7 SCREENBLAST (screenblast.com) As a rule, entertainment companies frown on those who sample and modify their artists' work. Sony has been experimenting with just the opposite: Screenblast participants are given the tools to take a loop from a Smashing Pumpkins song, add their own music to it, lay it down as the soundtrack to video footage from Starship Troopers, and publish it on the Web. Suddenly, everyone's almost famous.
8 THE LORD OF THE RINGS AND MOULIN ROUGE WEBSITES (lordoftherings.net; clubmoulin rouge.com) Movie sites have finally become as compelling as DVDs, offering hours of behind-the-scenes footage (Rouge's "Dubsy's Dirt" deserves some kind of docu-comedy award) and encyclopedic making-of information (minute details, like the hair on Frodo's feet, are combed through on the Rings site). Studios, it seems, have finally realized that well-stocked film sites have a role to play after all.
9 MICROSOFT'S XBOX AND NINTENDO'S GAMECUBE A common misconception is that videogames try to be like movies. But while most films run about two hours, it takes some 20 hours to finish Xbox's alien shoot-'em-up Halo. And the insect-size fantasyland setting of Pikmin, one of GameCube's premiere titles, is too abstract to be a movie plot. These two consoles are a reminder that gaming is not only wholly different from any other art form but sometimes even better.
10 BIG BROTHER 2 LIVE FEED (cbs.com/big brother2) Last year, Big Brother's 24-hour webcam was in the "worst" category for its unmined potential. This year, the uninterrupted Web feed from the bare-all reality-TV compound surpassed everyone's expectations (anyone catch the unedited version of Justin holding a knife to Krista's throat?). And not just because CBS somehow sold more than 56,000 people on paying subscription fees ranging from $10 per month to $20 for the season.
THE WORST
1 THE DEATH OF NAPSTER The ultimate digital-music smorgasbord is kaput, and the recording industry has yet to deliver the promised replacement. For now, we have to make do with RealOne, a service that offers 100 tracks for download at $9.95 per month. But you can't burn those songs to a CD, and there's nothing by U2 because Universal isn't playing along. A legitimate successor to Napster will emerge--maybe in our lifetime.
2 THE HARRY POTTER WAR (potterwar.org.uk) Last December, overzealous Warner Bros. lawyers sent letters to 12-year-olds demanding they shutter their Potter fansites. But with gumption worthy of the Hogwarts House Cup, the kids fought the Voldemorts and cursed Warner with an egg-on-its-face spell.
3 INSIDE.COM'S RUIN Inside.com was, for a while, the media world's most important daily. The staff broke big stories like that of the much-hyped gadget called IT (which we now know is a space-age scooter). But after cofounder Kurt Andersen proclaimed that raising millions in 2000 was as easy as "getting laid in 1969," the parent company ran out of money.
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