Star Wars Art

advertise on the 'Nest
ADVERTISER LOGIN

	EUROPE'S MOST VISITED SF/F WEB SITE

Lucas online combats Star Wars web piracy by giving away the cantina

Homestead.com - one of the numerous Geocities-style portals that allow surfers to build free Web sites - and our friends over at Lucas Online, have just got together to announce that Star Wars enthusiasts can build their own fan Web sites at www.StarWars.com.

With a URL like that, you must've guessed that this is the mega-official Star Wars Web site.

Fuelled by Homestead's technology, the new service allows users to build their sites from "drag-and-drop" Star Wars media such as photos and clip-art as well as live content from StarWars.com. Fans for whom HTML coding is a pain will be able to jump-start their site with a selection of customisable Star Wars templates.

"We designed Homestead to give anybody the ability to express their passions via the medium

of the Web," hissed Justin Kitch, the founder of Homestead.com, spouting the official company line. He went on: "It's hard to imagine a more passionate group of people than Star Wars fans, which includes half of our office. We look forward to working closely with Lucasfilm to provide Star Wars fans with an innovative and exciting service."

We had a look at what the fans have cobbled together using the new service. Sites range from one showing how to customize an automobile to look like an X-wing starfighter (hooray) to a tribute to the now dead - at least in the accompanying books - Chewbacca (hoot).

We also came across an in-depth study of the members of the Jedi Council, a history of Darth Vader, a "what if" page about the Skywalker twins hidden on different planets, a guide to Star Wars collectibles and a gallery of Star Wars action figures.

In addition to new site constructions, fans who already maintain Star Wars-related web sites can use Homestead's site-mover technology to port their existing sites to the official Star Wars domain, thus raising their profile through the official fan site directory.

This seems to be a growing trend among media players. To control the proliferation of bootleg images, sounds and QuickTime clips et al, the corporations are creating safe sandboxes where they can release freebies for the fans to play with, while keeping control, and, more to the point, profit from the resulting traffic.

Whether the thousands of - technically illegal - fan sites already in existence will be attracted into the legal fold, will, we suspect, depend on Lucas Online's willingness to release plenty of unique images, sound files and the like into their sand-box environment.

Browse for books and videos for Star Wars

FREE SF MAGAZINE
Sign up for the Crowsnest SF e-magazine - full of funny reports and gossip. Be the first to find out about hot sci-fi opportunities & news!