Student fashion design contest

THE BBC has joined forces with Bafta and some of the country's leading fashion designers to open a website design competition for students.

Coinciding with London Fashion Week, the contest challenges young people to build a web site for one of two fashion houses, Red or Dead - headed by Blackburn-bred Wayne Hemingway - and Michiko Koshino.

Winners will see their work included in official websites, and the overall winner will get a work placement at a multimedia development firm.

Building blocks for the designs have been provided in the shape of pictures taken on the catwalk at this year's London Fashion Week.

Nick Ware, programme executive at BBC Knowledge, said: "The channel has set out to nurture new talent - on screen, behind the camera and online.

"This competition gives students around the country a chance to gain real-life practical experience of the fastest growing media, which currently faces a real skills shortage."

Full details and a competition entry form are available at the BBC Knowledge website (http://www.bbc.co.uk/knowledge).

Search Party

THE fantastically accurate search engine Google (http://www.google.com) has officially gone live, after months of testing.

With the launch appeared a new feature, GoogleScout, that hunts down pages related to a particular search result.

Google has earned widespread respect among the internet community since it first emerged about a year ago, offering much better search results than many of its more established competitors.

Google's unique search system calculates the popularity of web pages according to how many other pages link to them.

It has emerged as one of the fastest and most accurate ways of searching for information on the web, and got even more respect for its minimalist page design.

Neither of these two key attractions have disappeared with the "official" opening of the site - indeed, many users will hardly notice any difference.

But behind the scenes, the Californian founders are actively recruiting staff and have attracted considerable investment for future expansion.

It is thought that rather than attempting to become a huge web portal and make money through banner advertising, Google will sell its search technology to established websites.

On its own, Google handles about 65 searches per second or 3.5 million per day.

Orthodox technology for global audience

THERE is no shortage of religious material on the net, and now the Chief Rabbi, Professor Jonathan Sacks, has opened his own site.

The site (http://www.chiefrabbi.org) is intended to communicate Jewish ideas and principles to a global audience.

Future plans include live webcasts of speeches and lectures and there is already an online ordering facility for buying copies of the Chief Rabbi's books.

Other site features include archived speeches in text, audio and video formats, a media information centre and downloadable copies of the Chief Rabbi's newsletter, Renewal.

A spokesman said: "The Chief Rabbi has signalled his desire to initiate a global Jewish conversation on what it means to be a Jew today.

"His website will be the starting block for this conversation."

Net gain for surfer in Oz

PRAISE for our own website, This is Lancashire, arrived by e-mail this week from Australia.

East Lancashire expat Peter Gregory came across the site while surfing the web.

Peter, who was born in Accrington and served an apprenticeship at Nayler the Printer in Church, has been away from Accrington for 26 years - and in Australia for nearly 17 of those.

He said: "It is good to be able to keep up with the news about the town. Keep it up."

You can find all the essential East Lancashire information at http://www.thisislancashire.co.uk

Clicking through

FRIENDS Matt Burke and Mark Preece have found one way of avoiding price hikes for flights to millennium celebrations in India.

They're travelling to Goa by a 1972 VW Camper Van.

The friends plan to leave England on October 10 and will travel through France, Italy, Greece, Turkey, Iran and Pakistan along the way.

They have set up a website which they promise to update regularly with pictures and tales from the road.

See how they get on at http://website.lineone.net/mpburke

A NEW charity Christmas card site has been launched (already?!) where two-thirds of the money will go to charitable causes.

http://www.charitycards.co.uk

DANCE music site Crunch has launched a radio station for its site. Winamp, or similar player is needed to listen.

http://www.crunch.co.uk

THE official site for Netaid, the online fundraising event planned for next month, has finally been launched.

http://www.netaid.org

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.