The Artcontext site from Andy C. Deck lets you draw ASCII pictures as part of chat discussions. . Related ASCII sites are Icontext , Ascii Art Web Pages , Vuk Cosic , Star Wars Asciimation , and Windowsninetyeight . [Matthew Mirapaul, NY Times, 30Sep99. David Dillard, DUC, net-hap.]

Portals, Inc. (Princeton, NJ) offers free news, link menus, and search facilities -- a "Subject Portal" -- for special interest groups, clubs, and organizations. You can also build a personal home page. . [, Xpress Press, 29Sep99. net-hap.]

List-News covers email list software, list hosting and archiving, advertising and opt-in marketing, content development, etc. or . [Brian Alt , NEW-LIST, 29Jul99.]

ListServe.com hosts email announcement and discussion lists. .

(ListServe and MajorDomo are two Unix text-based services. I'm opting for a free, Web-based list service called ONElist, with a better interface and back end than I could hope to implement for myself. It recently merged with eGroups, Inc., which has $42M in new funding for the support of online communities. eGroups currently serves 14M members in 280K groups with 48M messages per day, and is growing by 1M new memberships every 20 days. [MediaPeak. ListCity, 28Dec99.] Topica.com seems to be its chief rival in ad-supported email list delivery, and may have advantages for very large lists.)

Excite At Home Corp. has begun offering free dial-up Internet access, as a lead-in to its $40/month broadband service. [Washington Post, 07Jan00. NewsScan.] (AltaVista and Yahoo! also offer free Internet service, but without the high-speed alternative.)

Broadband Digital Group plans to offer free, ad-supported 1.5Mbps DSL access in the US, starting 01Apr00. . [TechWeb, 03Jan00. Edupage.] (Sign up now for implementation priority. They'll throw in a free DSL modem if you get 10 other people to register.)

To find out if there is DSL service in your area, see . It will list ISPs and estimated rates for your local phone exchange. [N"Gai Croal, Newsweek, 10Jan00, p. 12.]

If you have DSL, cable, or an "always on" Internet connection, try the free security-testing service at . [Lily Laws, 11Jan00.]

----- "It is not for man to rest in absolute contentment. He is born to hopes and aspirations as the sparks fly upwards, unless he has brutified his nature and quenched the spirit of immortality which is his portion." -- Southy. -----