Briefs

Coloured rubbers: Flexible friend Dalsouple has upgraded its free CD-ROM, designed by Automatic Television, to accommodate a new licensing agreement with colour giant Pantone. A finalist in this year’s Revolution Awards, Rubber World enables specifiers to access the full range of Pantone colours on screen when choosing rubber flooring designs. Colours and finishes can be combined and tested out in a 3D room set before being printed out with specifications and ordered. To launch the CD-ROM, Dalsouple is giving away five Pantone Colour Formula Guides, worth 55.50 each. Send your business card or name and address on a postcard or envelope to Dalsouple, PO Box 140, Bridgwater, Somerset TA5 1 HT to arrive no later than Friday, 19 June 1998. The first five names pulled out of a rubber boot after the closing date get the goodies.

The Odeon on-line: The Odeon cinema chain this week launched an e-commerce site which will sell cinema tickets on-line. The Wolff Olins/NetPosition-designed site (at www.Odeon.co.uk) offers a number of services, including a cinema search section, reviews, clips and information on upcoming films. According to Odeon spokesman Rick James: ‘A strong feature is Odeon Recommends, where visitors key in preferences such as director, actor and genre and the site recommends a movie from its huge database.’ The booking and credit card payment service uses secure encryption software which James says ‘is a standard system and the best encryption software available’.

Where to score: Four years ago, when the Web was but a piffling runt of a thing, World Cup USA was pretty badly serviced by a few sad sites which would take three days to update match results. But there’s now a bewildering array of sites dedicated to the competition and, in an exhausting journalistic endeavour to bring you the best, we’ve trawled them all. Yes, it was hard, but someone had to do it. So, in our totally biased and subjective viewpoint, the finest are as follows: France 98 Beeb (www.france98.beeb.com), Football 365 (football365.co.uk) and the Budweiser/Sky World Cup site (budweiser.co.uk/worldcup) by BMP interAction – a New Media Age award-winner. For those who think other sports exist, Sportsweb.com, the Reuters news service, which has just been redesigned by Deep End Design and BMP interAction, is also worth a browse, especially for its soccer stars loyalty game.