If you had been stuck on a desert island for the last several years with no Internet, you'd be surprised at the far livelier online environment today.

Webpages are no longer simple unchanging screen fillers. Today they are alive with animations and videos. Many are interactive, with content that adjusts quickly to your activity. There are huge photo, video clip, and art galleries, new places to meet people, vast online libraries, and strange new entities, like wikis and blogs.

Welcome to the World Wide Web, 2.0! It’s in the midst of a major upgrade. The widespread use of highspeed broadband access has enabled faster connections with more data moving than was ever possible with dial-up. Websites are complex and responsive with new interactive features in ways that could not have been imagined just a few short years ago.

It's all about user participation and interaction now. No longer are surfers subjected to static content served up slow, but encouraged to comment and contribute in real time. New online communities of interest are forming constantly just as exciting new applications are being implemented.

Here are several of the more currently popular sites in this brave new world. There are more every day. 

• Google Earth  - http://earth.google.com

The popular search engine takes on the world with this fascinating application. Cruise the planet in cool aerial shots and maps.

• Wikipedia -  http://en.wikipedia.org

A free online encyclopedia of just about everything that just about anyone can contribute their own expertise to help develop.

• MySpace - http://www.myspace.com

A popular site where people can post their own profiles, pictures, music, and videos to connect with friends around the globe.

• Flickr - http://www.flickr.com

A world of personal photography collections stored and shared. 

• YouTube - http://www.youtube.com

What Flickr is to still photos, YouTube, now owned by Google, is to user-created videos — from funny homemade music mashups to amazing short movies to newsclips old and new.