Cool Web Sites
by Don Singleton
Tulsa Computer Society
From the January 2003 issue of the I/O Port Newsletter
Including links previously reviewed at
http://www.educationindex.com/index.html,
http://www.komando.com/,
http://www.usatoday.com/life/cyber/arch.htm,
and http://marylaine.com/neatnew.html
Have a hankering for the classics but can't stand another trip to the library? The Web's Literature Network has your number. More to the point, it has over 300 books and 1,000 short stories awaiting your enjoyment. From the works of Charles Dickens and George Orwell to Edgar Rice Burroughs and Gaston Leroux.
If you really want to keep track of your favorite celebrities, you've got to keep one eye on the court docket. That's the way CourtTV.com sees it, anyway. Pamela Anderson, Courtney Love, and The Sopranos' Robert Iler have all graced the site's 'People' page, where you also can click through celebrity wills, the 'Penalty Box' and more.
Sick of relying on dumb luck when booking a flight? SeatGuru.com deftly tackles the problem by supplying interactive seating charts that show you which seats will best suit your needs. Does your seat recline? Will you have access to Internet ports? The SeatGuru seems to know all, and is only too happy to tell you.
"Statements, images, and links ... provided by the Study of Islam Section at the American Academy of Religion," speak out against terrorism and clarify the position of Islam.
Feel like a genius in the land of the chronically obtuse? Confirm your stellar intellect with the International High IQ Society's battery of seven exhaustive intelligence tests. Score 126 or better and you will be invited to become a member of this Mensa-like organization
OK, if you don't live in New York City, this probably won't be very helpful. But sites such as iSee — which helps privacy-minded city dwellers find routes that are least exposed to closed-circuit TV cameras — may become more widespread if our present leaders continue their rapid transformation into Big Brother.
Includes cartoon mini-lectures, "organize-it" (test your knowledge by dragging terms to show category relationships), "do-it-yourself evolution," and more.
With nearly 300 million people bumping around this great land of ours, you know we're carrying a significant amount of dead wood. Which, presumably, is why the folks at city/state ranking firm Morgan Quitno have ranked the intelligence of the nifty 50, based on 21 criteria, all having to do with education.
Oklahoma ranked 32 with a sum of -2.74
Faking a ghost photo is a snap with today's photo-manipulation software, FakeGhost.com prides itself on showing you how to do it with nothing more than your camera, some imagination, and a flair for the macabre
A subject guide to "Characters, Places, and Things that appeared on television programs broadcast in the USA from the 1940s to the present." Want the address and phone number of Clark Kent's Daily Planet? The name of the shy handsome biology teacher Our Miss Brooks was pursuing? The name of the character who said "Danger Is My Business?" Find answers by searching or by browsing through categories like "Artists & Artwork," "Beginnings and Endings of TV Shows," "Frogs," "Furniture," "License Plates, "Mottos and Slogans," "Songs," "Tattoos," etc.
On those days when you wish you could throw open the windows and let your soul soar free, lose yourself in the breathtaking images taken by Charles Benton's camera, which has sailed far and wide on the wings of a kite. From the skies of Normandy to the Golden Gate Bridge. What a pick-me-up
Whether you consider them figments of the imagination or demonstrations of the divine, miraculous occurrences never fail to fascinate. The Miracles Page offers a concise roundup of such modern day phenomena as weeping statues, healing waters, and miracle cures.
Not just a webquest, these library projects require students to find reference works, scholarly monographs, periodical articles, primary sources, and web resources from the library's preselected links.
Just how smokeless is the Smokeless Ashtray? Can the Weed Thrasher possibly be as effective as its better-known rival? The folks at Does It Work have gotten their hands on many of the staples of TV infomercials in order to tell you what's worth the money and what should remain only 'as seen on TV.'
A joy to read, the "Insultingly Stupid Movie Physics" site gives Hollywood a well-deserved dope slap for cars that explode on impact, visible laserbeams, and other staples of the silver screen that defy the laws of science. And yet the site is never above a little 'suspension of disbelief' when laws are broken to tell a good story.
The West Wing (the White House area, not the Martin Sheen retirement scheme) is 100 years old this year. To celebrate, the White House's official site features RealPlayer tours of the Oval Office, the Cabinet Room, and other parts of the president's workplace. Also, 360-degree views of rooms throughout the residence.
Looking to get a little practice for the SAT or ACT tests but don't want to blow a bundle on a formal course? California's Virtual High School offers practice sessions, vocabulary builders, and other materials online, all for free. (Registration required.)
Which is better: heaven or hell? Up or down? The USA or Iraq? Now there's a simple way to tell, thanks to GoogleFight.com. Place any two terms head to head to see which comes up with the greatest number of results in a Google search. (For the record, hell rules, up's where it's at, and the good ol' USA's still number one.)
Courtesy of the New York Public Library, "a collection of 30,000 digitized, public domain images from books, magazines and newspapers as well as original photographs, prints and postcards, mostly created before 1923. It consists of images of New York City, Costume, Design, American History and other subjects." Browsable and searchable.
Help your kids better understand the world around them with PathFinder Science, a site brimming with projects that encourage young people to study animals, the environment, and other components of the everyday. Young people can, among other things, track birds, test cookies for crumbling, and view results from around the country.
Give me a home where the dinosaurs roam, and likely it would look like the Internet's Jurassic Park Institute. This multimedia-rich Web destination offers colorful dossiers on nearly every thunder lizard you can recall from childhood, as well as games, Flash presentations, information on 'dinosaur hunters,' and more.
Treat yourself to a feast of Flash-fueled Internet exhibits on ancient cultures, early life in the New World, and social issues that still affect us all when you visit Humanities-Interactive.org. Courtesy of the Texas Council for the Humanities Resource Center
Wherever you are, chances are there's a lesson in physics only a few feet away. Physics.org takes you on a Flash field trip to a home, an office, and several other places to demonstrate the physical laws behind everyday life. From frying pans to playground swings, this is an entertaining introduction to the laws of life.
For more than a year, Britain's LaughLab canvassed the world via the Web for the world's funniest jokes. With all the results in and the experiment completed, LaughLab has compiled what it says have been deemed the funniest jokes in Great Britain, the USA, and other countries. (Does anybody find these all that funny?)
A resource both for kids and for adults who run after-school programs for kids.
If destruction's a form of creativity, the Implosion World Web site is the Mona Lisa of demolition. An online showcase for the industry's most impressive feats of obliteration, this site brings you video clips of spectacular demolitions, as well as photo galleries and first-person accounts from those who make the Earth tremble for a living.
Refusing to gloss over gaping holes in the long-standing theory of how caves are formed, researchers journeyed underground to find the truth. Along the way, they took some breathtaking pictures, presented here by PBS's Nova Web site. Includes an informative Flash presentation on the different ways that caves are formed.
To preserve for posterity what it was like to live in the 20th century, the creators of the Millennium Urban Soundscape Project site encouraged visitors to submit sound clips of street noise from public places around the world. The result is a sonic odyssey that whisks you from New York to Nepal.
For more information on the Tulsa Computer Society click here
Tulsa Computer Society 1/02/2003
Don Singleton, President