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A L S O__T O D A Y Wired nests with Condé Nast By Lori Leibovich But will the magazine's new owners dull its edge? Let's Get This Straight By Scott Rosenberg Now that they're sundered from the magazine, whither Wired's Web sites? - - - - - - - - - - T A B L E__T A L K HTML frames: What are they good for? When are they more cumbersome than helpful? Join the discussion in the Table Talk's Digital Culture area - - - - - - - - - - R E C E N T L Y Let's Get This Straight By Scott Rosenberg Gates tells the world that what's good for Microsoft is good for the country (05/07/98) Folk rock of ages By Geoff Edgers Roger McGuinn's Web site is an experiment in communal musical memory (05/07/98) The geeks and the aliens By Janelle Brown Why are the tech industry's best and brightest so determined to spearhead the hunt for extraterrestrials? (05/06/98) Web-ability By Mike Britten Even people who aren't in the position to enjoy all the Web's bells and whistles ought to be able to access its information (05/05/98) The gene genie By Jeffrey Obser Jeremy Rifkin's new book, "The Biotech Century," warns of a genetic-bazaar future (05/05/98) - - - - - - - - - - BROWSE THE 21ST FEATURE ARCHIVES - - - - - - - - - - _______

BY JANELLE BROWN | "Love your mag. But give us more babes!" said one of the first e-mails. Another declared, "I think your magazine really is the greatest thing to happen to guys. The articles and jokes are great, but what really makes it is the girls. Y'all have some of the hottest girls on the front of your magazines!" I was utterly confused. The Web zine I co-edit in my spare time, a woman's pop culture mag called Maxi, certainly doesn't feature any "babes." Instead, we write ironic odes to lipstick, critique idiotic advertising and run features on the gender gap in technology. But our in box was receiving a steady trickle of strange messages loaded with testosterone. It was a mystery to us until the day I accidentally mistyped our address -- www.maximag.com -- and arrived instead at the home page for the men's magazine Maxim, coincidentally located next door at www.maximmag.com. Maxim magazine, for those not familiar with it, is a year-old glossy magazine for men, produced by Dennis Publishing. Beyond the lingerie-clad starlets on the cover and the tag line "The best thing to happen to men since women," Maxim's worldview can pretty much be summed up by a recent story titled, "REALITY CHECK: Are You a Man or a Wuss? One minute you're a beer-belching god ... the next, an herbal-tea-sipping geek with lime Jell-O for a backbone. Make sure (before it's too late!) that our touchy-feely society isn't rounding your shoulders." Maxi, on the other hand, probably represents the feminists that Maxim referred to when promoting "Feminist Baiting Screensavers" on its Web site. Our publications and readerships are, you could say, diametrically opposed. But the Web makes for strange bedfellows, and in the cozy online world, Maxi happens to co-opt some of Maxim's readers, simply by virtue of that extra "m." - - - - - - - - - - - - N E X T__P A G E .|. When frat boys stagger into a feminist neighborhood