"The WWW Info-Rainforest"

First of all, here's the BBC's ISP-ish "BBC Networking Club" with its bulletin board Auntie, which "will enable you to participate in Conferences with programme makers, and access our growing archive Library of BBC related and educational information":

For me, it's reminiscent of the time when my flatmate appeared to excitedly relate that he'd heard from a chemist at an Italian university that "you can get pictures on the net now - it's called The Web".

Next, we have a complete list of the BBC's email addresses, rerendered from the original HTML. The heading reads: "This is an alphabetical list of all currently available BBC public e-mail addresses and it will be updated at regular intervals. If the address you are looking for is not here then it does not exist, so please do not contact the webweaver or postmaster asking for it! There is a separate list for those of you who have a browser that supports e-mail."

Especially pleasing is the alphabetical listing by email address, the total inconsistency of domain names and, for The Sky At Night, imagining how it might have been read out: "please do e-mail us at the dot sky dot at - that's at as in ay tee - dot night at - that's the at symbol this time - bee bee cee dot co dot yew kay. That e-mail address again...".

• [email protected] - For more information on BBC Monitoring's range of commercial and free services.
• [email protected] - the Radio 4 programme.
• [email protected]- to access the helpline. Available to BBC Networking Club members only.
• [email protected]- for automatic receipt of the Associate Membership application form to join Auntie if you already have Internet access.
• [email protected] - for comments and enquiries to BBC Education
• [email protected]- for contacting all BBC Wales sports producers.
• [email protected]- for sending e-mail to the producers of The Big Byte
• [email protected] - the address for the The Bruce Dickinson rock show (surprise!)
• [email protected]- for the See Hear production team.
• [email protected]- for general feedback on technical problems.
• [email protected]- for contacting the presentation team of Childrens Television.
• [email protected]- the address for all general BBC enquiries or comments.
• [email protected] - the address for a new series on Radio 4 called Diamonds, Rust and a Handful of Sand
• [email protected]- for BBC World Service Radio
• [email protected]@bbc.co.uk - For contacting the Independents Commissioning Office.
• [email protected]- for general enquiries about the BBC Networking Club
• [email protected] - for information about Open University programmes on the BBC.
• [email protected] - For contacting the people behind 1FM's Interactive night on 26th March.
• [email protected] - For information on BBC Aberdeen.
• [email protected]- for contacting BBC East.
• [email protected]- the address for listener correspondence with Mark Goodier.
• [email protected]- for mailing the New Ideas production team.
• [email protected]- for mailing the BBC Newsdesk at Radio Norfolk.
• [email protected] - the address for the World Service magazine.
• [email protected]- for getting in touch with Points Of View.
• [email protected]- for communicating with Pete Tong the essential Radio 1 DJ.
• [email protected] - Now you can contact Radio 1 FM direct
• [email protected] - the address for the makers of the Radio 1 technology programme
• [email protected]- the address for the programme makers of BBC 2's The Net.
• [email protected]- the super long-running popular astronomy show
• [email protected]- The Radio 4 current affairs show.
• [email protected]- Comments, additions and changes re: Top Gear new car data pages.
• [email protected] - Editorial: Reader's Letters, comments, suggestions etc.
• [email protected] - Ceefax Travel
• [email protected]- Yup, you guessed it!
• [email protected] - For access to the Radio 4 programme Womans Hour
• [email protected] - The 'Westminster Online' programme
• [email protected]- The address for contacting Youth and Entertainment Features

Next, Babbage. Who's Babbage?, you might ask - and the webweaver expects you to. "Who's Babbage? Well, he's the BBC's Internet mascot and guide. He's an orang-utan and he's named after Charles Babbage, the famous Victorian inventor of the Difference Engine. These pages are his attempt at hacking a path through the WWW info-rainforest for you. If you think something important is missing, please mail [email protected] or from here if your browser supports mail. You can also send off for an automatic information sheet from [email protected] or from here."

As well as Babbage's Mentor Scheme and The Internet Directory ("where you can check to see whether a certain organisation has got a public on-line presence"), Babbage offers a guide to searching the web - serving those for whom browsing by nested directories is simply not enough.

Finally, a programme item. From World Service Radio's New Ideas programme for week beginning February 20th 1995, we have an item on an invention from Japan with a lot of potential:

Flash forward almost thirteen years, and the future of the e-book is still uncertain.

We'll spare you for now the details of Top Gear's "Full Metal Racket audio tape", from which you can listen to extracts such as "1962 Ferrari GTO V12 with voice-over (Sun audio format 204k)".

Happy New Year!

Alan Connor is co-editor of the BBC Internet Blog.