Websites

Kasparov Chess A new commercial venture from the world champion, this claims to be the ultimate chess portal, with an emphasis on helping young people improve their game - Kasparov took on 30 of them at once in a recent simultaneous marathon match to launch the site. A playing zone offers varying levels of difficulty and a choice of Grand Masters, while the KC University will explain the difference between Anti-Meran Variation and Semi-Slav.

Tate Gallery This site is being redesigned to coincide with the opening of Tate Britain and (in May) the new Tate Modern gallery. The revamp is less austere, with bright colours and animation, and a new search facility for the artists currently online, from Edwin Austin Abbey (1852-1911) to Aleksander Zyw (1905-95). The new thematic displays at the Millbank site are linked to the 8,000-image database, and the whole catalogue should be available by the end of next year.

Encarta Centenarians "A thousand years of memories" are posted already at this UK-sourced addition to Microsoft's encyclopaedia site, comprising the surprisingly sharp reminiscence of 10 centenarians. Many more witness accounts are in the pipeline. Download Albert "Smiler" Marshall talking about the Somme, Mary Ann Waterton on her Lambeth childhood, or Lesley Tinnams on hearing the news of the Titanic. The anecdotes are reinforced with links to Encarta-supplied context.

Richard Rogers Partnership This Flash-intensive affair opens with a dark, buckling horizon. From the tectonic trauma, up pops the Millennium Dome, followed by the Lloyds building and other RRP creations. Rogers' output since the Sixties is profiled in detail and the underlying philosophy explained. The sophisticated site is meant to "enliven cyberspace" in the same way the buildings do urban space, though there's no visible plumbing as such.

Journal of Mundane Behavior Some readers thought it another joke at the expense of academia, but this is a real journal dedicated to the unremarkable - to the art of being "a reveller in banality", as one contributor defines himself. Lots to ponder here, from the way the Japanese behave in lifts to the cultural significance of shaving. Behind it all, the unassailable truth that "the ordinary is where people live", but also that anything called a "mundane manifesto" can't help but be fascinating despite itself. The same problem afflicts The Dull Mens Club (http://www.dullmen.com) with its tractor-spotting videos for those who find train-spotting a thrill too far, and its survey of airport luggage carousels. Featured event this month: watching sap drip.

Stand After the success of their "adopt an MP" scheme, this group campaigning for safe electronic commerce legislation is now making it easy to protest the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Bill - the one that proposes to give the Home Secretary, Jack Straw, the power to monitor your e-mail and demand decoding of encrypted data, on pain of imprisonment. Stand's site provides "the UK's first parliamentary Web-to-fax gateway", which will personally re-transmit a polite message of complaint to your MP's fax machine. In its first week of operation, Stand says it sent more than 1,000 faxes.

Guide to Animal Sounds on the Net MPs are oddly absent from this otherwise comprehensive, webwide sonic menagerie. Available animal noises range from farmyard regulars to altogether more curious creatures: cotingas, manakins, woodcreepers, currawongs, bulbuls, tanagers and drongos - and that's just the birds. Hear the real call of the Loon and shiver, and then, like good Bringing Up Baby completists, proceed to the leopard in Prague's Zoological Gardens.

Send your interesting, quirky or, at a pinch, cool, site recommendations to websites@ dircon.co.uk