Shelley Howells: Everyone needs a little online ephemera

COMMENT

Timesaving internet is what I'm after these days. I've stopped "working" from home for a while, and rejoined the heady world of full-time employment, commute and all. Internet usage has dropped by half already - at least some of the mindless web trawling is gone.

Who's got the time when half the day is spent in the car, half the income is spent on childcare and half the brain is suffering the effects of severe Dr Phil withdrawal?

Of course, there's always time to pop in and admire the exhibits at the Museum of Burnt Food. "Forever Shrimp Kebab" is a dark, blistering piece.

Other works include the classic "Thrice-Baked Potato" and the scorching "Why Sure, You Can Bake Quiche in the Microwave".

Surely no schedule is too full for the odd click around genius such as Leadholder - at last, an online celebration of the clutch pencil. And what a very stylish site it is too (you've got to love drafting pencil terms such as "chuck", "collet", "ferrule", "knurling"). And who knew that there was a thriving online pencil community?

Do check out the Pencil Pages, the world's most comprehensive online resource for pencil-related information.

Let's not forget the Pencil Sharpener Club, as entertaining for the Dutchified English as for the thousands of pencil sharpener images.

For those with burning questions or opinions on the subject (and it can happen at any time), bookmark Yahoo's drawing instruments discussion forum.

It doesn't take doesn't take a moment to test your left brain/right brain set-up with the Color Test or challenge a virtual know-it-all with a few rounds of Guess the TV Show or Movie Name, a bit of online mind-reading.

You think of a title, then answer a few questions and, time after time, it comes up with the right show. Obviously, I haven't completely forsaken the wacky web.

Still, from now on, it'll be mostly the likes of online banking and supermarket sites for me. Shame there's so little fun to be had from them.

Why on Earth do they make their sites so dull? Butchery chicken legs at $3.99 is a thrill, and $500 towards lawyers' fees is pretty stimulating, but I'm sure we'd visit more with a few enticements. A bit of fun.

How about a bit of banking humour? A chat room for the supermarket shoppers? A "what's your chicken nugget personality?" test, or a romping "predict the size of the next interest-rate jump" quiz? Anything?

What To Rent, with its combination of entertainment, efficiency and practicality does the job. They modestly bill themselves as "The World Leader in Movie Rental Suggestion Technology" (there's competition?).

This means that they will suggest movie titles for you to rent, potentially saving hours of aimless wandering through the aisles of the DVD rental store.

They base their selection on "your personality and the type of film experience you are looking for".

It's all down to the LaBarrie theory, which states "A movie viewer emotionally interacts with a film in the same manner that they interact with other human beings".

First, a quick login - they don't want any info other than a username, yay for them - then you do a 20-question personality profile. A broad range of questions, from "When you lay down at night to go to sleep, it typically takes you this number of minutes to fall asleep", to "Which do you think is better - reading books or watching TV?" and "When it comes to adult content, language, and violence in movies, how do you feel?" You do this test only once.

After that, when you log in, you just answer a couple of quick mood assessment questions and presto! they come up with a flick.

Tragically, the first one they suggested for me, having established I wanted one that fell within my normal taste, and one that was all about "Eating popcorn and watching a fun movie that probably won't impact you deeply", was Animal House.

Now all we need is WhatToWear.com, a site that will suggest snappy, low-maintenance office wear, based on personality and the scant, tatty contents of a work-from-home wardrobe (ie pyjamas).

* Email Shelley Howells