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Brendan Munnelly's Internet Column appears every Thursday in Ireland's Evening Herald.   All URLs were live at publication date. Text is as submitted for publication.		15 September 1998 - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Golden Spider Awards The finalists have been announced for the PostGEM Golden Spider Irish Internet Awards, which are intended to celebrate the designers, programmers and business people who have helped to put Ireland on the fast lane of the Information Superhighway. The winners will be announced at a £70 per head dinner in the RDS on 25 September next. Of the nominated Web sites, three of my favourites are Simon Stewart's Hill-Walking site (Best Personal Site category), Paul Clerkin's Archeire site (Best Community or Special Interest Site category) and Brian Fallon's Dublin Accommodation Finder (Young Person's Award). No prizes, however, for the Golden Spider Award's own site at http://www.spiderawards.com. One link on the home page leads to something called "Information". Whatever could possibly lie behind the other links? Larry's the Perl king If you read only one online article this week, make it the transcript of the Larry Wall's address to the second annual Perl Conference, held recently in California. Best known as the creator of the Perl programming language, Wall delivered a thought-provoking and entertaining mix of philosophy and technology that touched on the relationship between free and commercial software, chaos, complexity, and human symbology. You can link to Wall's illustrated presentation from http://www.perl.com. New NI site Published by a group of independent journalists, The Northern Ireland Site at http://www.thenisite.com aims to be an online resource for the traveller, the academic, people in business, and people who are just interested in the province. Features include searchable restaurant, hotel, golf course and car hire guides, advice on sailing and walking holidays, and live video feeds from traffic cameras located on four of Belfast's busiest streets. A fair cop Thirty-three police officers in Australia's Northern Territory officers have reprimanded for using their Web and e-mail facilities to view and send pornographic material, it was revealed last week. "We explained to them that the system nearly crashed (from the level of mis-use)", Max Hill of the Police Association told ABC Online at http://www.abc.com.au. Hill continued: "I think that their time should have been redirected to policing activities." Limerick scores on the Net Limerick Online at http://www.limerickonline.com is nicely designed portal Web site from BCS Computers that pulls together dozens of information sources on the Mid West capital and its environs. Visitors will find what's on listings, sports news, jobs offered, tourist information, and links to the local online press. In the last category is an extraordinary story from the Limerick Leader which reports on how 60-year-old song written by a Bruree schoolboy as he played truant from Rockhill National School has been given pride of place on a new, top-selling CD.