text:
shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the
free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press;
or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the
Government for a redress of grievances.
On the days I'm in my office, I can spend up to ten straight hours on the Web. Most of this time is spent writing and researching, but I like to surf a good bit, too. Hey, it was surfing that got me familiar enough with the Web to write about it, and to be published on it.
I generally like to visit sites that are entertaining, informative, or have content that coincides with my interests, hobbies, or values. If you could see my bookmark file, you'd learn quite a bit about me.
I'm going to raid that bookmark file now, and post the URLs of some sites that I check pretty regularly.
A9.com- A new search utility from Amazon.com, A9.com not only helps you find Web pages, but pages from books that match your search. When I performed a search for "Russell Shaw" and "wireless," A9.com yielded this search results page of citations and links.
Aaron's Baseball Blog- Insightful, intellectual and sometimes funny daily blog about baseball by someone for whom the game plays a large part in his life.
Abandoned & Little-Known Airfields- Even though aviation is in its prime, there are those airstrips that have gone to dust, seed, or have been paved over for other uses. With hundreds of rare, old photographs as well as new snapshots of the same landscape, the site is a visual digital tribute to places where men and women temporarily left the ground.
Abebooks- Another one of those great new, used, and rare book sites the Web is so good for. Here are some books and other material written by various Russell Shaws, including me.
About.com- Even though the site has been downsized some, still a great place to start looking for information about any of several hundred topics.
Academic Info-A gateway to thousands of Web-based resources, indexed by subject. New sites are updated monthly.
Accent On Travel Trip Reports- First-person and client logs of train trips booked by Accent On Travel USA, a leading train travel specialist agency based in Klamath Falls, Oregon. Although I have never done business with them, they seem to have their heads and hearts in the right place.
AccuWeather-As powerful and flexible a weather forecast, analysis and information site as you will find. Here's the outlook for Portland, Oregon.
Ace- The second coming of Bob Vila, I am not. Still, I like to peruse this online presence of Ace Hardware to read their project guides.
Acronym Finder- Searchable list of more than four million abbreviations. Some, like CAD, have numerous meanings. What's that you say? BFD?
Advanced Book Exchange- A great place to search for, and purchase, that out-of-print or rare book. More than 70 million such volumes, including a few of mine, are in the database.
Aerospaceweb.org-Ask a Rocket Scientist- The old saying goes, "it's not rocket science." Yet with questions such as what is the difference between a jet engine and a rocket engine this site is just that. Archived questions are listed and linked to answers on this page.
Air America Radio- Especially during this time of right-wing gloating, I'm sick and tired of Hannity, Limbaugh and Savage, and others of their ilk. For millions like me, here's a progressive and entertaining national talk radio network! It's way past time!!
Airline Meals.net- Most airline food is mediocre at best. Still, at 33,000 feet you don't have that many spontaneous dining choices. This site features airline meal photos, taken by passengers.
AIRLINERS.NET- A commercial aviation portal with more than 250,000 aircraft and airport photos, as well as a really cool database of virtually every airline and general aviation aircraft in use. Each link in the database is clickable to a page that describes the particular airplane, including its performance characteristics. For example, the page for the Brazilian-made Embraer ERJ-135 notes that its maximum cruising speed is 834 kilometers an hour (about 518 miles an hour). There's also an Aviation Industry News section, updated every 15 minutes. Wanna feel better? Check out these F-15Cs.
AirNav- A guide to most of the U.S.A.'s 5,000-plus public airports and private landing strips. In Oregon, where I'm from, there are more than 100 of them - from "poor condition" Country Squire Airpark near Sandy, to Portland International Airport. Remember the Jimmy Buffett song " Volcano?" In the song, he noted he didn't "want to land in Comanche Sky Park." Perhaps Buffett, a pilot, was referring to the misspelled Camanche Skypark Airport, a small strip near Ione, California.
AJR.org- Web site featuring articles from the pages of the American Journalism Review, the best publication of its type. I often check the Employment Section for its list of newspaper, magazine, newsletter and online jobs - which sometimes includes vacancies that aren't posted anywhere else on the Web.
Alaska Airlines- My first choice for travel between Portland, where I am based, and almost any city in California.
Alexa Web Search- Amazon.com-owned Web directory that tracks traffic to sites based on the number of searches performed by Alexa visitors that lead to the sites that are tracked.
Alliance for Innovative Manufacturing Videos- This project from the Alliance for Innovative Manufacturing at Stanford University offers a free collection of more than a dozen free videos about how things from motorcycles to candy wrappers are made.
All But Forgotten Oldies- Links to sites that offer streaming media samples of some 4,000 songs popular from 1960 to 1975.
All Consuming- New blog with a primary mission of cataloging and ranking the books most mentioned on blogs all over the Web within the last week.
All Freelance- Tips about how to survive this freelance life I lead. As someone once said about this existence, "you can sleep late, but you can't sleep easy." "Sleep late?" Oh, yea? Most weekdays, I am at my desk by 6 a.m.
All Freelance Work- Fee-based referral service for freelance activities in the creative disciplines. Listings are divided into numerous areas, including creative writers, Web writers and tech writers.
AllLaw- Mostly free site has a comprehensive topical index of links to articles, reference guides, resources and other information about topics from Bankruptcy to Wills and Trusts. You can also search by keyword. When I entered the keyword "privacy," AllLaw returned more than 25,000 hits.
All Songs Considered- Online-only program from National Public Radio features audio and video clips from international artists true to their ethnic traditions - as well as American artists attempting to capture ethnic traditions, or appear alienated yet functionally intellectual.
All-streaming-media.com- As someone who has written books and numerous articles about streaming media, I salute this site as the most comprehensive guide to almost anything about the medium that you would ever want to know.
AllTheTests.com- A searchable inventory of several hundred personality, health, and intelligence tests from all over the Web.
AllTheWeb.com Fresh News Search- Real-time search for news posted on more than 3,000 sites. Yet another service from the quite underrated AllTheWeb.com search engine. When I performed a search for Osama Bin Laden, the search engine returned a page with these results.
AllYouCanRead.com- Another all-encompassing directory of Web presences for magazines, newspapers and reference Web sites from around the world.
AltaVista- Not the most "chic" in-crowd search engine these days, but still very useful as a tool to find Web-based audio and video.
AlterNet- News and commentary from a progressive perspective. Several articles on cultural creatives explain why the non-traditionals among us who would rather watch educational programs rather than contrived horseshit don't have the impact we deserve. Hint: a good bit of the answer lies in our nature.
AlwaysOn- Takes its name from the concept that today's computing-related appliances and technologies are not dial-up, or off-on, but, you guessed it, "always on." Site actually casts a broader net to encompass industry segments of interest to IT people and venture capitalists. The site also offers a library of blogs, which are available from this page.
Amazon.com- There! I've just built a link to Amazon's Book Search page. They've buried it several clicks from the home page, but it's the most useful feature on the site. It's where I look for books, as well as for authors I might want to interview on various subjects.
American Bar Association Law Info- A collection of legal how-to's for consumers. Free resources are grouped in several areas, including Your Family, Your Home, Your Finances, Your Job, Shopping, The Courts, Criminal Justice, and help in Finding a Lawyer.
American Civil Liberties Union- I don't agree with all of their actions -- especially their reflexive distaste for necessary and proactive terror-fighting measures -- but I'm proud to be a member. Here's a link to the Web site for the American Civil Liberties Union of Oregon, and the American Civil Liberties Union of Washington state.
American Demographics- I have degrees in Sociology and Political Science, and am a journalist who writes about business, trends, and people. Stir all that together and you have a prescription for one of my favorite magazines - and, by extension, one of my favorite Web sites. Most articles require a paid subscription to read.
American Distance Education Consortium- A guide to distance learning initiatives and issues.
American Field Guide- A multimedia guide to the animals, ecosystems and flora in most U.S. states. Here is the guide to Oregon.
American Film Institute-100 Years- 100 Movie Quotes- The 100 most memorable movie quotes of all time, as voted on by a blue-ribbon panel. Given the scarcity of "bad" language in movies 65 years ago, I can imagine the shock in theaters when the #1 phrase ("Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn") was uttered in "Gone With The Wind."
American Heritage Book of English Usage- An online version of the guide to how to use words properly. One of their best features describes the correct usage for words that are pronounced similarly, but have different meanings. Here's an example.
American Law Sources On-line-Another one of those indexes of law references. The most compelling resources are guides to legal sources for each of the 50 states. Here's the main page for Oregon.
American Library Association Challenged and Banned Books- This site from the American Library Association offers chronicles of efforts to ban books. Good for the ALA, because I hate censorship. In the 1990s, the most heavily banned book was Scary Stories by Alvin Schwartz. Stick it up the censor's ass by purchasing it here. In 2003, the most frequently banned tome was the Alice series, "for sexual content, using offensive language, and being unsuited to age group." Fight censorship by making the author Phyllis Reynolds Naylor a little richer than she already is.
American Politics Journal -- Pundit Pap- I do not watch most Sunday morning talk shows. You see, I have a life. Fortunately, there are Web pages such as Pundit Pap to track what the talking heads say.
American Press Institute-Site of the eponymous training center for professional journalists. Here is an annotated, linked list of all articles posted on the site, and a run-down of articles indexed by topic.
American Public Transportation Association- Web site for the public interest body that represents regional and municipal bus, trolleybus, ferryboat, commuter rail, light rail and miscellaneous transit systems throughout the United States.
American Rhetoric.com- Sometimes, words speak as loud as actions. That is especially true when words make history. Here, you can read the text of and listen to audio feeds of more than 5,000 memorable speeches, and more than 200 audio clips from celebrities.
America's Roof- Let's get high! I mean, high from an altitude standpoint. Among many other points of interest, this site not only lists the highest point in each state, but offers direction to, and contains accounts from, people who have been to them. Here's the highest point in Georgia, Brasstown Bald. I have been there often, but since I am an Oregonian now, I sing the praises of Mt. Hood.
AMG allmusic- Biographical data, reviews and discographies of almost any recording artist in the last several decades you can think of. Unlike music company sites, the perspective here is both objective and authentic. The most commonly searched-for artists are listed and linked on this page. When I last checked, the most searched-for recording artist was the enigmatic Portlander (it takes one to know one), Elliott Smith. But I am alive and he is not, which is an important difference.
Am I Annoying- An absolute treasure of a stitch, the site lists the "annoying" and "non-annoying" aspects of thousands of celebrities.
Am I Right - Misheard Lyrics- Rock and pop stars do not have great diction. That's why some of their lyrics are misunderstood. The premise of this site is to solicit examples of lyrics that sound different than they really are. Here is one that I have submitted: for the Righteous Brothers' "You've Lost That Lovin' Feelin'," I turned in: "Cause baby, you're so cute in those stockings." The correct lyrics, of course, are, "Cause baby, something beautiful's dyin'."
Amtrak- Oh sure, their trains can run late every once in a while, but riding the rails is the best way to see the country.
Analyst Views- Portal with links to technology reports from several leading firms.
Ancestry.com- An Internet-based genealogical meta-index. I sometimes use this resource to look for ancestors. Through a series of recent searches, I may have found some distant relatives.
AndrewSullivan.com- The gay conservative writer-commentator everyone loves to hate. I'm neither gay nor conservative, but enjoy reading his polemics on culture and politics.
Anecdotage- This is the place to find funny anecdotes about famous as well as infamous people, in well over 100 categories.
Annoyances.org-Tips, complaints, and advice for solving and combating the numerous quirks in the various versions of Windows. Quirks get their own threads, such as the one that accompanies the question: How do I stop a program from running whenever I start Windows?
Answers.com- A meta-index of more than one million reference documents on just about any topic you would imagine.
Archive for Planetary Science Research Discoveries-Fascinating resource from the University of Hawaii's Space Grant Consortium offers updates on the latest findings about the rocks and balls that orbit our sun, and the odd-shaped objects that meander through it.
Arstechnica- One of my favorite technology news and reviews sites- even though I work for some of their competition.
Artcyclopedia- What a clever idea! Site links to more than 125,000 samples of artwork created by more than 10,000 painters and other visual artists. The links are to specific graphics pages on gallery and museum Web sites. Here, look at Van Gogh's Self Portrait. The ultimate for fine art as well as cutting edge, online eye candy.
Art Daily- News, features and special reports from the various worlds of art. As you can guess from the site's name, content is updated on a daily basis.
arXiv.org e-Print archive- Meta-index of hundreds of thousands of scientific papers in physics, mathematics, the Nonlinear Sciences (chaos theory and that sort of stuff) and computer science. While the actual papers are not posted here, obtaining information about authors is a good way to search for sources.
Ask a Linguist- Threaded discussion list where professional linguists may ask questions of one another. Previous questions and answers are available in the Archives.
Ask Dr. Universe- Washington State University's science-oriented questions and answers site for children. Here are some recent questions. Are worms animals? Click here to find out.
Ask- Type in a question, and the search engine that powers this site looks for Web sites that contain the answer. I admit I used to be skeptical of the gimmickry here, but I've used it for a few projects lately, and now, I'm hooked!
Ask Yahoo!- While sites like Ask Jeeves generate most of their answers via natural language parsing of Web pages; Ask Yahoo! appears to rely on human experts to answer site visitor questions. These experts visit sites likely to contain the answer, and then cite the site in their formal responses. Some 1,500 answers, skewing toward the non-complex are divided into a dozen topics. Why is the sky blue? Now you know.
Association of Alternative Newsweeklies- Top articles from several dozen of the nation's top alternative weeklies. Archived stories are organized by topic. Once derided as "hippie papers," many of these publications exhibit an investigatory zeal that outstrips the cautious approach taken by their daily newspaper competitors in many of the same markets. I started in journalism as a writer for what was to become an AAN member publication.
ASTALAVISTA SECURITY GROUP- Internet security portal with lots of inside info that goes way, way beyond the alerts you'll read in the technology online and print mass media.
Astrobiology.com- New planetary discoveries, as well as topics such as Panspermia (the ejection of life-bearing rocks from one planetary body to another) and Astropaleobiology, where the site links to articles that describe our just-beginning research on what, and who, might be "out there."
Astrobiology Magazine- A site devoted to intelligent life- any life- in the universe. Intriguing discoveries, such as revelations of lakes on Saturn's moon Titan, often are singled out for special articles.
Astronomy.com- The online edition of Astronomy magazine has a handy glossary, a Frequently Asked Questions list for beginners, and a Telescope Buying Guide.
Atlanta Journal-Constitution- A good way to keep up with news from where I used to live -- but thankfully, don't anymore.
ATLANTA.VOIC.US- New news site and community portal about the town where I lived for nearly 25 years.
Aviation Digital Data Service- How is the air up there? On this site, you can find out anything from the projected wind pattern 24,000 feet above the U.S. 30 hours from now, to current turbulence advisories for the U.S., including pilot reports of rough air in the Northwest U.S. as well as other regions. Here's the thunderstorm forecast for the U.S. Looking down, here's the latest satellite photo of Northwestern U.S. , and the entire continental U.S. I guess Bob Dylan was right --" you don't need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows." But a Web site, such as Aviation Digital Data Service, sure helps.
BabelFish- An online translation service that translates phrases for you to and from English, to Chinese, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Portuguese, Korean, Russian and Spanish. Not as reliable as a professional interpreter, but a heck of a lot cheaper and faster.
Backpack- Not a camping or hiking site, but an online personal and business organizer and information manager service.
Bad Designs- Market-research and advertising companies are paid fortunes to push products. Engineers get paid well to ensure they work, but the ones who design feature sets seem to live in their own world. In just one example, it seems that the shower controls vary from unit to unit, and often are not well-marked. Many is the time I have grumbled to myself, so, how do you turn on the shower?
Badmovies.org-Site for reviews of, and discussion about, movies that really suck. I mean really, really, suck. The worst of the worst are listed in B Movie Reviews.
Ballparks of Baseball- Statistics, history and commentary about current, future, and past baseball stadiums.
BallparkReviews.com- Site-minder Brian Merzbach offers site reviews of nearly 50 Major League and more than 290 minor league ballparks. Here's what he says about Portland's PGE Park, within shouting distance of downtown Portland.
Banished Words List- Periodically updated list of words and phrases that should be banned - not because they are "dirty," but because they are overused to the point of inanity. Here are some: "synergy," "in the wake of," "ramp up" To see the terms added in 2007, click here. For a list of all the "friggin'" terms that have been archived all the way back to 1976, you know what to do.
Baseball Almanac- All kinds of stats and trivia, and a collection of clever quotations from ex-ballplayers. For sheer ego in the raw form, I like the one from 1960s-era first baseman Dick Stuart of the Pittsburgh Pirates, who said "I want to walk down the street and hear them say, 'Jesus, there goes Dick Stuart.'" But now, the situation is reversed. "Dick Stuart, there goes Jesus."
Baseball Prospectus- Analysis and think piece about our national pastime.
Baseball-Reference.com- The ultimate trivia site for baseball statistics buffs. The Leader and Record Board Index section contains career and active lifetime leader listings in more than two dozen categories. Sometimes it is fun to look up the leaders in specific pitching categories, check the leaders in corresponding batting categories, and then use another site such as ESPN.com for assessing the results of direct confrontations. Giving it a try, I see that Todd Helton of the Colorado Rockies is the active batting average leader among hitters, and Pedro Martinez (now of the New York Mets) allows the fewest hits per nine innings among pitchers. The two have never faced each other. Another fun part of this site indexes current and former major league players by state or nation of birth. Here, one can learn that the most bountiful state for pro baseball players has been California, with 1,858. Given the state's great year-round weather and its status as the most populous U.S. state, that is no surprise. Oregon, where I live, boasts 115. The comparatively low number is due to a combination of factors, which include Oregon's comparatively sparse population during much of the history of baseball, rainy weather in the state's most populous regions that makes it difficult for youngsters to acquire baseball skills by playing year-round; and, until recently, few people of Latino and African-American descent, a common heritage for baseball players. Although I don't see any Hall of Famers, the best-of list would have to include Pendleton-born slugger Dave Kingman, whose 442 lifetime homers top all native Oregonians and Portland's Dale Murphy, with a state-pacing 1,266 RBI and 2,111 lifetime career hits. Despite only nine homers in his injury-plagued 2004 season, Seattle Mariners' first baseman Richie Sexson (whose name defines the very act that got him started) is fast entering that company. Neither should we should not overlook the only Oregonians with a lifetime batting average of over .300. Those would be Ken Williams, from Grants Pass, a .315 lifetime hitter who logged most of his good years in the 1920s, and Portland's Johnny Pesky, whose batsmanship in the years after World War II matched the descriptiveness of his surname. By almost any measure, Oregon's best pitcher was Portland's own Mickey Lolich, known for his work with the Detroit Tigers in the 1960s and 1970s. He comes from the same Lolich family that once owned agricultural enterprise Lolich Farms near Scholls, Oregon.
BBC- There is little doubt you have heard of the BBC. Inarguably one of the world's most prestigious news organizations, this radio and television network's news-gathering and objective analysis is especially relevant in these newsworthy times. Click here to directly reach the BBC News Online home page, here to reach the main World News page, a library of country profiles, and here to reach a page with links to audio archives of previous programs.
BestPlaces.net- All sorts of demographic and quality-of-life info on numerous American metro areas and cities. Based on 40 categories that you grade on a 0 to 10 scale, you can even pick out the best place for you to live. I live in Portland, Oregon, but when I took the test, Portland didn't even show up in my top ten. Boston finished first, followed by San Francisco and Washington, D.C. Portland came in #36, behind Wilmington-Newark Delaware., and Tacoma, Washington. But Atlanta, where I moved from in 1997, came in #44. Three cheers for a proactive quality of life move!
BetaNews- Insider information about new software being tested. Numerous betas are offered for download. If you're a compulsive early software adopter, BetaNews is the place to go.
Big Class Action- Updates on lawsuits that sue an industry or service sector on behalf of a large group of aggrieved people. Here's the latest info on travel-related class action suits. Let's try Internet/Technology suits and complaints. My take: while some mainly conservative people view class actions as the creatures of overly litigious attorneys, I regard many of these suits as standing up for the rights of the citizenry and the consumer. I mean, if big business were to get their way all the time, they would totally genuflect to the institutional investors and major customers, not the little people.
BILLBOARD- The definitive music industry trade publication. Packed with charts, including the Billboard 100 best-selling CDs and the Hot 100 singles and tracks. I used to be on top of all this stuff - I even wrote for Billboard from around 1982 thru around 1991 - but now, only a few of the listed artists and even fewer of their songs are familiar to me. I mean, when I see "50 Cent," I think of half-dollar coins, not the rapper. BTW, what ever happened to 50 cent coins?
Bill Thompson's Eye on Books- Broadcast journalist has interviewed more than 8,000 authors, and has posted numerous sessions on his site. Here is Thompson's collection of his interviews with Writers of Non-Fiction.
BitLaw- A technology law portal, with sections devoted to patents and patent law, software patents, trademark law, copyright law and Internet law.
Blinkx.tv- Searchable index of recently televised shows, news clips and feature video segments, posted and available in streaming video. Sen. John Edwards and his cancer-afflicted wife, Elizabeth, have been making the rounds of the talk shows recently. I posted a query for appearances by the duo, and got back a search page with these results.
Blogcritics- At its heart, this is a daily digest of writings on news, music and books from a diverse collection of Webloggers. I am now in that number.
blogdex- An index to news articles linked from some of the more vibrant blogs out there.
BLOGGER- I think, I feel, I react - all of which is why I blog.. I log on to BLOGGER when I am ready to post a new thought.
Blog Herald- News about the world of blogging- notable new authoring tools, RSS readers, and blogs themselves.
Bloglines- Aggregation, and sometimes aggravation of leading Blogs, including popular and new offerings.
Blog Maverick - The Mark Cuban Weblog- Random and occasionally quite irreverent musings from Mark Cuban, who earned billions from the sale of his co-founded company Broadcast.com, and used a portion of his windfall to acquire the NBA Dallas Mavericks.
BlogPulse- Maybe not the best-known blog search utility, but at least as comprehensive as any other. When I performed a search on BlogPulse for Blog posts featuring my name, I got back these results.
BlogRunner - Real-time updates of major blog-based conversation threads. Each day, the site lists the top weblog authors, as determined by applying Google's page rank algorithms to the Blogosphere. When I last checked in early April, the top ranking blog was Instapundit.com.
BlogStreet- Among many other things, this site from a Blog technology provider offers a ranking of the Top 100 Blogs, decided on the number of blogs BlogRolling them, and the Most Important 100 Blogs, decided on the basis of who is BlogRolling a blog. Got that?
Bloomberg.com- Comprehensive stock market information site, with Financial News, World News, and the latest stock prices.
Blue Mountain- Electronic greeting cards you can customize, and then send instantly via e-mail. New cards are frequently added. Even though Blue Mountain now charges $13.95 a year to use their service, the deal still beats getting in your car, fighting traffic, and then waiting on line at the mall card shop.
BlueOregon- A collection of Blogs from left-of-center Portlanders, (I count myself in that number) as well as Oregonians from other parts of the state.
BobDylan.com- Lyrics and sound samples from several hundred of his songs. Dylan goes real far back with me. When I dropped out of college (I subsequently went to another school and graduated) while still a teenager, my folks freaked and told me I would wind up a failure. Already an amateur poet by then, I held Dylan up to them as an example of someone who followed his own muse, rather than the proscribed college-to-success path. Hey, it was the late 1960s, and I was not alone. Nothing in my parent's life experiences prepared them for that notion - or for accepting Dylan's validity as a role model or an artist.
BookBrowse.com- Author interviews and biographies, plus excerpts and Reviews from their latest books.
BookFinder.com- The site searches more than 100,000 online booksellers. I did a search under my name. Here's what came up. Keep in mind that although there are other authors who share my name, several of my works are listed.
Booknotes- Companion site to the C-SPAN show. Interview transcripts are available as far back as 1989.
BookSense- Independent bookstores across the U.S. have banded together to form this site. Here, you can find an independent bookstore near you, as well as best-seller lists from member stores. Indexed by category, the books on these compilations are likely to be slightly more eclectic, even progressive, than those favored by mainstream America. That's largely because mainstream Americans (those who read, anyway) are more likely to live in smaller towns and suburbs with plenty of chain bookstores, but less of the independent variety.
Bookwire- A resource collection of keen interest to authors. Here's a list of literary agents. Ditto for book publishers. Bookwire also offers a link to the Publisher's Weekly site.
Boxoffice Magazine- A collection of movie news and reviews, as well as a cool section on upcoming films.
Breakupnews- When you break up with someone, you likely will want to hear tales from friends who have gone through the same experience. "Misery loves company,"ya know. So here is a Web site where you can read the pain (or the pleasure) others who have broken up with their significant (or insignificant) others have experienced.
British Columbia Outdoor Guide- It's summertime, and I know of no more idyllic outdoor setting than British Columbia. Come meet me on the Cariboo Chilcotin Coast.
Broadbandreports.com- All the news and reviews you would ever want to read about providers of fast Internet access.
BROADCASTPAPERS.COM- A collection of free white papers about broadcast television and radio technologies. Sections include Animation and Special Effects, Editing and Post Production, Streaming Media, and Television Signal Transmission.
Brooklyn Daily Eagle-Daily news from a recently revived newspaper in a place I have always found thoroughly fascinating.
BuddhaNet- Links to information about this gentle and contemplative way.
Budget Travelers Guide to Sleeping In Airports In the USA- For those of us who have encountered several hours between flights, and need to catch some winks. You know, those five-hour time gaps that preclude going off-airport to rent a motel room.
BugMeNot.com- Of unquestioned cleverness but debatable legality, this site contains URLs contributed by members who have figured out how to get beyond the registration firewalls imposed by tens of thousands of Web sites.
Builder.com- Numerous newsletters, white papers and discussion boards for people who program, manage, architect and develop Web sites.
Bumperactive.com-A place where you can order your own bumper sticker.
Business.com- All-encompassing search engine about U.S.-based businesses. I even entered my own name and found some references to me (as well as to other guys with my name).
Business Credit USA- Up-to-date credit reports and company information on more than 14 million U.S. and Canadian businesses. Reports cost $5 apiece - a pittance compared with the risks of transacting with a company on shaky financial ground.
Business Journalism.org- Resource for business journalism reporting, ethical discussions, and training, offered by the Donald W. Reynolds National Center for Business Journalism at the American Press Institute.
Business of Baseball- Reference material, news and commentary confirming what we all know- that while baseball is the national pastime, it's mainly a business. And not just now, either.
Business Wire- One of the two largest press release wire services. Recent releases encompass more than 100 different industry categories.
BuzzFlash Report- A site that uses provocative and opinionated titles in their links to current news stories.
BuzzMachine- Pre-eminent blogger Jeff Jarvis cuts through the muck and gives his plain take on the frustrations, duplicity and greed that mark our encounters with technology, politics and culture. Read what Jeff has to say about his ongoing battles with Dell "customer support."
C-SPAN CapitolWiz- Voting records for members of the Senate and House. I recently checked for information relevant to the voting records of my Congressman, David Wu, and my Senators, Ron Wyden and Gordon Smith.
CableNewser- A running diary about how the cable news channels cover the major (and sometimes less than major) events of the day.
Cairo- Not the city in Egypt, but a site where you can search for "physical world" stores by product category, store, and zip code.
California Academy of Sciences Anthropology Collection Database- Humankind uses all sorts of symbols and tools. Here is a search engine that helps you pinpoint more information about these items. I performed a search for "flute," and got back a page with 19 citations.
Coastal Records Project- A collection of more than 30,000 aerial photos
from various locations on the awe-inspiring
Calorie Calculator- Enter the name of a food, and the Calorie Calculator will tell you its nutritional content, carbohydrate and fat content, as well as the amount of dietary fiber it contains. I entered a search for canned lima beans. Here are the results.
Canadian Atlas Online- The Canadian National Geographic's online presence offers pictures and text reflective and descriptive of that great nation's stunning beauty.
Canadian Museum of Nature Natural History Notebooks-Although the site is only comprehensive in the mammalian area, it is worth checking out for its short background articles various mammals, birds, fish, reptiles, amphibians and invertebrates.
Can't Find On Google- You can get anything you want on Google. Maybe not, as the postings on this site attest.
Cap'n Wacky's Boatload of Fun! - a great trove of meaningless detritus. Highlights include It Ain't Cool In the Basement News, a hilarious send-up of the movie information and gossip site Ain't It Cool News; and Unfortunate Cards, a collection of greeting cards suitable for those people who currently are not on your favorites list.
CarbWire-Right now, I am on the South Beach diet, a low-carb regimen. This blog-like site keeps me up to date on nutritional, culinary and scientific developments in the world of low-carbohydrate eating.
CareerBuilder.com- An aggregation of searchable job listings from the classified ads and Web sites of newspapers in more than 200 markets.
Carfree Cities- Essays about how some cities have managed to enliven their downtowns by deemphasizing the automobile and improving mass transit. Online companion to the book "Carfree Cities" by J.H. Crawford.
CBS News- I find CBS News' take on fast-moving events to be more deliberate and measured than the Web sites of many competing sources.
Celebrity Atheist List- Descriptions of the non-theistic beliefs reportedly held by famous people, ranging from Marlon Brando to Bill Gates. Some of these listings quote the notable person directly, while others are hearsay.
CelebrityWonder- Biographical information about celebrities, including data that isn't available anywhere else. If you ever wondered how tall Madeleine Stowe is, now you know.
CensusScope- Large collection of maps and charts that bring a demographic perspective to the 2000 U.S. Census. You can configure maps to reflect national, state, or metro data. Here are some examples. The national Nuclear Families map shows that the counties in which families with at least one child younger than 18 are headed by a married couple tend to be concentrated in the Great Plains and in heavily Mormon Utah - socially conservative areas where "traditional family values" are common. The lowest-scoring counties would appear to be in heavily African-American regions of the Deep South, as well as sections of New Mexico and northern California. I would suspect that the crisis in the African-American family is a reason for the first set of numbers, and the new-age lifestyles in parts of New Mexico and California inform the latter set of numbers. I mean, a chick who owns a bead shop in Taos, New Mexico may not have as traditional a view of marriage as a tithing Mormon family in Moab, Utah. In a similar vein, the national Unmarried Partners map shows the lowest percentage of this arrangement in the Great Plains and Utah, and some of the highest incidences in places like libertarian-oriented Alaska, alternative lifestyle (both straight and gay) regions of Vermont and California; and the Las Vegas area (a tie-in between tolerance of gambling and wide-berth social attitudes). But you know what? It is that diversity that makes life fascinating. The wonder of the human mosaic is a key reason why I pursued my degree in Sociology, and then went into journalism.
Center For Science In The Public Interest- While this outfit seems to object to almost any food that did not grow in the ground free of pesticides or genetic engineering, they are right that what you eat can kill you. Which -- given the fact that other humans killed that which you are about to eat - might be seen as fitting revenge. Scary stuff, but a Nutrition Action Healthletter that mixes cooking tips with even more alerts. How did that song go - "you tell me what you eat, and I'll tell you what you are? Choices."
Charles Bukowski- Captures what makes me tick than any other writer I've ever read. I've had periods of my life in which I've lived like he did -- penniless, surrounded by empty beer bottles and left by confused women. "These words I write keep me from total madness." How true.
Charlie Rose - In an era of corny or impolite talk show hosts who blabber more than they listen, Charlie Rose is a national treasure. While not very comprehensive, his site does list who will appear on his program that evening
Cheap Tickets- Just before Christmas, 2002, I needed to fly back home to Portland from suburban, Washington, D.C. I went to several airline and online travel Web sites, and found schedules that were inconvenient and prices that were not economical. Then, I went to CheapTickets.com, and entered my search criteria. Within a few seconds, they dished up a next-day itinerary that fit an ideal schedule matrix with a reasonable price to boot. Such service earns the site an honored place on my Favorite Sites page.
Cheap Tickets - FlightTracker- When friends or family fly, I can check the progress of their flight on this site. A nifty resource that tells when the flight took off, how high and fast it is flying, and when it is due to touch down. This resource was once known as Trip.com FlightTracker.
Chicago The Band- Although they haven't had a big hit in more than a decade, I watched them on PBS about four years ago and they sounded great. This site has lots of multimedia files from their 40-year career.
Chris Matthews: Hardball- Daily Weblog from a cantankerous MSNBC commentator who loves to play the devil's advocate.
Christian Science Monitor- One of the world's most prestigious newspapers provides a measured, thoughtful and analytical take on the news of the day.
Church of the Customer- Articles and accounts that if they don't prove the customer is always right, attest it is the customer's right to try and prove that time-honored axiom.
CIA-The World Factbook 2007- The Central Intelligence Agency's briefing book about all the nations in the world is online here. Get the scoop on Iraq and Afghanistan. Who appoints the Appeals Court justices in Seychelles? Now, you know.
Cinemorgue- An alphabetical catalog of actors, and the "death scenes" they have played in movies. Each actor's death scenes are listed on specific pages. These pages, in turn, may list interesting trivia about the actor. I noticed that Olivia d'Abo (who also played an immortal "Borg" on "Star Trek: TNG") has "died" three times. Not only that, but Ms. D'Abo is the daughter of Manfred Mann's lead singer. "Doo-Wah Diddy," indeed.
Citation Machine- Back when I was in school, and even when I taught in college, I thought that all that ibid. op cit citation stuff was a pain. Now, this new site does the work for you.
Cities and Buildings Database-Photos of current and historical buildings from cities all over the world.
City Creator- Choose some elements from dozens of virtual buildings, roofs, people, vehicles, roads and walkways. Then, build your city. No danger of sprawl.
City-Data-All you would ever want to know about just about every incorporated place in the U.S. with population above 5,000.
Clark Howard.com- I remember when Clark was just a locally broadcast, Atlanta-based, consumer help guru. I wrote an article about him, which I wish I could find. Now, he's nationwide, on hundreds of stations - offering his tips on numerous topics, from paying off credit card debt to choosing the best long distance calling plan. Befitting Clark's national status, the Wall Street Journal recently wrote a cover story on him. A former owner of several travel agencies, Clark also offers travel tips, updated daily.
Classicbands.com- Links to biographical information about classic pop and rock bands from the 1950s through the 1980s. If you have ever wondered about Gerry and The Pacemakers, for instance, here is the site for you to learn more about this act.
Clear Channel College Entertainment-A listing of performers available for college gigs, and how much each performer or group charges for the privilege of gracing your stage. While performing artists certainly have a right to charge what the market will bear, reading over this pricing info turns up my bullshit detector to high gain. Why? I will give you a damn good reason. While some of these performers rage against "materialism," "consumerism," etc, many still charge a fortune. Any poverty-stricken kid who thinks these acts really speak for them must realize that all these performers have investment advisors and other business handlers whose reason for being is to make these artists some money. No, you snot-nose kids; these performers are not your role-models. The social worker, nun in the poor neighborhood, the drug counselor, the therapist for learning-impaired broken children, and the hospice nurses are the ones who lift us all with their many quiet and unselfish acts of selfless grace. They are the role models, the saints on earth. Not the kid who writes lyrics of alienation in the music room of his $3 million mansion.
ClickZ Internet Statistics and Demographics- Announcements and synopses of newly published research about Internet marketing, as well as links to the sites where these reports are available for purchase.
Clientcopia: Stupid Client Quotes- I love my clients. Where would I be without them? Still, some clients of some people can say, ask, or do some dumb things. This site is a compendium of all that stuff. Here are the Top 20 stupid client quotes, as determined by votes from site visitors.
CNET.com- Computer software, hardware and consumer electronics reviews. Top products in these and related categories are profiled here.
CNN.com- Another necessary, frequent click for these newsworthy times. The easily digestible front page gives you a quick look at what's going on. A click to the Larry King Live page notes who will be the guests that evening, and whether I should bother to watch or taste the broadcast. Hmm, CNN. Back when I lived in Atlanta, I covered the CNN beat for a television trade magazine, and got to know some of the big shots. Now-retired CNN CEO Tom Johnson used to walk up to me at gatherings, shake my hand, and greet me by name. He is no longer with the network, CNN effectively is run out of New York rather than Atlanta, I have chosen to live in Portland rather than in Atlanta, nor am I with that magazine, which moved from Chicago to Los Angeles. (I left for a competitor and they wouldn't have me back even if hell freezes over). Life moves on, and the best way to go about it is deal with the changes.
CNN.com Transcripts- They said it on the record. Word-by-word transcripts of most CNN news and interview shows, including Larry King Live.
Cockeyed.com-Nexus of this brilliant site is How Much Is Inside?. Using photo galleries, the site chronicles experiments that lets you peer inside at the actual contents of stuff like Oreos and flashlight 2 D cells.
Cogprints- A library of self-posted academic studies in eight main subject areas.
College Media Advisers Blog-Thoughts from those noble academicians who advise budding journalists how to run their college papers, and if my experiences at my college paper were any guide, how to stay out of trouble.
Columbia Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition- More than 51,000 full text entries. OK, let's give it a whirl. Ecology. Benin, a country in Africa. Freedom of the press. Caracals, one of the coolest members of the cat family. Lots of "cool cats" here.
Columbia Journalism Review- Online version of the eponymous bi-monthly magazine. Additional content, including a media directory, a series of Resource Guides, twice-weekly news updates, and a searchable archive of previously published articles.
Columbian.com- My home town of Portland, Oregon is directly across the Columbia River from Vancouver, Washington and Clark County. The Columbian newspaper does an excellent job covering issues on that side of the river. Given my newsperson's curiosity, plus the proximity of The Columbian's circulation area, I find myself checking their Web site for the latest news from time to time.
Comcast Message Center- I am one of those AT&T Broadband subscribers who was shifted to Comcast High-Speed Internet in summer, 2003. Yet despite temporary disruptions, this shift has gone well. As with the old AT&T Broadband service, I can check my e-mail directly from a Web browser.
Comcast Radio-A collection of more than 50, commercial-less Internet radio stations brought to me by the same company over which I access the Internet. In fact, I am listening to their New Age station as I type this.
Commercial Closet- As someone with a degree in Sociology and who writes about advertising, I find this site fascinating. Essentially, Commercial Closet analyzes hundreds of commercials for outright (no pun intended), negative, neutral, or vague overtones. Gets a straight but not narrow guy like me thinking. Was there a gay subplot to those DirecTV commercials? Just what is the relationship between the two young men in that Volkswagen commercial where they pick up a used chair by the side of the road - only to discard it when they realize it reeks? Isn't one of them being just a bit too fussy? "Da da da?"
Common Errors in English-A catalog of word misuse from Paul Brians, a distinguished academic at Washington State University.
Communications Technology Industry Association- Information-packed site from the trade organization that represents all sectors of wireless communications-cellular, personal communication services and enhanced specialized mobile radio.
Computer Hope- Free computing help portal offers links to PC hardware and software help pages from hundreds of Computer Companies.
Computer Law Association- When the mouse clicks, the lawyers follow. Association site links to a resource section with articles from CLA members, as well as a linked list of member firms.
Computerworld Security- Superior collection of Internet security news, all linked from this page.
Congressional Biographical Directory- A searchable listing of biographies of everyone who has ever served in the U.S. Congress. My current representative is David Wu, and my Senators are Ron Wyden and Gordon Smith.
Consumer World- Consumer advice tutorials and regularly updated consumer news are the most useful features on this site.
Contracted Work- On this site, businesses can search for programmers and writers. And we pixel-stained wretches can search for freelance Web writing work.
Convergence Catalog : Poynter Online- The venerable institution devoted to journalism studies has posted a continually updated guide to media alliances. There may not be a right-wing or left-wing media conspiracy, but there is one based on the almighty dollar!
Converting Addresses to Latitude/Longitude in One Step- This site, from Intel 8086 architect Steve Morse, enhances basic information from geo-location sites Maporama.com and TravelGIS and uses this data to build a fast and highly functional latitude and longitude search and reference tool. Here's where I am right now.
Cool Cosmos!-This site from the California Institute of Technology is testament to the fact that with enough infrared heft, distant galaxies can collectively look like an explosion in a paint factory.
Corante- It's one thing to set up a newsbot that clips the latest headlines. It's another to use human editors to gather this information and present it in a well-organized manner. Corante does the latter. This technology news-and-views site has two main components: tech news, and thoughtful columns.
Cornell University Ask a Scientist-Cornell University's Center for Materials Research fields questions from the public. Example: "How small is the smallest thing you can see under a microscope?"
Cornell University Legal Information Institute- An encyclopedic resource full of legal information on hundreds of topics. Next time I want to write something nasty about someone, perhaps I better check here first. Getting divorced? Better check out this page first.
Corporate Crime Reporter-Because not all criminals wear wool caps, masks, and rob the register. Sometimes they wear suits and ties, and rob the company. From within. And, sometimes, they are the company.
Court TV- As Warren Zevon once sang, "send lawyers, guns and money." The real Law and Order site.
Craig's List-Writing/Editing Jobs- The best collection of online full-time and freelance jobs postings I've seen. Very specific to my skill set. While the main link I built was to the San Francisco site where most of the writing jobs are posted, announcements are sometimes made on the Portland Craig's List, as well as the Seattle, New York, Boston and Los Angeles Craig's Lists. One caveat about the Los Angeles list, however: many listings are for "scriptwriters" who will not be paid until the script sells. Please realize how heavy the odds are stacked against that happening, even for established screenwriters.
Crazyfads.com- From 1920s-era "flagpole sitting" to the dreary "boy bands" of the 1990s, this site gathers and builds links to communities of interest for many of the fads that have afflicted our popular culture.
Creative Hotlist- I have built a link to the writer job search resource on this site. Here are gigs for writers in my general part of the world.
CrimeLynx-Items of interest for the criminal defense practitioner. Here are some valuable legal research links.
Cryptome- Spills the secrets of the secretive - code-breakers, code-makers, national security agencies. Given world events, a site whose time has come.
Cultural Creatives- If you see a copy of Utne or People magazine on a coffee table, which will you be more likely to pick up? Do you watch NOVA or Survivor? You've got two listening choices: do you pick Tom Waits or John Mellencamp?
Who, in your judgment, has more credibility: Choice A or Choice B? You are served Brie Cheese - will you eat it? In college, were you in one of these- or did you hate them? Are you a believer in evolution, or in this belief system? You've just taken the Cultural Creatives litmus test.
Cultural Policy & the Arts National Data Archive- A meta-directory of resources described in the site title. Here are a bunch of links to surveys that indicate how Americans regard, and interact with, arts and culture.
CyberJournalist.net- Tips about how to write well online, and examples of great online journalism, from a distinguished practitioner. Great links to other cyberwrite how-to's.
CyberTimes Navigator- A regularly updated library of research-oriented Web site links, compiled by the New York Times.
Daily Journal of Commerce- Site for the low-profile but authoritative Design & Construction, Real Estate, Finance and Law newspaper, published in Portland each business day.
Daily Tech-North Carolina-based collection of news items and staff-produced blogs- all focused on breaking news in various technology sectors.
Dale Chihuly- The term "genius" is overused, but this man is a true glass artist. Check out videos about his works in the Chihuly Screening Room.
Daring Fireball- Site is devoted to getting under the hood of popular as well as obscure Mac-compatible utilities.
Darwin Awards- Mean-spirited premise is that when people die doing stupid things, they can no longer reproduce, and the human gene pool improves as a result. Example: the unfortunate New Jersey man whose encounter with an errant vacuum may have been born of Bill-and-Monica type lust. The tragic results, however, ensured he will have no natural heirs. I guess, as P. T. Barnum was reputed to say, there is a sucker born every minute!
Database Football- All manner of statistical trivia about National Football League teams over the last 50 or so years of play.
David Rumsey Historical Map Collection- Thousands of historical maps from around the United States and the world, most of them one hundred years or older. To view these maps properly, you will need to download and install their proprietary browser.
Daypop- A current events search engine that peruses several thousand news sources each day. A recent search for the term "Taliban" yielded these results. Here are the results on a search for articles containing the search term airport security.
Day to Day- Yet another National Public Radio show, pretty much about anything that comes to mind. Archived programs are master-indexed here.
Dead Cell Zones- We've all been on cell calls that have mysteriously faded out or received a sudden attack of static. This site takes reports of such incidents from around the nation, and groups them into reports searchable by metro area or carrier.
Dead People Server- A famous actor, musician or politician fades from the scene, and hasn't been heard from in decades. Is he or she living or dead? One of the best ways to find out is by checking the alphabetical index, which is updated each week.
Dead Rock Stars Club-The lifestyle of a rock and roller can be dangerous. When danger, dumb decisions, or dumb luck conspire, sometimes the lifestyle is a lifestyle no more. Here are some recent passings.
DealTime.com- Another price-comparison shopping bot. To paraphrase a certain Beatles song, you say hello, but I say, Good Buy!
Defamer- L.A.-based, shameless gossip Blog about celebrity proclivities, screw-ups, and controversies.
Defense Review- News for the times we are in. Here's how to protect yourself against enhanced firepower, and how to fire off some rounds yourself. And if you are wondering about how the pros settle their scores, read on.
Defunct Amusement Parks- Nowadays, vacationing families either go to places such as Walt Disney World, or to a National Park. In yore times, weekends were not filled with backpacks, granola and hiking boots, but with carnival games and cotton candy. This site commemorates those times with a state-by-state guide to amusement parks that are no more. Close to home, Jantzen Beach fits that bill. It's now a giant shopping mall, its location just inside sales-tax-less Oregon a powerful attraction to residents of adjoining Washington State. If only by pop culture, the best-known of these shuttered facilities could be Palisades Amusement Park in New Jersey. Its name was the title of a great Freddy Cannon song. Surprisingly, the song received no mention in the historical article I just linked to.
Degree Confluence Project- The goal of this project is to visually catalog every meeting of degree latitude and longitude on the face of the earth. An example would be 45 degrees north, 122 degrees west. Scientists and ordinary folk alike have responded to this site's invitation to supply accounts and photos of travel to these confluences. There are around 1,000 such confluences in the U.S. alone, more than 860 of which have been catalogued here. Of the 20 percent or so that have not been successfully visited to date, many are located in inhospitable terrain, or are on private land owned by inhospitable companies or people. Don't look for awesome vistas; confluence is random, as this shot near the banks of a quiet stream just outside Lakeland, Florida typifies.
DeletedDomains.com- Internet domains can be launched at 3 a.m., in the conspiratorial lair of a solitary person dreaming of Web riches. They can also be birthed with a large splashy party on a San Francisco rooftop. Death from "domain poisoning," as I call it, is the great equalizer. More than 45 million domains have expired since the Web was launched.
Delocate- Search engine for finding non-corporately owned cafes in cities throughout North America. I performed a search for non-corporate coffee houses within five miles of zip code 97210 (trendy Northwest Portland) and got back a page with these results.
Delphi Forums- This is the site for the former Delphi.com, which originally started out as dial-up service providing online access. After many corporate changes, what was once Delphi.com has morphed into a forums site.
DesertUSA- Well-organized reference site about the southwestern deserts of the United States. The main index is on this page.
Dialog Open Access- A free search tool from longtime proprietary online research leader The Dialog Corporation.
Dice.com -Yet another technology jobs search site. Given the unstable nature of tech industries, the "roll the dice" analogy implied in the site's name is apropos. Here is the Portland search page.
Dictionary.com- A handy way to look up what words mean, from language products manufacturer Lexico LLC. The site amalgamates its roster of definitions from such resources as The American Heritage Dictionary and Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary.
digg- Here's how digg works. You want to promote a web page or blog entry? If you've already joined digg, log on and post a blurb with a link to the item you want to promote! I've done this with some of my BBhub entries and have usually noticed an increase in traffic. Or, if you don't want to harness digg, you can either search or browse the directory for interesting content you might want to read. Can you "digg" it?
Digital Camera- British site features technical advice, product reviews and several discussion forums. I recently posted a question to the Software forum and received these replies.
Digital Divide Network- A project of the Educational Development Center's Center for Media & Community, this is an online and offline community of activists and policy-makers dedicated to making the Internet accessible to everyone.
Digital Journalist- Articles, columns and message boards about digital content creation methods, tools and approaches. Boards include DV Cinematography, DV Audio, DV Editing and Photojournalism Today.
Digital Library Network for Engineering and Technology- As the site title indicates, papers, studies, tutorials and other reference materials on relevant topics from Aerospace and Aeronautical Engineering all the way down to Mining Engineering.
Digital Saskatchewan- Thousands of digital photos, the great preponderance of which are from the agriculture-oriented Canadian province. Here's a shot of a pull style combine.
DIGITAL TELEVISION- Site with facts, pointers, and other helpful info to help you become a knowledgeable digital television consumer and viewer.
Digitimes- I rely on them to bring me news of the chip industry in Taiwan. Why do I care? Because I cover mobile devices powered by these chips.
Directory of Corporate Archives- An index of archives held by corporations, what the collections consist of, and the contact person for more info.
Discover Magazine- Selected articles from the current issue of this consumer-themed science publication are available here for free. If you want to subscribe to the print edition, you can do so via any major credit card, including the identically named, but unassociated, Discover Card.
Discovery Channel- I've built a link to the main page for the Discovery Channel. From here, you can jump off to read and watch content relevant to the flagship network's programs, as well as those from The Learning Channel, Animal Planet, The Travel Channel and Discovery Health.
Dismuke's Virtual Talking Machine- Hundreds of sound clips from ancient big band, country, blues and other songs. I remember in 1958, when I brought a barely passing test grade home, and I tried to assuage my parent's disappointment by turning on the radio and singing "Little Star" by the Elegants. They said something like "that's nice," but they tried to convince me such tunes were a fad and the 1930s stuff was classic. Well, they were half right. "Little Star" and the songs on this site are classics, too.
Ditto.com- A searchable index of more than 500 million photographs from all over the Web.
DiversityInc.com-A series of articles and tutorials which reinforce my deep belief that no one in the workplace should be discriminated against based on where they come from, what skin color they are, what they believe in, or who they choose to love.
DIY Life- I've linked to the Computers & Internet section of DIY Life. Here you can learn about projects you can Do Yourself.
DLL-files.com- How many times have you been unable to boot up your PC or load an app because of a missing DLL file? This site is a directory of DLLs. Here, you can find that elusive DLL, load it into whatever program or routine seems to be craving it, and then - hopefully - everything will work.
dmusic.com- Always interesting thoughts, commentary and news about contemporary music, from Internet journalist and commentator Ben Silverman and several associates.
DNS Stuff- A collection of utilities you can use to trace the route of a Web site, check a spam registry, a whois server, or even find out more about the type of server your own site's hosting service uses. I checked my site, and here's what I found.
Domania- How much did your neighbor pay for his house or condo? If they have bought or sold their home within the last ten years, the price may well be available through the Home Price Check feature on Domania.
DonkeyRising- Compiled and maintained by The Emerging Democratic Majority co-authors John B. Judis and Ruy Teixeira, this blog offers takes on polling and other news that reinforces the position taken in their book. Damn, I sure hope they are right.
Drinking Liberally- Links to a nationwide collection of pubs where liberals (such as yours truly) reach out and touch each others minds while partaking of the (often brewed onsite) barley.
Drudge Report- More of a clipping service than a source for original reporting, the site is a regular repository of breaking news and scary rumors. While more than a few of these rumors are inaccurate "if-then" scenario speculations from news organizations with a sensational bent, read enough of them and you'll be a bundle of nerves.
Drudge Retort- By postings of progressive-toned views and news, site is a perfect counterbalance to you know what.
Drug Dictionary- Look up the pharmacological or slang name of any drug, and you are liable to get dozens of definitions.
DSL Reports- Thought-provoking broadband news, views, and reviews site.
Dull Men's Club-This trivia site is regularly updated with trivia that for the most part, isn't even mildly entertaining. Still, by not being entertaining, trivia can rise to that goal. If you get your kicks from the "So What's" of life, Dull Men's Club is for you.
Earth and Sky- What do seashells tell us about the ocean? Can a mosquito's genes be transformed to short-circuit its ability to transmit disease? This daily science radio show has a companion Web site with answers to these, and hundreds of other topics. Listen to today's show by clicking this link. To browse the archives, start here.
EarthCam - Webcam Network- Rather incomplete resource, but given that fact, probably as good an index to Webcams as you will find on the Internet. The index is divided into 14 major sections.
Earth Impact Effects Program- Plunging comets and earth-crashing asteroids can, like, really ruin your day. The site's built-in calculator estimates damage that various size objects at various size speeds would cause at selected distances from the impact. Brings a new meaning to the term, "Ground Zero."
Earth Science World ImageBank- Photos of what nature, and then we, as part of nature, are doing to the earth. Some of what we are doing, such as coastal erosion, ain't purty.
E-Cards- Online greeting cards, a good number of them with an environmental theme.
Eccentric America- In this land of nearly 300 million people, we sure have some strange people, sites and events. This is a guide to them.
Echoes- This is the site for what I consider to be the ultimate new age music radio show, with lots of soothing and hypnotizing clips you can listen to on your computer. Not programmed by damn consultants. Here are some shows available for listening.
EContent Magazine- Internet content is just limping along, but somehow, this magazine about Internet and database content is still going strong. As with the other online and offline publications about content that are left, this magazine tends to cover actual content less than it does content management tech tools and strategies. But hey, that's where whatever advertising bucks that remain tend to be. Some recent articles are hyperlinked from the home page. You can also search the archive for older stories.
eCoustics.com- Volunteer-run site features reviews of Home Audio, Home Video, Computers, Accessories, as well as Car Audio and Electronics.
Edible-Fun site is largely about foods made from stuff that foods are not usually made of.
Editor and Publisher- Web site for the monthly trade journal about newspapering. Here's the latest news about the news business.
Edweek.org- Site incorporates the Web presences of two noteworthy print and online publications, Education Week and Teacher Magazine. Registration is required, which is why I didn't link those two publications to their own URLs.
eHomeUpgrade- Blog-type Web site features news and reviews of electronic gizmos, many of them compatible with home networking.
eHow.com-A few years ago, this site offered me a gig writing multi-step "eHows." The pay was low and I did not accept their offer. The site went belly-up in 2001, but subsisted for three years as a very useful, stuck-in-time, archive of more than 15,000 ways to do things. It has now been revived as a low-budget Wiki.
Elance: Writing & Translation Projects- Subscriber-based access to listings for hundreds of posted jobs. Categories include Articles Projects, Web Content Projects and Technical Writing Projects. Click here to subscribe.
eLearn Magazine-News about online learning, a field which has been accounting for an increasing percentage of my income.
ElsevierComputerScience- Search engine and index lists more than 100 scholarly publications and articles about several research-related aspects of computing.
Emoticons- Let me be straight with you. I have trouble remembering how to form certain on-screen gestures with the computer keys. This is probably the same reason why, despite my history as a lifelong astronomy enthusiast, I could never recognize constellations. Sites like this help with the onscreen stuff. Constellations, I don't care.
Emporis.com- Data on more than 111,000 skyscrapers from around the world. To qualify, a building must be at least 35 meters tall, which is 114.829396 feet, or about 12 stories at and above ground. You can parse the data the site provides in countless ways. Here are the ten tallest skyscrapers in Portland, Atlanta and New York. We will not forget.
eNature.com- A spotter's guide to more than 4,800 animals and plants. Also provides listings of threatened and endangered species. We have 20 such species in Oregon, ranging from the Humpback Whale to the Applegate's Milk-vetch.
Encyclopedia Britannica, 1911 Edition-We didn't know then what we know now. Don't know if that is good, or bad, though.
Energy Fiend -The Caffeine Database- Cool resource lets you know how much caffeine is in what we drink and neat.
Engadget-A cross between a portal and a Blog, this site offers descriptions of, and links to more information about, cutting-edge technology products and innovations you're probably not even aware of.
Eric Alterman: Altercation- Somewhat (but not too) left-of-center musings from an MSNBC political commentator.
Errors messages- Finally! A hierarchical guide to many common Microsoft error messages. You know, Microsoft and error messages go together like hand in glove.
ESPN.com- Scores for the fan, stats for the obsessed, stories for the interested. When it comes to sports, I count myself in under all three criteria.
Ethnologue, Languages of the World- A guide to most of the world's 7,000 plus languages, including where they are spoken. Here are the languages spoken in the United States. Information about widely spoken languages in the U.S., as well as rare languages such as Wintu, which had 10 surviving native speakers the last time anyone checked.
Eventective- Planning a meeting? Site lets you search the U.S. for event facilities that meet your needs.
Evolt.org Browser Archive - Remember the movie "Dead Poet's Society?" Well, this site is a "dead browser's society." Dozens of antique Web browsers, few of which are able to open today's turbocharged multimedia Web pages, are available here for download. For one reason or another, these tools didn't survive as continuing enterprises to the present day -- when Netscape and Internet Explorer are pretty much your only browser choices. But since I've been on the Web since the early days, this collection of digital Edsels brings back memories of the days when the Web was pretty much just static, text-based links. "We are devo!!"
Examiner.com- A collection of city-specific news feeds, all aggregated around the Examiner.com livery. In Baltimore and San Francisco, that livery is also the online presence of local print papers the Baltimore Examiner and the San Francisco Examiner
Expedia- My online travel agent. They've never gummed up one of my orders.
Experts Exchange- Good to know that if you are frustrated by help desks, a collection of Web-based good digital Samaritans can help you with your question.
Exploratorium- Why does a curveball break? Why do auroras light up the northern night sky? How have fish in the Antarctic adapted to their frigid environment? Find out answers to these and thousands of other scientific questions at Exploratorium, the online version of San Francisco's The Exploratorium science museum.
ExpoWorld.net- A searchable meta-index of trade shows throughout the world. Listed by location and industry. I use this resource to keep up with trade shows I may want to visit (and qualify for a travel expense deduction on my taxes).
Facebook- Hey I am a Member, but then so are 60 million others.
FACSNET- Numerous reference materials and white papers for journalists. A brief registration process is necessary to gain access to the many areas of the site, including links business and government Web sites, a searchable database of experts, and backgrounders on newsworthy subjects.
FactCheck.org-Liberal-oriented bullshit detector for political spin and carelessly reported news. Here's an archive of recent postings.
Famous Locations- Site offers a search engine that lets you look up where movies were actually filmed. You can check the site by actor, or by title of the movie. I performed a search for movies starring Julia Roberts, and received this search results page. Here's where scenes from "The Pelican Brief" were shot.
Fandango- No more waiting on long lines outside the movie theater. Fandango lets you search for a movie in your neighborhood, and then log in to buy your tickets online. Then, when you arrive at the theater, you simply show the box office attendant the credit card you used to make your reservation.
FARK.com- Essentially a round-up of offbeat news from all over the Web.
FAST Multimedia Search- A very comprehensive search engine with millions of image files.
Federal Transit Administration- U.S. Department of Transportation agency's site has a useful listing of transit agencies, listed and linked by state. On the state pages, the listings are far from comprehensive, but they are a useful starting point to get to resources where you can check schedules of specific carriers.
FedEx- Site features a handy shipment tracker and shipment drop-off locator. Helps me "keep my ship together."
FedStats- Portal with links to statistical information from more than 100 U.S. Government agencies, as well as thousands of state and local jurisdictions.
Feedster- One of the more comprehensive blog search engines. When I performed a search for Blog entries I have posted, Feedster yielded these search results. Here are the 500 most popular feeds, as measured by number of inbound links.
50states.com- A handy reference portal to the states. Organized into 50 separate sections - one for each state. Click on a state and you will be in a position to learn all sorts of trivia.
Financial Times FT.com- Web site for the Financial Times, one of the world's great newspapers.
Find A Grave- Locations and photos of gravesites at which many leading celebrities, including actors, politicians, musicians and even animals. "Lately, it occurs to me, what a long, strange trip it was." Or, as another departed rock star often put it, "break on through to the other side."
FindArticles- Hot links to the Search areas on the Web sites of more than 500 magazines. This free research shortcut is organized by topic, such as Business & Finance, Computers & Technology, and News & Society.
Find Font By Site- Earlier this year, I embarked on a Web design project where I needed to identify specific fonts that were on a Web site, and then take that into account when I revised the pages. I wish I had known about this resource. I wish I had known about other things, too, but we won't go there. But, they did.
FindLaw- Newly re-launched site is a Yahoo! - like index with site listings, articles, and reference material covering what seems to be the entire legal universe. I could point you to many thousands of resources, but let's just pick one. Do you live in Florida, and is your Green Card about to run out? Get info and help here.
FindSounds.com - What do the sounds of a heron calling, a can of aerosol spray going off, jackhammers and thundering surf have in common? You can look through this sound-effects search engine for Web sites where these, and dozens of other, sound effects are available.
Firedog Lake- Progressive collection of blogs helmed by the heroic and courageous Jane Hamsher
First Amendment Center- News and analysis on just about any topic that has direct relevance to the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Because I cite the First Amendment at the top of this page, it is fitting that I honor it here, too.
FirstGov- Time was that if you were searching for government-related services, you would have to troll through numerous, poorly navigable Web sites. Now, the Feds are in the portal business, and that's good. This resource's prime content is grouped into three "gateways," which are Citizen Gateway (citizens interacting with government), Business Gateway, and Government Gateway, for federal, state, local and tribal government employees.
First Monday- A repository of peer-reviewed, scholarly papers about the Internet.
firstSTREET- The old saying is true that "necessity is the mother of invention." Clickable descriptions of products at the cutting edge of communications, electronics, the Internet, and many other areas. I found this site (formerly named TechnoScout) by clicking on a banner ad. I almost never do this, but I got lucky.
Flak Magazine- A frequently updated, blog-like series of crisply written essays about popular culture. Many if not most of these pieces seem to be written by politically progressive graduate students from liberal media and educational centers. Archives are grouped by subject, including Books, Features, Film, Miscellaneous topics, Music, Opinion, Television and the Web.
Flash 99% Good- Online tutorials for creating Flash-enabled Web pages.
Flickr- My favorite free photo-sharing site. Here are some photos Flickr members have uploaded recently.
FlyteComm Flight Tracker-Track almost any commercial airline flight in the United States or Canada. Flight info is updated every five minutes or so.
Fodors.com- An online travel guidebook to almost anywhere you want to go. Kauai sounds like a great idea, right about now. There's plenty to do, and lots of great places to eat.
FOLDOC- Stands for "Free Online Dictionary of Computing." Here are some recently added terms.
Folio:- Web site for Folio, the bible of the magazine industry. I like to check for news of new magazines that I might wish to target with story pitches.
Folkstreams- Documentaries and homemade films about American folklore. Here's a list of films by subject.
Food Timeline- When, and where in the world were various foods and food elements first developed and consumed? The site contains this information in a time-chart.
FoodTV.com- My idea of "cooking" is waiting for the microwave oven bell to go off. If I ever decide to take cooking seriously, I'll check out their more than 25,000 recipes. I'm thinking about learning to cook with mushrooms, especially Portobellos. Or better yet, let's have a picnic and go to the park. As the 1970's group War sang, we'll sit in the grass until long after dark.
FootnoteTV- Regularly updated assessment of the relationship between television series dramatic plot-lines and statements made on talk shows, to what really is the truth. Given that the truth is sometimes less than absolute, however, the tone of some of these entries is both credibly and necessarily equivocal.
F O R T E A N T I M E S- No, I'm not shouting- that's how this Web site for the magazine about strange phenomenon has decided how to spell out their identity. Although I am skeptical about most of this stuff, I still find the site a hoot.
Forthright's Phrontistery- Language resource site and self-described "thinking place" (hence the word, phronistery) provides a list of and definitions for more than 14,000 obscure and unusual words. The first word is "aba," (no, not them, silly) which means "a garment of camel or goat hair; camel or goat-hair fabric." The last word on the list is "zymurgy," defined as "a branch of chemistry dealing with brewing and distilling." If zymurgy (which my spell-checker recognizes!), can serve to signify "better living through chemistry, well, then, where's the brewpub? The site also has a Compendium of Lost Words. The list starts with the terms acrasial and addecimate (to tithe) and ends with the words yelve, which means a "dung-fork" (for the garden, ya smartass) and zygostatical, which means someone who runs a market and is in charge of the scales for weighing foods and commodities. - Language resource site and self-described "thinking place" (hence the word, phronistery) provides a list of and definitions for more than 14,000 obscure and unusual words. The first word is "aba," (no, not them, silly) which means "a garment of camel or goat hair; camel or goat-hair fabric." The last word on the list is "zymurgy," defined as "a branch of chemistry dealing with brewing and distilling." If zymurgy (which my spell-checker recognizes!), can serve to signify "better living through chemistry, well, then, where's the brewpub? The site also has a Compendium of Lost Words. The list starts with the terms acrasial and addecimate (to tithe) and ends with the words yelve, which means a "dung-fork" (for the garden, ya smartass) and zygostatical, which means someone who runs a market and is in charge of the scales for weighing foods and commodities.
{fray}- Site where people can post stories and pictures of their lives. Many are self-therapeutic attempts at prose, written by 27 year-olds with exaggerated but functional angst. Ya know, the type of man or woman who rides a bike through traffic without looking around, drinks too much coffee, avoids eye contact, has multiple body piercings, never quite got around to voting in this last damn election, listens to clangy music and goes through a series of six-month affairs with partners who have some of their own life issues.
Free Expression Clearinghouse- News updates about First Amendment-related controversies, including censorship and free speech controversies -- some of them Internet-related.
Free Graphics- More wallpaper than Home Depot -- but for your Web site. Plenty of fonts, buttons, bullets, bars, and animations.
Freelance Daily- A blog that constantly combs the Web in search of interesting and productive job postings.
Freelance Writing.com- A listing of paying freelance jobs. Most, unfortunately, pay either poorly, or are thinly disguised term paper and thesis mills.
FreeLunch.com - A brief registration process gets you access to a huge, free online library of economic and population data. Site is a service of the Web site Economy.com.
Free Medical Journals.com- An aggregation of medical journals available for free over the Web. Journals are sorted by specialty, as well as listed alphabetically.
Free Online Dictionary and Thesaurus- Why do I list another one of these sites? Well, I guess it goes back to my philosophy that words without definition or meaning are not words - just a bunch of consonants and vowels.
Free Online Medical Advice- Several hundred questions and answers, skewed toward psychological and behavioral issues. I performed a search for information about anxiety attacks, and received this search results page.
Freesticky- In Web parlance, "sticky" Web sites are those that keep their visitors around for awhile. Freesticky is a guide to free content that other Web sites can use - and, presumably, achieve "stickiness" in the process. I've discovered a trick: The Freesticky guide links to sites by topic area, which can then be visited on their own. OK, let's take this car out for test drive. Freesticky Financial Section. Freesticky Entertainment Section. Freesticky Maps Section. Freesticky News Headlines Section. Freesticky Photographs Section. Freesticky Sports Section.
Fresh Air- Companion Web site to the storied, one-hour interview show on National Public Radio. Today's show is available for listening, as are shows from the last week
Friendster- Seeking to disprove the "six degrees of separation" theory, this resource basically establishes contacts between you, your friends, your friends' friends, and ad infinitum.
Frontier Airlines- My favorite airline for flying from the West Coast to other parts of the U.S. Low fares, available one-way and without a Saturday night stay-over eligibility requirement. And did I mention pretty darn good service for the price?
Fuel Gauge Report- Updated daily, this service from the American Automobile Association lists average gasoline prices in most states and metropolitan areas. Here's Oregon.
Fuller Up, The Dead Musician Directory- Needles, nicotine, dead man's curves, drug deals gone bad. You name it, and a musician has died from it. This site breaks down the deaths of musicians by name, and by cause of death. I saw the needle and the damage done. Hell, I saw the Beatle and the damage done.
Furious Nads- Local Portland blogger BI!x's impassioned musings, often with a degree of fire implied by the title of this blog.
Future Rock Hall-Musings on current and possible future members of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. I state for the record: if the Red Hot Chili Peppers get in but Neil Diamond or Chicago doesn't, the whole deal is fucked.
Gadgetopia- A hot new blog about gadgets, software, and solutions.
Gadzillion Things To Think About- More than 11,000 questions you hear asked a lot, but seldom answered. No answers, just the questions. Example: just what is the washing machine doing during the pause between cycles? I am washing my clothes at the moment I am typing these words, hence my choice of this question.
Gambatte!-Blog from my dear friend Gloria Flynn, who is now back in the U.S. after three years in Japan teaching English as a Second Language. It's funny... when I was in Las Vegas four years ago, I asked her to dinner, and we wound up riding in a monorail car with a guy who subsequently, helped Gloria pave the way for her newest career path.
Game Politics- Articles and opinion pieces encompassing the (often unnecessary) intersection of video gaming and politics.
GasBuddy- Pain at the pump? Portal site catalogs the sad saga of spiraling gasoline prices in more than 170 locations, including Oregon and my home stomping grounds of Portland.
Gawker-An entertaining Blog, mainly dedicated to cultural temperature-taking and celebrity-watching in New York City.
Geek.com- It's all geek to me -- news, newsletter and how-to's on subjects from Personal Digital Assistants to a great technical glossary.
Genamics JournalSeek- A collection of more than 55,000 scientific and other journals available on the Internet. While some of these journals provide free access to article abstracts, the great majority of them charge for full-text retrieval. But here's a trick. If you are working on an article and are looking for an academic source, the name(s) of the article author(s) will be listed in the abstract. Then, you may choose to send them an e-mail soliciting their willingness to participate.
Genealogy Today-Web counterpart to the magazine that offers tips about how to track ancestries, and articles about people who are doing just that. Maybe one day, something I will read on this site, or access via the site, will help me solve this mystery.
Geocaching- What is "geocaching?" According to the Frequently Asked Questions list on the Geocaching site, "the basic idea is to have individuals and organizations set up caches all over the world and share the locations of these caches on the internet. GPS users can then use the location coordinates to find the caches. Once found, a cache may provide the visitor with a wide variety of rewards." I haven't actually geocached myself, but if I were to, I would buy a GPS device, learn how to use it, and then go "hunting" in my neighborhood.
GeoSnapper- A collection of several thousand digital photos, indexed to the specific latitude and longitude of the location where the snapshots were taken.
GetLocalNews.com- A network of more than 45,000 local news and topical Web sites, with most articles contributed by readers. This is true citizen journalism.
Getty Research Art & Architecture Thesaurus- Apparently, J. Paul Getty had a broader range of interests than simply pumping oil out of Southern California's quivery ground. His foundation endowed a great art museum and research institute. On the Getty's Web site, the Art & Architecture Thesaurus offers links to definitions of thousands of relevant terms. When I searched for chiaroscuro, this is what I found.
Ghost Sites- A Web site graveyard, with a museum of screen grabs from more than one thousand sites that have gone out of business recently. Here's a sample from The Museum of E-Failure.
GiantGlossary.com- Finding online glossaries can be a pain in the ass. Many sites bury them, making them difficult to find. Yet one Michael Hill has come up with a solution -- a compendium of dictionaries and glossaries from all over the Web, all in one place. I can't tell you how time-saving it is for me to find hundreds of glossaries only one click away.
Gigalaw- Doug Isenberg's breaking news and analysis about technology-related legal issues, legislation, etc.
gigposters.com- The "words of the prophets are written on the subway walls, tenement halls," but the walls and light fixtures of our cities have long been plastered with posters announcing upcoming concerts. Some four thousand such posters are listed and posted on this site. 'Scuse me while I click this link.
Google Product Search- Formerly known as Froogle, this is the Google tool that lets you search through untold millions of product listings. From there, you click and then if you want to, you buy.
Global Ideas Bank- Thousands of ideas for a better world. Some of these brainstorms on this British site have been posted by individuals, while others have found their way into books.
GlobalSecurity.org- Another site for these perilous times, with news and white papers about security-related intelligence, CyberStrategy, and Weapons of Mass Destruction. Here's where our nuclear forces based in the U.S. are situated. May they never have to be used.
Global Statistics- Frequently updated meta-index of population and other stats, broken down by country. Here are the busiest airports, most populous cities, the most populous metropolitan areas, and all metro areas with a population of one million or more. My home town, Portland, Oregon, ranks #254, between Bielefeld, Germany, and Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.
GlobeXplorer- Aerial and satellite photos of pretty much every town and neighborhood in the United States. Start your search by entering the locality information on this page. A photo of your locality will appear, bearing the company logo. Here is where I live. The logo is removed if you order a customized photo print.
Glossarist.com- A directory of thousands of glossaries on the Internet. Divided into dozens of sub-categories, including television, politics, weather, the earth sciences, the Internet, and railroading.
GoodQuotes.com- A collection of thousands of mostly unattributed quotes, many of them inspiring, thought-provoking, funny, or just plain dumb.
Google- The fastest, most up-to-date search engine. Few if any meaningless Java apps or pain-in-ass pop-ups. Just the results. Now.
Google Book Search- Controversial but handy resource for searching inside of books. I even found a few listings for myself, including from "Country Music, U.S.A: Second Revised Edition," by Bill Malone. I would build a link to that citation but the URL I got was a password-generated, Session I.D.
Googlefight- The geniuses at Google have created such a marvel of a search engine that they have enabled some unaffiliated French entrepreneurs to come up with a side URL that is nothing if not delightful fun. In a world where Google citations confer legitimacy, this site gives you a side-by-side the number of Google retrievals for any two keyword searches.
Google Glossary- Now a Google search string with the term define: (and the term you wish to look up) takes you to what was once the Google Glossary.
Google Groups- Archives of tens of thousands of newsgroups, some of which date back to the early 1980s. Lots of posts from guys with my name.
Google Guide-Tutorials and tips about how to use the most popular Internet search engine.
Google Image Search- With more than 880 million searchable images, the most extensive image search utility on the Web.
Google Local- This new project from Google searches through its vast database and serves up a list of businesses located in your zip code. When I entered my zip code here's what Google Local found.
Google Maps- New feature that let's you type in an address, and then see an exact map of that location.
Google News- With some 4,500 sources, perhaps the best news aggregation effort yet. A new Google feature which, as the company claims, "was generated entirely by computer algorithms without human editors."
Google Scholar- New feature from Google lets you look for citations to scholarly works and studies. Although indexes of these materials are available on the "public" Web, some documents require payment or registration to download. So although you are not likely to see the documents by clicking on search results pages, at least Google Scholar will tell you where you can find them.
Google Video Search-To use this new feature, you type a keyword or phrase in a search box. Then, you will get a linked and illustrated list of television programs (mostly news and feature shows) where the keyword or phrase you just specified was uttered, and for which streaming video is available. When I asked the search engine to retrieve video content where "Michael Jackson" was said, the engine returned these results.
Google Writer Job Search-This isn't really a "site," but a clever way to use a site. I have figured out that if you do a Google search with the search terms "writer" and "job description," you'll come back with a huge number of entries. Pretty resourceful, huh?
Grand Portage National Monument, Minnesota- One of the prettiest, most serene places I've ever been to. Places like this put me in touch with myself (don't take that too literally!)
Greatest Films- Movie buffs' site has an index of great films, with plot summaries of most, plus a super collection of greatest moments and scenes, and what they meant.
Greyhound Lines- "Hop on the bus," Russ. I don't ride Greyhound that often, but I like to check their schedules. You can get there from here, including many cities in Oregon.
GUIdebook: Graphical User Interface gallery- Thousands of screen shots, taken from user interfaces that appear on popular operating platforms, components and programs. You'll also find lots of screen shots from platforms and programs that no longer exist.
Guinness World Records- As you might can tell, this is the companion site for the Guinness Book Of World Records. Many of the records are searchable. Want to know the deepest dive on record for a mammal? Well, dive in.
Hardware Analysis Forums- Maybe something is messed up inside your computer, but you cannot readily diagnose what is causing the problem. Or, you are getting a weird error code when you attempt an action. Just ask your question here, and you are bound to get some helpful replies.
Hearing Voices- Links to audio of features carried on public radio networks.
Henry L. Stimson Center- Respected think tank, with a set of interesting papers on Chemical and Biological Terrorism. While not dismissing the threat, their analysts point to the significant obstacles in delivering "effective" bio-chemical attacks. Somewhat comforting.
HighBeam Research- Pay-to-read excerpts from thousands of print and online publications. Much of this research, including a good number of my own articles, is not available anywhere else except on musty library shelves.
Higher Education Resource Hub- Portal with links to news and resource information about higher education as a scholarly and business enterprise unto itself. This page offers pointers to studies about the field of higher education. If you are in the mood for trivia, check out this state-by-state list of colleges and universities that have closed, merged, or changed their names.
Highways.Tv-You can use all the online and printed road maps you want, but those maps won't usually tell you of construction delays and traffic gum-ups. Highway.tv offers this information on state-specific pages, as well as links to other resources. The best of these is Rand McNally - Road Construction. But you want to know something ironic? The site, which is devoted to highway conditions on the North American land mass, has as its Internet domain .tv, which is assigned to the tiny Pacific Ocean island nation of Tuvalu, a nation with not a single paved road.
History of American Broadcasting- Fascinating stories of how radio stations and networks got their names, and the changes they have gone through - not all of them for the better.
History of Nations-Searchable site of national histories from most of the world's countries.
HOAXBUSTERS- Meta-index of jive-busting, myth-exploding sites. I performed a search for "Nostradamus," and got back this search results page.
HomeTownLocator.com- Portal with geographic and basic demographic information about pretty much all the cities, towns, counties and zip codes in the United States. I checked for my zip code, 97210, and this page came up.
Home Town News- Site offers links to the Websites of more than 2,600 daily and weekly U.S. newspapers. Here are links to Oregon newspaper Web sites.
Hoover's Online - The Business Network- Comprehensive business news and information portal.
Hot Button- Wise-ass but oh-how-true comments about entertainers who take themselves too seriously, are over-hyped, or behave badly (sometimes, all three). Here is today's column. To reach the main archive page, click here.
Hotel and Travel Index- While more general hotel and travel booking sites have their advantages, this site offers the type of comprehensive property information only available to travel agents. For example, when I performed a search for the Best Western University Tower Hotel in Seattle, I got back this information page.
Hotel-Online- Top of the line, hotel, lodging industry and travel news aggregator site.
Hotwire- Need to get the heck out of Dodge? Here are some cheap, last-minute flights, hotel rooms and car rental deals.
Household Products Database- When I was 14 years old, I went under the kitchen sink and through the closets, and mixed about a dozen cleansers together. My Dad came home from work with a stain on his arm, which standard soap could not defeat. My concoction worked! Yet unknown to me at the time, some of these products and ingredients can be toxic.
How Far is It- Plenty of Web sites will tell you how far the road distance is between two cities. How Far Is It will compute the distance as the crow flies. For example, Atlanta to Portland, Oregon is 2170 miles.
How Stuff Works - How do jet engines work? How do toilets work? How do Christmas lights work? This fascinating, well-designed site explains almost every gadget and process you can think of. Here are the top 40 articles and questions. Some of the newest articles are announced on, and linked from, this page. If you want to peruse the entire archive, click the "Huge alphabetical list of all articles!" link.
How To: By You- Rather than pay writers to explain to readers how to do things, this site posts answers from visitors, and then invites others to join in on the thread by posting their own solutions. Here's how some visitors to How To: By You cook rice without leaving it soggy or stuck to the pan.
Human Nature Review- British-based digest of research and opinion about societal and psychological topics.
I, Cringely- Witty and irrelevant columns from one Robert X. Cringely, who is often seen on PBS. Here are some of his
I Want Media- Basically a clipping service for news about the media, but also offers a decent collection of original stories. One, written by site founder Patrick Phillips, is an interview with magazine consultant Cyndi Stivers. It is her contention that "the magazine industry is facing serious problems." Ya think?
IceRocket- Great new search engine specializing in blog search. When I used IceRocket to search for my own posts, I received this search results page.
IdiomSite.com- Actual origin of numerous clichés we use in everyday life - which can be a cliché unto itself. But as tedious as everyday living can be for some of us, it sure beats kicking the bucket.
Images Canada- Canada is many things, including one large photo studio. Images Canada is a search engine to more than 80,000 images held by Canadian galleries, museums, publications, and Web sites. A quest for railroad-related images returned more than 2,300 images.
ImplosionWorld- What goes up, must come down. Site features photos and streaming video of numerous structural implosions from all over the globe.
Infomine Multiple Database Search- Focuses on scholarly research collections in almost any field imaginable.
Information Please Almanac- The ultimate site for information trivia buffs. This online version of the Time Magazine Almanac is divided into ten sections, from World to Weather.
Informed Librarian Online- You may not be able to tell a book by its cover, but you can tell a magazine by its table of contents. This site is a monthly compilation of the most recent tables of contents from over 275 titles - valuable domestic and foreign library and information-related journals, e-journals, magazines, e-magazines, newsletters and e-newsletters. Here is the list of publications they excerpt.
InfoSpace- Meta research resource with Yellow Pages, and White Pages listings, as well as maps and directions. OK, let us put this site to the test. Here's my phone number and address, and where to find me.
Inside Digital Media- Interviews, polls and research reports about digital media, provided by pioneering digital media analyst Phil Leigh.
Institute For Scientific Information HighlyCited.com- A collection of information about, and contact information for, hundreds of scientists in several categories.
Insultingly Stupid Movie Physics- Several physicists, who also are movie fans, have teamed up to either praise, mock, or offer neutral comments on the authenticity of scientific premises and special effects in many popular recent films.
Intel Technology Journal- Quarterly electronic newsletter from the king of chips. Each issue focuses on one key topic, such as home networking. There's even a section on wireless networking for homes.
Intellectual Property and Technology Forum- Relevant headlines, articles and commentary, from the Boston College Law School.
Intelligence Watch- Blog with the latest defense, terrorism, and national security news.
Intelliseek BlogPulse- Updated daily, a quantifiable look at the top links, phrases and people mentioned in Blogs within the last 24 hours.
Intelius- Another one of those for-play services that say they can help you find anyone. I am no much the busybody to pay for this stuff, but occasionally I like to use these sites to find out the ages of people I know, or would like to know.
Intellectual Property Law Server- Dozens of new stories are posted each day on intellectual property law. Site also has separate sections for news and discussions about patent, copyright, and trademark law.
ISTE- This is the Web site for the International Society for Technology in Education. As a technologist as well as an online and classroom educator, I care.
Internet and Computing Newsletters- Yahoo's listings under this topic are a great place to look for quotable experts.
Internet Archive: Live Music Archive- More than 21,000 downloads of live shows from more than 850 musical artists.
Internet Archive Wayback Machine- Over the last several years, the Internet Archive project has captured and saved much of the Web on various dates. Now free and publicly posted, the Wayback Machine is a great way to check how Web site pages looked on such and such a day. When I checked the Wayback Machine's cache of my own site, here is what I found. Heck, I was even able to find Web pages posted for sites I used to work for, but no longer exist.
Internet FAQ Consortium- A collection of Frequently Asked Questions lists in hundreds of categories.
Internet Legal Resource Guide- An index of more than 4000 links and several hundred downloadable files related to legal specialties and issues. OK, let us explore. Here is an index to the Web sites of the 250 largest law firms in the U.S. This is a master index to all law journals with a companion Web site. The next link leads to a page listing the Web sites for all law-related Non-Profit Associations, including my home state's Oregon State Bar. Finally, I will refer you to the starting page for case lookups for United States Federal & State Courts.
Internet Movie Database- The ultimate Web resource for information about current and old films. Site periodically polls their many visitors for their take on their all-time favorite films in more than a dozen categories. Here's the winners in the Top 50 Comedy films poll. I couldn't believe that Airplane! didn't show up on the list. In contrast, here are the films most everybody thinks are clunkers.
Internet Resources for Business Journalists- I already have many of these sites listed on my favorite sites page. That said, collections such as this one from the Philip Merrill College of Journalism at the University of Maryland are worth inclusion for their handy categorization, and frequent pointers to newer sites or those I may not have been aware of.
Internet ScamBusters- Because just like the offline world, the online world has a collection of schemes and schemers.
Internet Scout Report- Assembled by the University of Wisconsin library, this is a weekly guide to new, research-oriented Web sites. You can search the archives by clicking here.
Internet Traffic Report- Pages loading slowly? It's not you, it's the Internet. The site continuously monitors Internet processing speeds at routers located at key relay points throughout the global network. Here is the main page for key online traffic points in North America. This Seattle relay point is one of the ones that are closest to my home in Portland. The nodes know!
InterTran Translation Server- Quick, easy and free way to translate a phrase between several languages.
Intranet Journal- A guide to implementation how-to's, best practices, wireless applications and cost vs. profitability considerations for company Intranets.
Investment FAQ- The most complete library of "how-to", "what-is" articles and resources about investing you'll find on the 'Net.
Isbn.nu- Named after the Library of Congress' (ISBN) International Standard Book Number cataloging system is a online book shopping bot that retrieves current prices for titles on numerous Web sites. Here's how much varying merchants want for Easy Digital Cameras and for Wireless Networking Made Easy: Everything You Need to Know to Build Your Own PANs, LANs, and WANs.
ITA Software Trip Planner-Want to learn how much it costs and how long it takes to fly between any two airports in the world? This site offers this information. For example, flights between Lisbon, Portugal and Madrid, Spain, last about an hour and costs a minimum of $215 each way.
ITpapers- A collection of mostly free, Information Technology White Papers on numerous subjects. If you care more about Packet Rings than rings around a six-pack, this is your place.
iWorkWithFools.com- Do you have colleagues who are bossy, anal, picky, or all the above? Post your tales here. You need not even give your name.
Ixquick Metasearch- A new meta engine that searches more than a dozen sites at once, and returns the top-ranking results from each. As a metasearch site, gives Metacrawler a serious run for its money. Only weakness: no Google.
Jack Bog's Blog- Blog about pretty much everything Portland from one of my hometown's most famous and widely cited
Jambands.com- I came of rock and roll lifestyle age when bands used to stretch out and play rather than snarl. Live the new and relive the old.
James Randi Educational Foundation- Articles, research and opinion by and from James Randi, arguably the world's leading debunker of psychic stuff.
Jane Goodall Institute Website- I consider primatologist Jane Goodall the Mother Teresa of primatology, a living saint selflessly dedicated to preserving the diminishing numbers of our closest living relatives, the chimpanzees.
Jane's Information Group- Web site presence for the storied and highly respected military affairs reference publisher. Since we have yet to learn how to beat swords into plowshares, the relevancy of the site, including its oft-updated Security section, need not be explained.
Jason Calacanis Weblog- Declarations, pronouncements and musings from the dynamic and visionary co-founder of Weblogs, Inc. Plus, I work for the guy.
Java Mirror- Not reflections of coffee, but links to to Java and Shockwave simulations from around the world. Service of the Mississippi State University Department of Physics.
Jazzhouse.org- A lively discussion forum, blog and news source, offered by the Jazz Journalists Association. A recent discussion explored whether or not Norah Jones is a jazz artist. The consensus seems to be mine: her work has some jazz-like qualities, but she is not a true jazz singer.
Jeff Pulver Blog- Commentary, notes and updates about IP Telephony from one of the field's leading entrepreneurs and observers.
Jeffrey Zeldman Presents- Best described as a "meta-blog" about Web design. While Zeldman has plenty of his own opinions, he is not shy about citing the commentary of others who maintain Blogs about this topic.
Jewish Encyclopedia- Fully keyword-searchable site about the 4,000-plus year history and traditions of the Jewish people.
Jim Hightower- Amazing this man got to be elected Secretary of Agriculture in Texas. Molly Ivins, Ann Richards, etc. are dead. They don't make populists- nor Texans like Jim anymore.
Jim Romenesko's Obscure Store and Reading Room- A great place to check for the day's offbeat news. Assembled by Jim Romenesko, who is also responsible for the Poynter Online - Romenesko media news site.
JiWire Wi-Fi Hotspot Directory- Directory to Wi-Fi hotspots around the world, including some 28,000 here in the U.S.
JobSchmob.com- News about, and posts from, folks for whom it's a fair bet do not derive intellectual stimulation from their gigs. Makes me glad I am able to do the work I love.
Joe Sent Me- A collection of news, features and opinions about the hectic world of business travel, from veteran travel journalist (as opposed to "travel writer") Joe Brancatelli.
John Battelle's Searchblog- Daily news and views about search, from the founder of the original Industry Standard.
JohnDoe- The generic name is used by this journalistic-assistance site to guide reporters to publicly available information about people they may be looking into.
JournalismJobs.com- A jobs board for media professionals, such as I. Here's the Online Media section. Because freelance work opportunities are occasionally posted, checking out the Magazines/Publishing listings is also a worthwhile endeavor.
Journalism.org- A joint endeavor of the Project for Excellence In Journalism and the Committee of Concerned Journalists, the site offers news and tools for journalists, including valuable stuff for print and online types. Recently, Journalism.org released a fascinating study entitled The State of the News Media 2004.
Journalist's Toolbox-Meta-index of Web based resources for journalists. We chroniclers love resources like this.
Jump The Shark- It's inevitable -- even the best television shows reach a point in their creative lives when they start to go downhill. A leading actor leaves the cast, an inexplicable plot twist distorts the main story arc, etc. On the "Jump the Shark, " fans and former fans vote to quantify the moment that the show turned sour.
JURIST- Legal information portal from the University of Pittsburgh Law School. Resources encompass dozens of topics, including Legal Research, and new sections on Intellectual Property law and Terrorism Law and Policy.
Justice Talking- A growing collection of more than 215 archived one-hour discussions about controversial legal issues. New programs are broadcast weekly on National Public Radio affiliated stations.
JiWire- Directory of Wi-FI hotspots around the U.S. Useful service, considering that I have a-enabled notebook
Kartoo- A visual search engine. Type in a search term, and something that looks a bit like a diagram of cell DNA appears. Citations are grouped by topic within the diagram. Move your cursor over the citation to see a description of the link, or link category. While description will only be the first several words of the text in the cited document, the cool thing is that you will not have to go to the document itself in order to preview it.
KATU- News and feature updates from one of Portland's best television news operations. I do notice, however, they tend to update less on the weekends. I guess their Web folks have the weekend off. Weekends off... what a concept!!
kausfiles.com- Thoughtful daily political and social commentary, without the ideological trips and dramas.
Keep Portland Moving- Frequent updates on road and bridge projects that are bound to tie up traffic in my home town. Some of the projects are temporary, while others are more long-range in nature.
kgw.com- Of all the news sources in the Portland area, the Web site for television station KGW-TV seems to be the most regularly updated.
KillerApp- News of broadband and software innovations.
kiraco's Photo Home Page-My niece Kira is a talented and budding photographer. She has hundreds of her photos posted here.
Knowledge Hound- Reference meta-site divided into more than one hundred specific subject index pages.
KPOJ Super 62- I guess I am showing my political leanings by linking to the live stream of this progressive radio talk station from Portland, Oregon. About time that Messrs. Limbaugh, Hannity and Savage had some retort.
kuro5hin.org- Technology and culture Blog, a true example of the Web's potential for thoughtful dialog.
Language Corner- The Columbia Journalism Review resource describes the proper usage for numerous phrases, including "could/couldn't care less" and "refute/rebut."
Language Museum- Greetings in more than 1,200, mostly rare, languages. Here's the Hail Mary in Tsimshian, which at last count, had 323 speakers in North America. Sure are a good number of "k" sounds, right?
L.A. Observed- A daily blog about life in one fascinating city.
LastMinuteTravel.com- If a flight leaves with empty seats, a rental car spends an un-rented day, or a hotel bed and unslept-in night, that money can never be recouped. For that reason, service-providers in these sectors get real nervous when the aforementioned appears ready to happen. That's the strategic reason for sites such as this, where great deals on flights, hotels, and rental cars are plentiful.
Last Words- "The tongues of dying men enforce attention like deep harmony," wrote William Shakespeare in Richard II. In keeping with that belief, this site offers the reputed final utterances of the famous and infamous. Among other citations, Last Words breaks down their citations by departing phrases of real people and fictional characters. Example: upon losing a duel, American naval hero Stephen Decatur said, "I am mortally wounded, I think." Well, duh.
Late Show With David Letterman-Top Ten- You know the drill; every night, David reads off an outrageous top ten. The most current top ten list is posted here. You can also peruse the archive for previously broadcasted and posted lists.
Law Library of Congress- Resource with links to United States legal information, as well as law-related info from all U.S. states and territories, including Oregon.
Lawrence Lessig Blog- In a world full of increasingly fewer media monopolies who use focus groups and tenacious copyright lawyers to narrow our access to creative works, prominent freedom-of-ideas attorney Lawrence Lessig is a Patrick Henry for our time. He's on the losing side more than the winning side, but he is still right. This Blog is Prof. Lessig's ongoing report from the trenches.
Lawyers.com- First, click all the lawyers. A searchable index, with contact info for, more than 440,000 attorneys in the U.S. Search by practice area, city and state. OK, let's take this baby out for a spin. Here's a list of patent attorneys in New Hampshire. Let's try Internet lawyers in California. Admiralty law in Nebraska? Huh? I guess if your boat runs aground in the three-foot-deep Platte River, you will be so embarrassed you even dropped anchor in that glorified mud puddle, you may want to sue someone. Site is presented by Martindale-Hubbell, longtime law firm print directory publishers.
LegalTorrents- Not all peer-to-peer digital content is illegal or of questionable legality. Here's a library of legally downloadable, freely distributable music, movie and book files available for download and play via a piece of software called BitTorrent.
Leo's Lyrics- One of the Web's most comprehensive collection of song lyrics, organized by song, artist and album title.
LexisNexis- Striking out in your search of the free Web? You might want to try a subscription-based database such as Lexis-Nexis. Here's a list of LexisNexis products and services, some of which can be accessed via special one-day subscriptions.
lexisONE- A legal-mega site with free keyword access to a case-specific search engine. You can search by keyword, state, and both. I performed a search for Oregon legal cases having to do with libel. A search results page came up with 23 citations. You can even access public records in every state on a pay-as-you-go basis. Here's what you can find in Oregon.
Librarians' Index to the Internet- One of those "list of lists" sites that give infoferrets like me a head start hunting down information on the Web. Site categorizes resources into more than 40 subject areas, including Computer Topics, General Reference Topics, Geography Topics, Internet Topics, Mass Media, Politics, and Travel Topics.
Library of Congress City and Towns Map Collection- A fantastic collection of thousands of maps from the last few hundred years. Let's give it a whirl. Browsing the Geographic Location Index page, I've come across a page with links to another page with two historical maps of Portland.
Library Journal- For the professional book-minders, the appointed and deserving guardians of our collective knowledge.
Link TV- Streaming video programs about nations and topics seldom covered in the celebrity and fear-obsessed U.S. mainstream media.
LiP Magazine- Short screeds, interviews and reviews from a leftist perspective, including lots of articles about varied lifestyles, the perils of globalization, women's issues, plus art and music. Fortunately, the site generally avoids the snotty tone of academic liberal sites, or the "everything sucks except a few recording artists, movies and films" alienation of other sites aimed at people in their 20s.
Lists of Bests- Site gathers and then builds links to, Web pages that rank "the best" books, movies and music. I feel duty-bound to mention, however, that the list is sparse and needs to be expanded with many more entries. If I see that few if any lists have been added, I'll yank 'em from this page.
ListServ CataList- A keyword-searchable directory of more than 60,000 public mailing lists that use mailing list software made by L-Soft International. Here are the ListServ-powered lists with 1,000 subscribers or more.
Literati Network of Authors- Literati hosts the Web presences of many leading authors and journalists. Here's a list.
LLRX.com - Web Guide to U.S. Supreme Court Research- Librarian-oriented legal research site offers annotated directories to other sites that specialize or offer legal perspectives on U.S. Supreme Court decisions.
Long Bets- Site takes hypothetical virtual "bets" on whether specific technological or political changes will occur over time. Among the bets placed to date: By 2030, commercial passengers will routinely fly in pilotless planes. I think not. Here are some open bets.
Looplabs- Electronic tabla, anyone? Some of us remember those primitive, $100 electronic keyboards. We'd take them home, and try to extract new grooves from the built-in sound menu. With Looplabs you can now do that online. The site is a collection of pre-recorded songs, sound "loops," and cool controls. You use the slider settings to configure these musical snippets to match a specific beat style, or to sound like they are being played on a synthesizer, clavinet...or tabla.
Los Angeles Times- Earnest and resourceful world and national news reporting from one of America's major metropolitan newspapers.
Lost Remote- A combination Web site and discussion board for Webmasters of television station Web sites. As one who covers this industry, I find Lost Remote a valuable resource. Here are the Archives of their weekly newsletter, and a link to post a message.
Louisiana State University Jazz Collection- Hundreds of sound samples from the main state university in the state that is the cradle of jazz.
Luciferous Logolepsy- Wow, I had a feeling my spellchecker would not recognize the terminology that entitles this 9,000-entry index of obscure English words. Luciferous has nothing to do with the Devil. It means illuminating, literally and figuratively. Logolepsy means and obsession with words. But as to my description of this site, as well as my writing, well, let us not get too lexiphanic.
MacRAE'S BLUE BOOK- Want parts for say, a drill bit that can cut through rocks? This free resource has searchable listings from 120,000 industrial companies and over 500,000 industrial products.
MadSciNet- More than 700 accredited scientists are on call to answer questions from site visitors who are working on school projects, are involved in work-related research, teaching, or, like I have been known to be, have a hypercuriousity about all manner of things. The archives have many tens of thousands of questions. Search the archives here. Two of my favorites: similarity in skunk smell and scent of azalea plants - same compound?, and What would be the effect of popping popcorn in a vacuum?
MagPortal.com- A searchable directory to magazines that post free content on the Web, as well as highlighted articles from those collections. Citations are classified into several directories, including Science & Technology, Business, the Internet, and Society, Politics & Culture.
Mahalo- New user-configured search engine. Company CEO is Jason Calacanis, for whom I worked for at Weblogs.
mail2web-On the road? Want to download your e-mail? Go ahead, try it. I am sure you will agree with me: so simple, so easy, yet so cool.
Mailshell- An index with links to sign-up forms for hundreds of e-mail newsletters, on subjects ranging from movies to cooking recipes.
MakeZine.com- In the mood for some technology how-to products? Then try MakeZine, from the O'Reilly Network - a technical book and Web site publisher.
MapBlast- I find this site to be more visually appealing than many other online mapping resources. Here's where I live.
Mappy- Although I am not planning a European trip any time soon, if I were I would use this site to obtain train and driving directions. Although, I suppose, I would have a bear of a time adjusting to the steering wheel being on the right side.
Maptech MapServer- Another cool topographical map site that lets you pinpoint almost any place in the U.S. Here's my neck of the woods.
Marginal Revolution- A left-leaning blog about the ironies of life.
Marketplace- Web site for the daily business news show from Minnesota Public Radio. Partial transcripts and full streaming audio from previous shows are indexed and linked from the News Archives.
MarketResearch.com- I often need statistics, and need them fast. These resources are in market research reports, provided by hundreds of companies. The search engines do a poor job of indexing these reports in a timely manner. I don't have time to visit multiple Web sites to hunt them down. That's why this research-report aggregation site is so valuable to me.
MarshallK- Internet thought leadership from well-traveled fellow Portlander and friend, Marshall Kirkpatrick.
Martindale's Construction, Remodeling, Landscaping & Gardening Center- Links to sites where you can learn how to build, fix up, and grow shit.
Mashable- Arguably the definitive blog about social networking.
Mass Transit Magazine- As a man of motion (and sometimes of emotion as well) I prefer metro areas that have well-integrated, well-patronized and well-planned mass transit systems. This magazine covers the latest developments in the field. Here's a recent piece on the latest commuter rail projects in North America. Here's an update on North American light rail projects.
Match.com- A useful resource for those times in my life when the heart of this Portlander has needed a port.
MayoClinic- Web site for the most highly respected health care facility offers a database of diseases and conditions, a Drug Information database, a first aid guide, and answers to common medical questions.
McAfee.com Internet Connection Speedometer- Party rocker Sammy Hagar once sang "I Can't Drive 55." I say that "I Can't Surf 56" (kbps). My cable modem has largely eliminated waiting for pages to load. This service sends different files to your PC, and then crunches an estimate of your connection speed by determining how long it took their files to transfer to your machine. These connections seem to be getting faster. On a busy Saturday afternoon in late February, 2004, I tried it and attained a speed of 2.9297 Mbps. A couple of years ago, I tried it around 4 p.m. on a lazy Saturday afternoon, and came up with 2.029 Mbps.
McGraw-Hill's HOMELAND SECURITY- Samples from several pricey McGraw-Hill publications dealing with same. Free content from current and recent issues of Homeland Security & Defense Newsletter is the real value-add proposition.
mediabistro.com- A New York-centered jobs board and discussion community for the creative arts. Despite the Big Apple emphasis, the site has plenty of listings for print and online jobs throughout the nation.
mediabistro.com Revolving Door- As a freelance journalist, writer and author, it behooves me to keep up with editor job changes and appointments. This site does a better job at doing that than most.
Media Bloggers Association- I should get off my butt and join this association of (guess what) media bloggers.
Media Map- I primarily use this site for its SourceNet feature, which lets me post queries to potential sources for the article I am writing on. MediaMap also offers an ExpertPR Weblog, which features news about the comings and goings of print and online media people as we move from one masthead to another. Gosh, we are a wandering lot, are we not?
MediaPost Advertising & Media Directory- As the title says, a directory of key decision makers in media, and the advertising industry.
Meetup- Gathering place for more than 4,400 interest groups. These groups hold meetings in more than 1,000 cities around the world, including mine.
megapixel.net- Articles and forums about digital photography.
MelissaData Free Online Lookups- Near as I can tell, "Melissa" is a virtual online research assistant. Site has area code lookups, and lots of other treats for the compulsive info-ferret.
Memeorandum- Top news aggregation site, with news automatically updated every five minutes.
Merriam-Webster OnLine- I was in college decades and decades ago, but the cyberspace version of the Merriam-Webster Collegiate Dictionary is a valuable resource. Each morning, a click to the Word Of The Day feature sparks at least a bit of intellectual vigor for my own wordsmithly tasks.
Metacrawler- The fastest of the multi-search engine meta-directories. If it's anywhere on the Web, Metacrawler will find it.
metacritic- An aggregation of critic reviews of films, full-length videos, music and games.
metroblogging- Site includes daily urban-themed blogs from more than 20, metro areas, including Portland. I'm one of 10 Portland bloggers.
Michael Moore.com-The left-wing polemicist offers a persuasive online counterweight to all the fear-exploitation crap on right-wing talk radio.
Microsoft Certified Professional Magazine Online- An independent voice covering the latest news about current, forthcoming technology and platforms in the offing from the world's largest computer software and operating systems company.
Microsoft TerraServer- Another one of those sites that let you look down from space to where you live.
Mic-UK- British site with lots of fascinating pictures of microscopic bugs.
Miserable Melodies- A frequently hilarious collection of clips from recordings made by singers and actors who either cannot carry a tune, or recorded a song so far askew from their image it was laughable. Browse the list by artist or song title. I cannot resist at least a few: " I Can't Get No Satisfaction," by Phyllis Diller. Hey Phyllis! " If I Had a Hammer" by Leonard Nimoy, a.k.a. Spock. Hey Spock, why bemoan not having a hammer when you already have the Vulcan nerve pinch! " Rocket Man" by William Shatner makes topical sense, but not musical sense. And finally, there is the un-credited woman carrying the vocal chores on " My Bathroom is My Special Place." Many nine-year-old boys would agree. Hell, that's where many of today's red-blooded American males first learned how to wash their washcloths off verrrrry thoroughly.
Mobile Jones- Mobile device, carrier and networking news from colleague Debi Jones- a long-established authority in these sectors.
Modern Language Association Census Data- You can use this site to find out how many specific-language speakers were counted in your zip code in the 2000 U.S. Census.
Molecular Expressions Photo Gallery- Thousands of photos of the microscopically exotic, the everyday mundane, and large stuff, as taken through the microscope. A photo of an Amaretto looks like a post-modern painting. This is the surface of a hunting knife. And, if you feel like walking away from your confounded computer to go for a walk in the park, you'll want to take a look at Acetyl Choline - a neurotransmitter that governs the reactions between your brain and your motion functions.
Mondo Times- A comprehensive, worldwide media directory, listing and linking to the Web sites of more than 15,000 media outlets in 211 countries. Here is a listing of the most popular media sites, as measured by the number of click-thrus from the links on Mondo Times
Monster.com- I'm somewhat skeptical of job boards. I have two reasons. First, I have generally been more successful at pitching employers about creating work that might fit my needs than I have been answering a notice for a job with very specific requirements and duty parameters. Second, the amount of responses these boards don't put the numerical odds in my favor - no matter how qualified I might be for a particular position. Still, I like to stop by and search, even for the heck of it. On a recent visit, I entered several search terms for Portland-based positions. Monster dished up a page with these results.
morph- Blog from the Media Center at the American Press Institute.
MotherNature.com - New Choices in Natural Healing- Highlighted by more than 150 chapters detailing natural remedies for a variety of ailments from acne to yeast infections. But you know what? Don't you see irony in a site about "Mother Nature" carrying the domain name most often associated with commercial (i.e., ".com") sites? I mean, Mother Nature was around longer than the Internet, or even our desire to make money.
Movielink- I am sure you agree with me that driving to the video store, standing in line, and then returning the video or DVD is a major pain in the ass. With Movielink, you purchase limited-time access to the film, download it to your hard drive, and play it! Transfer can take the better part of an hour, but I can't think of a better reason to pay for broadband Internet access. Here is a list of all movies available for online rental. But keep in mind that after the allotted time, your stored movie becomes inactive. Kinda like those "Mission Impossible" "your mission, should you decide to accept it" cassettes. Like anyone ever turned down a mission on that show? Hello?
Movie Review Query Engine- A searchable index to movie reviews posted all over the Web. A search for reviews of "Million Dollar Baby" yielded this search results page.
MPiOS- A human-configured Web site index by some mysterious outfit who seems to harbor a phobia letting the world know who they are.
Mr. Magazine- Magazine expert Samir Husni tracks most new magazines released in the United States. For links to lists of magazines that have made their debut in the last 12 months, click here. With a pulse on the industry, Dr. Husni has made his "What's New, What's Hot" commentary available here.
MSNBC- The latest news, from a well-respected cable and online news organization. Lately, I have been visiting the site several times a day for its handy Newsbot feature.
MSN Search- Microsoft says they intend to become serious competitors in Web search. This is their first major effort. Let's perform a vanity search and see how they do.
MSNBC The Scoop- Every weekday, MSNBC gossip columnist Jeanette Walls posts the kind of celebrity news and gossip you will not read on supposedly similar sites. Too many other sites use thinly disguised public relations pitches. Walls relies more on burn-up-the-phone-lines gumshoe work. Missed some of her previous columns? Read them by clicking here.
Multnomah County Library- My home town library maintains an extensive selection of remote databases you can access with a library card.
Murphy's Laws- All of Murphy's Laws are catalogued here. You may get a cackle out of Murphy's Technology Laws and Computer Laws. Be sure to check out Murphy's Love Laws. My favorite, for repeated personal experience reasons: "Availability is a function of time. The minute you get interested is the minute they find someone else." And, if you are interested in how Murphy's Laws acquired their collective name, click here.
Museum Of Bad Art-I'm pretty good with photography, digital video content creation, and even drawing on the computer. But ask me to paint, and I'm liable to turn in stuff that makes this "bad art" look like Monet. That's not to say this site isn't a hoot, though. Here's a link to an oil-on-board called "Love Is Being Out On A Limb Together." Sure is, you know.
Music Industry News Network- A portal-blog hybrid site that covers the creative, legal and technical aspects of the music world.
Music from TV Commercials- A listing of song tracks included in commercials produced over the last several years. The links accompanying the tracks do not spawn sound samples. Instead, the links take you to a page on Amazon.com that contains a link to an audio sample of the song used in the particular ad. Here are some new additions, as well as the site's complete archives.
MyFamily People Finder- If you are creative enough, you can use this site to find relatives you have lost track of, or have never met.
My Way- No, not the Frank Sinatra song, but a streamlined combination of Google and Yahoo!, without the pop-ups.
Nanodot- Commander Data may be hundreds of years in the future, but nanotechnology is here now. Here's the latest news about what's here and what's coming in the field.
Nano Investor News- In the world of tech, little things, including that which you cannot see, means a lot. Site is a veritable Petri dish of leads for people like me, whose sustenance depends on a steady flow of leads to editors (as well as the wisdom not to bug the shit out of them once I send them queries).
Napsterization- Blog with news and views about the technology, legal implications and competitive aspects of peer-to-peer trading and downloading of digital files. I've written a book on that very subject.
NASA Brain Bites- Collection of short video clops that offer answers to such compelling space travel questions as How do you scratch your nose in a spacesuit?�
NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies- Thousands of research reports, modeling software and other goodies available for download.
NASA Sun Earth Media Viewer- "Here comes the sun," literally. At any one time, this feature on the NASA site offers at least two dozen ultraviolet images of the sun's exterior, as well as of the fire down below. The photos are taken from a satellite telescope operated by the SOHO (Solar & Heliospheric Observatory) project, a joint effort by the European Space Agency and our own National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA).
NASA's Visible Earth- Hello down there! Hundreds of high-res shots of the earth, taken from space. Attention, tornado watchers: here are several funky funnels. There are numerous images classified by U.S. state.
National Association of Counties- Highlight of this site is political, economic and demographic information for each of the more than 3,066 counties, boroughs and parishes in the United States. Start your search by clicking here. I checked for Oregon and then for Multnomah County, my home and an infinitely more progressive place than the last jurisdiction I called home.
National Association of Railroad Passengers-Hotline- I've been fascinated by trains since I was a boy. Each week, this section of the rail traveler's advocacy site keeps me up to date on Amtrak's attempts to stay alive and grow the system, despite mixed sympathies in Congress. I'm a member. Here's how to join.
National Defense University- Listing this site may seem counterintuitive to the Jain prayer on the Speaking Out section of my Web site, but these are times when the expertise of this pre-eminent military and security policy institution is a national asset. Site offers several free papers on such subjects as weapons proliferation.
National Enquirer Online- I post this site with the full realization that my reputation for intellect may be irreparably harmed. Daily missteps of celebs -- such as divorces, unplanned but joyous pregnancies, trips to rehab. In short, all the stuff that affects the future of our civilization.
National Geographic- Companion site to the great magazine offers tons of interactive features, articles,adventure photography tips, and maps.
National Governors Association - Ever since I studied for my degree in Political Science, I have been a government and politics geek. Governors run our states. Meet 'em.
National Institute of Standards and Technology Computer Security Division- Information security news and best practices portal, prepared by the Information Technology Laboratory at the National Institute of Standards and Technology.
National Institutes of Health-Home page for the U.S. Government's take on health information and news.
National Park Service- Because it is all out there.
National Review Online- I'm not a conservative, but it helps to hear what the other side has to say. The writing here is taut and crisp. Makes my blood boil, but that is the cost of living in a free society.
National Traffic and Road Closure Information- Sometimes, maps don't have the latest information. Roads can be closed, or subject to substantial delays due to construction, hazards, or bad weather. This site from the Federal Highway Administration contains pointers to the latest road disruption news. Here are pages listing links detailing the latest conditions for Oregon, and for Washington State.
National Trust for Historic Preservation- The most robust and influential institution for keeping our nationally significant edifices away from the wrecking balls of greedy, rat-bastard developers. Here is where some front line battles have been, and are being, fought.
National Weather Service Climate Prediction Center- Some folks step out into the wind, and feel the weather. Others, such as those assigned to this agency, take a longer view, and forecast the climate. Here's the latest 30-day outlook.
National Weather Service Doppler Radars- Here is the latest U.S. radar map from the National Weather Service Doppler radar.
NationMaster.com- Statistics about most of the world's 250-plus national entities. Although the information can be found in other places (chiefly on the site), NationMaster parses the data in some fascinating ways. Here is a list of the world's nations ranked by population, and by number of airports.
Nature-Full-text articles and highlights from the respected science journal.
Net Disaster- Ever despise a Web site (or a person with a Web site) so much that you wanted to launch a simulation that would "destroy" the site? Net Disaster lets you do this.
NETR Public Records Online- Real-estate and assessor records, from counties all over the U.S. Also links to a site where you can search criminal records.
NetLingo- A directory of Internet-related terms and jargon (not that there isn't some overlap between the two classifications. My Webmaster spells the term "website" as such, but NetLingo knows better.
Netscape.com- Netscape was once a proud, independent company and an innovator in the browser wars. Although they still make a darn good browser, today the main value of their site is as a portal to online content from corporate parent AOL-Time-Warner's impressive portfolio of print magazines and Web sites.
Net-Temps- Temporary jobs in the Internet and Information Technology fields.
Network Solutions- WHOIS Lookup- From this page, you can find out the address, phone number and contact info for almost any Web site -- even the ones who are too dumb to post anything more than an "email@example.com."
New Scientist.com- Timely and highly credible site of the British science magazine offers news, features, and updates on Hot Topics. Here's an interesting feature on the role brain chemistry plays in people who tend to see patterns in unrelated events. (In truth, most of us have a habit of imagining patterns when there aren't any, and failing to "connect the dots" when they need to be). I also like to check The Last Word, an archive of more than 1,100 science-related questions and answers. Just one example: Why don't adults fall out of bed? I suppose a more ribald question would ask why adults fall into bed.
New Venue- All you ever wanted to know about digital filmmaking. Much of this info is linked from the FlickTips page.
NewsFactor Network- A collection of six technology-related news sites, updated each business day. Sites (some of which I have listed separately on this page) include E-Commerce Times, TechNewsWorld.com, Wireless NewsFactor, and osOpinion.
NewsGator Online- Free service that monitors new Blog, newsletter, Web site and other posts on topics you care about.
NewsJobs.Net- A compendium of links to Web sites with jobs for news-oriented editors, writers and reporters.
NewsLibrary- Inexpensive way to search dozens of U.S. newspapers, and to find articles from as many as 20 years back. Cheaper than a parking spot near the public library.
NewsLink- A starter resource with links to top local news sites, as well as sites for newspapers, magazines, radio and television stations, and further resources. Unfortunately, the resources area of NewsLink is partially out of date has numerous dead links. It could use an update.
NewsLinx Web News - All of today's Web and Internet news. Links from several dozen news sources. The best thing about this site is that you can search it by topic or keyword for older stories. It's faster, more comprehensive, accurate and more current than performing such tasks on search engines -- some take weeks or months to post links to articles. NewsLink's search function helps me find what I need to know -- fast.
newsmap- A graphical representation of the relative amount of news by topic indexed by the constantly updated Google News site.
NewspaperLinks- Another one of those newspaper Web site meta directories.
Newsweek- When I am around my computer on Sunday, I like to sneak a peak at the forthcoming week's edition. It's better than waiting until mid-week, when my copy arrives in the mail. Many of the articles are available on line.
Newswise- Links to press releases from colleges and universities, announcing new research. There are separate areas for Science News, Medical News, Business News and Life News. They also have a handy Newswise Contact Directory that lets you search for public information staffers at universities and colleges. A great treasure-trove of story leads.
New York Observer- New York is the media capital of the world, and the weekly New York Observer has its own take on media and the arts.
New York Post Online Gossip Page- Naughty celebrity gossip and trash talk from the pages of the New York Post. Much of it is real catty stuff, placed by agent provocateur publicists and busybody (in more ways than one) waiters that overhear stuff. The old age is true: "Loose Lips Sink Ships".
New York Public Library Digital Gallery- A collection of several hundred thousand images from the library's vast database of photos, paintings, and maps.
NewYorker.com- In
some circles, it is stylish to moan for the days of the old "New Yorker." Yea,
if you wanted to read about life among the expatriates of
New York Newsday-Back in the mid-1990s, New York Newsday was folded back into the Newsday, which historically has tended to focus on Queens and Long Island. Yet in the past couple of years, this newspaper has been boosting its coverage of New York City. This site is testament to that.
New York Times- In this time of turbulent international and domestic affairs, do I even need to explain why?
New York Times Book Section- What thinking people are reading, or at least, ought to read. The first chapters of several new books are excerpted, and The New York Times Sunday Book Review is offered. A good way to feel superior to the public at large, whose choice of reading matter is not always enlightened.
New York Times Circuits- The latest high tech news and product reviews, published weekly in, hmm, guess where?
NextBus-Since they run on public thoroughfares, busses sometimes do not arrive when schedules say they do. NextBus takes a good bit of uncertainty out of the waiting-on-the-bus process. Using GPS technology, they give you reliable projections as to when the next bus or other transit vehicle will reach your station or intersection. Here is the NextBus application for the Portland Streetcar stop just outside Powell's Books at NW 10th Avenue and Couch Street in Portland.
NNDB- Site offers basic biographical data, and sometimes juicy sexual orientation rumors or ethnicity information, about tens of thousands of non-anonymous people. Hey, Carol Channing is a multiracial Christian Scientist!
Nolo Self-Help Law- Legal publisher provides free online resources in dozens of topic areas, ranging from traffic tickets to probate. And, it's all free.
North American Light Rail Information Site- Comprehensive guide to North American light rail systems.
Number Watch- Site takes a month-by-month approach to demystify number-oriented over-interpretations delivered by the overeager, let's-find-a-hook-to-this media.
NutritionData's Nutrition Facts Calorie Counter- This site offers a searchable list of nutrition information from more than 8,000 foods and recipes, both exotic and popular. A few clicks on the fast foods area, and you will never frequent one of those places ever again. Even just to use the bathroom.
NYC Subway.org-Photos of, and articles about, everything you ever wanted to know about the New York subway system.
Obituaries 101 Death Notices- Links to the obit pages of several hundred newspapers. Here are some links to recent obits of prominent people.
Obsolete Computer Museum- Collection of more than 100 photographs of old computers. A guy remembers his first computer in the same way he remembers his first ...err, car. The Tandy Model 100 was my first laptop. Wherever I went on assignment, I took it with me.
Obtaining Birthdays in One Step- This site, from Intel 8086 architect Steve Morse, enhances basic information from a Web site called Anybirthday.com and lets you look for birthdays of people you know or have known.
O'Dwyer's PR Daily- News from the world of public relations - a profession whose practitioners work with me on articles. Intelligence on the comings, goings, and priorities of these people help me manage the flow of information I act on. PR maven Jack O'Dwyer's site also has a valuable Media News section, as well as a public relations industry newsletter archive, and a corporate communications database of corporate public relations representatives. I performed a search for "Microsoft," and got back a page with these results.
Official World Golf Ranking- While I'm not a huge golfing fan, I am a sports stat buff. That's why like to go to this site and check their scientific rankings of the world's Top 500 male golfers. Updated every Monday, the results change frequently, and are fascinating to track and deconstruct.
OLD-COMPUTERS.COM- Site is devoted to descriptions and pictures of old computers. Use the site search engine to look for a vintage computer make or model. I found a picture of my first desktop computer, my long-gone, clunky but treasured Columbia MPC. The pricey device took me from the electronic typewriter to the digital age. A guy remembers his first computer the way he remembers his first ... err, car.
OldieLyrics.com- Lyrics by songwriters from the 1950s up until the present day.
oldnewsbaby.com- Site lets you contribute cool news links, and then retrieve them later if you want to forward them to your friends.
On the Media- Gosh, we media types like to explore our own professional navels. Still, this weekly show provides lots of thoughtful insight about my profession.
OneLook Dictionary Search- A portal to dozens of online dictionaries. When you search, the cited results are linked to the specific pages on the dictionary sites where the term you queried is listed. I searched for the word "tautological," and received this results page.
Online Books Page- Pointers to more than 25,000 books available online. These resources are indexed and linked by subject.
Online Conversion - Length matters, or so I was once told. Then again, so do temperature, velocity, volume, weight, time, and lots of other units of measure. This site lets you convert between hundreds of disparate measuring units. An example, from the Power Conversion page: 1 horsepower = .746 kilowatts. Helps me "measure up" (oh, groan).
Online Journalism Review- This periodically updated journal from the University of Southern California keeps me updated on my craft.
Online Library Computer Center- Site's main utility to me is as a resource of pointers to online materials held by more than 50,540 member libraries in 84 countries and territories. These materials are grouped into a list of the Top 1000 titles owned by member libraries. Number 1 is a cumulative account of various U.S. Census holdings. Number 1000 is Allan Bloom's culturally bigoted, Eurocentric The Closing Of The American Mind.
ONLINE Magazine- The best magazine I know of for informational professionals such as professional researchers, librarians, and (he holds himself up to the mirror here) info-ferret journalists. A fair number of current and archived articles are available online, and for no charge.
OnlineNewspapers.com- I frequently like to read the day's news from other cities. This site has an up-to-date series of lists and links to most U.S. and world newspapers with Web presences. I've built a link to the U.S. section of this handy site.
Online Publishers Association- News headlines, research papers and twice-monthly intelligence reports about putting up content on the Web and directly, or at least indirectly, obtaining a revenue stream from it.
Online Rhyming Dictionary-I'm not a poet, and I know it. When it comes to rhyming words and phrases, this free service from business letters software vendor WriteExpress earns my praises.
Open Government Information Awareness-A project that furnishes data about government, including how it is allegedly looking in on us in the name of national security,
Open Science Directory-Comprehensive directory of scientific resources in virtually any field you can image. Also, check out the collection of science blogs.
Open Table-Portland- Restaurant reservations service with two-click confirmation ordering. Far better than being put on hold by a human while being forced to listen to recorded pitches or worse yet, on-hold music.
Open Video Project- Fascinating site with more than 2,500 freely downloadable video clips, most of them historical or scientific in nature.
Opinion Duel-Occasional opposite-view columns from John J. Miller of the National Review and Michael Crowley of The New Republic.
Orbitz- Co-owned by several major airlines, Orbitz is one of the best places to check for and book travel online.
ORblogs- A collection of more than 935 blogs from my fellow Oregonians. Most of the state is represented. Not surprisingly, the most blogs are from Portland.
Oregon Blue Book- Official state guide to Oregon State Government, city government, culture (including newspapers and magazines), plus much more.
Oregon History Project- The Oregon Historical Society's online trove of historical maps, documents, letters, photographs, and miscellaneous ephemera. Currently, more than 100 such objects are in the database.
Oregon Live- Sometimes, the newspaper carrier misses my front porch, and the paper lands in the ravine. I'm not up to hopping over the fence to grab the paper. It's far easier to log on to Oregon Live, and read my morning Oregonian. After the paper comes out each day, Oregon Live also posts a continuously updated list of breaking news. They also have a great collection of Oregon Traffic Cams, including a few dozen in the Portland area. Here is the one closest to my house. In the winter months, a check of road conditions is a prudent idea.
Oregon Live Blogs- Collection of blogs, many of which feature supplementary or updated content from Oregonian news, sports and feature writers.
OregonLive.com: Business Wire-Ideas are gold for freelancers. Here is a way to look at Oregon-centric press releases, before they are printed. With luck, I will turn one into an assignment from time to time.
OregonLive.com: Cams+Radio- Portal to hundreds of Webcams around the state. One of my favorites is the Oregon Live Office Cam. Until Oregon Live's relocation to SW 11th Avenue in May, 2002, Oregon Live mounted a camera just outside their second-floor office at Southwest 2nd Avenue and Yamhill Street. This camera has a 24-hour archive of images. These images are updated every minute. On a rainy afternoon in February, 2002, I was feeling a bit mischievous, so I drove to that intersection, made sure a cooperative red light was working, and tried to get my car captured on the cam. Then, after I got home, I retrieved said image. As you can see, I actually pulled off this feat!
OregonLive.com: PR Newswire- I'll take the expeditious path and paste the blurb I wrote for OregonLive.com: Business Wire: Ideas are gold for freelancers. Here is a way to look at Oregon-centric press releases, before they are printed. With luck, I will turn one into an assignment from time to time.
Oregon Public Broadcasting- I'm a proud supporter. I can only wish that your statewide public radio and television networks are as consistently high-quality as theirs.
O'Reilly Digital Media Center-Site largely consists of digital media content creation tips from authors of related O'Reilly books.
o r g a n i c a- A Web site that crawls Weblogs, and offers key data about each Blog that it finds. I've noticed that organica has found my own Blog, and has compiled a list of links I have built from my Blog to various Web pages.
Overlawyered.com- Let me set one thing straight. As a society, we need lawyers to protect us from abuse by powerful, and/or intransigent corporate interests or stupid government decisions. Yet, sometimes the legal profession goes overboard. This site is a mixture of links to stories where lawyers are on the correct side (such as defending a nine-year old Florida girl who set up a lemonade stand without a permit), and are, perhaps a bit excessive in their litigiousness.
Oxymorons.info- Because on their face, a large number of statements are self-contradictory or make no sense. Hope you are not drawing a blank.
Pacific Northwest Booksellers Association- Trade group for those retailers who not only have a love of books that transcend mercantile advisability, but are brave enough to face the formidable challenges of competing against the major chains. Here are the region's weekly paperback and hard-cover books.
Pacific Northwest Earthquake Information- I was in bed last night, and I felt the earth move. Was it an aftershock, or was it just a saggy mattress? Well, I guess not. Find out for sure on the Pacific Northwest Seismographic Network Web site.
Page By Page Books- Copyright hasn't been here forever, and sometimes, it runs out. Here are hundreds of books you can read for free, directly from your Web browser. Meet Mark Twain.
PaidContent.org- Online newsletter about the business of (boo) charging for content. Make that "boo," unless I am the one whose content is being charged for! Even if I cannot make money directly from my site, though, PaidContent's new Digital Media Jobs Blog can help me monetize my online time and skills.
Paleomap Project- Maps that depict what the earth's geography and climate was in prehistoric times, and what it will be like 250 million years from now.
Palowireless Wireless Resource Center- While I have no idea what "palo" means, I still like to check this site out for its collection of resources specific to various wireless-related technologies.
Pause- Cleverly written Blog-formatted musings on life, love and career from my former colleague Jory DesJardins.
PBS Do You Speak American?- Online companion to the recently broadcast PBS shows that explored the many varieties of American English. Here's an article about how people in my home town of Portland, Oregon speak.
PBS Online- Web site for the PBS (formerly, Public Broadcasting Service) network of some 350 non-commercial television stations in the U.S. Most PBS shows have their own Web site or page. You can visit these pages to obtain more information about topics discussed on specific shows or episodes.
PDX History- Stories, illustrations and accounts of "old" Portland.
Peedy's Interactive Learning Resource Room Calculator- Why take the trouble to whip out a calculator or boot up Excel when you can achieve instant arithmetic calculations with this Web-based tool? I've even downloaded the Merlin icon and have learned how to make him talk.
PeopleData- One of those sites that for a fee, will sell you contact and other personal info for just about anyone.
PersonalMD.com- This useful medical news and information portal is divided into three main areas. Family Health encompasses issues relevant to women, men, seniors, and children. The Health Centers section encompasses health policy, disease information and issues. Resources offers a Drug Database and a Medical Encyclopedia.
PestPatrol Pest Research Center- Not an etymology site, but one with background, descriptions, and remedies for all the Adware, Spyware, Worms, and all the other nasty toxins swirling around cyberspace.
Philosophy in Cyberspace- Linkers to thinkers -- thousands of online discussions, papers, philosophic arguments, etc.
Philosophy Talk: The Blog- I think the blog format lends well to short bursts of philosophical discourse of the type you will find here.
Photobucket- I use this site to post photos and obtain URLs for them from which I can upload to some of the blogs I write for. Or something like that.
Picsearch- Not the most comprehensive image-search tool on the Web, but the fastest and easiest to navigate. If Roe v. Wade gets overturned - say, in a year or so from now -- blame this guy.
picturephoning.com- A blog that updated the latest developments in cell phones that take videos and photos.
Planetary Science Research Discoveries- When I was four or five years old, I could recite the names of all nine planets in our solar system. Now, a good case can be made that there are only eight. Even so, that points to the fact that I have been fascinated by planets, asteroids and comets for just about all my life. That's why I occasionally click in to this frequently updated resource from the University of Hawaii.
Plumb Design Visual Thesaurus- Type in a word, and a new window will open up with synonyms for that word floating around in a big circle.
Podcast Alley-Comprehensive directory of Podcasts you can access and then download for listening on your PC or mobile device.
PoeWar.com- Two things one can never have enough of: pairs of socks that match, and Web sites with listings of freelance writing opportunities, as well as part-time and full-time jobs for writers. While offering few listings of its own, PoeWar does better than any other writer resource at culling timely listings from other job boards.
Political Advocacy Groups- An alphabetical directory with links to the Web sites of hundreds of lobbyist organizations. Groups are also catalogued by subject.
Pop History Now- Annoying Flash and completion of a required registration process lets you look at the news for various weeks and months. Look up what was transpiring in the week you were born (not that you would remember).
Popular Baby Names- A harmless diversion for an otherwise busy day, the site uses Social Security Administration data to chart the most popular given names of the last 120-plus years. Times change. A century ago, the most common given names for newborns were John for boys and Mary for girls. In the decade I was born, Mary still topped the list for girls, but John was supplanted by James (including my Webmaster). My first name was 70th, between Norman and Francis. In the 1990's, the quite traditional Michael led the boys, but the trendy-sounding Ashley led the list of newly assigned girl's names. James had slipped to 13th, and John had slipped to 14th. Mary was 41st, between Anna and the related, Maria. OK, self, get back to work.
Portland Art Museum- A great place to get away, and look at neat stuff. Sometimes, I like to go to Museum After Hours, their Wednesday night soiree. I'm a member of the Portland Art Museum, and you can be too.
portland.citysearch.com- Postings of forthcoming events in the city where I live. When combined with restaurant listings searchable by cuisine and neighborhood (including mine), this site provides an ideal service for weekend planning.
Portland IndyMedia Center-"Non-corporate" coverage of world, regional, and Portland, Oregon news. Touches on everything from animal rights to forest activism. Part of the Independent Media Center, an international organization of nearly 100 city and nation-specific Web sites. My only beef with this crowd is that they, as well as like-minded people voted for Nader, costing Gore the election.
Portland Mercury-I do not have any body piercings, ride a bicycle, or vote for Nader. Neither am I a 24 year-old slacker with an attitude. I am older, and my irreverence is born from a lifetime of informed perspective, not just some forced coolness. Yet I still like to read this paper, and its online counterpart.
Portland Stories-A series of interesting essays of life in my hometown, written by the thoughtful and observant (and unpaid).
Powell's Books - As a reader on a perpetual knowledge quest, and as a published author who has been humbled by those who have valued my perspectives enough to honor me by purchasing the books I have written, I hold bookstores in the most holy chambers of my spirit. I rejoice in the fact that I live in the city that not only has the largest bookstore in North America, but one that regards the written word as sacred. Through their Web site, they have managed to transcend their physical identity to carve out a worldwide reputation for knowledge, dedication, and service.
Power Reporting- I'll tell you, we journalists can never get enough meta-indexes of sources. This is one of the best of its type.
Poynter Online - Forums- Text of internal newspaper employee memos, sent to site-minder Jim Romenesko. Many of these memos either announce new individual hires, or reveal staff layoffs.
Poynter Online - Romenesko- A daily collection of links to enough media news articles to satisfy even I, an ultimate media junkie. Maintained on the site of The Poynter Institute, an educational facility for journalists.
Poynter Online Search Nelson- Online search utility named after The Poynter Institute's ancestral founder Nelson Poynter offers simultaneous search of more than 220 news and journalism Web sites. I entered the search term "Iraq," and this is what came up.
PR Newswire- Along with Business Wire, the pre-eminent place to find press releases on the Web. Before I leave for an industry convention, I like to check the PRN Trade Shows area for announcements that will be made at the event.
PressThink- A weekly examination of the frequent clashes between democracy and an increasingly consolidated media. Written by Jay Rosen, chair of the journalism department at New York University.
PriceGrabber.com- A great resource to compare prices for stuff listed for sale on hundreds of online stores in different categories.
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences- Links to all manner of scholarly articles, many of which were researched by NAS funding. If you ever wondered why some duck-billed platypus are male, while others are female, you are about to find out. Here's a list of the 50 Most-Frequently-Read Articles in PNAS last month. When I last checked, a real screen-scroller entitled A rapid bioassay for single bacterial cell quantitation using bioconjugated nanoparticles headed the list.
ProcessLibrary.com- A guide to the processes that run under the hood of your computer, and what can go wrong when things are not working right.
PRODUCT PLACEMENT VALUATION & PRODUCT PLACEMENT NEWS- Frequently updated posting of news and feature articles that describe how and why specific products make it into movies, television shows, and other venues where their display is likely to garner significant public attention.
ProfNet-An online directory of several thousand expert sources, many of them available for article interviews on short notice. Has saved my source-seeking butt on more than one occasion.
Project Gutenberg- A round-up of works from hundreds of authors, including books that can be downloaded for free and read offline. Dead prose society.
Protocol Online-Near as I can tell, the site seems mostly to be about the proper way to conduct scientific experiments in specific fields. If, for instance, you have a burning desire to do post-graduate work in Antibody Conjugation, best to check with these guys first
P.R. Watch Spin of the Day- Public relations pundits at the Center for Media & Democracy criticize how the media is being "spun" to bring attention to commercial, political, and organizational messages of varying credibility.
Psychiatry On-Line- A wealth of current papers and abstracts from the literature.
Psychology Free Online Medical Advice- Kind of like an "Ask Jeeves" for the anxious and neurotic. Type in a question, like "why am I depressed," and the site's search engine will call up a list of articles that explain what depression is, how to diagnose it, and how to improve your life so that depression is minimized.
PublicRadioFan.com- Updated daily, a guide to scheduled shows on hundreds of public radio stations. Here is what's on now.
Publishers Weekly- Round-up of the latest news from the world of book publishing, from the site for the eponymous trade magazine. This page has links to the most current best-seller lists.
Pulitzer Prizes- An archive of every Pulitzer Prize winner, in every category, since 1920. Full-text, searchable archives are available from 1995 forward.
Quackwatch- Guide to what retired psychiatrist Stephen Barrett, M.D. regards as non-credible health care practices. Heck, the guy even has some problems with traditional Chinese medicine.
Questia- An online library with more than 50,000 full-text searchable books, 120,000 journal articles, more than 120,000 magazine articles, as well as more than 160,000 articles from newspapers.
Quicken.com - Insider Trading- When major shareholders in a company sell stock, that can sometimes mean they are not optimistic about the corporation's immediate future. I have a curiosity toward people's motivations, which is one reason I became a journalist. That's why I like to check here from time to time, to see who is selling what. I checked Hewlett-Packard recently, and got back a page with these results.
Quill Online- Here's the site for Quill, the monthly magazine of the Society of Professional Journalists. The archives are searchable. I am a member of the Oregon chapter.
quirkyalone.net- Throughout much of my life, I have been both "quirky" and "alone." That's why I felt warmed and bemused when I stumbled across this site. At least they don't have a members-only area where those who join would post profiles - presumably for finding a partner and thus countermanding the mission of this group.
Quote Geek- Bartlett's Familiar Quotations with an attitude. Classic quotes from movies, television, literature, famous people and more.
Radio-Locator- A search engine to more than 10,000 radio station Web sites, and more than 2,500 radio stations who stream their signal over the Web. A search for Adult Album Alternative (sometimes called "New Age") yielded a page with these results.
RadioLovers.com- Streaming audio of more than one hundred old radio productions. Thus far, only the shows with titles beginning with the letters "A" through "L" have been indexed.
Railpace- Railroading features and news updates from the Eastern United States and Canada. While news is updated on a daily basis, the site merely lists, rather than carries, articles from the monthly print edition. That's sound business strategy, come to think of it. That's a key reason why I am a subscriber.
RailroadData.Com Railroad Links Directory- Links to thousands of railroad sites, including some 195 Webcams, more than 725 tourist railroads and museums, (including 53 in the Pacific Northwest), nearly 140 transit, light rail and commuter sites, and around 145 links to sites with info about railroading in the United States. Lest I forget, RailroadData.com links to more than 160 train-oriented photo galleries, including my own. Here's the page on which the addition to my link was announced.
Railroad News Network- As you might intuit from the title of this site, this is a resource for railroad related news. Midwest and western U.S. railroad-related events seem to get the top priority. That's due in part to the Modesto, Calif. location of the site's complier, railroad publisher and memorabilia clearinghouse Altamont Press. Altamont (OK, if your brain thought-associates in the way mine does, everyone hum a few bars of the Rolling Stone's "Gimme Shelter" right 'bout now) updates the site each weekday.
RAND- Web site for the famous think tank. Separate sections on key issues, including National Security Research. One of their most recent postings is the at-least partially reassuring Combating Terrorism: Assessing The Threat Of Biological Terrorism.
Rapid Transit Net- Fascinating historical accounts and documentation about municipal railroading. Much of the information is devoted to the history of New York City transit lines. Here, you will learn that contrary to books that concentrate only on Manhattan, public rail transit in the nation's largest city was plentiful before the opening of the New York subway in 1904.
Real.com- Hub for all news and information about media content compatible with RealNetworks' latest media player, RealOne. Also links to RealGuide, which has news about and a searchable index of, streaming media Web sites and live events.
RealForum- Online community with several threaded discussions for streaming media content developers using RealOne and associated platforms. I am writing a book on this technology, so I check here often.
RealNetworks.com- I'm writing another book about Internet multimedia. With that in mind, the RealNetworks corporate site is a must-stop. I frequently check several areas of the site, including Media Creation, and Third Party Plug-ins & Tools.
Reel Top 40 Radio Repository- A collection of sound samples from the glory days of Top 40 radio, when pop music stations played all the hits, rather than those that "tested well." Here is an aircheck from Dan Ingram, a disc jockey who used to be heard on New York's WABC Musicradio 77 in the 1960s and 1970s.
Refdesk.com- A one-click guide to hundreds of links to indispensable informational resources from all over the Web.
Register.com- Several of my domains are parked here. Since the market for domain names ain't what it used to be, I have been letting some of them expire.
Regret The Error-Sometimes, newspaper people make mistakes. I've made my share of them. This site lists corrections and retractions for many North American newspapers.
Research Matters at Harvard University- Not only a branding statement, but the name of a Web site dedicated to spotlighting current Harvard research projects about the mind, body, society, earth sciences, space science and technology. Want to read about how the geniuses at Harvard slowed light down to 38 miles an hour? Here you go.
ResourceShelf- A blog-like aggregation of news, analysis and opinions about search engines and other utilities likely to be of interest to librarians and information services professionals. Since I do most of my own research online, a click here every week or so keeps me up to date about what is going on in the world of info-ferreting.
retroCRUSH- Thoughtful, zine-like musings on pop culture of the 1970s and 1980s. Many of the entries are in "50 most" or "top ten" list format.
Retrosheet- Baseball statistics and player information from most of the game's history. Here's some player statistics and other information.
Reuters- In 2001, the venerable international wire service turned 150 years old. Although only a small portion of their feed is freely available over the Web, a stop by their main URL is a good way to catch up on the latest major breaking news.
Reverse Phone Directory- Ever get a phone call from someone who left his or her phone number, but you couldn't place? Reverse Phone Directory gives you several ways to check. Just type in an area code and a phone number, and the three databases the site uses will show you the caller's address. Caveat: as with most other online telephone directories, RFD is sometimes out of date.
RISKS-LIST- A continuously updated digest of computer security risks, with entries going back some 19 years.
RitzPIX.com- Photo-sharing site from Ritz Camera and FujiFilm lets you upload your photos online, or send off an order for them to be converted from digital files to prints.
Roadside America-Guide to roadside tourist attractions in the 50 states. Here are some roadside attractions in Oregon and Washington.
Rock Critics.com- Self-indulgences, caffeine-assisted ramblings, using dubious literary metaphors to make the assertion that clangy music is artistically and socially significant. You get the idea.
RocketNews- Yet another of those automated news services that clip stories as they are posted on thousands of news Web sites, and then let you perform a keyword search for documents containing those search terms. I performed a search for stories mentioning Enron, and got back a page with Enron.
Roll Call Online- I am a political junkie. This is the online version of the thrice-weekly political newspaper Roll Call. Unfortunately, the Web site has changed from a limited menu of free stories to subscriber-only access to all but the first paragraph of most pieces.
Ryan Block- Personal blog from the energetic, highly competitive and quite linked in editor of Engadget
Salary Wizard-The fun part of this site is the ability to compare typical salaries in the same field, but in two different metro areas. Take Reporter, which is what I do. I am better off living in Portland than in Marietta, Ga., from where I moved in 1997.
Salon.com- A site for people who think, as opposed to those who merely think they do.
Salon.com Ask The Pilot- Fascinating weekly feature with "inside the cockpit" answers to reader (and flyer) questions. Working airline pilot Patrick Smith (a pseudonym, I suspect) writes the column.
SamSpade.org- Follow that IP address or mysterious e-mail message back to its origin with this suite of tools. Hackers are too smart for the relatively primitive services this site provides, but then again, not every hacker is smart. Some are just assholes with attitude.
SANS - Internet Storm Center- News-oriented blog about all the wicked malware, viruses, spyware and other crap floating around the Web.
Savvy Traveler- This hour-long travel advice show has ended its run on public radio, but the companion Web site survives as an archive of previously aired programs.
Science Blogs- You only get one guess about what this site contains.
ScienceDirect- An index with links to abstracts and full-text articles from more than 1,700 online journals. Most of these publications charge a fee for access.
Science Friday- A weekly-two hour public radio show with topics ranging from the controversial bird-dinosaur evolution hypothesis to the search for alien life. Science Friday Archives are available in RealAudio.
Science Frontiers Digest of Scientific Anomalies-An online version of the publication, with more than 130 searchable editions with more than 2,100 articles.
Science Magazine- Full text and summaries of numerous articles published during the last few years in the official publication of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. In 2001, the AAAS marked its 150th Anniversary by publishing a series, Essays on Science and Society. Articles continue to be added . I have been a member of AAAS.
Science Museum of Minnesota Science Buzz- Blog-style, educational-toned commentary on science news by Museum staffers.
Scientific American- Some science magazines are popularized, others are academic. Only Scientific American straddles the chasm. Not only does the site offer substantial archives, but it is updated daily with cool stuff, such as today's science news as well as a thought-provoking Ask The Experts feature. If you ever wondered why cats purr, here's your answer.
Scirus - For Scientific Information Only- A new, comprehensive search engine for scientific information, searchable in 20 categories. Being an amateur astronomer of sorts, I performed a search for articles about the planet Pluto, and received these results.
SciTech Daily Review- A portal for the day's important -- you guessed it -- science and technology news.
Scobleizer- Reflections on Microsoft culture, broader geek culture and broader non-geek culture from Robert Scoble, who is often the first person to come to mind when you mention the terms "Microsoft" and "blog" in the same sentence.
ScottLowell.com- Ongoing commentary about acting, as well as political social issues, from one of the stars of the now-ended "Queer As Folk."
Scott Rosenberg Linkyard- Opinionated and occasionally provocative Blog from the FORMER managing editor of Salon.com.
SearchAbility- A conclusive and comprehensive guide to specialized search engines. Although some of the links are dead, there's enough unique stuff here to qualify this site as a unique resource.
Search Engine Guide- Take a sip of water, and count slowly to ten, for this will come as a shock. The site is a guide to search engines - many of which you have never heard of.
Search Engine Journal- News about search engines, as well as links to for-profit, search engine optimization enterprises.
Search Engine Showdown- Usage tips, statistics and news about leading Web search engines.
Search Engine Watch- I'm a seeker and a searcher -- offline, and online, too. Not a day goes by that I don't use an Internet search engine. It seems like many of these search utilities are constantly changing the way they search the Web. The Search Engine Watch Blog keeps up with the latest daily developments. How large is each search engine? Find out here.
Search Systems- Playground for busybodies with a higher calling than idle curiosity. A database with more than 35,000 mostly free, individual sets of public records from all 50 states. Here's where you can find out if that new client has ever declared bankruptcy, or if that health care professional or attorney is properly certified to practice in your state.
Searcher: The Magazine for Database Professionals- Not only do I search for "truths," but sometimes I search for information. "Searcher" is a magazine for info-ferrets such as me, as well as for those information pros who index all the stuff that info-ferrets find. Only about one-third of the monthly magazine's content is posted, but there is enough to whet the appetite. Here's an article on how to build reference links to scholarly material. This article describes the technical challenge even experienced information searchers face. Another piece offers a tutorial about searching for art on the Web. If you want to look for older news stories on the Archives sections of newspaper Web sites, read this article first. Links to older issues are provided on the main archive page.
Search Tools- A comprehensive guide to search utilities available for Webmasters of enterprise-sized Web sites. In case the terminology twists you in knots, here's a handy Glossary of related terms.
Seattle Times- It shouldn't surprise you that an inveterate news hound such as myself would frequently visit the Web site of the largest newspaper in the state bordering mine.
Security Awareness for Ma, Pa and the Corporate Clueless-A Blog collection of news, advice, and random thoughts about how to stay safe online - and, occasionally, offline as well.
SecuritySearch.net- Citations of the latest cyber-security news, white papers, and tools.
Shabbyfufu- The latest online creation from my talented sister, Janet. Here's her Boutique full of cool Romantic Chandeliers, Original Artwork, Chic Furniture, Romantic Garden Treasures, Chic Pillows, and more available for sale directly from the site.
ShawGuides- No, we are not related, but whoever this "Shaw" is needs to be commended for this directory of Cultural Travel, Art & Craft Workshops, Writers Conferences & Workshops, and Recreational Cooking Schools. Each of these and several other categories are broken down by state and nation. When I looked for Writers Conferences & Workshops in Oregon, here is what came up.
shiny shiny- British site full of first-person reviews of cool tech stuff. Most of this is aimed at young females, but they do buy! Here's an "intelligent perfume dispenser." "Smells like teenage girl spirit - I kid you not!!
Shockwave.com - Sometimes, I play a few Shockwave games before I get to work. My favorite is Shockwave Baseball. Unless there is a tie, each game lasts one inning. While it is a bit too easy to hit home runs, getting good "wood" on the Splitfinger is difficult. And, I cannot figure out why there are no left-handed batters. Another favorite is 2 Minute Football 3D. The game has recently been upgraded, and has some improvements. It is no longer a no-brainer to score. Running from scrimmage is difficult. If you do not make a first down in four tries, you incur a 10 second penalty. Also, whereas the old version never placed a team behind its own 20 yard-line, everything regressive including safeties, is possible now. Still no penalties, fumbles or interceptions, though. I play Shockwave Bowling, the most realistic of the Shockwave sports games. Dunking is easy in Shockwave Basketball; all you need to is position the offensive player on the baseline, and have him drive right-to-left from the paint. Works almost every time. I've also taken a liking to Shockwave Hockey. Sometimes I play the three-minute game by letting the computer make all the moves. Then, I try to top that score by directing the action. Here are two new games I've recently discovered: Three-Point Shootout pits man against rim, and in Super SlapShot 3D, it is you vs. the goalie. Play this game and go puck yourself (hee-hee).
ShopTalk- The latest television industry news --hires, fires, people "leaving to pursue other interests" (yea, right), new shows, cancellation of existing ones.
Sing365.com- Core appeal of this site is links to bios of musicians who are not necessarily the highest profile members of their bands.
site59.com- I used to flee Atlanta for Portland every summer, until I moved here in 1997. I wouldn't live anywhere else, but that fact doesn't mean I am above checking this site for the latest travel bargains.
Siteowner.com Link Checker Summary- While other link checkers go to paid business models or seem to fizz out after checking just a few links, this one remains comprehensive, fast and free. Doesn't find every internal site broken link, but poins to sites that have those links. Works for me.
Skeptic.com- Because you should believe only some of what you see, don't see, hear, don't here, believe, and don't believe.
Skype Blogs- Blogs by Skype staffers. Considering I write about Skype, this resource is a must for me.
Skype Journal- Skype news and reviews from what I consider to be the leading non-Skype affiliated site and blog.
Slang City-Features examples and "translations" of the latest slang expressions in American culture (an oxymoron) and sub-cultures (not an oxymoron).
Slashdot- While the site strikes me as a worldwide town square for open-source cultists, it is still worth checking out for its lively and contentious dialog from the high-tech trenches. Here is Journal of CleverNickName, a new feature from Wil Wheaton of "Wesley Crusher" fame.
SlashNOT-Satirical takeoff on Slashdot, which is a site that nerds take seriously. A bit too seriously, if you read the posts on SlashNot.
Slate Explainer- So fascinating, this section of Slate Magazine deserves its own listings. A rational explanation of what things mean and why things happen. Recent examples include Does Truth Serum Work? , and Why Did the World Trade Center Towers Collapse?
Slate Magazine- Founded by Microsoft but now owned by the Washington Post, this is the highest quality, completely free access commentary site I know of.
Slipups.com- Mistakes submitted by site visitors from Movies, TV (including many from Star Trek: The Next Generation), Books, and Quotes from Speeches. Here are the 25 Most Popular Slip-Ups. Only problem with this site: too many pop-ups.
Smart Computing- Answers to specific questions about all types of computing-related equipment and processes, from audio to storage.
Smithsonian Global Sound- Kind of like an iTunes for Third World music, this Smithsonian site lets you sample and then purchase traditional and ethnic music tracks from all over the world.
Sniglets- Words that don't appear in the dictionary, but ought to.
Social Security Death Index Interactive Search- I sometimes go to this site and look up the birth and death records for distant ancestors from Pennsylvania in the 1870s, as well as departed relatives, friends, and loved ones. Recently, I used this site to confirm the passing more than three years ago of a friend. I began to feel a greater sense of my own mortality - and have reinvigorated my diet as a result. For all those who know me and can read this, or who I have known but can know no more, "there are places I'll remember all my life, though some have changed, some forever, not for better, some have gone and some remain. All these places had their moments, with lovers and friends I still can recall. Some are dead and some are living. In my life I've loved them all."
Solar System Simulator- Visual representations of how planets and moons in our solar system would appear from other bodies in our celestial neighborhood. Here's how one Jovian moon, Europa, looks from Io.
Song Meanings at Songfacts- Ever wonder what a song's lyrics mean? Here, you can search. I looked under Gordon Lightfoot's "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald," and found this explanation. Actually, I knew it already.
Sources and Experts- A meta-directory of organizations with experts who, it must be presumed, are quotable for articles. Resources such as this one, assembled by Kitty Bennett of the St. Petersburg Times, are precious for perspective-seeking journalists such as the guy whose Web site you are now on.
South Florida Sun-Sentinel- My Mom lives in this newspaper's circulation area. Sometimes, before giving her a call, I like to log on and check the news from that part of the world. Then, if there is something I perceive she will be interested in, I raise the topic in conversation. I am not positive she completely understands how I am able to find out all this stuff, but the conversations are usually lively and opinionated. Hey, she and I are both Scorpios (as was my Dad), and Scorpios are opinionated.
SoYouWanna.com- Here is the ultimate how-to site for life's mundane tasks and challenges. SoYouWanna make a compost pile?
Space.com Search For Life- Updates on the search for extraterrestrial civilizations, much of which are radio-wave transmission projects coordinated by the SETI Institute. "SETI" stands for Search For Extraterrestrial Intelligence, and Space.com is a space and astronomy news site.
SpaceDaily.Com- When I was four years old, I could name all the planets. In order. I got a telescope at eight years old. And now, so many years later, I find myself clicking on this site for the latest news about space projects and space travel.
Speech Accent Archive- A neat experiment in which native speakers of some 250 languages recite the same English language paragraph. The paragraph reads: "Please call Stella. Ask her to bring these things with her from the store: Six spoons of fresh snow peas, five thick slabs of blue cheese, and maybe a snack for her brother Bob. We also need a small plastic snake and a big toy frog for the kids. She can scoop these things into three red bags, and we will go meet her Wednesday at the train station." Here's how a Basque speaker would recite that paragraph.
Spinsanity- An entertaining and objective b.s. detector on the excesses of the spin that politicians utter to (and in) the media - and the all-too-common culpability of the media in spreading these excesses to their viewers and readers.
SportsFilter- A cross between a Weblog and a bulletin boards, SportsFilter offers threaded discussions on controversial sports (well, duh!) topics. The kind of online place you can go to if you don't have a ready crowd of buddies at the brewpub.
Sportspages.com- Continuously updated links to sports stories posted all over the Web, including what the top sports columnists are writing about.
Spyware Warrior- Guide to spyware, and anti-spyware tools to combat them.
STANDS4.com- Stands with Acronym Finder as a great resource for untangling the alphabet soup that we all must deal with in our daily lives. The site constantly updates its list of the five most-requested abbreviations to be translated. Last time I checked, the leader was FUBAR. A polite decryption would be, "Fouled Up Beyond All Recognition."
Star Links- Is Hollywood an incestuous town? This site lets you type in the name of two actors - from the same, or different eras - and it will return a results page indicating connectivity between the two. Let's push the envelope: Anthony Hopkins and Drew Barrymore. Ta-dah!
Star Trek Chronology-Star Trek aficionado Edgar Governo has compiled a list of events depicted and referred to on various "Star Trek" shows, and has assigned chronological and star-dates to each.
StarTrek.com- Beam me down, Scotty, there is intelligent life down here. All manner of episode descriptions and trivia from all five series. Who starred as Picard's imaginary wife in "The Inner Light?" Who played the female computer interface in Star Trek Voyager's "Alice" episode? Find out here.
Stateline.Org- Site with news about state governments, including state-specific facts and info. Here is what states are doing to combat terrorism. Of a more general nature, here's the latest government-related news from Oregon.
Statistical Abstract of the United States- Numbers on who we are, how many of us there are, how we live, what we make, where and what we farm, etc. All files are in PDF.
Statistical Assessment Service- One person's statistics are another person's assumptions. This site largely fulfills the role of a b.s. detector, in which professional statisticians comment on statistical research of debatable authenticity.
Statistical Resources On The Web- If you are looking for statistical information on the Internet, this is the place to start. Resources are alphabetized by dozens of specialties, from Abortion to the World Village.
Statistics Every Writer Should Know- I admit it, sometimes I confuse my medians with my means. I'm a pretty normal guy, but sometimes I forget about the concept of standard deviation. I suppose that leaves me with little margin of error.
StatMarket- Internet usage statistics and related market research, from e-business intelligence firm Web Side Story. Articles citing StatMarket research are archived and linked from this page.
Step Into History- Site has listings of, and links to, descriptions of more than 500 U.S. locations and attractions that depict life from an earlier time.
Stock Market Yellow Pages- Site lets you search for information about companies based on their name, or a description of the services they provide. I performed a search for companies active in "streaming," and received these results
Stowe Boyd/Message- True, Stowe is not the most humble of souls. That said, he is undeniably one of the most profound and deep thinkers in the technology space.
Strayhound-Sometimes funny, sometimes infuriating content from bus riders and Greyhound employees- some of whom would be fired if their identity ever became public.
Streamingmedia.com- Daily news updates and weekly newsletters about an industry I am very involved in.
StudioB-These folks were my literary agents at one time. While I have moved on to a competitor, I still have a favorable opinion of them. They have some useful resources and industry news for computer book authors.
Stupid Security-While it is true that we live in security-conscious times, a tour through this site makes one realize that not all security policies and actions of government and private enterprise are, well, all that thought-out.
StupidVideos- A collection of several hundred goofball videos. When I checked in June, the most watched video was "Evil Penguin 2," in which one penguin smacks another down into the ice.
styleborg- For some people, it's not enough to work with or on computers. They have to wear them. This site is dedicated to wearable digital tools.
Submarine World Network- I've been fascinated by submarines for a long time. They may not run that deep, but they do run silent. This site links to more than one thousand other submarine sites and discussion lists from around the world.
Subways Page- Great collection of links to subway schedules, articles and general information about subways all over the world.
Sunoasis Jobs- Job listings for freelancers, online writers, and others. Here are the newest jobs postings.
Surface distance between points of Latitude and Longitude- Site offers a built-in calculator that lets you figure out the direct, "as the crow files" distance between any two spots on the globe, or between any two of 326 cities. That's nearly 53,000 two-city combinations. I ran Atlanta to Portland, Oregon, and came up with 2166.824994989304 miles. Oh, and in my case, more than 10 years.
Susan Crawford blog- Thoughtful treatises and occasional musings from a law professor who specializes in intellectual property and copyright.
Switchboard- One of the more powerful White Pages, Yellow Pages and e-mail address finders.
SYMBOLS.com- What does that squiggle mean? Where does it trace its origin to? SYMBOLS.com will teach you. If you want to browse, the Word Index is the good place to start. Warning, though: if you have work to do, then avoid this place; it is dangerous.
Talking Points Memo-An oft-quoted ad lively daily political commentary from widely published Washington, D.C.-based political journalist Joshua Micah Marshall.
TeacherNet- A comprehensive online resource for K-8 schoolteachers.
Teaching.com- Heart of this site for teachers is Teacher Talk Forums, where, as the promotional copy for the section says, "K-12 teachers can discuss classroom techniques, trade lesson plan ideas, and support one another."
Tech Central Station- Although I am not a conservative, I find this site's politically conservative "free market" perspective on numerous public policy issues to be an illuminating read on what that side of the political debate thinks.
TechEncyclopedia- Definitions for more than 25,000 computing and technology terms. Here's a whole bunch of definitions pertaining to the Internet and the Web.
tech:knowledge- Daily, Blog-like opinions about the latest tech news as well as cool gizmos and gadgets. It is written by Mike Wendland, a popular technology columnist for the Detroit Free Press.
Techmeme- Every five minutes, Techmeme issues an auto-updated listing of the most important and breaking technology and Internet-related blogs and news stories posted to the Web. I check it dozens of times a day. When my name is attached to a Techmeme tree, it makes my day.
Tech Nation- Each week, host, news columnist and former NASA engineer Dr. Moira Gunn interviews at least two movers and shakers. Most of the time, her subjects come from the technology world. The shows are two or three weeks old when they come to Portland, and are already available on the show's streaming archive when they are broadcast. Still, it is fun to drive around and listen to the stimulating repartee. I have been known to take the long way home so not as to reach my garage before the program ends.
TechNewsWorld.Com- Real time tech news from around the world, updated 24 hours a day.
Technorati- Tools and services for bloggers, as well as a growing compilation of more than 22.7 million Blogs. Here are some citations of blog work from yours truly.
TechNews.com: Filter- Birds-eye view of technology news developments and coverage. Written by the Washington Post's Cindy Webb.
TechPresident- From the Personal Democracy Forum, this is a blog whose main purpose is to show how the 2008 U.S. Presidential candidates are using the Web.
Tech Support Guy Forums- Free help for almost any computing or consumer technology system, product, or problem.
TechTales- Loads of funny as well as frustrating accounts of customer service calls participated in by tech-service types.
Tekrati- News about the world of analyst research, updated daily. An alphabetical directory of Information Technology and Internet strategy firms starts here.
Telecommuting Jobs for Writers- Section of the Telecommuting Jobs site with opportunities of interest to ink and screen-stained wretches like the guy looking back at me through this computer monitor.
Teleoperated Deskoid Robotic Communication PC- Blog-minder Wayne Chiang's most serious public mission these days is to design a Wi-Fi enabled, robotically operated PC. It's one thing to do it online rather than in a fabrication shop or lab, but Wayne seems serious about it.
Television Without Pity- Got to admit: when I first stumbled across this site, my mind association neurons called up an in-heat version of "Town Without Pity" by Gene Pitney. Far from it: this is a great site for television buffs. The latest news, and gossip, sure, but primarily worth a call for their episode-by-episode plot summaries of various shows. The fact that three of my favorite shows, "Enterprise," "QueerAs Folk" and "Six Feet Under," are all indexed is a cool thing.
TerraFly- Although TerraFly is a memory hog, and now charges $100 a month for any sort of functional access, it is about the coolest site I have ever seen. Basically, the concept here is to provide satellite-derived photographs for just about every address and location in the continental United States. Here is a general area view of my neighborhood. The cursor points to my residence. Think that's something? Here is a close-up view. I was likely hard at work when that photo was shot from way up there.
The Atlantic Online- Articles from current and older issues of "The Atlantic Monthly," probably my favorite magazine.
The Chicago Manual of Style FAQ- Promotional site for the well-respected book of the same name answers some vexing questions about writing about, for, and referring to, the Internet.
The Cyber Hymnal- I am a person of contemplation rather than praise-driven faith, but still, I think that hymns are beautiful. This site has words to several thousand such musical tributes to The Divine. "Amazing Grace" is just one hymn that is just a click away.
TheDeal.com- If a company has been bought, sold, or might be, this site will probably have the scoop first. I check it regularly for story ideas. Updated several times each business day.
The Death List-Gruesome and tasteless but owing to the inevitable, this site lists and tracks the people judged most likely to die in a given year. Usually, the folks for whom the end is predicted are either very old (99-year old Nazi boxer Max Schmeling), in a precarious political position in a turbulent part of the world (such as Pakistan's Pervez Musharaff) or practice self-destructive lifestyles likely to land them in the morgue. For 2005, the Top Five are Pope John Paul II, former Ambassador Ronnie Biggs, boxer Max Schmeling, Nazi-hunter Simon Wiesenthal, (interesting order there) and astronomer Patrick Moore. John Paul II, Schmeling and Wiesenthal have passed. For 2004, the top five were John Paul II, actress Fay Ray, who passed away in early summer; Schmeling, Biggs, and former President Ronald Reagan, who rode off into the sunset in 2004 as well. In the 2003 list each of the top five have left us: Warren Zevon, Gregory Peck, Bob Hope, the Pope and Schmeling.
theDevilsDictionary.com- Humorous and cleverly satirical "definitions" for hundreds of words. Take "laughter," for example. We see the definition as "an interior convulsion, producing a distortion of the features and accompanied by inarticulate noises. It is infectious and, though intermittent, incurable. Liability to attacks of laughter is one of the characteristics distinguishing man from the animals -- these being not only inaccessible to the provocation of his example, but impregnable to the microbes having original jurisdiction in bestowal of the disease. Whether laughter could be imparted to animals by inoculation from the human patient is a question that has not been answered by experimentation. Dr. Meir Witchell holds that the infection character of laughter is due to the instantaneous fermentation of sputa diffused in a spray. From this peculiarity he names the disorder Convulsio spargens."
The Eighties Club- A field guide to 1980s "culture." It's all here, including movies, television, music, sports and essays about the decade.
The Gadflyer- A self-described "aggressively progressive" Internet magazine.
The Gallup Organization- Polls and analyses, which the famed organization has been known for, for nearly 70 years.
TheHill.com- Robust site from the tri-weekly, Washington, D.C.-based magazine of the same name. Since this is an election year, the site is a must-click. I would also like to say that The Hill.com seems to be more willing to post printed content than their arch-rivals, the tri-weekly Roll Call Online.
The Lycos 50 With Dean- A ranking of the week's top 50 non sex-related, specific search terms on Lycos. New rankings are posted every Monday.
The Lyrics Library- A searchable directory of Web sites with song lyrics. Whether through a lack of time on the part of their site-minders to maintain them, or wussing out after receiving letters from copyright attorneys, these sites seem to come and go pretty regularly, so take the good links with the bad.
The Memory Hole- Links to news articles and columns, some on controversial subjects. Read this article about how work kills more people than war.
The Nation-Passionate, constructive flame-throwing from left-leaning thinkers, including the witty and eloquent Katha Pollitt. Although I agree with only a portion of their protestations, the right-leaning timbre of the times call out for voices like this.
The National Academies- The best way to collectively describe such entities as the National Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Engineering, the Institute of Medicine and the National Research Council is government-run think tanks. On these sites, you can keep up with the latest news and check out the newest research from each of these venerable institutions.
The Nine Planets- For an astronomy buff like me, sites like these are "heaven sent" (pun intended). Everything you've ever wanted to know about our solar system's nine orbs, and most of their moons, as well. Stuff you've never even thought of knowing, or even asking about. Example: Caliban isn't an especially observant branch of Islam, but a new moon around the planet Uranus.
The Nonverbal Dictionary of Gestures, Signs & Body Language Cues- An alphabetical guide to nonverbal human interaction, including what we mean when we do things such as tilting our head back.
The Onion- Did you know that Historians have discovered a children's menu on the back of the U.S. Constitution? What about a new national museum for the middle class? The only place you can read such scoops is in The Onion.
The Pew Charitable Trusts- A distinguished public policy research and education entity, the Pew's site is particularly interesting to me for its articles on Society and the Internet.
THE SECRET LIVES OF NUMBERS- A ranking of all numbers from 0 to 100,000, based on the amount of times they appear on a leading Web search engine. Here's a sample Java demonstration of how the technology behind this site works.
The Skeptic's Dictionary- Definitions and short essays of some 475 terms that the site's minders deem "self-deceiving." Just one example: Kirlian photography and auras. Most articles on this site have links for further reading.
The Smoking Gun- This site specializes in public record documents from the lives of celebrities and politicians (you think there's a difference?). Here are on-screen photocopies of lawsuits, arrest record write-ups, and court testimonies. I've just read a David Copperfield performance contract. If you work at one of his shows, and tell anyone how he pulls off his magic, then you're really up the creek.
The Software Patch-"Patches, I'm depending on ya, son," went the old song by Clarence Carter. Software users and gamers feel the same way - a fact of life that makes this patch, update and driver download site such a valuable resource.
The Straight Dope - For more than 30 years, Chicago journalist Cecil Adams has answered the seemingly unanswerable questions of life in his published columns, books, and now, online. Sometimes, they answer questions I pose, such as " Why weren't fragile Titanic relics crushed by the depths"? Here's where you can find answers to questions like "Should you cut up six-pack rings so they don't choke sea birds"? Answer, no, because you should expend your energy on more pressing marine conservation issues; and "If all one billion Chinese jumped at once, would the earth be thrown out of its orbit?" Answer, once again: no, because the combined energy of them all hitting the ground at once would be about 500 tons of TNT- a vanishingly small percentage of the earth's weight (6 sextillion, 588 quintillion short tons).
The Talk.Origins Archive: The Age of the Earth FAQs- Several articles that rebut the belief of some creationists that the Earth is merely several thousand years old.
The Two Things- A collection of two basic facts in many areas of life. Take computers, for instance."The Two Things about Computer Programming: "Idiocy increases faster than idiot-proofing," and all compiling errors boil down to a missing semicolon."
The Wall Street Journal-Personal Technology- A collection of new and archived columns from The Journal's personal computing expert, Walt Mossberg. His more recent columns and how-to pieces can be reached via links on the Column Archive page.
The Weblog Review- There are more than 10 million Weblogs in existence and that number is growing by more than 250,000 a week. True to its name, this site is a collection of Weblog reviews, written by the site-minders and visitors as well. Here's the complete listing of reviews posted so far.
The Why Files- The "why is it" science behind the headlines. Everything from the survival secrets of ancient worms who live on the Gulf of Mexico seabed to an article about the danger of undersea panic attacks for scuba divers.
The Word Detective- How popular words and phrases developed their current meanings. A new newsletter posts once a month. Here's the archive, with references listed alphabetically. When I was in college, I had an acquaintance named Sam Hill. That name can have more than one meaning. But heckfire, that was back in my Salad Days.
The Write News- News and commentary about media and the writing life, as well as a jobs board of interest to ink-stained and pixel-stained wretches.
The Writer- Web site for "The Writer" magazine, a monthly guide to writing styles, and the writing life. Sold a couple of years ago, the magazine now seems less hung-up on rhetoric and syntax, and takes a more encompassing view of real-life writing issues. Most of the print magazine is not posted here.
Thesaurus.com- A scaled-down, searchable, online version of Roget's Thesaurus. I use this tool when I try to think of another way to say a word. Here's love.
This American Life- Highlights from the public radio show that takes a look at ordinary Americans doing quirky things. Episodes are archived, and are available for listening in RealAudio.
This Is Broken- A collection of visibly obvious "duh's" from the corporate, organizational, and public agency worlds. Many of the results point to confusing signage. Obviously, the people who make the signs do not talk to those who make the policy.
THOR: The Virtual Reference Desk- Stands for "The Online Resource," which, as the rest of the title strongly infers, is a "virtual reference desk" with links to a trove of Web-based reference sources.
Thoreau Reader- Just two words: a prophet. As many truisms as can be found in many religions.
Those Dark Hiding Places: The "Invisible Web" Revealed- A comprehensive list of descriptions of, and links to, databases, directories, and searchable sites that are not likely to be crawled by search engines.
Ticketmaster- Beats standing in line, or being put on hold on an automated ticket phone reservations line. Here are upcoming jazz and blues shows in Oregon.
Tides Online- Surf's up! Resource lists current tide readings for hundreds of locations on the Atlantic, Pacific, Great Lakes, and Gulf Coasts. Here are the pages that will take you to latest readings for several cities in Oregon, Georgia, and Florida.
Tile.net- Comprehensive guide to discussion lists, newsgroups and FTP sites.
Timberline Lodge- Located on Mt. Hood, this is every Oregonian's mountain home. I sometimes like to go to this page to see what the current conditions are at the top of the Magic Mile Chair, 7000 feet above sea level.
Time.gov- Does anybody really know what time it is? With apologies to the rock group Chicago, I care. My computer's master clock seems to gain an extra minute every five days or so, rendering dependence on it somehow less than an exact science. Sometimes I don't have the time (pun partially intended) to reset it. Because I'd obsess, I don't keep a clock in my office (I've finally gotten to understand that most obsessions drain the mind from more productive tasks). Instead, when I have to know the exact time, I click on the Pacific Time Zone reading, which displays a Java-animated time-clock
TIME Magazine- Every Sunday, Time magazine posts a good portion of its next week's issue online.
Tim's TV Showcase- The ultimate television trivia site, with cast info and biographies available for hundreds of television shows past and present. Let's go on a fishing expedition in search of: the actor who played Lou Costello's landlord on the Abbott and Costello Show. Found it - not bad!
Tinsley Ellis- A great electric blues guitarist from Atlanta, Georgia, and a friend for more than 25 years. After seven years away from the Pacific Northwest, he appeared at the Cascade Bar and Grill, just across the river in Vancouver, Wash., on June 18, 2004. Earlier this year, we caught him� at the Roseland Theater in Portland, as well as in Tacoma.
TMZ.com- This celebrity news and gossip (when it comes to celebrities, is there a difference?) site is, I must admit, a guilty pleasure.
Today's Front Pages- A collection of scanned in photos from several hundred of today's newspapers. Here is a list of the U.S. newspaper front pages carried by this site, a feature of Newseum. This enterprise is offered by the museum about newspapering, which is preparing its new "physical world" location in Washington, D.C.
TOMPAINE.com- Articles about public policy, issues and people, written with a rational progressive perspective. Shortly after the great blackout of 2003, the site ran an article stating the case for local power generation.
TOP500 Supercomputer Sites- He (or she) who computes with the most processing speed wins. A listing of the world's 500 most powerful computers, including their owner/operators, capacity and location.
Topica- Thousands of mailing lists and discussion boards. These resources are divided into more than a dozen channels, including Books, Movies & TV, Internet, News & Information, Personal Finance, Personal Technology, Small Business and Software. Here are some to sample.
TopoZone - The Web's Topographic Map- A topographic map of the U.S. Enter any latitude and longitude reading - either by the decimal point, or in degrees, minutes and seconds, and this site will dish up a topographic map for you. Here's downtown Portland. Once you see the map, you can move the little red locator icon to your neighborhood, and retrieve the exact reading where you live. When I tried this, here's what I found, which, I am told, is at latitude N 45.5251, longitude W -122.6993. My Webmaster lives somewhere around here.
Top Teaching Resources- Because I sometimes write about education, I find this guide to information about the craft of
Torah from Terror- Many Jewish people were killed in the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. The events of that day also tested our abilities to understand why God would permit such a horrible thing. This site features sermons from rabbis who offered their perspectives on this terrible tragedy, and have chosen to permit their thoughts to be posted online.
Totally Off The Record- The boss isn't always right. Anonymously submitted stories from the American workplace. Contributions are grouped by occupation. It is safe to say that if the identity of these posters became known, the ranks of the unemployed would swell commensurately.
TouchGraph GoogleBrowser- Type in a Web page address and you will see a display diagramming a series of links between that page, the links on that page, and the links on the page that is being linked to. Here's a diagram of my Home Page. I tried to use the tool to show me a display of my Favorite Sites page, but apparently there were too many links for TouchGraph to process.
Traffick- Not a tribute site for that great Stevie Winwood band, but original articles and hot links to stories posted about portals on Internet news sites.
Trails.com- Search index of hiking, mountain biking, bird-watching, and other trails throughout the U.S. Start your search on this page. According to the site, there are 712 such trails in Oregon, including 189 in Portland, where I am from. There are eight such trails in Northwest Portland, including a cool one on Sauvie Island.
Trainorders Oregon Railroad Map- In my driving around Oregon, I sometimes see single trackage. I wonder where those lines come from and are bound to. Now, I know.
Trains.com - Can you tell that I love railroads? A comprehensive site about everything that runs on tracks. Features include railroading news, updated several times a week, and a great section on passenger rail travel.
TrainWeb- A portal with lots of railroading stuff, including news, train schedules, and a cool collection of live, railroading Webcams from all over North America and the world. The functioning Webcam nearest my house is located at the Olympia-Lacey Amtrak station, which is located along the Amtrak Cascades route in Washington State.
Travelocity.com-Business- I haven't been working with them as long as Expedia, but I find Travelocity's tools for the business traveler more robust. For example, I have been traveling without a laptop these days, and prefer to stay in hotels with onsite business centers. Travelocity lets me search for hotels which offer that service.
TrekWeb.com- Although some of the coding seems to be a bit sloppy, this is still the best "Star Trek" fan site I have ever seen.
TripAdvisor.com- A portal with tourism information advice from throughout the United States, Canada, Mexico, and the Caribbean, mahn.
TripCheck - Oregon Department of Transportation- This is the Oregon Department of Transportation's road conditions info resource. When one does not have traction tires, checking the Weather Outlook before setting out for places such as Timberline Lodge (at 6,000 feet) is not only wise. It could be a life-saver.
Tsnn.com- Trade show search engine, which can be checked by industry sector, state, city, or range of dates.
TV ACRES- The ultimate site for television trivia. Once you get past the incessant pop-ups, you can look up television shows and even individual episodes by theme. If you are a science-fiction fan searching for shows about shape-shifters, you've come to the right place.
TV Barn-News and blog about television programming, updated daily.
TV.com- Episode guide to thousands of television series from the past and present. To find a program with an episode listing and guide, start on this page.
TW Crossroads- Travel industry trade publication "Travel Weekly" offers this daily news update, divided by sector. A great place to find leads for articles.
Twitter- Hey, what are you doing now? I'm updating my website.
Tyndall Report- Blog featuring citations and commentary from Andrew Tyndall about major stories are getting on the evening news broadcasts of CBS, NBC and ABC.
UberGizmo-O.K. put it this way. If you guessed that this is a blog about, uh, "gizmos," well then you get the gold star!!
Uchronia: The Alternate History List- A guide to thousands of books and articles that postulate on what would have occurred had what has occurred did not, or what has not occurred did. Got that? Like if John Wilkes Booth missed, that sort of stuff.
Ultimate Computer Acronyms Archive-Searchable database of almost any computing-oriented alphabet soup term that's ever thrown you for a "huh" loop.
Underheard.org- Hundreds of hours of Podcasts, much of which are community radio programs you ordinarily wouldn't know existed.
Unitarian Universalist 100 Questions- I'm not a joiner or member, but I'm not an atheist or agnostic either. I find very little here that I disagree with, however.
United Justice Terrorist Newswire- A vital resource for our times. The site clips terrorism-related news from thousands of sources.
United Parcel Service- At one time, "big blue" was backward, not offering package-tracking, and few direct drop-off centers. I recall questioning a UPS driver about this some years back. He didn't seem to grasp the imperatives involved. Now, with state of the art package tracking and numerous UPS Store direct drop-off locations, UPS is a pleasure to use.
United States Patent and Trademark Office - Searchable archives for almost every patent issued or applied for over the last 210-plus years. Here's one: United States Patent: 6,314,411.
United States Postal Service- Kind of ironic I am posting the site of a 200-plus year-old paper-bound institution on the Internet. As often as the rates change, the postage calculator comes in handy. Since I am on the road often, and it is helpful to know where the nearest post office is. Here's mine. And, here's the handy ZIP + 4 Lookup
University Business- Monthly journal about the academic and business managing factors involved in running a university or college. A long, long time ago in a galaxy far away, I taught at the college level.
University of California at Berkeley Journalism--Jobs- A jobs referral site maintained for Univ. of California journalism school graduates. Still, this is a useful service for all who seek writing jobs in new media, for newspapers and wire services, magazines, as well as freelance work.
University of Virginia Computer Science Dept. Star Links- A fascinating site that undertakes to prove the theory that at least in the worlds of television and cinema, there are few degrees of separation between any two performers, alive or dead. I decided to really push the envelope by testing for degrees of separation between Richard Burton and Jim Varney, the chain-smoking but deceased before his time actor who played "Ernest." Think I'm kiddin', Vern? Forsooth, indeed.
Unstrung - As one who believes in "have antenna, will travel," I find Unstrung a great source for reports on the wireless industry.
Upcoming.org- Collaborative event calendar, where enthusiasts add listings for events in their city. Here is a list of forthcoming events in Portland.
Urban Legends Reference Pages- For a skeptical society, we sure believe in lots of tall tales. The ultimate debunker for many myths, great and small. In keeping with the times, site has just added a Rumors of War section.
URLwire- Although their business model is a Web site announcement service, I like to click here for their periodically updated listings of new and useful sites.
USATODAY.com- The latest news, from the most widely circulated newspaper in North America.
USATODAY.com - Tech_Space- Irreverent but authoritative blog about technology, written by old colleague and friend Angela Gunn.
USATODAY.com Travel- Timely news and advice of interest to business and leisure travelers. I am one of those people.
U.S. Bank- Here's where I do most of my banking. The U.S. Bank Internet Banking page prompts me for my user ID and password, which, when entered, allows me one-click access to my banking information.
U.S. Census Bureau American Community Survey- Detailed demographic statistics and perspectives on U.S. states and counties.
U.S. Census Bureau 2002 Census of Governments- Statistical document enumerates such fascinating political wonk trivia as the number and nature of various local government jurisdictions in the United States. For the record, there are 19,429 "subcounty" municipal governments and 16,504 town or township governments and 35,052 "special district governments, "many of them public utility, water, transportation or park-related entities.
U.S. Census Bureau County and City Data Book: 2000- Nirvana for a statistics and trivia nut like yours truly. Here are just a few nuggets. The three counties with the highest ratio of males to females are Crowley, Colorado; West Feliciano, Louisiana, and Aleutians East, Alaska. Guess cowboys, oilmen and fishermen get lonely; let's send 'em some Russian brides!! Charlotte County, Florida, has the highest percentage of residents 65 years old or more. The most sparsely populated county in the U.S., is 67-person Loving County in Texas. Given the lack of humans, one suspects that the brunt of the "loving" going on there is between cows and prize bulls. Finally, if you really want to know, here is a list of all U.S. places with 2,500 or more (human) inhabitants.
U.S. Conference Of Mayors- Fuck suburbs. I like cities. When these people do their job right, that is.
USGS Earthquake Hazards Program- Because the earth moves. Here's where the earth has moved lately, as well as within the last several decades.
USGS National Mapping Information- I've long had a fascination with maps. The United States Geological Survey's site has them by the thousands. How high up is a given place? Click on Atlas Maps. Note: do so in Netscape or Opera, not in IE 6, which seems to resist Shockwave and Flash. Check out an aerial image (that's my house) or look up a place name. I checked Portland, Oregon, and received this search results page.
USNews.com- The online home of U.S. News & World Report magazine.
US Search.com- A very guilty pleasure. Enter the name of anyone you know, or knew. Unless they have married or given up the regular pursuit of nitrogen, you will find them here, as well as their age. Just to show you time flies: a while back, I became buddies with a girl at a nearby college. Buddies, nothing more. I hadn't heard from or about her in over a decade. I logged on (ethical confidentiality prevents me from linking to the search results page) and found out that she was 44. That's older than Elvis and John Lennon were when he died, and older than JFK was when he was inaugurated.
Use It- Have you had it up to here with self-indulgent Web sites that have too much pizzazz, and little navigation or functionality? Web site usability guru Jakob Nielsen has seen more than his share, and has much to say on the subject. Doesn't only vent, but offers constructive suggestions. An example: he correctly points out that the p.r. sections of many Web sites are lacking in necessary info. Listen up, corporate America: the man is a genius, and is worth more than a boardroom of overpriced, suit-wearing consultants.
Utne.com- Few things are more intellectually enriching than engaging in a thoughtful online chat while sipping coffee as it's raining outside. In addition to content from Utne magazine (formerly Utne Reader), the site has more than 100 conversation topics, organized by category.
VersionTracker.com- Frequently updated and always comprehensive guide to the newest downloadable software patches, software and hardware fixes, and other resources. Here are some Windows tools.
VIA Online- The American Automobile Association is good for many other services besides battery boosts. VIA Online, the AAA magazine for the West Coast, offers listings for hundreds of upcoming events in California, Nevada and Utah. You can narrow down your search by date or by location - such as Marin County. For a list of weekend getaways, start here.
vidblogs.com- With the growth of digital video recorders and Blogs, it was inevitable that the two technologies would converge. This is a collection of one to six minute clips of people essentially describing and depicting a portion of their lives.
Virtual Perpetual Calendars- I like to go back in time and see what day of the week certain memorable events occurred. Here are calendars for every year in this century, and the last.
Virtual Sites- A directory of Web site directories (got that?) for subjects such as specialized search engines, reference sites, and Webcams.
Visual Thesaurus- Enter a term, and a diagram will come up that illustrates similar words, their relation to each other, as well as to the word you originally asked about.
Vivisimo- Another of the next generation of search engines. Vivisimo organizes research into categories. A new Advanced Search feature lets you look for news, sports, patent information, among other topic areas.
VoIP Watch- News and comment by my colleague and friend Andy Abramson about Voice over IP telephony, technology, and related business issues.
Volt.com-Another directory of technology, writing, and other jobs.
VolunteerMatch- How dedicated to the "greater good" are you? This site helps would-be volunteers to find organizations in hundreds of U.S. cities that could use your help. Here are several hundred opportunities in Portland, alone. Greedy yuppies need not apply.
Warp Radio- A searchable guide to radio stations that stream their programming over the Web.
Washington Post- Only because this is the Web site for the most important newspaper in the capital city of the world's most powerful nation at a key juncture in history.
Weather Channel - Air Turbulence Potential- I love to fly but I don't like bumps. Before I leave for the airport, I check the map on this page to tell me if I should have a drink at the airport before I board the plane.
Weather Channel-Portland, Oregon- Hey, it's raining outside! Not only can I check the weather forecast for my hometown, but also I can read the weather outlook in other cities I may be headed to.
Weather Underground- Great collection of color-coded weather maps. Since they say "it's not the heat, it's the humidity, the national, as well as regional, dew point maps are worth checking out. Here's the weather for my area.
we make money not art- Blog about cutting-edge technology that may or may not make money, but has that patina of art to it. Kind of, you know it when you see it.
Web Bound- A frequently updated index of several hundred thousand Web sites. The index is divided into dozens of categories, and hundreds of sub-categories.
WebDesignHelper-British site for Webmasters leads to hundreds of free Web design templates, graphics and fonts and tutorials and scripts.
WebDeveloper.com- Another top-to-bottom information and teaching site for people who want to build their own Web pages.
Weblogs.Com- A Blog directory that offers a linked list to the Blogs who pinged Weblogs.Com in the last several hours.
Weblogs Compendium - Blog Tools- A compendium of resources and facts for bloggers (you're reading one, ya know).
Webmasterclicks.com- A collection of links to Web sites with tools, advice, and discussion forums for Webmasters.
WebmasterWorld- News and forums for advanced Web professionals. Major forum content areas include Search Engine World, highlighted by a growing collection of threads about Google; a collection of search engine-centric Marketing World forums; several WebmasterWorld forums oriented toward the design, production, and maintenance of Web sites; and a Commercial Exchange, with help wanted and services offered postings.
WebMD- Health info and advice from the Western medical establishment's perspective. Here's the main directory page for Diseases and Conditions.
Webopedia- As comprehensive an online dictionary you'll find for Internet and computing terms. Defined terms are divided into dozens of categories.
WebProNews- an article portal for Internet and Technology professionals. You will find lots of articles about search engine optimization.
Web Sites for Journalists- Veteran newsman Allan Andrews has gathered a timely list of links to resources useful for ink-stained and pixel-stained wretches like me. For a linked list of online columns and editorials, click here.
what ever happened to...Trivia site uses Google searches and visitor input to track what the formerly, temporarily famous and infamous denizens of society are doing these days. Relies on "word of mouse" more than original reporting.
whatis.com- A cross between a technology glossary and encyclopedia, the site has meanings for all sorts of computing-related terms and acronyms.
Whichisworse.com- Hilarious site presents hundreds of different and absurd two-case scenarios, and asks you to vote on "which is worse." One "which is worse" example: "Stepping in dog poop," or "getting crapped on by a bird." I think that because you do not know that it is coming, "getting crapped on by a bird" is worse. I mean, stepping in dog shit is basically a duh on you. But being, well, "shocked and awed" by bird turd is not only a random act of nature, but one in which it was quite likely that the bird targeted you. Hey, guess what! A full 76 percent of voters agree with me!
Whois.net-Some of the better-known Whois services have finally figured out that scumbag spammers are mining their databases. As a result, you sometimes have to jump through hoops or endure time-outs to extract the information you need. Fortunately, this site does not seem to have implemented those measures just yet.
Who Owns What- An online resource from the Columbia Journalism Review that lists most of the major media conglomerates, and the properties they own all or part of. Dozens of media companies are listed, from Advance Publications to The Washington Post Company.
WholeHealthMD-Articles, reference materials and health tips from an alternative, but medical, perspective. I recently had bronchitis, and have found that informational pages like this one can be of value.
Wikipedia- With more than two million entries, the largest volunteer-supplied encyclopedia available on the Web. Here's an article on my home town.
Wikiquote- A list of quotations erroneously assigned to people who never said that.
Willamette Week Online- The week's cinematic, dining, music and literary to-do's, mixed with a progressive, but not-too-lefty take on Portland's news.
WIL WHEATON DOT NET- Face it. Most celebrity Web sites go up without the celebrity's active, or even passive, involvement. Your average celebrity is more comfortable with doing Ecstasy in hidden rooms of trendy nightspots than coding a Web page. Many are more comfortable with a spoon in their hand, rather than a mouse. But Wil Wheaton - yes, the former Wesley Crusher on Star Trek-TNG, is a real geek that does his own coding. He's thoughtful, too.
WindowsMedia.com Media Guide- A directory of streaming media Web sites with content encoded for Windows Media Player.
Windows Support Center- Man, do we need more resources such as this one - a well-informed and authoritative independent guide to Windows' many quirks, bugs annoyances, blind alleys and hidden functionalities. Site is a one-man operation helmed by 25 year-computing veteran James A. Eshelman.
Wired Magazine- Site offers articles from current and previous editions of one of the true greybeards in the technology journalism space.
WiseNut- This easy-to-use search service looks and feels a good bit like Google did when it first came out. Yet Google still finds more stuff. Heck, Google has been at it three years longer.
Wonkette-A funny, sarcastic blog from someone who has more trust in technology than politicians. Blame her? You go, GURL!
Wooden Horse Publishing- Up-to-date market information for writers. including breaking news about publication suspensions, start-ups, and the comings and goings of editors. Some of those editors have the authority to commission articles!
WORDCOUNT- Not so long ago, a Brit named Jonathan Harris marshaled some resources and embarked on a project that ranks the 86,800 most frequently used words in the English language. Until ranks 204, five ranks 205, party ranks 206 and point ranks 207. So, there may not be a point, but let's party until five!
WordCounter- A fun site that ranks the amount of times specific words appear in a document, or on a Web page. You copy the document or Web page into the "Enter the body of text here" box, and in just a few seconds, WordCounter will rank the words you used. You may specify a search that includes or excludes common words such as "to," "I," and "it." When I performed a search of my Favorite Site page (the one you are on now) with those words excluded, the five most common words, in descending order, were: "site," "new," "Web," "search," and "link." When I did the same for my home page, the five most cited words, in descending order, were "site," "how," "read," "Web," and "write." Given that most of the text on my site points to other stuff I have either posted on the Web or recommend to Web surfers, the link results are no surprise to me.
wordIQ.com-A meta-reference resource with links to various online dictionaries, encyclopedias, and other such defining presences. Note the physical and taxonomic resemblance to Google.
Word Origins- Origins for more than 400 words and phrases. Try this site, and you will be entertained and educated at the same time. That you will have fun here, may I say, is a Lead Pipe Cinch.
Word Pirates- Some words get discovered by influential politicians, companies, ad copywriters, or individuals. Then, their meaning gets altered, distorted or rendered, well, meaningless. The site is a compilation of such words and phrases that mean something different now than when they first rolled off the tongue.
World Almanac Books- Site features a monthly newsletter that highlights content from the latest edition of the World Almanac.
World Atlas-Articles, facts and figures about many of the world's nations and territories. As an example, here is an article about the Azores, an integral part of Portugal.
World eBook Library -Searchable directory of more than 27,000 e-books.
WORLDLawDirect- Links to articles, reference materials, and other resources that may help you gain insight into legal issues. Here's the Internet Law area.
World Sunlight Map-When it is light here, it is dark there. Constantly updated map shows sunlight conditions (or lack thereof) throughout the globe, as well as cloud cover (or lack thereof).
World Values Survey-Survey-based graphical comparisons of cultural and political attitudes in more than 80 nations. According to this study, it appears the United States is not as enlightened as some parts of the world. After this last election, I know it isn't.
World Weather Information Service- Hong Kong Observatory site provides official readings and climate information for hundreds of world cities.
World Wide Words- Here's another amusing and educational word and phrase-origins site. Most of the terms they define are linked from the General Index page. If you've ever wondered about how such phrases as "Mind Your P's and Q's" started, here's your answer.
World Wildlife Fund- Because endangered species, and endangered spaces are vulnerable and in need of our protection from the scumbag developers, deforesters and poachers of the world.
Writerfind- A free listing of freelance and telecommuting jobs for writers.
Writer Opportunities @ www.ezboard.com- Writers post their work on this board, and hope for bids from publishers. While I would not post to this board myself, perusing this list of articles sometimes gives me ideas of stories to propose to editors.
Writer's Digest 101 Best Web Sites For Writers - Links to search engines, online dictionaries, reference resources, and writer's organizations.
WritersMarket.com - The main attraction of this site is a daily Market Watch update about magazines that hire writers, book publishers that commission writers, agents who represent writers, as well as legal, business and creative issues important to those of us who draw our sustenance from assembling consonants and vowels in a cogent manner.
WritersWeekly.com- Plenty of advice for "perspiring," as well as aspiring writers. As one who has been in this business for awhile, I mainly use the site for their job listings. You can find them toward the bottom of the home page.
XE.com - The Universal Currency Converter- I write for a UK-based technology publication. Since they have to convert quoted article payments from pounds to dollars, I use this site to preview just how much money from a given assignment is going to wind up in my till.
Yahoo!- Not the best source for any specific task or topic, but the most complete collection of resources on the Web. Good for searching, reading the latest news, checking stock prices, sports scores, etc.
Yahoo! Advanced People Search- When it comes to this resource, I've got a trick up my sleeve. The advanced search feature lets you search by domain. If I am trying to reach someone at a company, but the company site yields no clues about the type of name-address scheme they used, I will go here and input the company name. If a search results page comes up with listings, I can generally tell what type of e-mail addressing protocols the site in question uses.
Yahoo! Buzz Index- A daily ranking of the most requested Yahoo! searches, including overall leaders.
Yahoo! Calendar- Hey, lookit -- when I am on an intensive project, the days and dates stick together. I do have a dead-tree calendar on the right-side office wall, but why not use a digital solution as well?
Yahoo! Creative Commons Search- Searchable guide to Web content that contains a Creative Commons license. Such a license often allows you to use the work for commercial purposes, or even to change and repost it.
Yahoo! Groups- Hundreds of thousands of e-mail discussion lists about almost every imaginable topic. I posted this message to one such group. Here is the first and the second response my post received.
Yahoo! Hot Jobs- For my money, the most resource-rich mega jobs site. I sometimes perform searches for listings of jobs for writers, freelance writers and businesses looking for Web content producers.
Yahoo! Mail- Because I do not want to get spammed at my regular e-mail address, I give out my Yahoo! e-mail address to sites that require an online registration - and are likely to sell that info to spam-inclined third parties. I practice the lesser of two evils, and check my messages on Yahoo! Mail from time to time.
Yahoo! Maps and Driving Directions- You can get there from here. In fact, here's where I live now. If I had driven to Portland when I moved here from Georgia in 1997, here's the route I would have taken.
Yahoo! Movies- Everything you wanted to learn and see about current, recently circulating, and forthcoming movies. Check out the Trailers & Clips section.
Yahoo TV-Sometimes, I want to know what is on TV tonight before I meander over to the set. If there is nothing on, why bother? With its digital cable listings, Yahoo! TV helps me make that "to watch or not to watch" decision.
Yahoo! Weather- Quick and easy way to check up on the local weather, without any of the pain in the ass pop-ups more comprehensive services subject you to. Here is the local weather for Portland.
Yahoo! - What's New- Each day, Yahoo! posts a list of the sites they have added to their directory the previous day. I like to check this directory for new sites to list here, as well as sites I might be able to approach with content contribution or consulting offers. The best of these additions also find their way to Yahoo! Picks Of The Week.
YouMustChoose- Every couple of days, this clever site offers a new "ballot" that asks you to choose a course of action on a particular dilemma.
YourDictionary.com-An ultimate word portal. Let us take it out for a spin. Accessing just one of hundreds of online language dictionaries, we learn that in Ainu, "omap" means "to love." We learn in the Cooking glossary area that Galangal is a root similar to ginger. I found the alphabetized list of 100 Most Often Misspelled Words to be both "acceptable" and "weird." Ditto the list of 100 Most Often Mispronounced Words. Don't "aks." For "all intensive purposes," this site is a "cannidate" for being "prolly" as educational a collection of "verbage" as anything I have ever come "acrossed" in a "libary." That's my "prerogative." Man, did my spell-checker just get a workout!
YouSendIt-Site will accept, and then forward, your emails up to one gigabyte in size.
Zacks.com- Investment research from all over the Web. Many resources are free, including a frequently updated #1 Rank page, which lists the stocks analysts recommend by sector. Check out Computers & Technology and Aerospace. The recommendations keep up with the news. For example, a recent Aerospace analyst recommendation touted Hurley Industries, Inc, which makes flight instrumentation components for military and civilian aircraft. Zacks also provides a page where you can apply for a free trial subscription to many investment newsletters.
ZAGAT SURVEY-Web version of familiar city-specific restaurant guidebooks lets you perform a city-specific search for user-reviewed restaurants by city, neighborhood, and cuisine. I performed a search for Thai restaurants in Portland, and got back a results page with 14 listings. In order to read the reviews, you have to be a paid subscriber.
Zillow-Site provides estimates- some would say rough estimates- of how much individual houses and condos in U.S. cities, neighborhoods and streets are worth.
zipdecode- Type in your zip code over the site's Java-enabled map of the U.S.A., and the dots on the map disappear except for one. That's the location of the zip code you entered.
ZoneZero- Articles and discussions about digital photography. As you can see, digital photography is a hobby of mine.
Let me know what you think, or if you have a site you'd like me to check out. Write me: email@example.com.
Check out my Photo Gallery here.
Check out my Multimedia Gallery here.
Check out my favorite tools here.