What is so striking about ABC Online is the wide range of interests and age groups that the site caters for. As well, the site provides both audio and video streaming. So you can listen to TripleJ or NewsRadio while you're browsing the Web. Or if you've missed Landline on TV, the whole show, or sections you choose, can be seen via streaming video.

The Playground at ABC Online caters for the younger ones - there are online games and ones you can download for them. These games are listed by age so you can more easily find what's suitable.

If you're a student needing to research a topic for that assignment due tomorrow, ABC Online should be the site you first visit. Current affairs, science, health, arts and culture, online learning and indigenous affairs all have wide-ranging content and links to other resources.

News and current affairs at ABC Online cover international, national and local bulletin items heard on radio or covered on ABC TV News. These news pages are updated as soon as major stories break and that can be fairly often in the morning. As well as the news bulletins, ABC News has supplementary writings on particular topics to give background information and add depth to the news items. Examples include the GST, the troubles in Fiji, and so on.

Local stories are sourced from ABC offices in the regional centres, such as Shepparton, Albury-Wodonga or Bendigo. But you can also view stories from other regions by simply choosing an area from the online map or entering a postcode. All the ABC Local Online sites have links to local radio, a local diary of events, and links to sites dealing with that particular region.

Current affairs online concentrates on supplementing the radio or TV programs. Each evening's PM is available online via streaming radio. Radio Australia is also streamed (Macca's Australia All Over takes over the channel on Sundays of course). Transcripts are provided for LateLine, the 7.30 Report and Four Corners so you can be up to date. There are archived stories, so, for example, you can go back to 1995 at the Four Corners site to see what was covered in earlier programs.

NewsRadio has been very successful in making use of streaming audio and has increased its audience beyond expectations. If you're the type of person who needs to be up to date with news stories, then having NewRadio online while you're browsing in the morning is probably just what you need.

This week's list of sites gives you all the addresses to reach the main areas of ABC Online if you want to go straight to a particular one. Naturally, these areas are accessible from the opening page of ABC Online. Choosing sport, for example, will take you to ABC Sport which in itself is almost another web site, catering for all branches of sport. So there's a lot of depth to what's available in each gateway, as the ABC likes to call these different areas.

Many readers will be interested to get the Gardening Australia Fact Sheets so we'll mention that first. Note that at present fact sheets only become available online about two weeks after the show goes to air.

Other sites listed include "Australians Online - Your Community, Your Say", information about discussion forums (these often occur after a program is aired to enable you to interact with those involved in a story), what's available through audio and video streaming, and where to contact ABC programs or local offices.

There have been more MP3 sites added this week. These sites centre around independent and unsigned musicians. Of particular interest is the independent bands and local talent site at www.iuma.com. This site has a super search facility whereby you can search for musicians by country. You'll be able to find Australian artists' work from here.

Sites listed this week have already been added to the webDotWiz Online music sites directory, so they'll be there for future reference. Using the new online search facility will make it easier as well when you come back to find these sites.

webDotWiz Online now enables you to help feed the world's hungry. Just "click-to-donate" by visiting TheHungerSite.com once a day when you go online. Thus far the HungerSite has been able to donate about 7700 tonnes of staple food as a result of about 65 million site visits.

A reminder to the younger generation to get their web pages written and learn some HTML as they do so by visiting MatMice or Lissa's HTML for Kids.

If you'd like to add features to your site, then webDotWiz Online has several you can sample: free Web-based email accounts, cartoon of the day, a discussion forum and, most importantly, an online site search facility. All these are free and they don't require much work to add them to your site. Colours can be changed and you can add your own graphics title so the search results page or cartoon page fits in with your site.