"Looking for Sites (in all the wrong places)" The most common requests I get here at 'Cowboys In Cyberspace' are 'where can I find so and so's Web site' and 'I know the information I want is out there, but I just can't find it. Help!' As the World Wide Web gets even Wider, it can be daunting to find what you are looking for, but here are a few tips to help you along. The first one is, 'guess'. No, I don't mean guess what the first tip is, I mean guess the address of the Web site! Suppose you are looking for Gina Jeffrey's site. Go to the address line at the top of your browser and type www.ginajeffreys.com.au and press the ENTER key and see what happens. What do you know, there it is! Have a look around; check out the sample of her amazing new video for 'Angel'; download some wallpaper for your computer desktop (I'm predicting that will be a very popular pastime) and check Gina's tour dates. Next, suppose we're looking for Beccy Cole's home on the Web. This time the first guess doesn't pay off and we're staring at a blank page. Here is my second hint. Just because an artist is local, it doesn't automatically mean that their Web site address will end with .au which is the Internet country code for Australia. The address (or to use the technical name URL, short for Uniform or Universal Resource Locator!) has more to do with where the name was registered, or sometimes the type of business to which it relates. Examples of this include .org for organisations, and .asn for associations. Back to the problem at hand - finding Beccy (pictured here collecting Golden Guitars with Sara Storer). Let's ignore the geographical aspect and just type www.beccycole.com into the address line at the top of your browser and press the ENTER key. Success! Other variations of this technique include trying .net instead of .com and sometimes leaving out the www from the address. Another common problem is that you know the address of an exact page that you are looking for and you type the full address in, only to get a 'page not found' error message. Sometimes this means that the page has been moved, even though the rest of the site is still there. Click into the address line and, starting at the end of the address, use your backspace key to delete the letters until you reach a forward slash. For example, if you type www.shownet.com.au/nosuchpage.html you will get an error message. If you remove the /nosuchpage.html from the equation, and then press ENTER again, you just might get to see part of the site that will help you find what you were really looking for. Let's now say you're looking for something a little more complex than a single artists' Web site. Charley Pride has just been to Australia and you've heard that his latest album includes some new technological properties and you want to find out more about it. We know that his new album is a tribute to Jim Reeves. Let's go to a Search Engine and see what we can uncover. These days, Google.com is one of the most popular. Into the search box, type enough words to narrow down your hunt. If you just put Charley Pride you will get so many search results, it would take forever to find what you really want. If you enter Charley Pride Jim Reeves that will only show you a list of pages that contain both of those names. From there we can see a link that takes us to the full story: - 'Fahrenheit Entertainment has decided to incorporate the SUN-X Sentinel Copy Protection into Country Music Hall of Fame star Charley Pride's next album. The copy protection, developed by SunnComm Inc. is designed to prevent the unauthorized digital duplication of the compact disc'. These are just a few starting tips. Many Search Engines will have an 'advanced search' option or a 'help' section to show you the techniques that will work best at that particular site. Remember too, that the 'Cowboys In Cybersp@ce' Links Page will show you where to find over 450 Country Music Web sites!

Some more new and updated Country Music Web sites to check out: Mary Heard & the Midwest Obsession recently launched their debut album 'Happy Ever After' in front of a capacity crowd at Sydney's Botany View Hotel, and now they have launched their Web site; News on the Kasey Chambers Web site that her song 'The Captain' will be featured on an American television show - the Emmy Award-winning TV series The Sopranos. The track will be included on The Sopranos compilation CD, scheduled for release very soon. Participating artists include Bob Dylan, The Rolling Stones, The Kinks, among others. While you are at Kasey's site, don't miss BJ's entertaining account of life on the road; If you can't get enough of Kasey Chambers, have a look at a very up-to-date fan site (The Unofficial Kasey Chambers Site), or swap messages via a Yahoo! club named…'Kasey's Chamber'; Bob Dylan fan's might enjoy my illustrated Web review of his recent Sydney show, plus links to reviews of every show and set list from the Never Ending Tour - now in its 13th year! Also, just to hand...EMMYLOU HARRIS - live in Sydney - April 25th - another concert review Voting has begun in the third annual Australian Online Music Awards (the ONYAS!), and the dedicated Country Music (and associated) sites that are nominated include: Australian Artist Site - BECCY COLE, BRENDAN MAROLLA, BRIELLE, COLIN BUCHANAN, FRANK IFIELD, JOHN WILLIAMSON, KASEY CHAMBERS, LEE KERNAGHAN, LESLIE AVRIL, PAT DRUMMOND, PAUL KELLY, SLIM DUSTY, TAMARA STEWART, TANIA KERNAGHAN, THE BUSHWACKERS, THE FIDDLERS FESTIVAL, TOMMY EMMANUEL, TROY CASSAR-DALEY Australian Online Radio Station or Program - 2SER, COOL COUNTRY RADIO Australian Print Music Publication Site - COWBOYS IN CYBERSP@CE Australian Music Video Network or Program - MUSICCOUNTRY Australian Independent Record Label Site - SHOCK Australian Online E-Tailer - THE COUNTRY MUSIC STORE Music Industry Resource - CMAA Another info-packed fan site is the aptly named Dollymania where you can learn, amongst many other things, that when Jamie O'Neal was a youngster, her family's show opened for Dolly who took the time to encourage her along her path to Country Music success; Jamie O'Neal is also one of the many artists featured in the video interview archives of the Get Music 'Country Close-Up' feature section. Others include Keith Urban, SheDAISY and a two-part feature on rising young star Jessica Andrews. If you're going to San Francisco and feel the need for a bit of bootscootin', visit The Sundance Association for all the Bay Area Country-Western Dancing information. Lots of event listings. Dance steps and how to avoid 'road rage' on the dance floor with Dance Etiquette. The Concert for a Landmine Free World tour featured some of the finest singer/songwriters of our time led by Emmylou Harris. Learn more at the Vietnam Veterans of America Foundation (VVAF) Website. Read about the brilliant CD and watch a short video clip, and find out how you can support this worthwhile cause. Every 22 minutes, someone is maimed or killed by a mine - 90 per cent are civilians, many of them children.

If you want to share the location of an interesting site you’ve seen or request a topic for discussion in future columns, why not E-mail me.

Don't forget to listen out for cyberBob each month on the radio waves with Belinda Miller of Murri Country, 4AAA (98.9 FM in Brisbane) and Barbara Morison on 2SER (107.3 FM in Sydney).

Until next month, happy surfing.

Would YOU would like to be added to our FREE mailing list and be automatically notified each time a new Cowboys in Cybersp@ce article appears on the web?
Just enter your E-mail address (and/or comments) here and click the button once!
(If your browser doesn't support "forms", E-mail us above)

Back to top of this page

You can use this box to search this site for your favourite Country Music artist...

...or if you want to search the World Wide Web...

...type their name into this search engine box and then press the GOOGLE SEARCH button.....

Visit the rest of our site while you are here...

INDEX/HOME || CHARTS & SERVICES || PRODUCTIONS, SESSIONS & RESUMÉ || QUIZ? || HARMONICA ||

BOB'S CABARET SHOW || WHERE TO SEE BOB || DISCOGRAPHY || PRESS QUOTES ||

WEB DESIGN || LINKS || MUSICAL JOKES || PET PUZZLE || WHAT'S NEW ||

FRANK IFIELD & THE BEATLES || LENNON - THE MUSICAL || ZEN & THE ART OF GUITAR PLAYING ||

© 2001 Bob Howe Productions - ShowNet