Reviewed:
12th May 1997
By:
Clare Davies
Cynics tired of wasted Web-surfing hours might just take heart on visiting the Planet Science site. The site, run by the magazine 'New Scientist', is carefully structured and is full of real information and news. Having said this, perhaps in an effort to avoid scaring away non-scientist users, the site does emphasise features such as fairly sensationalist news stories, puzzles, humourous items and 'everyday science'.
This is not a site to recommend to an overworked microbiologist with a limited sense of humour, but the rest of us could well find ourselves quoting it in the pub. If the shallowness of the content starts to pall, there are extensive lists of links to many other science-related sites. Information professionals will find the site also includes interesting features about information aspects of the Internet.
New Scientist Planet Science Web site,
The site's contents are a selection from the magazine, clearly with the hope of persuading users to subscribe, but include the all-important jobs listing. Where whole features are included, the opportunity to use the Web's multimedia capabilities are disappointingly ignored, perhaps indicating the continuing print-based priorities of the publisher.
The site violates a few unwritten rules of Good Webbing: modification dates are not given, although a warning message asks you to empty your cache and reload frequently (an arguably irresponsible approach, with the Net's M25-style traffic buildup). Email to the site's creators is invited on the home page, but the link named as 'feedback' is, confusingly, a semi-humorous comment column rather than users' or readers' input.
In general the site is well-constructed, and can be viewed without image loading (although the home page carries the usual disclaimer about being designed for recent versions of Netscape or Explorer). Science is not exactly its coverage - more news 'about' science and its associated events - so as with much on the Web, cynics could write it off as mere 'metadata'. But 'New Scientist' itself is a magazine, not a serious journal, and the Web site can't be condemned for reflecting this.
Reviewed by: Clare Davies,
International Institute for Electronic
Library Research.
Email:
cdavies@dmu.ac.uk
Material on this page is copyright Ariadne/original authors. This article last updated/links checked on 11-Jul-1997