Frog by Nick George

Whaaasuuup????

Ayuuuup!!!!!

Thanks to Ned Jenkinson for this one! Thanks to him this is now the most irritating page on the Internet. Send it to your friends who work in big open plan offices and send'em frantically looking fer that volume button. (For those of you living in a bubble, this is from that Budweiser ad - pity about that Manc footie game that they're watching...)

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Ayup Online Magazine is a totally nonprofit, done for the hell of it website. There's no fat cat boss, no editorial policy and no fees for contributors. All done for the love of it. It has contributors from all over the place, including New Zealand, United States, Japan, Belgium, and Jump. Yes, even Jump.

The site came out of a pub conversation on the Goldhawk Road in London, just after a Barnsley game against QPR. The idea had been around a little longer. It came out of a daft joke about a Yorkshire version of Hello! Magazine ( Julie Etchingham take a bow - you helped start all this...) and what kind of publication it would be. All them posing celebrities in blow dried homes on the French Riviera. We just saw Mrs Higginbottom from Grimethorpe showing off her new three piece suite from the catalogue. Albert Clegg and his new tattoo. Britney Barraclough showing off her belly ring on the council house steps.

There was also heated debate going on the Yorkshire Posts Forum ( linked from the ex-pat websiteYorkshire From Afar) about Home Rule. We're the biggest county, we have a bigger per-capita income than Scotland - so why the blummin ummer down we post a border point on the M1 and declare independence! We got hold of the URL and the rest is history. Home Rule page oges up and then we got the hang of html.

We make no apologies for being a bit biased towards Barnsley cos our Editor is a Wombwell lad, but as for the rest, well that's up to you. If you feel that you have an article about someone, or a piece of history we should know about, please get writing. We love it when we get a new contributor. And it might as well be you.

The main reason for the site's existence is to champion the kind of personal website that is getting increasingly hard to find. Professional webbers have all but excluded the personal touch from the Internet scene. But we live in hope, especially for Yorkshire, which has still a low percentage of home computers compared to the UK as a whole. And as more of you get online there'll be more individuality out there on the web. It's not all 'This Is Barnsdale' style blanket coverage from an office block in Birmingham. And it's not all Online Brochures either. The web has far more potential than that.

So we're keeping it personal and that's why the site goes through the odd month or two without the updates you want. It's hard work running a website when you're holding down two jobs, so be nice to us. And if you happen to take any of this blather too seriously (and this means you in the suit) more fool thee. It's all just a bit of a wind-up.

If you want to send an e-mail, or contribute owt feel free to e-mail us.

And if you're a big fat company wanting to sponsor a section, think thousands!

More later.

NORTHERNER