Fan Fiction
FanFiction.net is a huge collection of fan fiction. It is broken into sections: anime, game, book, cartoon, movie, comic, TV show, and miscellaneous. People can contribute their own fan fiction by registering.
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October 31, 2005
Magnetic Poetry
Online Magnetic Poetry lets you play with a variety of word sets using java. Kits include Pickup Lines, Artist, Dog Lover, College, Cat Lover, Genius, and Shakespeare.
October 30, 2005
Spiritual Directory
Spirit and Sky offers a directory of spiritual sites covering death, divination, enlightenment, ghosts, magic, meditation, mysticism, paranormal, philosophy, psychic, reincarnation, religion, skepticism, UFOs, and more.
The Open Library
The Open Library is a beautiful thing. It is the first release of Brewster Kahle's digitized book database. The books are all lovingly scanned, retaining the feel of a book with page turning, yet the books are fast to load and easy to use. I am intrigued by the audio book feature too, after arguing with Overdrive and iPods for some time. Perhaps this open content will work better. Come and explore, it is a lot of fun and a great way to spend some time with books.
The Open Library
The Open Library is a beautiful thing. It is the first release of Brewster Kahle's digitized book database. The books are all lovingly scanned, retaining the feel of a book with page turning, yet the books are fast to load and easy to use. I am intrigued by the audio book feature too, after arguing with Overdrive and iPods for some time. Perhaps this open content will work better. Come and explore, it is a lot of fun and a great way to spend some time with books.
October 29, 2005
Stickies for Windows
Stickies for Windows lets you put digital Post-It notes on your desktop as reminders. It is free software and a function that I have been looking for!
Clioinstitute Blog
The clioinstitute blog is subtitled: inspiring libraries to inspire communities. In their first few days of blogging, they have shared several great pieces that I would have missed otherwise. Add this one to your feedreader. Let's hope the quality continues.
October 28, 2005
GooGhoul
GooGhoul lets you enter a zip code and find Halloween events in the area. The advanced search feature will let you specify the type of event you are interested in. You can also submit your own events to the database.
October 27, 2005
BrainyQuote
BrainyQuote has all sorts of quotes sorted in different ways. You can browse quotes by topic, author or type of author. You can also browse through a list of quotes by favorite authors or do a keyword search of the site.
Pregnancy Site
Pregnancy.org is a resource for pregnant women. It offers charting tools, a pregnancy calendar, baby name finder, expert advice, chat, bulletin boards, articles, and much more.
October 26, 2005
The Encyclopedia of Arda
The Encyclopedia of Arda is a celebration of the work of J.R.R. Tolkien. It is an encyclopedia of the world that Tolkien created in the Lord of the Rings trilogy. They offer a movie-goer's guide that will ease the transition of those who have loved the moves to reading the books for the first time. They have a dictionary, interactive calendar, and links to other Tolkien resources. You can browse the encyclopedia alphabetically or by races, places or miscellaneous subjects.
MyPIMP
MyPIMP is a personal information manager (PIM) that offers an online calendar and todo list, alerts that can be sent to your phone or email, group calendaring, and an address book for free. Best of all, it is designed to work on Firefox! They have a blog for additional information and a forum where you can leave feedback.
October 25, 2005
MicroAngela
MicroAngela has a great electron microscope image gallery. It has everyday insects, like the house fly pictured above, human body cells, and tiny creatures invisible to the naked eye. Fascinating.
Atmospheric Optics
Atmospheric Optics offers fascinating photos of light playing on water drops and ice crystals in the atmosphere and creating rays, shadows, ice halos, rainbows and more. The site also explains why these light shows happen.
October 24, 2005
Political Sites
Political Resources on the Net lists political sites from around the world. They are sorted by country and contain links to specific political parties, organizations, governments, media and much more.
AskQuestions
AskQuestions collects questions from the public and submits them to the media. You can browse through the questions by popularity, date, category, or organization. You can also ask your own question or search the questions by keyword.
October 23, 2005
Guess-the-Google
Guess-the-google is a fun little game that shows you images and you have to guess what the key word was on Google that generated them.
Goowy
Goowy is a new competitor for the Gmail group. It offers 2 GB of storage, widgets, calendaring, and flash games. In order to use some of the functions you need to download the goowy desktop. This is a very interesting service that may just be a glimpse at the new suite of programs everyone will soon be using as part of free email online.
October 22, 2005
Sky & Telescope
Sky and Telescope offers astronomy news, observation information, how to tips, and resources.
Who2
Who2 is a directory for celebrity information. It contains recommended links and basic information on each of the celebrities. And nicely, there are RSS feeds too.
October 21, 2005
Inform.com
A new news service in beta is inform.com -. They offer personalized news browsing where you can select specific topics or keywords to be pulled for your personal folders. You can also flag any articles that you want to look at later. The interface is very slick and easy to use. I especially enjoy the links to related categories with each entry that will lead you to related articles.
WeatherBug RSS Feeds
WeatherBug RSS is a great alternative for those of us who don't want to install the bandwidth-hogging full program. You create your own RSS feed with current conditions, forecast, community photos and weather news tailored to a specific zip code.
October 20, 2005
TIME's 100 Best Novels
TIME has released a list of the All -Time 100 Novels. The 100 best English-language novels from 1923 to today.
LifeTips
LifeTips offers tips and advice on a wide variety of subjects including art, business, technology, home life, shopping, personal growth, sports, and hobbies.
NatureServe Explorer
NatureServe Explorer is an encyclopedia containing information on plants, animals, and ecosystems in North America. It offers especiaily detailed information on endangered species. You can search the database by either the common or scientific name of a plant or animal, or a group. Then you will get detailed information on the region the plant or animal lives, articles about the topic, and conservation status.
October 19, 2005
UN Policy
Global Policy Forum monitors United Nations policies for global citizen participation and international peace and justice. Topics include the Security Council, social and economic policy, globalization, nations, and NGOs.
Visual Elements
Check out this very cool flash Periodic Table. You can mouse over any element and if you click on it, you will get detailed information on the discovery of the element, origin of its name, and a description.
October 18, 2005
Science U
Science U offers interactive online science exhibits. They include a solar system simulator, planet locator, fractal landscape generator, fractal art, symmetry, and tetrahedral puzzles.
Overnight Success?
Overnight Success? is a blog that belies the myth of overnight success for authors by sharing the stories of the struggles by now-famous authors. Participating authors include Jan Burke, Lee Child, Michael Connelly, Joseph Finder, and David Morrell.
October 17, 2005
Romance Divas
Romance Divas is a writers' resource forum for romance writers. It offers links, news, book reviews, and discussion forums.
SciPeeps
SciPeeps has information on science's most prominent people, including astronomers, biologists, chemists, engineers, inventors, physicists, and radiologists. Each entry includes lengthy information on the scientists' life, work and accomplishments.
October 16, 2005
Tyndall Report
Tyndall Weekly offers information on what the American television network nightly newscasts are showing by measuring the time each network devotes to a specific story. Each week you can see the top ten stories as well as the top story for each day. You can also look back at annual statistics in the archives that date back to 2000.
Innovative Internet Applications in Libraries
Innovative Internet Applications in Libraries is a large collection of recommended library web sites that do creative things. The sites are grouped into categories like Ages & Stages, Book and Reading Lists, E-Journals, Local Databases, and Virtual Tours. This is a great place to look for inspiration for making your own innovative website.
October 15, 2005
TravelPod
TravelPod bills itself as the original travel blog. It is a great travel site filled with information on specific destinations, flights, hotels, cars, hostels, and tours. But best of all is joining together of all sorts of travelers to write about and share their experiences in forums, articles, and photographs.
Mass Extinction
Mass Extinction Underway is a vast collection of recent articles and link on the biodiversity crisis that the world is now facing.
October 14, 2005
ShinyFeet
ShinyFeet is a free email service that offers unlimited email space, unlimited file storage, photo galleries, and a slick interface for downloading websites.
October 13, 2005
Cooking Light Blog
Cooking Light Magazine has a new staff blog: Cooking Light Confidential. It offers a look behind the scenes and into the world of food writers and editors.
October 12, 2005
Gada
Gada is a search service that pulls results from Yahoo! News, Google News, MSN, Flickr, IceRocket, Amazon, Digg, and many more. The layout is clean and clear with the top 15 results from each site provided. Very sweet!
Yahoo! Podcasts
Yahoo now offers Yahoo! Podcasts, a service very similar to iTunes that lists podcasts by popularity, category, and most recent additions, and allows searching by keyword. You can also listen to podcasts right on Yahoo and subscribe to them there as well.
October 11, 2005
Calculus Site
The Calculus Survival Guide is a guide for college students to get a basic hold on the theories of calculus. It covers subjects from limits to trig functions to Newton's Method to definite integrals, all of the subjects covered in a basic calculus class.
Magazine Articles
Old Magazine Articles is an interesting site that offers old magazine articles in pdf format. The articles are listed by broad topics. Unfortunately, the site doesn't list articles by magazine, so until you browse the categories, you will have no idea what magazines are part of the collection. Yet, it is still a collection of interesting articles that could be useful for research.
October 10, 2005
MIT OpenCourseWare
MIT OpenCourseWare gives access to MIT course materials. There are different levels of material in the courses. Some offer lists of reading materials, others have online videos, and some only have a basic description of the course itself.
Interment.net
Interment.net offers Cemeteries and Cemetery Records where you can search by surname and region. You can also browse for cemeteries, browse cemetery transcriptions by region, or submit your own transcription of a cemetery.
October 9, 2005
Free Full Text
Free Full Text offers access to full-text online versions of over 7000 scholarly publications. All are available free, though some may require free registration. You can browse the collection of journals by the first letter of the title.
Government Information
U.S. Blue Pages is a directory for federal government listings. Search by keyword, state, city, area code, zip code, or agencies.
October 8, 2005
Botany.com
Botany Encyclopedia of Plants and Botanical Dictionary lists plants by common names and botanical names. It also offers dictionaries of botanical words and Latin terms, as well as sections on leaf shapes, zones, pests and diseases, and related links.
LiveMarks
LiveMarks lets you watch live what people are bookmarking on del.icio.us. Very addictive! Just lean back and let others do the surfing for you. :)
October 7, 2005
MosNews
Mosnews is a source for news from Moscow. It offers feature articles, columns, interviews, commentary, images, weather and an online guide to Russia.
10k Wizard
10k Wizard lets you search SEC filings. You can search by ticker, CIK, or company name. You can also limit by specific industry, SIC and date.
Broadway World
Broadway World is a huge site dedicated to Broadway shows. It covers news, reviews, interviews and shows, offers message boards, has a radio program you can listen to online, and they have just started offering video previews of shows.
October 6, 2005
Poetry Site
PoemHunter lets you search for poetry, lyrics or quotations by keyword. They have a section on classic poets, one that lists their top poets, and give new poets a place to post their own work.
Google Blog Search
Google Blog Search is a great way to find blogs that are writing about subjects you are interested in. Search by keyword or head to the advanced search feature and search by words in blog title, URL, author, dates, and/or language.
October 5, 2005
Mario Kart
I am writing this from a dark room filled with boys ecstatic to have a place to play video games together. We are doing a trial month of video game programming after school. And from this first program alone, for which we didn't manage to get flyers off to the schools in time, it appears to be a success.
We are using an X-Box (that of course failed to work this afternoon) and a Gamecube connected to a digital projector, so the kids can play video games huge up on the wall of our meeting room. Each day we are doing this, we have picked a specific game. Tonight was supposed to be Crash NitroCart, but with the X-Box not working, we had to change to the hilarious Mario Kart. Mario Kart is silly enough so younger kids can play, but cut-throat enough that older kids enjoy it too. It's a great game for a library program like this.
How did we fund it? Well, if you don't have a husband and son addicted to console games, then I would ask around the community and see who has a console that they would be willing to bring in to the library. Gather extra joysticks so that a whole mess of kids can play at once and that's all there is to it. Of course, the library may want to look into getting its own console if the program takes off, but this is a great way to start. And of course the digital projector is critical, because part of the fun is being able to blow up another character huge on the screen in a darkened room. Sheer bliss!
I would caution that you will need an adult in the room. That way the language stays clean, the younger kids get their turns, and voices are kept at a dull roar. This is one of the most positive ways we have reached preteens yet, especially boys who are drawn to the room from the music alone and stand in the doorway open mouthed, amazed that the library is doing something like this just for them.
Simply Hired
SimplyHired is a metasearch for jobs. It searches thousands of job sites and lists millions of job listings. Searches can be done with keywords, locations, and advanced filters. You can also browse categories and once you have rated some jobs, the site will give you suggestions of other jobs you may want to look at.
Shakespeare Site
Internet Shakespeare Editions offers online text of Shakespeare's plays, information on his life and times, and links to related sites.
October 4, 2005
Mostly Fiction
MostlyFiction offers book reviews. You can browse by genre, most recent reviews, top authors, top picks, alphabetically by both title and author, or share your own thoughts. There is also a newsletter that you can subscribe to via email to get the latest reviews in your inbox.
Open Content Alliance
Open Content Alliance is a joint venture between Adobe, Internet Alliance, Yahoo, O'Reilly, HP Labs, and the Universities of California and Toronto. It will digitize text and multimedia to build an open, permanent archive. Content is not available yet, but will be through this URL.
I consider this an amazingly positive venture where instead of propietary, profit-making goals, there is openness and access. With such strong partners in the project, there is hope that this will become a very successful example of what can be done to promote open access to information.
October 3, 2005
Yahoo Instant Search
Yahoo! Search - Instant Search performs a search as you type, pulling up the most common searches. It is interesting, and their examples work well, but it seems that I don't do many common searches, so often the Instant Search feature doesn't kick in for me.
IBDB
Internet Broadway Database, the official site for Boradway theater information, offers information on current shows, opening nights in history, and a search engine for specific shows.
October 2, 2005
Muppets
Muppet Central is filled with all things Muppet, with news, collectibles, articles, guides, and an online forum.
New Fall Books
Salon.com has an article on What to read with some of the top new fall releases listed.
October 1, 2005
My Money
MyMoney.gov is a government site that offers information on budgeting, taxes, credit, financial planning, home ownership, paying for education, privacy, scams, saving, and investing.
Cruise Information
Reviews of cruises along with reviews of specific ships are available at Cruise Critic. They also offer listings by homeport and destinations, and message boards.