegant. Now it's maddening, with frames, distracting animation, confusing screen switches that leave you unsure of where you are and where you should go, and a painfully slow interface.

Which is too bad, because there's some good stuff here, such as "Can't Sleep," a photo essay by Cambridge's Karl Baden; an excerpt from David Foster Wallace's novel Infinite Jest, as well as the transcript of an on-line interview with him; a story by Devon Jackson on the coming collapse of Social Security; and a lengthy, quite moving first-person account of the malling of Auschwitz by David Lazarus.

Location:http://www.word.com.

Feed

In contrast to Word, you'll find a clean layout, an easy-to-navigate interface, and attractive, retro art. The current opening illustration is a hoot: two men in suits and a nude woman, with laptops and cell phones, relaxing by the riverside, while another woman in a white robe bends over the water. Huh?

Editor-in-chief Steven Johnson has the right idea, writing that "the current frenzy to re-invent journalism from scratch looks like a dangerous mix of unchecked hubris and cultural amnesia." Execution, though, is uneven. A piece titled "Sympathy for the Unabomber?", by technology critic Mark Slouka, is excellent; but an essay by Mary Granfield, "The Molester Within," is a remarkably shallow look at a complex topic, as she accepts almost without question the notion that most accused perpetrators are innocent. An effort to annotate Bill Gates's wretched The Road from Here should be funny; instead, it's turgid and pedantic.

Location: http://www.feedmag.co.

Firefly

A hot, mostly rock-and-roll site based in Cambridge, Firefly uses interactive technology developed at the MIT Media Lab to create something that feels more like a community than a webzine. It features music, movies, reviews (read them, or write your own), sound clips, talk, on-line live performances, and record reviews from Rolling Stone.

Firefly requires users to register, but that allows for the possibility of personalized content. This is on the cutting edge of new media, and is as different from Slate and Salon as Ray Gun is from the Partisan Review.

Location: http://www.firefly.com.

Intellectual Capital

A shockingly high-quality new webzine published by former Delaware governor Pierre "Call Me Pete" DuPont, an ultraconservative Republican who once ran for president. Intellectual Capital features commentaries by conservatives such as Russia expert Richard Pipes and Washington Post columnist James Glassman, and policy debates between right-wingers such as Family Research Council president Gary Bauer and centrists such as National Urban League president Hugh Price.

With a simple, easy interface, DuPont has come up with a winner. Let's hope some enterprising lefty takes note, so we can be treated to debates between Noam Chomsky and Molly Ivins.

Location: http://www.intellectual capital.com.

Spiv and Stim

Long on sensibility, short on information. Spiv manages to bring massive attitude to bear on China's oppression of Tibet. The hip factor seems more forced at Stim, which may have something to do with the identity of its owner, the extremely unhip Prodigy on-line service. Both are worth a look, but caveat surfer.

Locations: http://www.spiv.com and http://www.stim.com.

-- Dan Kennedy