Ekko Guardian -
a "virtual safety deposit vault" and security service aimed at protecting travellers from identity theft and fraud
(has 3 levels of annual pricing). Offers credit card and
identity theft protection, mobile phone protection, lost keys cover,
support during travel emergencies.
gethuman.com (usa-centric) -
a consumer movement created to change the face of customer service. This free website is powered by over
one million consumers, and the site is run by volunteers who are sick of bad customer service.
The most popular part of this website is the gethuman database
of secret phone numbers and codes to get [directly] to a human when calling a company for customer service.
Mind your
mobile phone manners - "... makes perfect
sense that mobile phones are continually cited in studies that say good
manners have gone out of the window. You don't need a sociology degree
to see just how handsets have changed how we relate to each other."
The SocioSite Project
(Social Science Information System based at the University of Amsterdam)
19 SMS ...
Don't get ripped off!
19 SMS is a web-based 'one-stop shop' provides Australian consumers with a comprehensive guide to mobile premium services. These services
are created by a content supplier and delivered over your mobile service provider's network. They are called 'Mobile Premium
Services' because you buy them using your mobile phone, you receive them on your mobile phone, and you will be charged a
premium cost for them. >> Comprehensive 19 SMS fact sheet
The Time Value of Money Concepts -
the notion that money has a time value associated with it, independent of the effects of inflation,
and that this value can be quantified.
Maps of World.com
>> Top Ten Countries -
Find out about world top ten countries in different arenas such as countries with fastest growing economies,
longest railway network, highest percentage of urbanization, highest investments in healthcare,
greatest oil reserves, active participation in sport events, largest internet users, etc.
World Wind (from NASA) -
"Lets you zoom from satellite altitude into any place on Earth. ...
Lets you experience Earth terrain in visually rich 3D, just as if you were really there."
wunderground.com - USA and international point-and-click location maps
WeatherBug -
Live radar, severe weather alerts, travel forecasts plus Live Temperature on your
Windows taskbar (paid and "lite" FREE versions available)
Airliners.net -
"the biggest and most visited aviation interest site on the Internet, ...
an online aviation publication with a diverse audience of everything from
airline management to frequent air travelers to aviation enthusiasts."
VirtualParks (wilderness panoramas (USA) -
Each panorama captures a full 360 degrees of scenery and is built from 10-18 individual images. See what it is like
at possible vacation spots, explore remote mountain passes you might not be able to get to this year, or revisit
favorite places. Get a feeling for what these remaining wild places are like.
climezine.com - an initiative to bring environmental news to the
Web 2.0 community -- for sharing of information, photos and movie clips on our planet, and its state it is in.
Farecast -
an airfare search engine, for USA cites, that also predicts how much the price of an airline ticket will rise or fall over the coming days.
They "help you decide if you should buy now or wait." (Apparently it was originally going to be called Hamlet, standing for "To buy, or not to buy.")
Sports Tickets 411 -
A sports entertainment site with great resources for every sports event nationwide in the USA (baseball, basketball,
football, hockey, and more), including team and venue history with sports event tickets links.
The Emptorium (Australia) -
"news on the latest scams, deals and shopping hacks: the sort of information that can save you time, headaches and money."
... NOTE: This site now seems to have null
content.
Australian Banking IVR Cheat Sheet -
a listing of shortcuts that you can use when calling various Australian banks to exit their
automated interactive voice response (IVR) maze as soon as possible and
reach a real human being!
Cheapskates Journal -
"Saving money is easy!" - dedicated to showing you how to
cut the costs of everyday living and still have fun.
Recycling ...
Recycling Near You (Australia) -
search for local recycling information simply by entering your Postcode, Suburb or Council Name
to find where you can recycle in your local area. You can search either by council/shire name
or by product type (mobile phones, medicines, tyres, batteries, etc).
RateBeer - "a forum for beer lovers
to come together and share their opinions of beer and breweries. Established and maintained by
dedicated volunteers, RateBeer has become the premier resource for consumer-driven beer ratings."
MegaConverter - conversion tool for just about any units (ancient or modern)
Australia Eastern & Central 2008 Daylight Saving Changes -
Australia Eastern (New South Wales, Victoria, Australia Capital Territory and Tasmania) and Central (South Australia) time zones
will extend daylight saving and also harmonise start and end times commencing April 2008. From April 2008, daylight saving
will end on the first Sunday in April and recommence on the first Sunday in October in all states.
See the Australian Government Time web site for more information.
Time Zones for PCs
(FREE download) - "built around a comprehensive database of over
1500 cities and towns, in 252 individual time zones,
across 240 countries. ... 100% coverage
of all the time zones in the world. " >>
UTC Time Reference
ClockLink.com - "provides fashionable clocks that you
can easily embed in your web page"
Karen's Time Zone Manager - "Take control of Windows'
Time Zones! Now you can create a desktop shortcut to any time
zone, allowing you to switch between zones with must the
double-click of your mouse. You can even create your own custom
time zones, enabling or disabling settings such as Daylight
Saving Time."
YouSendIt FileLink -
a personalized link to the YouSendIt website. Your address is automatically passed as the recipient address
to the FREE public YouSendIt service. When the YouSendIt homepage appears, the email address of your choice
is already filled in. A good way way to send large file attachments.
There's nothing more annoying than having your inbox clogged up with a massive file attachment
sent by a well-meaning friend or colleague. Alternatively, many mail servers have frustratingly
low file size limits (typically 5MB or 10MB) that prevent you from receiving the occasional large file.
The Assayer -
a site for book reviews (with a focus on reviewing free books.. It also functions as a catalog of free books.
NPR - an
internationally acclaimed producer and distributor of
noncommercial news, talk, and entertainment programming. A
privately supported, not-for-profit membership organization, NPR
serves more than 750 independently operated, noncommercial
public radio stations.
MIT OpenCourseWare - a FREE, open publication of MIT course materials.
(NOTE: it does not require any registration, is not a degree-granting or certificate-granting activity,
and does not provide access to MIT faculty.)
GoogleZeitgeist -
Google users' behaviour (search patterns, trends, and surprises).
Year-End Google Zeitgeist -
(Google users' behaviour) Search patterns, trends, and surprises ...
Based on billions of searches conducted by Google users around the world, the Year-End Zeitgeist offers a unique perspective on the year's major events and trends.
Ask Ms. Dewey -
This is a quite different search experience! Switch on your
speakers first.
QuackTrack - "The world's largest browsable blog index"
Blogdigger - uses such as RSS and Atom to index blog content and make it available for search,
so users can subscribe to keyword searches and automatically be notified of new content pertaining to their interests.
Zuula - get results from all the top search engines.
BizSeer.IST - Academic Business Literature Digital Library
Factiva (from Dow Jones) - provides business news and information
together with the content delivery tools and services that enable professionals to make better decisions faster.
LexisNexis - a leading provider of comprehensive information and business solutions to professionals
in a variety of areas—legal, risk management, corporate, government, law enforcement, accounting and academic.
>> LexisNexis Australia home page
Most reliable search tool could be your librarian -
While the Web is good for offering quick results from a broad range of sources, which may or may not be trustworthy,
librarians can help people get access to more authoritative information and go deeper with their research. ...
"There are limitations with the search engines." ...
Most people don't bother to look at results past the first page or spend much time evaluating the source of the material, experts say.
"There's a problem with information illiteracy among people. People find information online and don't question
whether it's valid or not."
The magic that makes Google tick -
"It is one of the largest computing projects on the planet, arguably employing more computers than any other single, fully managed system ...
all hidden behind a deceptively simple, white, Web page that contains a single one-line text box and a button that says Google Search. ... When
Arthur C. Clarke said that any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic, he was alluding to the trick of hiding the
complexity of the job from the audience, or the user. Nobody hides the complexity of the job better than Google does; so long as we have a
connection to the Internet, the Google search page is there day and night, every day of the year, and it is not just there, but it returns results."
Factbites - a search engine "more interested in content analysis than link popularity"
Bible Gateway -
enter the Bible passage (e.g. John 3:16), keyword (e.g. Jesus, prophet, etc.) or topic (e.g. salvation)
you want to find -- for multiple Bible versions, in multiple languages.
Podscope - the first search engine that can find content in podcasts according to the words spoken during them
A9.com -
"a powerful search engine, using web search and image search results enhanced by Google, Search Inside the Book®
results from Amazon.com, reference results from GuruNet, movies results from IMDb, and more."
... (Web search combined with book search)
ZoomInfo -
an excellent way to find "People, Companies, Relationships."
... Zoominfo is a summarization search engine
that "delivers comprehensive information on over 27 million business professionals
and two million companies across virtually every industry."
The Trellian ToolbarBrowser
is "a complete Toolbar Authoring and Management tool. You can use it to
manage dozens of toolbars in a simple tabbed control to save valuable
browser space. It also includes all the standard features for search,
navigation, popup blocking, etc., so you will never need another
toolbar."
URLinfo -
a tool for for analyzing a website (handling web pages: finding information about it, translating it, finding related pages, etc).
The Search Systems Free Public Records Directory -
find business information, corporate filings, property records, unclaimed property, professional licenses, offenders, inmates, criminal and civil court filings, and much more -- USA and worldwide.
Product Review - Australian consumer reviews
(a discussion forum where people can rate particular products and services, list the price they paid for it and
where they got it from - all to help others make an informed shopping choice).
Acoona.com -
"Traditional Search Engines focus on direct keyword matches. This [Acoona] technology
holds the vision of understanding what pages a user might want to view, without matching keywords.
The Search Engine with Artificial Intelligence better understands the users question through
the utilization of an algorithm that restates the question and alters the verbiage based on
sophisticated word permutations."
Pluck - Pluck's suite of integrated applications for Internet Explorer
helps you search, retrieve, organize and share the best parts of the web.
Amplify
- "gives you the power to find, collect, save and share the content you
care about"
Furl/ Furl.net -
"Furl is a search engine for your mind - a free service that saves the important items you find on the Web and enables you
to quickly find them again. Furl archives a personal copy of every page you save.
When you want to recall it, you can find it instantly by searching the full text of
your archived items. Each member has a personal archive of 5 gigabytes (GB),
large enough to store tens of thousands of searchable items."
Some Dominate, Some Die - As the Internet and e-commerce matures,
three of the giants are starting to dominate: eBay, Amazon and Google.
How did these companies end up dominating?
Alexaholic - blends Alexa website traffic graphs
with a lightweight Ajax-enhanced interface to satisfy hard-core Alexa traffic chart junkies.
Webmasters, SEO/SEM specialists, and domain owners can compare and measure website statistics
for up to five domains at once, switch traffic chart types and ranges without page loads,
and generate report pages that are easily bookmarked and shared.
No rest for the Query
- "The search engine Google is the operating system of the Internet"
- A survey
of 60,000 homes and businesses has indicated that 29.5% use Google;
28.9% use Yahoo!; and 27.6% use MSN. However, users spent more time with
Google--28.5 minutes a month, compared to 11 minutes for Yahoo! and 8.7
minutes for MSN.
Googlefight -Provide two words or terms and see how
many times each is referenced by Google
Multi-Site Quotes Search Engine
- Famous Quotes, Famous Quotations, Quotations about quotations,
Quoting, Sayings, Famous Sayings
Screencast demonstrating the desktop search capability in Windows -
Why doesn't Microsoft make it plain and easy to use this lightning-fast search capability?
See how, even when the Windows Indexer is enabled, the usual Windows search won't use it unless you prefix the search term with an exclamation point.
(Also see the ancient and obscure Windows indexing administration tool in use.)
World Wide
Learn - "the World's largest directory of online courses,
accredited online degrees, continuing education, online training, and
online education"
Lookoff
- "... devoted to helping you select a search engine from thousands depending on the topic you are searching for.
Remember that specific topics will be found more efficiently with specific search tools"
mail2web
- a browser-based email client, and allows you to skip over messages with large attachments
StumbleUpon -
"an intelligent browsing tool for sharing and discovering great websites. you'll get high-quality pages matched to your personal preferences.
These pages have been explicitly recommended by friends and other StumbleUpon members with similar interests
... to form collaborative opinions about websites"
Findory -
personalization technology builds a home page for each reader, recommending content based on what each person has read and what new content is published.
CrowdFound - "Harnessing the power of the crowd to bring
you the best content on the web. ... CrowdFound harnesses the
power of the crowd to help you find, add, review and share links
to the best content of the web on almost any topic. In other
words it is the best of the web on one site and at the same time
you can interact with people from all over the world who are
interested in the same topics as you."
SETI@home - The Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence
BlogSphere - a Lotus Domino Blog Management And Publishing System - FREE - an OpenNTF
project
Technorati - provides search and notification services for
active content on the Web, monitoring over 1.8 million
sources (weblogs, RSS) with over 10,000 new sources added each day.
The Technorati Conversation Engine keeps track of incoming and
outgoing links to web logs, searching for people and subjects. In the
connected context of the Web, the people searched are those who link
to each other's writings. Technorati is also able to look at
interesting relationships. The results of a a conversation search
include the listing of links to that particular blog and the sources
from which they originate.
FreeThesaurus.net - an online thesaurus service offered by
DonationCoder.com,
expected "to deliver fast, fine, free thesaurus search results to English language lovers around."
Epicurious - "The world's greatest recipe collection"
The Cook's Thesaurus - a cooking encyclopedia that covers thousands of ingredients
and kitchen tools. Entries include pictures, descriptions, synonyms, pronunciations, and suggested substitutions.
Wikibooks
- a collection of open contenttextbooks, manuals, and other texts,
with supporting book-based texts that are being collaboratively written.
This site is a wiki, meaning that anyone,
including you, can edit any book module!
SUMO - Suggested Upper Merged Ontology -
one of the largest and most comprehensive, free, formal ontologies. This OntologyPortal site
is dedicated to distributing open source formal ontologies and tools, and supporting the developers and users of those products.
The Etext Archives -
"Home to electronic texts of all kinds, from the sacred to the profane, from the political to the personal."
textfiles.com -
"a glimpse into the history of writers and artists bound by the 128 characters
that the American Standard Code for Information Interchange (ASCII) allowed them."
The Internet Archive - The Wayback Machine -
"building a digital library of Internet sites and other cultural artifacts (sic) in digital form.
Like a paper library [to] provide free access to researchers, historians, scholars, and the general public."
Gnod
- an "experiment in the field of artificial intelligence. It's a
self-adapting system, living on this server and 'talking' to everyone
who comes along. Gnod's intention is to learn about the outer world
and to learn 'understanding' its visitors. This enables gnod to share
all its wisdom with you in an intuitive and efficient way.
You might call it a search-engine to find things you don't know about."
Evopedia -
an experimental website that contains information about various topics.
It is basically an online encyclopedia with one major difference: nobody wrote it.
The content was created by employing genetic algorithms - a method used by computer scientists
to find an optimal (or at least near-optimal) solution to a problem. Specifically, genetic algorithms
use the principles of evolution to take nowhere near optimal solutions to a problem and turn them
into better and better solutions until you have a solution that is
"good enough". (See
www.genetic-programming.org -
a source of information about the field of
genetic programming and the field of
genetic and evolutionary computation.)
Answerbag - "a community of people helping others.
Have a question? Ask it here! Know something? (Everyone knows something!) Help someone out!
We're here to help you connect with others and to find and share knowledge about topics
ranging from celebrity trivia and home cleaning tips to Russian name origins and particle physics.
Any topic you can dream of, you can ask it here!"
Wondir -
"an organization with a simple mission: eliminate the barriers between questions and answers.
Wondir is building a new and
different kind of information service ... to connect people who have information needs with the people and information that can help them."
-
dedicated to filming for posterity the life stories of the great thinkers, creators, and achievers of our time.
The people whose stories you watch on this site are leaders of their field, whose work has influenced and changed our world as we know it.
-
started out (in 1984) as a conference bringing together people from those three worlds.
Since then its scope has become ever broader, to make the best talks and performances from TED available to the public,
for free. These videos are released under a Creative Commons license, so they can be freely shared and reposted.
