World Wide Web

Internet hackers infiltrated the Justice Department's home page Saturday, altering the official Web site to include swastikas, obscene pictures and lots of criticism of the Communications Decency Act. The official World Wide Web site--http://www.usdoj.gov--was changed to read "United States Department of Injustice" next to a red, black and white flag bearing a swastika.

Imagine a place where people fear crime and obsess on airline shuttle schedules, a land of bonsai clubs and super-fast roller coasters, where churches and commercial sex flourish side by side. Don't recognize it? Welcome to the San Fernando Valley, as viewed from the Internet. It's the view you would get of the Virtual Valley if you lived in Finland, say, or Zaire or Iowa, and surfing the Internet's World Wide Web was your only source of information about the place.

The war between Microsoft Corp. and Netscape Communications Corp. for control over Internet software escalated this week as attorneys for the two companies exchanged sharply worded letters and Netscape sought to draw the Justice Department into the fray. A letter dated July 30 from Microsoft senior corporate attorney Robert W.

Dude, you're going to be stoked by the latest wave in surfing. Cameras, hidden in dunes or mounted atop beachfront structures from Malibu to Oceanside, are snapping pictures of surf conditions and beaming the images to the Internet. Click: Monster break at Malibu. Click: Three to four and glassy at Huntington Pier. Click: Major tubes at Trestles. The latest ripple on the Internet is giving the phrase "surfing the Net" a whole new meaning. And it's turning beach bums into techno-wizards.

After my recent column about women's Web sites, several readers e-mailed to suggest overlooked favorites, others messaged "amen" and a couple wrote in to state the obvious, which is that I am a numskull. Anyway, here are some of the places I've tried since then. In all honesty, I'm too old for any of these sites, most of which struck me as far too cool (except Women's Web, which is far too earnest).

PacBell Launches Web-Based Directory: Pacific Bell took its first step in providing content for the ballooning World Wide Web portion of the Internet with At Hand, a cyberspace version of the Yellow Pages directory. The site, accessible at http://www.athand.com, allows visitors to search 1.2 million merchant listings clustered into topic categories.

Imagine a billboard of community events free of thumbtacks and tattered index cards, a sleek, stylish resource available 24 hours a day all over the world. In fact, it already exists. Known as the Event Center, it's the creation of a Chatsworth computer consultant, a cyberspace place where community groups can advertise their activities on the World Wide Web. The site is located at http://www.pacificnet.

Microsoft is making important headway in its effort to unseat Netscape as the Internet's dominant power, but the intensifying battle between the two companies is creating a major split in the Net and new headaches for Net developers who are being pressure to take sides. Netscape is responding to Microsoft's marketing barrage for the Internet Explorer World Wide Web browser with the formal release Monday of its newest browser, Netscape 3.0.

After decades of struggle for equality that has finally brought them some semblance of parity, female television journalists have been granted a truly unique form of recognition: The News Babe Page. The World Wide Web site features more than 300 color photos of what Playboy might call the Women of Television, complete with biographical details, favorite hobbies and, in this case, G-rated attire.

High-tech venture capital powerhouse Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers said Wednesday it has created a $100-million fund to invest in start-up firms developing businesses based on the hot new Java technology for the World Wide Web. Kleiner Perkins--which since its 1972 founding has created a web of companies similar to Japan's networks of closely affiliated businesses--named 10 major technology companies, including International Business Machines Corp., Compaq Computer Corp.