Aim-to-inform sites will survive clearout

Five years ago, as far as I was concerned, Amazon was a river and jungle in South America, Yahoo was what I shouted when Shelbourne won a football match and the Internet and email seemed only to be used by academics and large corporations.

Now Amazon and Yahoo are large Internet corporations and everyone at least knows what email is, and it is no longer just used by monoliths and the very rich. The last year has seen enormous advances in how the Internet - in this writer's opinion the most liberating technology yet invented - has been used to enrich the life of parents, teachers, students and generally anyone remotely interested in learning something new.

The dot.bomb meltdown, which has seen many commercial sites disappear, has had little or no affect on noncommercial sites. If the purpose of an Internet presence is to disseminate information and provide a forum for like-minded people, the Nasdaq can go through the floor and it will not make any difference. That is not to suggest that these sites are in any way amateur; many, with no funding from anyone other than those responsible for the content, are far more professional than some which spent millions of capital investment dollars and pounds before crashing in flames.

There is nothing surer in the Internet world than that the dot.com clearout will continue. So many famous-name sites are so utterly useless, so user-unfriendly that you wonder how they ever got funded in the first place. Bust is inevitable for them. Conversely, sites which require little more than a desire to inform to make them viable will continue to grow in strength and number.

For me, there is no surer sign of the health and importance of the Internet as a force in Irish education than the response that this column has had from readers. Every week there are several, sometimes dozens, of responses from readers (most coming by e-mail, which tells its own story) with questions, comments and web tips.

I have responded to most questions and had a look at most sites, but inevitably there have been some omissions due to lack of space and time. Sorry if your question went unanswered or your site was not reviewed. Some of the web links have been from people that run them, but a lot have just been from people who have come across something interesting and want to share it with others.

The Internet allows so many different organisations to publish compared to traditional routes. There are no paper, printing and delivery costs. Everything is much more economical and accessible once you have the basic equipment. In some ways, with the Internet, the means of production truly have been handed to those doing the producing.

Most of the Irish sites that I enjoyed accessing are still going strong, such as the Irish National Teachers Organisation (www.into.ie) and Non-Consultant Hospital Doctors (www.nchds.com), but the excellent nua.ie (which is a wonderful advocate for all things Internet-related) has had a receiver appointed. All of its content is still there, for the moment at least, and we can only hope that this commercial site survives the technology purge. It certainly deserves to.

Not many people have yet figured out how to make money from the web, but we are all richer educationally because of its existence. My own favourite thing is being able to keep in touch with what is happening in other places I've lived on a daily basis by clicking into websites of papers from those cities.

E-mail, allowing me to "talk" to people almost anywhere in the world instantaneously, is another favourite of mine. Everyone who uses these new technologies will have their own particular aspects that they love.

Hopefully this page has eased some people's journey into using the Internet and helped them find interesting websites that deal with their areas of interest. I have very much enjoyed writing it. See you in September.