« April 2006 | Main | June 2006 »
The Library of Congress has started collecting digital materials like websites with Web Capture. They are doing it with a focus on specific subjects. Several of the subjects are complete, including the 2000 and 2002 Elections, September 11th, and Hurricane Katrina. You can also see what subjects they are currently working on or plan to cover in the future.
ContestGirl is a site about online contests and sweepstakes. They are broken into handy categories by region and then by single entry, daily entry and odd entry. The site also offers tips for winning contests, favorite sites, and links to free stuff.
WeatherBonk is a site that mashes up Google Maps and weather information, including forecasts, live weather and webcams. Just do a keyword search for the area you want to view and it pops right up. If you click on a specific city, you will get a seven-day forecast from the Weather Channel.
SoundDogs is an online collection of sound effects. You can listen to them on mp3 format or pay for a collection. The sounds can be searched by keyword, or browsed by categories like production music, samples and loops, vocals, and ringtones.
Platial.com is a site that allows you to create your own personalized atlas and to explore maps created by others. Explore by places, add tags, and view maps.
Sustainable Table is a site that offers information on how to eat in a sustainable and healthy way. It offers information on the issues, recipes and recommended cookbooks, bringing sustainable food to schools, news, and a search engine to find locally grown food in your area.
Libraries411 is a site that lets you find public libraries near you or libraries in any community in the nation. The maps can be zoomed in and out and easily moved to see surrounding areas. Central libraries are color coded differently than branches and bookmobiles, so you can differentiate between them easily. You can search by name or zipcode. Clicking on the marker for any library will offer information on it, including name, address, phone, website and square footage.
ExpectMore is a federal government site that lets you know which federal programs are working and which are failing. You can browse the site by programs that are performing and not performing, search by program name or keyword, or find programs by general topic.
GoodThings is a site that focuses on stories, news, ideas, projects and more that celebrate all that is good in the world. You can subscribe to their email newsletter, find books, music and movies that will inspire you, read stories that will reaffirm that the world is a good place, and find out how you can help out.
Tagground is a search engine that allows you to search by a specific website or by a tag. What this lets you do is to enter a website you enjoy or whose subject you are interested in and discover how people have tagged it. Then you can follow those tags to find other sites tagged with the same terms. You can also enter tags and find related sites, allowing flexibility in searching across various social bookmarking sites.
ViCasting is a rather plain site that offers an amazingly large collection of audio and video podcasts. At this time, they have over 9800 podcast feeds listed on their site with almost 350,000 individual podcasts. You can browse the site by tags, keep a list of your own favorites, or take a listen to the featured podcasts and new additions.
TurnHere is a site filled with short online films that let you visit places around the world. You can search for the place you are interested in or just browse the most popular films or view by category. Enjoy your travels!
Dosize is a website that allows you to resize images easily right in your browser. Just choose your images, decide which size you want them to be and then email them.
MissPronouncer is a site that provides a pronunciation guide to things in Wisconsin, like Oconomowoc and Ashwaubenon. It is done via sound files, making it very user friendly. You can do a search to find what you want to learn how to pronounce or browse via categories like counties, cities, parks, and famous people.
TheClassicalStation is a site that plays classical music 24 hours a day. Listen to classical music online in a variety of formats. The online format has a couple of advantages, including being able to read classical music news and best of all, being able to find out the title, composer and performer of the music currently being played!
Dental Health Index has information on dental issues such as tooth abscess, root canal, gingivitis, dry sockets, implants, and bleaching. Each issue is fully covered with illustrations, explanations, treatments, and causes.
Boston University presents a series of podcasts to help you learn how to record your own. The information goes beyond what equipment to use and how to edit and also talks about where to list your podcast and developing your personal style.
Zimbio is a site that allows you to create portals on specific subjects. A portal can include photographs, links to websites, a group blog, online discussion forum, recommended RSS feeds. and live chat. To take a look at how libraries can use it, visit the portal to South Carolina Public Libraries.
The Wisconsin Historical Society presents a digitized version of Freedom's Journal, the first African-American owned and operated newspaper in the U.S. The publication ran from 1827 to 1829 and included over 100 issues. All are available in pdf format online.
HousingMaps is a mashup of Google Maps and Craigslist. It combines housing listings (real estate both for sale and for rent) with an interactive map. You first click on the city you are interested in and then get to visually browse the map. There are a limited number of cities available to search right now, but if you are looking for housing in any of the major cities in the U.S. this is a great place to start.
Dictionary.com has a list of Official Forms of Address for Letter Writing, which is a handy place to go to figure out how to address someone who has a title. Here you can find the right way to address a letter to a Senator, a Representative, a President, or even a King or Queen.
BoardTracker is a site that allows you to follow the discussion on a wide range of online forums or discussion boards. You can do a keyword search across all the boards or limit it to a specific subject. You can also browse by general subject or explore using their tag cloud.
I am pleased to announce that I have been selected to be the next director of the Menasha Public Library in Menasha, WI. I start in Menasha in late June. I have been asked by folks if I will continue Sites and Soundbytes and the answer is YES! One of the reasons cited for my being selected was my technology interests. So on we go!
Here is the article in the Appleton Post Crescent announcing my hiring. I am flattered by all of the wonderful things people in Menasha are saying and hopeful that I can live up to it all.
Spotback is a personalized new service that covers blogs in particular. You are able to rate the news, comment, and also link to the news other people with similar tastes enjoy. They also have links to hot videos online, an RSS feed for new items, and a very extensive list of categories to choose from.
The Kennedy Assassination Newspaper Archive offers more than 50,000 historical newspaper pages covering JFK's assassination. The site has search capabilities, a timeline, a short history, and links to related websites.
Yahoo is taking on CNet with its new Yahoo! Tech page. I appreciate their basics section that will explain the basics of whatever technology you are looking at. Their buying guides and how-to articles are also great. But I miss the consumer reviews of CNet. That said, if you want to start at a beginning level and learn about the products out there, this is a great site. If you want to look at reviews done by people who actually own the product, this site is a bit too young to offer what CNet does.
The Education Arcade is a site from MIT and the University of Wisconsin that focuses on education video games for use in classrooms. They have several games they are working on, events that you can attend, forums for discussion, and more.
Amazon Wire is Amazon's new monthly podcast program featuring books, music, and films. You can listen right on the site, subscribe to the podcast or download it to listen later.
Everything Preschool is a site filled with ideas for teachers and parents of preschoolers. It offers lesson plans, alphabet, coloring, product reviews, project recipes, and message boards for conversation and idea sharing.
Bits of News is a news site that has sections covering culture, politics and economics, science and technology. They allow members to join in discussions on news, submit stories of interest, and subscribe to RSS feeds.
Care2 is a site with over 5 million members. It is a website that focuses on values. The site offers information on how to take action for the causes you believe in, finding a job you can live with, news that you can help rank, and groups that focus on a variety of subjects.
180 News lets you vote on what is important news of the day. The site is sectioned into top stories, technology, sports, entertainment, business, world, society and health. Under each of the categories, items with the highest number of votes are pulled out and featured, though all of the news is easily accessible.
Listible is a site that combines tagging and comments with the creation of lists on specific topics. You can create a new list and then others can comment and add their own items to the list. It is a very slick way to browse sites and articles that others recommend about the topics you are interested in.
Poetry Archive is a wonderful poetry site filled with treasures like historic recordings, information on poets, browsing of poems and poets, information for teachers on how to make poetry a part of their classrooms, and a children's archive of poetry as well.
Yahooligans! Games is a site that brings children and online games together. The games are broken into categories like sports, TV and movie, arcade, holiday, board, word and card. They also offer online gaming polls, downloadable games and a list of the Top Ten Games.
The National Institute for Literacy is an organization that offers programs and information on literacy at all levels from young children to adults. The website has facts and statistics, information on grants, and an online discussion list.
Neat Reviews is a service that reviews software. They have sections on anti-virus, anti-spam, anti-spyware, email, medical billing and faxing.
PopMatters is a resource for criticism of popular culture. They have feature articles and regular columns and sections. Music, books, comics, film, and TV are all closely examined by writers with plenty of style and opinion.
Yahooligans! Science is a site for children that offers information on space, dinosaurs and animals. Kids can view online movies, join in the science poll or watch a nature slideshow.
ForeignWord offers dictionaries and online translation tools. You can download their free translation software for the PC, use their search engine specifically for language and translation sites, read articles and news, and find recommended websites.
EducationAtlas is a site that offers information on all levels of education from preschool to K12 to higher education. They have a special area just for teachers, lists of distance learning opportunities, information on home schooling, and much more. It is really an education portal filled with information.
Hot Air is a conservative political site that offers video clips, blog entries, and links to sites of interest.
MarineWaypoints is a site dedicated to boating, diving, fishing, sailing, and watersports in general. They offer a large directory of related sites, today's news, and a learning center filled with charts, flags, and calculators.
Flightlevel350 is an aviation site filled with aircraft videos, online discussions, and chat. The main focus of the site is the video section which has a very detailed search engine.
The Boating Channel is a website that offers boating news covering sailing, cruises, fishing, safety and the environment.
Airliners.net is a huge site that offers all sorts of information on airlines. You can join the discussion in the forum, learn about aircraft history, view photographs of airplanes, and read news and articles.
InClue is a free RSS feed reader that works with Outlook. Now you can browse via the web and as you find feeds to subscribe to, just click the bookmarklet on your toolbar to add them to your Outlook list. This is a handy service for those that use Outlook for email and are looking for an alternative to more pricey Outlook RSS readers.
Tax Policy Center is a site that offers information on tax incentives, estimates on the impact of tax proposals, publications on tax policy, tax data, and definitions of tax-related terms.
StockCharts.com is a site that offers financial charts for stocks. Choose a style and enter a symbol and you have a chart. Some of their charts are available for free, but others will require a subscription fee.
DigStock uses a Digg interface to tagg and index financial or stock information. The more a story is tagged by users, the higher it rises on the front page. That way you as a tagger are deciding what stories are most important right now. The site can be searched by stock symbol, you can view your own tagged stories, rank your own stocks, and access an online economic calendar.
Democracy 2.0 is a Web 2.0 political science site. It features discussions, feeds, recommended links, and a "public library" of resources. If you are a political junkie, dive on in and start discussing in one of the DZ areas.
ClickCaster is a free service that lets you create a podcast and offers free unlimited storage of it. You can also use the site to find new podcasts to subscribe to yourself or ones to save directly to your harddrive.
ToRead is a service that lets you bookmark websites you want to read and sends them to you via email. This lets you keep all of your bookmarked items together in your inbox rather than on another service. Just enter your email into the site and drag the bookmarklet to your toolbar and you are set to go.
Beehoo is a site dedicated to beekeeping. You can sign up for their free newsletter, browse their collection of sites, or search for a specific subject. Information includes bee biology, research, bee management, hive products, apitherapy, entomology, and recommended sites.
Gethuman is a database of 800 numbers that you can call to get a real person rather than a machine. There are numbers for major auto manufacturers, credit card companies, financial institutions, government agencies, computer companies, and many more.
TV Guide now offers blogs! There are blogs on specific shows, blogs written by media experts, and blogs on entertainment news. You can browse recent entries on all of the blogs, or subscribe to ones that you are interested in via RSS feeds.
RealClimate is a blog about climate science. It is written by several contributors and covers subjects like greenhouse gases, paleoclimate, hurricanes, oceans, aerosols, and sun-earth connections. This is a very reputable resource for people interested in the earth's changing climate.