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Chronocentric
is "the largest independent, non-commercial, consumer-oriented resource on the Internet for owners, collectors and enthusiasts of fine wristwatches." It offers information for consumers that helps them make educated choices and save money, information for owners and collectors, forums, photo galleries, and a collection of related links.
Web's Biggest is a new search engine that claims to be the largest search engine online. Interestingly, it is wiki based and certain sections like Editors' Choice can be edited by anyone. This is one that I will be looking into more. I really like the lists of the 50,000 sites online as well as the editors' choice.
ArticleCity offers free articles that you can use for websites or newsletters. The subjects covered are wide ranging and include autos, technology, business, family, health, home improvement, food, recreation, and travel.
Y.E.N. of Youth - Newsletter comes from the Indianhead Federated Library System here in Wisconsin. It focuses on children's services and collections in public libraries. Some of the articles are focused mainly on their member libraries, but others are very useful to anyone providing services to children.
The Fifth Annual Weblog Awards are a great way to find blogs that you are missing out on. Right now the awards are at the stage where you can vote for your favorites of the nominees. Only one vote per person and an email address is required to vote. Voting closes on February 3rd.
Einstein and the World Year of Physics 2005 is presented by the University at Buffalo. It celebrates the 100th anniversary of Albert Einstein's "miraculous year." The site offers a large collection of online resources, including theories, secondary resources, discussion sites, and fun stuff.
The Groom Guide offers information on the engagement, groom duties, the best man, bachelor party, and honeymoon.
The Paleontology Portal from the University of California, Berkeley, offers a fossil gallery, flora and fauna, links to related sites, online resources, and information on careers in paleontology.
Squashed Philosophers offers condensed and abridged philosophy from some of the greatest minds in history, including Plato, Aristotle, Machiavelli, Copernicus, Einstein, Freud, and many more.
Top 100 Most-Subscribed-To RSS Feeds will give those of you new to feeds and feedreaders more than enough feeds to fill your reader. But remember, these are the top ones, they are not necessarily the ones that will make you return again and again to your feedreader. Also search for feeds that focus on something that you are interested in. Those smaller more niche-oriented feeds will be the ones that really get you using RSS and readers.
National Coalition Against Censorship (NCAC) offers a website filled with information on current events and new headlines covering the latest in censorship issues. They offer action alerts, recent publications, and an arts advocacy project.
This is a site that librarians will want to be aware of, even though most of the articles are not about books. The NCAC does have a piece on The Cyber-Library: Legal and Policy Issues Facing Public Libraries in the High-Tech Era. This piece is a great reminder for librarians about how important it is that we continue to apply first amendment rights to the new technology we offer as well as to the traditional collections we maintain.
NOVA introduces scienceNOW, a show that will focus on science and technology news. It will air in the NOVA timeslot on PBS five times a year. The first episode airs tomorrow and will be about mirror neurons, hurricanes, and booming sands.
The website offers an RSS feed and additional information, plus a section for educators and another for scientists.
While checking out the forecast for last night's snowstorm, I discovered that the Green Bay channel's website offers RSS feeds! So I dug around a little more and finally ended up with two Green Bay channels that offers feeds and one Madison channel.
WBAY RSS Feed: only one feed offered that covers all of their news.
CBS 5 Green Bay: RSS/XML Feeds: has a variety of feeds to choose from.
WISCTV - RSS: also offers a variety of feeds.
RSSCalendar.com
is a beta version of a new applications that offers online calendaring that can be shared vie RSS. It has the potential of serving as a calendar on websites that will alert your patrons of new events and changes on their feedreaders. This is definitely one I have to play with a little more.
BlogBib is a blog that is the perfect stop for librarians who give speeches about blogging and try to encourage other librarians to give it a try. The blog offers sections on articles, blogging tools, select library blogs, books on blogging, studies, and blogging presentations. All sorts of information in one place.
Ta-da List is a free online way to keep your to-do lists. They can be publicly shared or shared with specific people. You can make a list and then check off the items you accomplish. Even better, there is no software to install.
Purportal offers a quick way to see if the email you are about to forward to everyone you know is a hoax. The site offers searches on five of the largest urban legend, hoax, and virus databases online. They also offer a large collection of other related links that you can visit plus recommended books on fraud and hoaxes.
Sunshineweek looks like a week that librarians should mark on their calendars. Kicking off on March 13th, journalists from across the media as well as librarians will be speaking out about the importance of having an open government and freedom of information. The site doesn't have much on it yet, other than a press release, but eventually the site will offer materials to aid in programs.
Bloglines is now offering saved searches, where they will continue to search blogs and RSS feeds for your keywords and then will list the new items in your My Feeds section. The saved search feature is reached by simply doing a general search and on the results list clicking on Subscribe To This Search. Very slick!
The PLA Blog is up and going. Tune in to read a bunch of perspectives about the ALA Midwinter Conference in Boston from some of the top library bloggers. I am looking forward to going to the Annual Meeting in Chicago this summer and maybe being a small part of that blogging effort.
Reader's Circle is a free directory of book clubs and reader's circles. It can be searched by zip code, or limited by type of group.
I continue to believe that RSS feeds are going to be huge. I just attended a meeting where a presentation was made about what technology was going to be affecting libraries in the future. Unfortunately, no mention was made of either RSS or blogging. This new Yahoo service is a great example of what RSS feed technology has to offer the general public. It allows you to build your own RSS feed that will follow company news on the specific stock symbol you wish to follow.
Breaking News Blog is a collective blog where bloggers follow certain niche topics that fit within technology, health, sports, entertainment, and lifestyle. In this way, you can get news on specific topics of interest without having to dig through the news sites yourself.
The Wisconsin Legislative Notification Service was recommended to librarians at yesterday's Winnefox Annual Meeting. It allows anyone to receive daily or weekly emails on specific legislative topics. You can choose items by Proposal, Committee, Author or Subject, making it customizable for your needs.
Library of Congress: State Library Web Listing offers a list of links to state libraries or state library agencies from each state in the U.S.
The 20 Year Archive on Google Groups has more than 800 million messages that date from 1981, the most complete collection of Usenet posts ever assembled. Google has also created a fascinating timeline from the oldest Usenet article in their archives to early mentions of emoticons, to the first mass spamming.
eye of science offers an incredible collection of photographs from electron microscopes. The photos include bacteria, plants, fungus, and animals. Breathtaking.
Picture History is a digital library of photographs covering 200 years of American history. The collection can be searched by keyword or browsed by categories.
State Legislatures, State Laws and State Regulations
The Law Librarian's Society of Washington DC offers this site with web sites and phone numbers for laws, statutes, administrative code, and more for each state.
Number One Leisure Activity is Reading!
35% of Americans say that reading is their favorite leisure-time activity. This is an 11% increase over last year. And this manages to dispute the other poll that showed that the number of people reading was decreasing. Oh how librarians bemoaned that poll. Let us roar with approval at this!
The History Cooperative is a nonprofit site offering online history resource that provides multimedia and written content, including online journals, conference papers, and oral history resources.
Incredible Internet Guy takes one topic a week and selects the ten best sites on that topic. This week is digital photography, and he has done music on the Internet, Google tools, gift buying, jobs, homework, movies, family vacations, seniors, and a lot more.
Via Librarians' Index to the Internet.
EarthTrends: The Environmental Information Portal offers sections on coastal and marine ecosystems, water, climate, population, economics, energy, biodiversity, agriculture, biomes, and environmental institutions. For each section, there is a searchable database, data tables, country profiles, maps and articles.
If you want to help by donating to the tsunami victims, Shelter For Life International is a perfect place to donate. Based in Oshkosh, WI, Shelter will be building low-cost housing for the devastated nations. Each home costs $1500 to build, and Shelter is hoping to build 1000 homes.
American Women's History: A Research Guide
This extensive collection offers research sources and tools to find primary and secondary sources on women's history in the United States.
Retro-Gram provides free e-cards styled like vintage telegrams. Classic and classy.