Cool Web Sites
by Don Singleton
Tulsa Computer Society
From the March 2001 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
Cox Cable has begun carrying the 24 hour Tech TV channel on their digital
cable service (channel 255), and this is the web site that goes along with
that channel. The schedule is at http://www.techtv.com/showschedule/0,24005,,00.html
and the schedule for today is:
6:30 a.m. Big Thinkers, 7:30 a.m. Silicon Spin, 8 a.m. The Money Machine,
8:30 a.m. Zip File, 9:30 a.m. Big Thinkers, 10 a.m. Call For Help, 12 p.m.
The Screen Savers, 1:30 p.m. The Money Machine, 2:30 p.m. Big Thinkers, 3
p.m. Call For Help, 4 p.m. TechTV News, 4:30 p.m. The Money Machine, 6:30
p.m. Big Thinkers, 7 p.m. Call For Help, 8 p.m. TechTV News, 8:30 p.m. The
Money Machine, 9 p.m. The Screen Savers, 10:30 p.m. Big Thinkers, 11 p.m.
TechTV News, 11:30 p.m. Silicon Spin, 12 a.m. The Screen Savers, 2 a.m.
TechTV News, 2:30 a.m. Silicon Spin, 3:30 a.m. Zip File, 4 a.m. Call For
Help
Tongue Tied - A weekly column by Scott Norvell of Fox News from the front lines of the wars
over political correctness, free expression and culture
This is the third of Don Singleton's Web Sites related to politics.
The purpose of this site is to track various news items, bills, web sites, chat threads,
and other information regarding the various issues that George Bush and Dick Cheney
campaigned on, to assist other Bush Supporters in following these various issues and
seeing where they might help President George Walker Bush. The other two sites are:
http://clinton-legacy.org, created to properly
document the Clinton Legacy, and
http://bushsupporter.net, created during the Florida
Election Mess
as a way to maintain a central record of links to news articles, polls, and other information
to be used in online discussions in the FoxForums and other Delphi Forums.
When the election was over I decided to keep it alive,
and add links to news articles, polls,
and other post election information of interest to Bush Supporters.
Morbid or not, this set of burial records for over 1700 worldwide cemeteries is a
find for your genealogy trackers. Searchable by location, surnames, ethnic
groups.
One of the most acclaimed political resources on the Web, Project Vote Smart features a mammoth
database of over 13,000 candidates for public office, from the White House to your local state
legislature. Each candidate is profiled in five subject areas: backgrounds, issue positions, voting
records, campaign finances, and performance evaluations made by various liberal and conservative
special-interest groups. Enter your zip code to find regional candidates, or take a simple diagnostic
test that aligns you with similar-minded politicians.
Get a free analysis of how much information may be
collected from you when you are surfing through Web
sites. The analysis, which takes a few minutes, may
reveal more than you thought.
After ten years, many of them spent as the biggest technology joke in the solar
system, the Hubble has been returning spectacular images. View some of them
here -- a black hole eating a nearby galaxy, a cluster of stars being born in a
nearby galaxy, pictures of an ancient storm on Jupiter. Amazing stuff .
From CERN in Switzerland, the amazing particle physics laboratory that brought us Tim
Berners-Lee and the World Wide Web, comes this introduction to antimatter. Tune in on
November 21 to a live educational webcast produced in cooperation with San Francisco's
Exploratorium or listen anytime to the archived presentation. Take a guided video tour of the Low
Energy Anti-Proton Ring (LEAR), a particle accelerator that lets scientists create and observe
antimatter in a quest to understand how the universe works. Read about Paul Dirac and the history
of antimatter or see how it has seeped in to our daily lives.
The largest scientific dictionary ever compiled in the
English language makes the jump to cyberspace. The
Academic Press Dictionary of Science and
Technology lets you search more than 130,000 terms
defined in 130 fields of science.
Very useful guide to free magazine articles on the net, either by keyword search
or subject directory. You don't have to register to use, though special features
are available if you do.
Take a dictionary. Supercharge it. The result: The
Exploding Dictionary, whose idea was to scour the
Web for publicly available dictionaries and "then
cross-reference them to near death."
Underwear, pajamas, dried squid, raw eggs, frogs,
dog tags and something called emu jerky - the
strangest things have been sold in vending machines.
And now, heaven help us, we know!
Test your knowledge of relative health risks and which are more likely to affect
you.
Navigate on a satellite map of planet earth.
View and claim 800.000.000 different locations on our planet.
Contribute personal content to your favourite location.
Search and be found by geographical criteria.
As you can see from the above graphic, I have already claimed a cell adjacent
to the one for Tulsa, OK for the Tulsa Computer Society.
So, how's the great experiment with charter schools going after two years?
Check it out.
PeopleSpot aims to be the ultimate search tool for info
about people on the Web. Links to such things as vital
records, demographics, e-mail, phone, reverse
directories and genealogy resources.
NARA is an independent Federal agency that helps preserve our nation's
history by overseeing the management of all Federal records. Their mission
is to ensure ready access to the essential evidence that documents the
rights of American citizens, the actions of Federal officials, and the
national experience. They try to make it easy for citizens to access this
essential evidence regardless of the location of the documentation or of
the people using it.
Advice on Press Releases,
or "Top Ten Reasons to Throw Your Press Release in the Trash"
The Graphic Design Network News Service identifies common deadly mistakes
in public relations campaigns.
The website of Mrs. Schorr's science classes, with links like
How Things Fly, Journey Into The Cosmos, Microbes In The News,
Life As A Blob, Learning Network, and Crab Nebula. She says
"This year I will be teaching three sections of 10th grade biology. We
started out the quarter with a unit on Cells and have just finished up
the unit on Biochemistry, We are now moving on to organisms,
starting with the smallest, Bacteria and ending with the highly
complex mammal and the fetal pig disection. After the Animal unit,
we will visit the Plant kingdom and end with a unit on Ecology.
Fourth quarter will also include the presentations of the Animal
project and the Rat project.
An admirable goal, though perhaps not quite this way.
Continual updated counter for Station Time in Orbit and Crew Time in Orbit,
plus Space Station News items like Expedition 1 Timelines, Expedition 1
Press Kit, Current Station MCC Status Reports, Expedition 1 on-orbit
Imagery, Zvezda Service Module Press Kit, Station Image Gallery, Station
Model Images, X-38 Crew Return Vehicle Videos, X-38 Crew Return Vehicle,
International Space Station, Utilization Conference. and Kibo New Name for
Japanese Module.
Serious researchers may find Search Systems an
answer to an online prayer. More than 1,500 free
searchable databases of public records. Nationwide or
limited to individual states.
The Report Gallery is the most complete and up-to-date listing
of Annual Reports and related financial reports online today.
Save time and paper by researching your reports online. The
Report Gallery currently lists over 2,200 Annual Reports and
covers the majority of the fortune 500 companies.
PBS Series covering "Are Animals Intelligent?", "Do Animals Have Emotions",
and Animal Consciousness".
A team of researchers at U.C. Berkeley's School of Information Management has published a study
that attempts to measure how much information is produced annually worldwide. The analysts
examined a variety of media including print, film, optical, broadcast, and Net, and summarized their
findings at different levels of detail. We went for the heavy overload version: "The world's total
yearly production of ... content would require roughly 1.5 billion gigabytes of storage. This is the
equivalent of 250 megabytes... for each man, woman, and child on earth." Anyone remember when
PCs had less than 1MB of storage?
Get smarter about the use of prescription drugs.
MEDLINEplus publishes an online guide to more than
9,000 prescription and over-the-counter medications.
You'll find out about proper use, precautions and
possible side effects.
Useful hints and tips to help the beginner.
Take better photos, Picking the best viewpoint, Which is the best photo?,
Improving the picture, What's wrong with these photos?, Parallax problems,
Using flash, Against the light, Setting the scene, Travel photos i, Travel
photos ii, Travel photos iii, Children, People, Landscapes, A bit of humour
helps, Computer enhancement (NEW PHOTOS), Looking for a new camera? (35mm
or APS?), Cameras: what's what?, Going digital, Slides or color neg?,
Filters, Black and white, Night scenes, and Look after your camera.
Find a chairity in the GuideStar database of over
640,000 nonprofit organizations and make a donation.
Can't fathom how to go about converting millimeters,
say, to rods? Liters to gills? A dash to a pinch? Put
down that pocket calculator and try out Online
Conversion. More than 8,100 conversions and
calculators, including a collection of "Fun Stuff."
The storehouse of knowledge that is the Web just
expanded. HighWire Press, an online offering of the
Stanford University Libraries, provides 145,748 free
full-text articles on a wide variety of scholarly subjects.
Baking Tips, Bake Sale Secrets, Baking Perfect Brownies, Baking with Kids,
Cookie-Baking in Shifts, Cookie Sheets, Decorating Bars, Doctoring up
Quickbreads, Doughboy Cookie, Freezing Cakes, Freezing Cookies, Freezing
Pies, Muffin Toppings, Packing and Mailing Cookies, Perfect Biscuits,
Perfect Muffins, Breads, Rolls and Coffee Cakes, Cakes and Tortes, Cookies
and Bars, Pies and Tarts, Holiday Cookies and Desserts, Easy Olive
Appetizers, Making Trays, Meatballs, RecipesEvent Planning, Entertaining
Outdoors, Estimating Beverages, Hosting a Family Reunion, How to Host a
Buffet, How to Host a Cookie Exchange, How to Set Up a Buffet Table,
Make-Aheads, Out of Time to Clean?, Party Invitations, Planning for a
Crowd, Planning Timetable, Potlucks, Presentation Tips, Shopping for
anEvent, Take-Out Takeover, Treats WreathFeast Menus, Ham Dinner #1, Ham
Dinner #2, Mini-Turkey FeastMeal, Planning/PrepTips, Rib Roast Feast Prep
Tips, Spring Feast, Traditional KwanzaaFeast, Turkey Dinner #1, Turkey
Dinner #2, Open House and Brunch Menus, Fiesta Open House, Frittata Brunch,
Heartwarming Brunch, Southwest Open House, Backyard Summer Social, Barnyard
Birthday Bash, Celebration Patio Party, Children's Birthday Party, Dessert
Buffet, Family Celebration, Patriotic Picnic, Pizza Party, Summer Grill
Fest, etc.
Marking yet another triumph for those savvy team players capitalism and media, The Coca Cola
Company has graciously donated its archive of television commercials to the Library of Congress.
Nope, this isn't an Onion headline, but rather a "variety of television advertisements,
never-broadcast outtakes, and experimental footage reflecting the historical development of
television advertising for a major commercial product." All your favorites are here: the Hilltop, Mean
Joe Greene, and the Polar Bears.
NASA upgrades its online satellite tracking system,
offering a 3-D view that allows you to manipulate a
virtual Earth. A pull-down menu lets you choose
satellites to track. Bring along a Java-enabled Web
browser.
The objective in creating these pages was to publicize license plate
pictures with a few facts that may interest and entertain the casual web
surfer and perhaps encourage him or her to become a license plate
collector.
RatherBiased consists of "over 500 statements from America’s most politicized journalist" -- Dan
Rather. It is rather curious that the site's creators don't identify themselves, although they do
state the mission of their carefully organized diatribe -- to help loosen "the stranglehold of
government by the media." They've amassed ample evidence of the partisan and changeable beliefs
expressed over the years by the CBS journalist. The compilation of quotes is organized into
categories such as People (from George Bush to George Washington), Issues, Events, and Scandals
(from Watergate to Whitewater). There's also a Compare and Contrast section that spotlights
Rather's inconsistencies and opinion shifts over the years.
Can you identify the candybar by looking at the cross section?
Make a guess and click on the cross section to find the answer.
Want to buy a computer product but don't know who
to trust? ResellerRatings evaluates more than 1,300
companies, nationally advertised mail-order companies
and ones who do business on the Net. Those to do
business with and those to avoid.
There are a number of great reasons to buy produce from your local farmer. You support the local
economy, treat your body right, and (perhaps most importantly) eat food that tastes better. Local
Harvest is a non-profit group that carefully nourishes and prunes an "organic" directory of small
farms across the country. Just click on the zoomable map to find a farmer's market, organic farm,
u-pick farm, or dairy producer near you. Say goodbye to that empty, sinking feeling one associates
with the frozen foods aisle.
For the Tulsa Area, for example, we have:
Tulsa's Cherry Street Farmers Market
Sand Springs Main Street Farmers Market
Sapulpa Main Street Farmers Market
The product of over 2,500 hours of monomaniacal determination, the Lego Star Wars Trilogy
recreates 180 key scenes from the original series. Relive all of those magical moments through
Lego-lensed glasses: the Tatooine races, the Hoth battles, the Ewok dances. You won't find any
Millennium Falcon or Imperial Walker Lego sets in stores; these are all custom-made models. As
your Japanese host S. Fujita proclaims, "I completed this project by myself without any support."
Thank you, S. Fujita.
A safe and clean environment is the solid foundation
of a healthy community. HUD E-MAPS springs from the
strong conviction that every American has the right to
know about the quality of the environment where they
live, work, play and raise their families. Today, all
you have to do is log on to the web to access the
information necessary to make environmentally
informed choices. Armed with this information,
families, developers, local, state and Federal
governments can work in partnership to build healthy
and safe communities one backyard at a time.
I selected a HUD E-MAP for the south east Tulsa Area, and it shows
Public Housing, Brownfields Tax Incentive Zone, and various Environmental
Protection Agency identified sites, such as Air Releases, Brownfields
Pilots, Discharges to Water, Hazardous Waste Generator, Hazardous Waste
Handlers, Superfund Sites, and Toxic Releases. You can click on a particular
area and zoom in to see exactly where these various sites are in your
area.
PBS explores the life and legacy of Nikola Tesla (1856-1943) in this detailed web backgrounder
for a television biography premiering on December 12, 2000. Born in Serbia, Tesla arrived in New
York City in 1884 and was quickly hired by his idol, Thomas Edison. When conflicts developed, he
sold his revolutionary patents to a Mr. Westinghouse and continued to experiment and innovate --
AC motors, Tesla coils, radio, remote control devices, high-frequency lighting all bear the signature
of his genius. Master the fundamentals of alternating and direct current (AC/DC), power
transmission, or magnetic fields -- it's positively electric.
Which is better: ESPN's SportsCenter or the commercials for the show? If you're a fan of the latter,
you'll enjoy this rotating selection of choice ads. No dumb beer ad humor here. SportsCenter ads
are like tiny Saturday Night Live skits: self-deprecating, offbeat, and usually very funny, even if you
don't like sports. So treat yourself to a two-minute sanity timeout.
Professional photographer Martha Cooper began collecting photographs and images of women with
cameras in 1977. Her online exhibit features dozens of magazine ads, catalog covers, and film
wallets featuring the mythic Kodak Girl, "a fashionable, young, vibrant and independent woman who
often appeared in ads in a distinctive blue and white striped dress. Until the mid-1920s the Kodak
Girl roamed the world freely taking pictures as she went." The collection is very impressive, but
Martha Cooper's life story is just as compelling -- the daughter of two well-established camera store
owners in Baltimore, Martha was pretty much born with a camera in her hand. She went on to
become her own version of the Kodak Girl.
For more information on the Tulsa Computer Society click here
This page has been accessed
times.
Tulsa Computer Society 2/01/2001
Don Singleton, President
djs@ionet.net