Drudge Report
You used to know where you were with news. You'd switch on the TV or open a paper and there would be the news. Although you'd understand the bias in news selection, depending on who was delivering it to you, some news values, like fact checking, copyright and distribution were sacrosanct. Not any more. Meet Matt! Matt Drudge is to many hacks a pest who peddles in gossip and innuendo, yet it was his Report that broke the Lewinsky scandal and forced the American networks to review their core news values. Not bad for an unemployed twenty-something with a simple net connection and a typewriter.

 The Onion
If Drudge put the wind up news media, then the Onion has ripped it to shreds. A razor-sharp weekly net publication in tabloid US paper form, its mix of pseudo-science, inane features and biting satire on news values truly makes it America's finest news source. Sample headlines: "Animal Rights Activists Release 71,000 Cows Into Wild" and "Man In Chair Pauses To Consider Reclining Options".

 Alternative Press Centre
Another non-mainstream web news outfit, although this time without the humour of those above, is the Alternative Press Centre. With thousands of articles collated from obscure publications such as the Bulletin of Concerned Asian Scholars, this site is certainly different from the usual news feeds.

 NewsUnlimited
The Guardian's news site offers world reports, in-depth documentaries and round the clock breaking news. You can also see the full content of the Guardian and the Observer.

 CNN
One of the best US news sources, usually first to react, as in the Starr Report case. Its excellent financial site and other services tie in well with its TV programming.

 BBC
Given its massive news resources, it's little surprise that the BBC's news site is outstanding. Quick to react to breaking news, it offers research and background material for all major news and current events. Not to be confused with the BBC's homepage which is cluttered with TV-based coverage.

 ITN
Another extensive news archive but this one has a difference: video archives.

 PA
This is what fills the net. News feeds have been in use for decades, but the immediacy of the net has seen articles copied and disseminated with lightning speed. Indeed, many people feel that the overall value of news has fallen, such has been the scale of the spread of news feeds. There is also the online version of Chinese whispers whereby news stories are slightly altered at every new site so as to become far removed from their source. So check the source here.

 NewsNow
A collection of news feeds, this one is a must for every news junky and newsfeed addict.

 OneWorld
For charity, development and little reported international news, OneWorld has it covered. Taking news from obscure foreign sources, it gives a humanitarian view of world development events.

.Football: Football Unlimited
The Guardian's brand new football site escapes from the usual trap of repeated soccer news feeds by bringing in the fans. Containing the Football Unlimited Network, where fans can control parts of the site about their favourite teams; Statland, a comprehensive statistics service; and quiz and chat areas, this site is the best football community site bar none.

 International Football: YEXT

List of links to American, British, German, and national soccer teams

 Football: UK Football Pages
An excellent starting point if you want to find web pages on any UK side from Premiership to Unibond leagues.

 Cricket: Cricket Unlimited
The Guardian's new cricket site has daily columns from Jonathan Agnew and players' diary pieces that you won't see in the dead-tree media.

 Cricket: Cricinfo
This site is, indeed, the home of cricket on the internet. Run by a collective of cricket fans in the UK, Australia and the Indian subcontinent, Cricinfo has more information than is healthy about all aspects of cricket, and its recent deal to show live video of test matches will make it de rigueur for cricket obsessives without satellite TV.

 Rugby: Scrum.com
All the fixtures, interviews and match reports from the domestic game plus extra coverage of the upcoming Rugby World Cup coming to these shores in October.

 Betting: Bet Online
Sick of wading through fag ends and crumpled betting slips just to stick a few quid on the gee-gees? Then just point and click. You'll need to open a regular account, but at least you won't have to put up with hard-luck stories and outrageous odds. All in all, a more civilised way to lose your money betting on racing, football, cricket and even NFL.

 Surfing: Surfstation
Sick of having your holiday ruined by wannabe-hip surfing accountants? The introduction: "Mother Earth, she feeds you she clothes you and she entertains you. Have you said thank you in some way today?" means this is for you.

 Running: Run London
One hundred runs spread over Greater London, each with printable maps and advice, for beginners and seasoned runners. It's not that cold out there. You know you can do it.

The Internet Movie Database 
Many websites claim to be the real McCoy, offering not just listings but a "whole database" of information. The Internet Movie Database is the full monty. It has over 2.5 million information entries on over 170,000 films, regular film news and studio briefings. A must see for cineastes.

 FilmUnlimited 
Fresh from its stunning debut covering the London Film Festival last November, the Guardian's film site offers complete coverage of all British films, listings and reviews for the whole of the UK. There is extensive content that you won't see in print, such as the regular "hush-hush" column. And if you want to know what others thought of a film or to air your opinion, you'll soon be able to chat in the online foyer. A video-mood matcher, nationwide listings, a critics matrix and integration with the Internet Movie Database will soon follow.

 Cinescape 
The web home of the popular science fiction and action adventure film magazine, with previews of hundreds of forthcoming movies, television series and books.

 Dark Horizons 
Choose the path of destruction! So reads the introduction to Garth Franklin's site which covers gossip, rumours, trailers and posters for the film industry all over the world. 60,000 film junkies can't be wrong.

 Hollywood Online
For once, the US home of politics - Washington DC - shows an understanding of the West Coast community. The Washington Post's film site includes video and audio celebrity interviews and a fine video guide.

 Mr Showbiz 
The Post's big rival ABC has a complete entertainment site including TV and games, but the film section includes a whopping 30,000 strong movie review database.

 Empire Online
The UK's premier film mag has a site worth seeing. It's practical too, with reviews of the week's releases and where they're showing. Plus games, a trivia quiz, top 10 lists, and reader reviews.

 Popcorn
With Carlton's extensive film interests - from posters to production companies - it's little surprise that Popcorn, its recently unveiled film site, is an epic. Lazier film fans will appreciate the cinema finder which tells you how far from your home a film is showing.

 Coming Attractions
Given the power of the studios and big media players, it's a pleasant surprise to see small independent sites building an audience. This Canadian site tells you what stage of development upcoming films have reached, from script stage to "in the can". You can review films by genres and read the latest gossip from insiders in the film game.

 British Actors And Actresses
We've all had this experience: you think of a British actor and, given the state of the film industry, you realise you haven't seen him or her on screen for a few years now. Then someone says, "Is he/she still alive?" and you have to admit you don't know. So find out here.

The Spinner 
Work is hell but at least there's a soundtrack. If you need an excuse to get a sound card and speakers for your computer, then here it is. Over 100 music channels streaming music to your desktop in real time, the Spinner has sections on urban, folk, oldies and classical music plus the usual chart fodder. You'll need a Real Audio plug-in for your browser, but you can get that free by following a link from the site.

 The Dance Music Resources Page 
Juno Records has created this shrine for dance anoraks. A complete listing of UK dance releases and imports, it also offers a popular weekly email, a searchable back catalogue and the usual e-commerce service.

 Underground Custom CDs 
Cductive is not just another CD ordering site. With over 150 record labels supplying content, Cductive lets you listen to tracks and then compile your own playlist. It can then cut a CD with your own personal playlist which you can order online. More fun than home taping and completely legit.

 Timecast 
If you need to find a list of TV and radio stations offering streaming media - either audio or video files - then this is the place. Over 1,200 audio selections and over 100 video feeds.

 Channel 4
An excellent addition to the TV station, C4's site has off-screen, film and archive sections that embellish its role as a non-mainstream media company. And in case you want to catch up with what's on, the site also has TV listings for the next seven days.

 Andrew Wiseman's TV Pages 
Yearn for the old days of TV? Confused by digital TV? Want to hear Zippy from Rainbow swear? Here's the place. Andrew Wiseman's paean to TV is one of the most amusing and informative personal sites online. The TV themes section, where you can watch all those old intros, including Yorkshire TV and Thames programmes, is particularly funny, and you can download those old public information films that saw small children being taught how to boil a kettle by a screeching cat called Charlie.

 Discovery Channel 
The galaxy's first and only daily science television magazine, part of which includes a roundup of new technological and scientific advances made in just the last week! Unbeatable.

 Yahoo Games
Yahoo is one of the leading directory and search sites online, and as such commands an enormous loyal community. And now they are playing games ranging from bridge to blackjack. Deeply addictive, so watch out for those phone bills if you're playing from home.

 Ministry of Sound 
You've been to the club, seen the video, read the magazine and heard the CD. Now visit the site replete with albums, merchandise, competitions and giveaways. At least you can get in without queueing for two hours. 

Multi-player Online Gaming 
The web is great for games and at this site you can find gaming communities and learn how to play in real time across the net.

Microsoft Expedia
You've seen those ads for Microsoft that say: Where do you want to go today? Well it seems Uncle Bill has found another way to add to his burgeoning fortune by answering the question for us. If your answer is on holiday - and, let's face it, who really enjoys British weather in January? - then you need to go to Expedia. A long-established US travel service, its recently opened UK counterpart offers hotels, plane tickets, car rental and package deals, all bookable from your browser. There's a section for business travellers and a nifty map service: just enter a place name and back comes a map.

 Bargain Holidays
For a quick break, the best place is Bargain Holidays which has 70,000 late-availability flights and holidays on offer, plus loads of travellers tips and tricks for popular European destinations.

 LeisureHunt
Wherever you are going in the UK, you may want to find out some information: whether there is a hotel, golf course or park nearby, for instance. LeisureHunt will tell you.

 Internet Holiday Rentals
If you don't want to buy a package holiday, then book a flight and go to Internet Holiday Rentals to book a villa or apartment. Here you'll find over 1,500 private homes to rent, plus ski, golf and B&B vacancies as well.

 The UK Travel Guide and Interactive Map of the UK and Ireland
Staying closer to home, the UK Travel Guide is a good starting place to find links and details about breaks in the UK - and the section for foreign visitors is particularly interesting. Did you know our glorious Queen is the descendent of both King Egbert of Wessex and MacAlpine of Scotland? Maps and photographs complete the picture.

 Skiing
If you want to get back on the piste after Christmas, then slope off to 1ski.com. From the people who brought you bargain holidays, 1ski.com contains flight offers - including the top 10 deals - snow reports, ski news, a resort finder, plus that all-important holiday insurance.

 Currency Converter
Wherever you go abroad this year there are two sites you should check. The first is the Currency Converter to find out just how overvalued sterling really is…

 Government Passport Pages
…and when you've turned off the gas and checked your tickets, log on to the Government's passport pages to make sure you can get past Terminal One.

 Railtrack
Letting the train take the strain is not something that many Virgin passengers would know about lately, but if you are planning a break by rail then the excellent Railtrack site can help you make sense of the unholy mess that is the balkanised British train network.

 Paris Street Map
If it's Eurostar you're travelling on, make sure you peek at this street map of Paris. With photos covering nearly all of Paris, you can arrange your shopping route before you arrive.

Amazon
The pin-up boy of e-commerce, Amazon is the web's biggest bookstore with 1.5 million titles in its portfolio. It offers sizeable reductions over high-street booksellers and you can now order CDs, videos and assorted gifts from its big sister site in the States. The best thing about Amazon is that you can read reviews penned by other Amazon users before you buy, and even leave your own thoughts on the site.

 Last Minute
If you're in any way hassled or disorganised, or just plain lazy, here's the solution. A combination of a bargain basement sale and an online auction, Last Minute offers holidays, gifts, tickets and much more at knockdown prices if you are prepared to buy immediately.

 Quixell
Another online auction with a far-from-cryptic name. Quixell ("quick sell") is now Europe's largest auction site and is particularly useful for knockdown electrical goods and computers. Recent successful bids include £52 for a rechargeable, personal CD player.

 Sovietski Collection
It is simple to sell online, hence the increasing number of popular commerce sites. Occasionally though, you come across someone who sells stuff that you rarely see in the high street. Sovietski sells all manner of Soviet-related goods, from World War II posters to replica Fabergé egg pendants.

 CDnow
The net's number one music store, it does what it says on the front of the site. Well, not quite. It may not be "CDs now" exactly, but it is certainly "CDs in a few days after ordering at substantially lower prices than your local record store". Which is just a little less catchy.

 Interactive Music and Video Store (IMVS)
This UK store has grown so fast that it is one of the first e-commerce outfits to be a success on the financial markets. Videos, CDs, T-shirts and much else on offer here.

 The Internet Bookshop
WH Smiths' own bookshop now offers 1.4 million titles to choose from.

 Ticketmaster
Book tickets for all manner of events in the UK, from exhibitions to concerts. You can use the search tool to find events in your locale; and there are also Canadian, Australian and American sister sites if you want to liven up your holiday. It is not the prettiest site on the net, but it beats holding on the phone for ages just to find that all the tickets are already sold.

 Sainsbury's
Those goodly grocers don't yet cover the whole of the UK with their online ordering option, but you can find out if they will deliver to your house by simply entering your postcode. If they do, then you just fill your online basket with goods, choose home delivery or collection, and your account is debited accordingly.

 Tesco
More of the same but with added news and links sections, and some recipes thrown in. Plus there's the chance to open your own TescoNet internet account if you want to take your loyalty card pledge to the extreme.

Classic Gaming
Education, education, education may be the Government mantra for kids and the net, but for the bigger kids online its more a case of games, games and more games. The best place to start, especially for the more mature kids with a web connection, is the Classic Gaming pages. Even if you are more familiar with Galaxian and Asteroids than Quake, you'll have nothing to fear here, especially because you'll find out more about the games from this site than you could ever know when you were spending your lunch money down the arcade.

 Dave's Classics
A real hardcore gamer's site with news of the latest technology in hardware and consoles, and some software demos.

 Pass The Pigs
If you've ever had the chance to see adults arguing about two silver pigs lying on the table, then you've been lucky enough to see a game of Pass The Pigs. Although it looks simple, this is one of the most addictive games you can play against a computer and it will even insult you when you lose.

 Yucky
Kids everywhere know that there are some things that are just Yucky. Homework, kisses from elderly relatives and the opposite sex usually fall into this category. And so does the workings of the human body. Want to show them something totally gross? Then start with a graphic display of their intestines.

 Insecta
If it's not humans then it's animals that the little dears will want to play with. In this case, there's nowhere better than Insecta for the inner workings of the insect world - includes Bug of the Month.

 Anagram Genius Server
Whatever your kids' names are, or those of their teachers' more to the point, you can run them through the Anagram Genius Server. I heed gut, Huge edit. However you like to read The Guide, its name can take many forms. And you can search the archive for the best anagrams: under Hollywood you'll find, for example, Robert De Niro becomes "Error on bidet", while Sharon Stone boasts "Not on her ass".

 CIA for kids
For more interesting wordplay, they could pop into the CIA's site for kids. With headlines such as "What is intelligence?" you should be concerned. When you get answers like: "This question is not easy to answer and, depending on who you ask, you may get different answers," then it's time to panic.

 Godzilla
There's no shortage of retro film sites. You've seen the film and read the book, now play the game at Godzilla. Its G-database has everything you need to know about the big green one.

 Star Wars
The Godzilla site is bettered only by this one, the ultimate in sci-fi sites. As well as loads of previews and background info, this site has pictures of Ewan McGregor playing with his light saber. It's a must for all film fans.

 Cosmic Yoyo
Another kids' favourite, now coming around again, is the yo-yo. This site is unashamedly commercial, but if you've ever wanted a cosmic yo-yo, now's your chance.

Find A Grave
The web is not short of those who appear to be less than a full shilling. One such man is Jim Tipton. He has photographed over 1,000 graves of the famous and infamous. Even more scarily, you can now buy 'Find A Grave' T-shirts from the site.

 Supermodels
"Forget geeky nerds - let Supermodels explain Cattle Insemination." What follows that introduction is similarly alarming: Liz Hurley and cattle insemination, erogenous gum massage and phone condoms. The phos4 site (so named because it "brings news" to the phosphor inside your monitor) is "just slightly ahead of the truth".

 French Fries Around The World
Proof that chips are different the world over.

 The Surrey Stick Theatre Of Death
Is it art? Is it serious? We don't know, but it's very amusing.

 Name That Candy Bar
Think you can name a chocolate bar by sight? Even if it's a cross-section view? This site has images of loads of them. Just one question: why bother?

 Scan Your Cat
1. Take a household feline. 2. Place aforementioned moggy on a scanner. 3. Voila! One idiotically funny and morally questionable website.

 Name Your Baby
From Xeney to Xylia, you can pick from a bizarre list of names at the New Baby Name Index. Those two are girls' names, by the way.

 Driveways Of The Rich And Famous
Public access TV in the USA has its fair share of eccentric programmes. Here's one translated to the web. Picture after picture of incredibly dull driveways that happen to belong to Hollywood stars. As its creator says: "Perched precisely and marvellously at that point where cyberwonk fandom, responsible journalism, and pop-culture Dadaism all meet."

 The Schwa Corporation
The Schwa Corporation has grown into a vast network of interrelated entities that is "responsible for over 37.15 per cent of the new ideas being generated in the world today," it claims. And most of them come from space aliens, it would seem.

 The Official Darwin Awards
The Darwin Awards are handed out for those who remove themselves from the gene pool in the most spectacular fashion. So popular have these become that there are now several so-called award-winners - such as the man who attached a jet engine to his car and flew into a canyon wall - that regularly appear all over the web and in tabloid papers. Unfortunately, these are urban myths. Here, though, you can check out real award-winners (such as the lawyer demonstrating the safety of windows in a downtown Toronto skyscraper who crashed through a pane with his shoulder and plunged 24 floors to his death).

 Toasters
Toasters. That's all. Just toasters. But why?

JobsUnlimited
The Guardian's epic effort to bring you details of every job up for grabs in the UK nears completion with JobsUnlimited. Search the database of all the jobs which appear in the paper, use our career planner, chat in our graduate and charity forums and even look for recruitment consultancies. All you have to do is register - it's free to use. Go on spoil yourself, hand in your notice and get a new job.

 Monsterboard
US-based site with more than 50,000 jobs from all over the world to search from. You can even build your own CV and send it to the site. Just make sure your boss doesn't have the address.

 Topjobs
Specialist UK jobs and an up-and-down selection of international vacancies. Particularly good if you're looking for a job in the booming Polish market.

 Personal Finance
FT Quicken
The FT and personal software outfit, Quicken, share this personal finance site that includes that most elusive of services: independent financial advice.

 Investment
Motley Fool
If you want some real laughs, go to the Motley Fool. Its policy: The Fool exists to inform, educate, and amuse the individual investor; to prove to you that the best person to manage your money is YOU. The Motley Fool has a very personal line. When Clinton and Blair launch attacks on Saddam, the Fool is quick to ask the question every investor is asking: How does this affect the rest of us and our holdings?

Investment
The Interactive Investor
Another investment site, this time backed by one of those finance magazines that you know you ought to read but never get around to it.

 Stocks and Shares
Electronic Share Information
The internet has done what Sid, Mrs Thatcher and Norman Lamont couldn't: make individual share ownership seem attractive. The Electronic Share Information pages cover all sorts of investments in an easy-to-understand way.

 Screen Trade
Insurance. It may not be fun, but you know you should get yourself covered. Screentrade brings several top policies for car, home and travel insurance together and lets you pick the one for you. Your individual quote is held on the system for 30 days - just long enough to have spent the money on something more exciting. Definitely one to do in work time.

 Co-operative Bank
Most UK banks and building societies now offer some sort of online banking. The great advantage of this is that instead of sending a letter to your bank complaining about their charges, you can complain by email. The Co-op offers the best of all in our opinion, but do you really want to see how much you spent this Christmas?

 Bill Gates Personal Wealth Clock
You don't envy him. He's a humourless nerd with no style and the US authorities always on his tail. Look, really, you wouldn't want to be him. It's just that he has a tiny bit more money than you. You and the GDP of the smallest 40 nations in the world that is.