Remember the "net" is more than the World Wide Web and includes a growing number of telecommunications possibilities, including both virtual reality environments and plain old networking. And I've found newsgroups like this one and others have opened up an enormous number of possibilities of meeting people who will help. You have to develop new research techniques sometimes and a good place to start is with an article on networking on the net by Phil Agre available on his web site (http://communication.ucsd.edu/pagre/). Netscape is about to release version 2.0 and it includes improved mail and newsgroup functions and the capacity for plug-ins like JAVA and Shockwave for enhanced functionality. But it's only a start. Personally, I'm spending a great deal of time these days on things like Quicktime VR, Shockwave and RealAudio and even though they don't produce much worthwhile in the short run, in the long run they will and I will have had input into the kinds of tools I want (instead of Microsoft giving me what they want to sell me). ___________________________________________ ROBBIN MURPHY, creative director, artnetweb [log in to unmask] http://artnetweb.com/artnetweb/ 426 Broome Street, NYC 10013 212 925-1885