"It will be the place to go to get information about everything relating to the healthy development of your child," Reiner told a launch ceremony at the University of California Los Angeles Child Care Centre. Excite chief executive officer George Bell said the new website, Excite First Years (http://firstyears.excite.com), beefed up the company's menu of services to embrace a sorely neglected segment of internet users.

"One of the reasons we said this was ripe for an opportunity was that this particular audience of parents and caregivers has been under-served in terms of contenton the web," Bell said in an interview. Bell said one of the fastest growing segments of internet users was the elderly, many of whom were grandparents who played key roles in raising children. First Years offers advice on child-rearing from pregnancy through age three, as well as chat services with other parents and links to the latest research on childcare.

The service compiles information from a range of sources, including other websites like BabyCenter (http://www.babycenter.com) and online retailer Amazon.com, which offers child-rearing books for sale. Users can find answers to frequently asked questions, view diagrams on each stage of pregnancy and personalise the site so it automatically updates with fresh information.

In pact with Microsoft for music, video clips

Excite on Wednesday said it signed an agreement with Microsoft Corp that will allow users to add music and video clips to Excite Communities pages and integrate a customised version of the Microsoft Windows Media Player.

Theenhancements are scheduled to become available within the next 90 days, the internet portal company said in a statement. Windows Media Technologies 4.0 provides quality streaming video over the internet. Microsoft has also created a digital rights management solution for protecting content accessed over the internet in response to piracy concerns.