Cool Web Sites
by Don Singleton
Tulsa Computer Society
From the November 2002 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
Line drawings of the art deco buildings, downtown churches and museums of Tulsa.
The advantage this has over most "this day in history" sites is that it links to relevant New York Times stories, obits, reviews, etc.
Having trouble negotiating some of the trickier branches of your family tree? CousinConnect.com helps you appeal to the public directly with queries about specific relatives or family names. Search its extensive database or browse by state and country.
Librarian Barbara Fister takes writers by the hand and teaches them how to get the most out of their libraries and librarians as well as the internet and field experience. While some resources are specifically chosen for mystery writers, many researchers would find this useful.
"Your Guide to Children's Literature & Books", from the Public Library of Charlotte & Mecklenburg County. Includes reading lists by grade level, reviews of adventure books, readalouds, humor, sports, mystery, fantasy, and more. Site visitors can add their own comments to the reviews
California's rough-and-tumble gubernatorial race is getting ugly, especially online. EGray, a parody of the popular online auction site eBay, paints Gov. Gray Davis as a public official selling his political favors to the highest bidder. The 'BribePal' button actually takes you to Davis' contribution site. (There's a cease-and-desist order in here somewhere.)
If you haven't done 'the wave' in the stands at a ball game, you're probably something of a stick in the mud. Interestingly, scientists — traditionally thought to be sticks in the mud — have analyzed the phenomenon in a professional paper, reproduced here with video clips, interactive simulations, and some interesting observations
Images assembled by Prof. Kenneth Helphand to illustrate his course in landscape history. His text is not provided here, but the pictures, illustrating gardens, forests, agriculture, French and English gardens, the Parks movement, etc., are wonderful.
Who are these people running for Congress? This publishers offers biographical info on all candidates for free. For candidates' voting records, see State PIRG's Congressional Scorecard 2002 http://www.pirg.org/score2002/
An online exhibit of man's attempts to control the hearts and minds of his fellow men, TheFileRoom.org provides a searchable archive of censorship battles organized by date, location, grounds for censorship, and the medium in which the 'offending' works appeared.
Describing itself as 'a search-engine to find things you don't know about,' Gnod presents you with one item at a time (Web site, book, etc.), which you explore or decline to explore, until it learns what type of information you're interested in.
From law librarian Sabrina Pacifici, one of the founders of LLRX.
Get an inside look at the lives of Britain's royal family with The Royals, a suitably cheeky comic strip following the occasionally-real-life exploits of Queen Elizabeth and her nearest-and-not-so-dearest.
Think of it as the eBay of your local precinct's evidence room. StealitBack.com lets you bid upon diamond rings, cameras, and other items seized by police during raids and other law enforcement operations.
Choose a date and find out who was born, who died, what happened, and what holidays and observances are going on. Use for fun or a starting point, not for reference or an ending point, as no sources are given.
America has changed substantially in the last 150 years; so too have the advertisements that fill our lives. Browse through more than 9,000 vintage ads that plug Jello, cameras, and other products between 1850 and 1920, all courtesy of this Duke University online exhibition.
'I'll be there when you're sleeping; I'll be there when you awake ...' No, not Santa Claus. This is the Flash-powered pitch for LifeGems, diamonds 'created from the carbon of your loved one.' This online billboard is a digital testament to the fact that the sell-anything economy is alive and well online.
Are you ready for ragweed season? Here's advice on managing your symptoms, and identifying allergy triggers in your child's school, among other things.
Be it Martha Stewart's Wall Street troubles, Whitney Houston's alleged breaking of New Jersey's water ban, or Buzz Aldrin's purported braining of a moon-landing conspiracy theorist, CelebCourthouse.com keeps you in the know about those who should know better.
For those with a cartographic bent, the Library of Congress invites you to dive into a treasure trove of historical maps. This extensive online exhibit covers the European age of discovery, the evolution of U.S. cities, military battles, and a great deal more. A browser's delight.
Available in entirety in German; 45 chapters are also available in English. Richly illustrated and hyperlinked to other entries in the textbook. There's also an internet library on teaching botany and related topics
Reach out and touch someone you've never met with PostcardX.net. The site randomly serves up a name and address, and asks you to send the person named a poem, anecdote, or another item as a way of 'exposing a part of yourself to a random person somewhere out there in the ether.'
Explore the burial places of ancient Egypt and the artistic wonders they contain in this aesthetically-enticing online exhibit provided by the National Gallery of Art. A multimedia smorgasbord including streaming artifact slideshows, photo galleries, and a virtual walk-through of an actual tomb.
By the same folks who brought you CEOExpress and MDExpress. A keeping up tool for people who need to get to the important stuff fast. Includes pages for specific practice areas.
Swing by Fragnetics.com to watch a Webserver destroy itself by activating the industrial crusher in which it currently resides. Perhaps one of the Web's greatest attention-getting ploys to date. (The cyber-destructive event is expected to take place sometime Thursday.)
Ever find yourself in the throws of culinary creation only to realize you can't tell a dash from a pinch? Fire up KitchenMath.com, which stands ready to make the necessary conversions between measurement units into fractions or decimals. Bonus points for letting harried cooks multiply the ingredients by any given factor.
Thorough collection of flag images. For information about them, arrow down to the Frequently Asked Questions file.
"I was gung ho about working the graveyard shift until I got a Charley horse." Trying to understand some of our language's more colorful phrases can be a headache-inducing affair. Fortunately, IdiomSite.com offers concise explanations concerning the origins of our weirder words and expressions.
The most entertaining aspect of this online repository, dedicated to those instances in which fate ensnares us, may be the thought of someone spending long nights coming up with every conceivable way things can go wrong. Categorized by subject (e.g. love, tech, commerce, etc.). Skim through these laws or submit your own.
Papers that changed our understanding of how the universe works. From the Center for the History of Physics.
You'd be amazed at the number of books awaiting your attention online, all free of charge. Page By Page Books features hundreds of titles, yours for the reading. From L. Frank Baum's Oz series to Sax Rohmer's Fu Manchu yarns of politically-incorrect adventure.
For more information on the Tulsa Computer Society click here
Tulsa Computer Society 11/02/2002
Don Singleton, President