Here's what Nexus has written to artists and visitors who've signed up for the Furnation news listserv:

I added two book reviews from Jeff Eddy of Sofawolf Press. Check them out. Also, if you're an RPG fan, you really have no excuse not to pick up a copy of World Tree. I'm not an RPG fan, but the book has consumed most of my weekend. We had an interview with the creators not too long ago.

If you were wondering about Haul Trek, the comic strip created by Paul Gibbs and Bill Redlern, you're about to be plesantly surprized. Haul Trek's back, but as Freighter Tails and without the Star Trek influence. The rework was due in part of the strip being a derivative work off of Viacom/Paramount's Star Trek, and that any derivative work has alot of legal issues attached to it.

From the comic strip site that brings you Satin & Silk, Campus Safari and numerous other titles, one of the titles is increasing its frequency this week to begin updating three times a week.

Contrary to an earlier rumor posted to several mailing lists, Furnation is not being shut down for good, but does have some downtime in its future. Here's the official word, as posted by Nexxus to alt.fan.furry:

A recent article in the Chicago Tribune discusses online comic strips (yes, we're a bit slow on the uptake; the article ran Feb. 22). Among those mentioned are Kevin and Kell and Newshounds.

From Steven 'Shaterri' Stadniki, a FurryMuck Wizard as posted on alt.fan.furry: "Hello there. This is Steven Stadnicki, a.k.a. Shaterri; for those
folks who don't know me, I'm one of the long-time wizards on
FurryMUCK. Since I've been one of the people driving the
furrymuck.com domain issue from the wizards' side, I've decided to
be the one to respond to the various issues that have been raised
publically in the matter. While some wizards' opinions may differ
from mine -- we're a diverse group with a fairly diverse range of
viewpoints -- I've shared this letter with the rest of the wizcorps
and can safely say that my statements reflect the consensus view of
the FurryMUCK wizards. The tone is likely to get unfortunately
legalistic in spots, but I think it's important to express our view
of the facts as we see them, as objectively as possible." Click below for the whole statement.

Those of you who submitted entries for the Name That Artist Contest, mentioned here two weeks ago, or who are simply interested in the answers, can now view the answers and the results, and some of the other sketches not used in the contest.

A special Hugo will be awarded at the 2002 Worldcon, ConJose, for best sf/f website. Read more here at SF Wire, or at ConJose's page about the new award. So anyone going to vote for us? *grin*

Some of you who have been following the news may have noticed that the Ebay auction for the furrymuck.org, .com and .net domains has disappeared. Read on for Darrel's Exline's post to AFF in regards to what happened:

After experiencing some trouble with their current DNS provider, Sofawolf Press has finally moved to sofawolf.com (from sofawolf.org). There's a new website design and more information on current projects, submissions and advertising... so check it out and pester Eddy with questions. *grin*

Animal Planet has a web page devoted to live webcam sites specifically aimed at animals. Included are a shark cam, a penguin cam, a rhino cam and more. The page also sports a link to yet more cameras listed off of Discovery.Com (parent of Animal Planet). This listing has far more links, with links to a camera in a pet shelter, a lion camera, hippos and more. Take a peek!

http://cgi.ebay.com/aw-cgi/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=1222200152 is Dwight Dutton's sale of the FurryMUCK .com, .org and .net addresses. He's selling all three of them as a set. I did a check and yes, he does own these domains and thus is entitled to sell them. According to Dwight he had a bid on the set 10 minutes after putting them up for auction, so it sounds like a change will definately be occuring. But, since nothing was hosted on them before I don't see this as being a particularly big deal, outside of the name itself. FurryMUCK's site all runs off the furry.* domains, so....

From Kurst on alt.fan.furry: "...FurEcard is a free web site that specializing in providing tools for
furry artists to build their own customizable free email card site! In
minutes an artist can have his or her own branded web site..." The site also incorporates a picture gallery site featuring "...html templates and a thumbnail engine..." Looks promising. Anyone put it to use?

Simba Wiltz has begun serializing his furry novel, Mainframe at this website. The last time I read a serialized work on the web was probably Regan Pylman's Tails of the City, which was actually quite good (Blue Horizon isn't really a serialized novel as much as it is a collection of related short stories). Has anyone had a chance to read the inital chapters of Mainframe?