Net Gains: Party on

www.aloud.com/festival.shtml

Music festivals are about as alternative as a tie-dye Barbour jacket these days, a fact reflected by the depressingly corporate nature of their presence on the Internet, itself a relatively recent convert to the mainstream. That said, much as no one wants to listen to a Nethead pining for the days of the ad-free browsers, who likes an aged hippy banging on about the 1977 Wishbone Ash set? In other words, there are advantages. Organisation, for one. Almost all of the dozen or so big festivals have websites, the biggest - next weekend's Glastonbury Festival - among them. www.glastonbury- festival.co.uk will tell you everything you need to know (and then some). However, for the bare essentials on all the summer's largest festivals - ticket purchases, maps, weather forecasts even - check out aloud.com (above).