Your New Home Page June 19, 1996January 30, 2017 CONSUMERWORLD! Just click here and you’re at a wonderfully simple, well-organized jumping-off point to just about everything. Eleven hundred websites, linking to thousands more. I have made this my new “Home Page,” for when AT&T Worldnet first logs me on to the Internet, because from here I can get so many places so easily. Want to buy some ballpoint pens? Click SHOP TIL YOU DROP, as I just did, then select Office Max (the Staples site is there, too, but currently “under construction”) . . . I found exactly the brand I wanted. UPS delivered them a few days later. Want to list your house for sale, or take a look at others’ listings? You’ll find a link to the For Sale By Owner site in the SHOP TIL YOU DROP section, also. So far, there aren’t many listings. But heck, Century 21 is still four years off! While I was writing this I remembered a novel someone urged me to buy. Corelli something-or-other. Don’t know the author or publisher or title. A few clicks, Corelli’s Mandolin! A few more clicks and a credit card and I’ll have it next week (or overnight if I want to pay extra). Want to select a CD? Buy a car? Browse the L.L. Bean or Sharper Image or Computer Express or International Male catalogs? Brookstone? FAO Schwartz? North Carolina Furniture? Tupperware? It’s all here. And that’s just SHOP TIL YOU DROP! The CONSUMER AGENCIES button opens a gateway to everything from the +Better Business Bureau to the Environmental Protection Agency to your own state’s consumer protection agency to the U.S. Postal Service . . . but organized in a very friendly, not-overwhelming way. The CONSUMER RESOURCES button takes you to a zillion interesting things . . . which take you to a zillion more. For example, one of the many CONSUMER RESOURCES “directories” is the Advertising directory from the University of Texas. Click that and you get an index of dozens of topics, from +Actors and Models to Outdoor Signs (click to find a company that will make or display one for you) to Consumer Psychology to Tobacco Advertising to dozens of others. And this is just one tiny piece of the CONSUMER RESOURCES button of CONSUMERWORLD. The COMPANY CONNECTION takes you to an alphabetical list from American Airlines and Burpee (“answers all your gardening questions”) on through Walgreens, Weight Watchers and Whirlpool. Some sites, needless to say, are more exciting or useful than others. But what a handy way to shoot to whichever one you want. And that still leaves three or four other buttons to explore — TRAVEL AND LEISURE, MONEY AND CREDIT, BARGAINS, INTERNET WONDERS (including, from New Zealand, the world’s first automatic wedding speech writer). Really, the thing is misnamed. It’s not CONSUMERWORLD. It’s: THE WHOLE WORLD. And my new home page.