Net.philes: September 2001
http://medstudents.medscape.com
The Medscape medical student section has improved dramatically in the past couple of years. It now features regular news stories taken from Reuters Health, the usual Medline search engine, a wide range of discussion boards so you can moan transatlantically about the trials and tribulations of medical school, and a series of Dispatch articles giving the American experience of medical schools around the world.
The Editor-in-Chief of Medscape is George Lundberg, who took on the site after a 17-year stint as the big cheese at JAMA, and consequently it contains a lot of good ideas, which are marred only by the tedious but necessary commercialism.
http://www.antivirus.com/vinfo/virusencyclo/
http://www.messagelabs.com/viruseye/
With yet another virus threatening to cause internet meltdown, you may find these two sites very handy. The antivirus.com encyclopaedia lists most known viruses, how to spot them, and how to combat them.
It also offers an online virus checker, Housecall, so you can ensure your PC has a clean bill of health without forking out for expensive software. The VirusEye, from the UK-based MessageLabs, is updated daily with the top ten most active viruses intercepted on the internet.
The latest is a program called SirCam, which not only self-propagates throughout your email address book but will also pluck a random file out of your hard drive’s My Documents folder and send it to all your friends. Nice.
http://www.wired.com/news/medtech/
The medical technology section of Wired News is updated daily, and you can guarantee that the latest and greatest advances in the medical digital age will be detailed here – no mean feat in the techno-savvy 21st century. Although USA-orientated – there’s a lot of information currently listed about the House of Representatives debate on stemcell cloning, for instance – the site still manages to give a global view of advancing technology. As well featuring great articles, the site’s archive is searchable and you can be emailed with a roundup of the day’s news.
http://www.juiced.co.uk
The Daily Telegraph is very much ahead of its broadsheet rivals when it comes to attracting student readers. Juiced.com is part of the Electronic Telegraph website, and accompanies the thrice-yearly paper of the same name that is given out at universities across the county.
The sites digests the most relevant stories and feature from its parent newspaper and publishes them weekly, along with added features such as snippets of wisdom from student publications across the country and, bizarrely, the Stick Figure Theatre of Death. Add to this a few impressive online competitions, and you have a winning formula. I still buy the Guardian, though.
http://www.recipeland.co.uk
Contrary to popular belief, the five major food groups in the student diet are not sugar, salt, fat, caffeine, and alcohol. Oh no. Apparently things that aren’t sold in McDonalds are included too.
Recipeland.co.uk lists 20000 step-by-step recipes designed to lift you out of baked bean hell. Remember, the warm lettuce in your Big Mac doesn’t strictly count as one of your five daily vegetable portions.
http://advancement.independent.co.uk/student_money/
Another academic year is about to begin, and most students have just about broken even after last year’s little luxuries (food, accommodation, etc) by working all summer. Some medical students, however, don’t have the luxury of free time and so fall deeper into the clutches of the bloodsuckers. At least with the help of the Independent you can be a little more choosy about the bloodsuckers you bank with. You can use their site to search for the best interest rates, loans, credit cards, even the best ISA around. There must be a pay-off for them somewhere in the deal, but hey. It beats traipsing up and down the high street, or laughing at the thought of paying an accountant.
http://www.webbyawards.com http://www.hotornot.com
Judged as the Oscars of the Internet, the Webby Awards are held every year and seek out the best from the digital quagmire. As well as being scrutinised by a panel of official judges, the nominees in each of the 30 categories were voted on by the public in the People’s Voice Awards.
One of the most popular websites proved to be hotornot.com, which now receives millions of hits a day. Conceived by two Californian students during one boozy evening, the site relies on people being brave—or stupid—enough to post their photos up so the site’s users can score them out of ten. Mind-numbingly superficial, yet strangely compelling.
studentBMJ 2001;09:305-356 September ISSN 0966-6494
