Skiers of the world unite. Well, skiers, snowboarders, and resort lounge lizards of the world unite. This site aims to be a one-stop shopping guide to winter resorts in the U.S. It does an outstanding job. RSN starts with an ultra-clean front page laced with smooth-stylie graphics (nice icons) and a comprehensive main menu -- what's new, video clips, a resort locator, events schedules for the resorts you locate, contests to play, links to follow, and a series of spy cams to show you what's really happening in these vacation havens. It's packed.
RSN maintains a huge college students section, and although it has some cheesy bits and bytes about what is "Rad" and "Raging" (like the silly little dictionary of "cool" words), it also has some very useful information. The extreme sports page is great, with a comprehensive list of trails and runs for the dangerously inclined (the mountain biking in Maui interview is fabulous). There's a special contest area "for college students only." The site also helps you organize group trips and guides you through an events calendar for the various resorts (it's actually the same as the events calendar linked from the top page, but in different, perhaps hipper colors). Most impressive, and important for the budget-minded, the site points you to where to ski for free. RSN lists resorts that are looking for seasonal instructors and helpers in exchange for free passes.
The video clip collection, though not huge, has a number of high-quality action videos of mountain biking, wind surfing, and general extreme sport goop. You can also view the scenery from one of 14 resort cams (Vail, Tahoe, Park City, Wildcat, and others), with an updated image every few hours.
RSN sports a Usenet-like, threaded chat section for surfers to converse about the various hot spots and not-spots, trade skiing tips, and ramble about whatever else they want to, which may or may not relate to resort stuff. It's a fairly active list, so definitely check it out.
All the pages load quickly, look great (the creators have mastered their HTML and Netscape extensions), and have lots of information. It's a great site.-SK
A
Cleveland Indians Home Page
The Cleveland Indians Page offers much the same as the Seattle Mariners page, by way of content. You'll find player info, game schedules, online merchandise sales, and team stats. The difference is that the Indians page has great graphics, putting it an inch above most other baseball-related sites. The icons are tasteful, the pages load quickly, and it's overall just better. And, they promise to add video soon to jazz up the site with a little multimedia foo foo. Of course, if you aren't an Indian fans, none of this matters anyway.-SK
A
Da Truth
Here you'll find extreme sports and extreme layout, with trendy graphics and angular construction. Lines and boxes, and it sure does look cool. Unfortunately, the content is a bit thin and some of the links dead end at error stops. Sure, the site warns that some areas are still under construction, but why make a link live if there's nowhere for it to go? Oh well, despite its annoyance factor, the site has some good stuff for inline skaters, skateboarders, and snow boarders -- especially nice are the global listings of parks and resorts.-SK
B-
DansWORLD Skateboarding
It may not be slickest-looking skateboard page, and it may not even have the most current content, but nonetheless, I really like this site. It's got FAQ files, gossip, tons of pictures, a few videos, links, and a super-cool photo archive of net surfers who also also skate. The Mike Blabac photos of the San Francisco skate scene are pretty tasty, too.-SK
B+
GT BICYCLES
I ride GT because its bikes are well-constructed and look cool. And, guess what? Its Web site follows suit with a super-clean layout, mucho information (e.g., an online catalog of all its bikes and accessories), and valuable dealer locator searching capabilities. You can type in a zip code, select what you're looking for (parts, frames, tech shops), and you'll get an accurate list with addresses and phone numbers. GT also provides updated news, events, and bike related links. Very cool.-SK
A
Influx Magazine Issues
Influx is a skate zine. Skater this and skater that, but mostly, it's just photos. Perhaps I shouldn't say "just" photos. The pictures are RAD, but if you were looking for juicy gossip, tips, or reviews, it's pretty thin. It does have some video clips, though, and as image-intense as they are, the pages load fairly quickly. Some of the highlighted images are of skate icons --Tony Hawk, Mike Judd, and Tim Brauch.-SK
B
NBC Golf Tour
At first glance, it's a little busy, but after probing through the golf.com site, I was left to assume it's cluttered only because it has more golf information than any sane server could handle. Egads, it's packed. Search the entire world for gold courses, via a clickable image map, get gold tips from pro Jeff Maggart, stay in tune with upcoming events and NBC broadcasts (yes, NBC is a very visible sponsor), or visit local clubs and merchandise vendors. No corners are skipped: There's contact information for all of these places. It's perfect for serious golfers.-SK
A+
Seattle Mariners Home Plate
It's official. (Toyota advertisement and all)! Learn everything there is to learn about the Seattle Mariners. Did you know that Infielder Rich Amaral has a degree in business from UCLA and weighs 175 lbs.? Yes, that's the nitty gritty type stuff you'll have access to. Of course, the site has archived team schedules, tells you how to contact your favorite Mariner, and contains "merchandise" to buy (secure only for Netscape users). The layout is O.K., nothing too special, but die-hard fans will probably like it just fine.-SK
B+
The Sports Network
O.K., sports fans, if you're looking for an alternative to ESPNet (http://espnet.sportszone.com/), this ain't a bad jaunt. It's consistently updated with news, events, and scores, and offers both professional and collegiate coverage. It's got a nice layout, good enough graphics (though few huge glossy action photos), and a pretty dang fine searching mechanism. And they don't skip corners. There's information on just about every team, archived locally on the server. (Yup, mucho original content here.) It's a winner. (Nice cliche, eh?)-SK
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