Amazing, wonderful, and useful web sites (12/17/08)

Here are just a few of the many terrific web sites on the internet, culled from a quick survey of my friends, a little online searching, plus a few of my own favorites.

Amazing Videos, Photographs, and Ideas

http://www.ted.com: Named for Technology, Entertainment, Design, not some guy called "Ted" - Inspired talks (about 20 minutes each) by the world's leading thinkers and doers - Don't miss this architect's talk about piecing together publicly-available images into a three-dimensional experience: http://www.ted.com/index.php/speakers/blaise_aguera_y_arcas.html
http://grin.hq.nasa.gov: Great Images in NASA - Over a thousand high-quality photographs
http://www.airspacemag.com: Air & Space/Smithsonian magazine - Don't miss http://www.airspacemag.com/space-exploration/Top_NASA_Photos_of_All_Time.html
http://www.chandra.harvard.edu: NASA's orbiting Chandra X-ray Observatory
http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/astropix.html: NASA's Astronomy Picture of the Day
http://www.photographymuseum.com: American Museum of Photography
http://www.nationalgeographic.com: National Geographic Society

Entertainment, Television, Radio

http://www.imdb.com: The Internet Movie Database (also includes TV shows) - Two of my favorites: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0058331 and http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0065314
http://www.film.com: Movies, Trailers, Reviews, TV Shows, DVDS, and Celebrities
http://www.cartalk.com: Car Talk (Boston-based radio show) plus a huge array of articles and information - Don't miss http://www.cartalk.com/content/features/fueleconomy: Car Talk's Guide to Better Fuel Economy
http://www.pbs.org: Public Broadcasting Service (TV)
http://www.npr.org: National Public Radio
http://www.zap2it.com/tv/listings: TV listings
http://streamingtvepisodes.com and http://www.fancast.com/full_episodes: Watch a wide variety of classic and recent TV shows on your computer
http://www.dtv2009.gov: Read about the change that will occur at midnight on February 17, 2009, when all full-power television stations in the United States will stop broadcasting in analog and switch to 100% digital broadcasting

Art

http://mfa.org: Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
http://moma.org: The Museum of Modern Art, New York
http://www.museumofbadart.org: The Museum Of Bad Art, Dedham, Mass.

Learning

http://urbanlegends.about.com: Debunking online and real-life myths
http://www.wikipedia.com: The Free Encyclopedia
http://www.loc.gov: Library of Congress
http://www.theonion.com: The Onion - News, dripping with satire
http://www.jir.com: The Journal of Irreproducible Results - The Science Humor Magazine, targeting hypocrisy, arrogance, and ostentatious sesquipedalian circumlocution
http://www.improbable.com: Improbable Research - Research that makes people laugh and then think; They also administer the annual Ig Nobel Prizes, intended to celebrate the unusual, honor the imaginative, and encourage interest in science, medicine, and technology
http://www.exploratorium.edu: Exploratorium - The museum of science, art, and human perception, San Francisco
http://www.archive.org: The Internet Archive Way-Back Machine - Enter a web address, you'll see past versions of that web site - Another reason to be careful about what information you post online, even if you later remove it

Food and More

http://www.betterhomesandgardens.com: Better Homes and Gardens - Home decorating and remodeling ideas, gardening, recipes, and more
http://www.eaglebrand.com/recipes.asp: Fun recipes from Eagle Brand (the Condensed Milk people)
http://www.kingarthurflour.com: Festive recipes and catalog of baking ingredients and tools, featuring a clever idea I've never seen on any other online shopping site: Once you've put something into your "shopping cart," it displays additional items you can add without increasing your shipping cost

Investment news stories, research, analysis and more

http://finance.yahoo.com: Yahoo! Finance
http://www.morningstar.com: Morningstar online - Such a respected standard for investment information, your local library probably subscribes to their paper version
http://www.fool.com: The Motley Fool - Championing shareholder value and advocating tirelessly for the individual investor; named from the works of Shakespeare, whose wise fools both instructed and amused, and could speak the truth to the king, without getting their heads lopped off
http://www.thestreet.com: Another good site for investors with lots of free and valuable content among the clutter and advertising
http://www.measuringworth.com: Lets you explore different measures of the economy, including inflation, purchasing power, stock growth, and more, using the most reliable historical data available

Useful

http://www.musicnotes.com: Sheet music for a fee, transposed into whatever key you need
http://www.yousendit.com and http://www.pando.com: Send files that are too large to be emailed
http://mapquest.com and http://maps.google.com: Maps, driving directions, satellite images, and more
http://www.wunderground.com and http://www.weather.com: Weather conditions and forecasts
http://www.catalogchoice.org: free service that tries to help you reduce the number of repeat and unwanted catalogs you get through the mail

Health and medical information - two well-respected sites

http://www.webmd.com
http://www.drweil.com: Andrew Weil, M.D.

Community

http://www.freecycle.org: The Freecycle Network - A grassroots and entirely nonprofit movement of people who are giving away (and getting) stuff for free in their own towns
http://www.paperbackswap.com: Swap books with other book-lovers - Paperbacks, hardbacks, audio Books, textbooks, and more
http://www.craigslist.org: Read (and post your own) listings in a huge array of categories, including discussions, services, jobs, housing, childcare, and more
http://www.yelp.com: Real reviews on what's great (and not so great) in your area, including restaurants, stores, services, and more

Wacky

http://www.stopabductions.com: How to make a "thought screen helmet" to prevent you from being abducted by aliens
http://www.halfbakery.com: A communal database of original, fictitious ("half-baked") inventions

Where to go from here

It's a big world out there, and a chunk of it is on the internet. Whatever interests you, whether it's art, literature, politics, investing, religion, a hobby, how to get out a stain, how to improve your business, medical questions, or something else, search for it online and you're likely to find thousands if not millions of interesting places to visit.
Enjoy, but don't believe everything you read. Look for credible sources. (If you're not sure, do a google search for "xyz.com review" to find reviews of a given web site.)
Remember that the entire world is not on the internet.
If you have a wonderful web site to share, please let me know!

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If you have any comments about this article, send me a reply!
If you have a topic that you'd like me to write about, I'd love to hear about it!

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