Previous Featured Sites - January - December 2003

December 19, 2003

Cooking

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'Tis the season to look up recipes.

Cook's Thesaurus is an encyclopedia about food. There are 2,500 entries covering fruits, vegetables, grains, meats, fish, oils and even the condiments. The Thesaurus provides pictures and text descriptions together with alternate names. Most importantly Cook's Thesaurus has notes on substitutions, usage, handling and shopping hints.

FoodReference is a portal to facts and trivia about food. Kitchen Tips and Recipes sit with Crossward Puzzles and Poems & Humor. James T Ehler is the chief cook and bottlewasher at the site. A resident of Key West, he has devoted one page to restaurants and food stores in Key West. It is a wonderful site where food lovers can graze leisurely.

Chef2Chef Culinary Portal is aimed at those in the hospitality industry looking for news, jobs and schools. But there is much to interest the menu planner at home.

Lucy Waverman is the food columnist in the Globe and Mail. She has a small but useful site with kitchen tips and some recipes.

Sympatico uses WorldWide Gourmet to power its Home & Family Food section. If the recipes don't appeal there is a restaurant finder for major Canadian cities.

November 22, 2003

National Library of Canada

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2003 marks the 50th anniversary of Canada's National Library. During the year there have been several new exhibits added to the web site.

Kids Page: Has activities and readings for kids roughly 7 to 12.

Glenn Gould Archive: Virtual exhibition with photographs and archival materials, audio segments, articles.

Canadian Women in Theatre and Dance: Biographies of 15 women.

Canadian Writers: Marie-Claire Blais, Roger Lemelin, Carol Shields and Michel Tremblay - essay, images, and resources. Includes material from the Literary Manuscripts Collection.

Canadian Directories: digitized versions of 15 pre-1901 directories.

Canada by Train: history of railways and their marketing.

The National Library is part of the new Library and Archives Canada. One of its goals is to preserve Canadian web content through periodic sampling.

November 7, 2003

Eclectic

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For people who love the eclectic, Charles Bowen has the stuff. His weekly column, The Reporters Digital How-To, at Editor & Publisher features sites on a wide variety of topics - travel, business, education, health, statistics and much more. It is written for journalists and writers, but all who enjoy diversions to high quality web sites will want to read this column regularly.

Charles Bowen is an online journalist and published author who has been writing about the Internet since the earliest of days, covering Compuserve, bulletin boards, and online conferencing.

The Reporters Digital How-To index page has the last 20 columns. He has found such interesting sites as:

# Lists of Bests for the best of in "best of" books, music, and movie lists.

# NationMaster for statistics on nearly everything.

# YourDictionary.com, a portal to 1,800 reference sources.

# Web4Health.info for psychological help, developed in the UK and funded by the EU.

# Foodreference.com for everything about food - history, recipes, humour, puzzles.

September 28, 2003

E-Learning

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The Web offers a myriad of opportunities for online courses for personal development.

Barnes and Noble University offers several instructor-led online courses on a variety of content. There are course titles for business and office productivity, liberal arts, graphic and web design, life improvement, information technology, writing and languages. Some courses are free, others moderately priced. Most are online although some self-paced are on CD ROM (for purchase).

Netscape has a Learning Center with off-the-shelf courses to help in day-to-day living. Each course has 4-8 lessons and each lesson is said to take less than an hour. Basic dog training is listed as a popular course for only $9.99 USD. There are several others for computers and technology, entertainment, relationships, and money.

BBC Learning in the UK has learning resources for schools, colleges and adults. The site has a subject listing to a large number of topics. For the most part, resources listed are educational web sites. There is also a small list of online self-paced courses.

MIT OpenCourseWare has 500 courses in 33 academic disciplines - all free. These are entirely self-study and tend to consist of readings, notes and assignments.

For more general interest courses check the e-Learning Centre's list.

September 1, 2003

All-in-one

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The beauty and spirit of the Internet is best found in the work of individuals who tirelessly assemble links, create content, and develop search tools. Michael Fagan is such a person, a student at the University of Waterloo, who has developed a collection of tools.

FaganFinder (www.faganfinder.com) has been acknowledged by many Net-information people as a top site for useful tools, informational sites, and quick reference.

FaganFinder lists search engines to use for weblogs and RSS feeds, reference, media, words, and the Web as a whole. It is an all-in-one directory to search engines, reference and news sources. Simply select the sources to use and run the search.

Among the tools is the new Translation Wizard. Through the use of other tools, FaganFinder can translate over 40 languages - just enter the URL or the text. There is also an international keyboard.

It also has a Speed Browse for frequently viewed sites - faster than your bookmark list.

The Google Ultimate Interface rivals Google's itself and many prefer the options on this page for date, domain, and their settings.

Michael also has a personal blog of news and interesting bits called Puzzlepieces.

August 3, 2003

Back to School

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The hope of every learner is to find a high quality guide on the Internet. AllLearn, the Alliance for Lifelong Learning, is a good starting point.

AllLearn is the joint venture of Oxford, Yale and Stanford Universities to provide distance learning and educational materials to adults.

The course catalog of over 40 courses has titles for music, literature, history, psychology, philosophy, economics, politics, astronomy and archaelogy.

Complementing this are Academic Directories and Learning Guides.

Learning Guides are prepared by scholars and offer web sites, books, online texts and articles on a specific topic - mainly literature and history.

The Academic Directories is a compilation of leading academic websites reviewed by subject experts covering a breadth of topics in Arts and Science.

In addition, AllLearn has a User's Guide to Online Research with advice on finding research resources. While the focus is on using libraries, the guide points to other academic research guides to resources on the Web.

July 11, 2003

Singingfish

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As more broadband users come online with an appetite for high-quality audio and video for entertainment and education, there will be a greater need for a good multimedia search engine.

Singingfish, based in Seattle, is the main contender. It has indexed around 10 million streamed files and millions of audio files. Its secret is in the metadata it applies (often manually) to describe the file - artist, song, format, duration.

Advanced Search allows one to limit by A/V type. The Title/Artist search supports queries for an artist and/or song and limiting to a particular web site.

Singingfish lists the top 10 searches in the previous month for artists, songs, movies and sports. In June, Matrix Reloaded, Eminem and 50 Cent topped the lists.

Singingfish also has links for downloading all the audio/video players for the media it indexes.

More information about Singingfish in Singingfish: Advancing the Art of Multimedia Search by Mark Fritz. EContent (April 2003)

Featured Site
May 30, 2003

Deep Net

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There is more on the Web than a search engine like Google or Alltheweb can show. There is the Deep Web of searchable databases whose content may not be reachable by universal web search or whose results may be lost in the numbers. Searchers must be mindful of the kind of information they need and where they are most likely to find it.

Turbo10 is a metasearch engine that taps into the Deep Net - letting searchers select the databases most suitable for the query.

They call it the Deep Net rather than the Deep Web since some databases may be on peer-to-peer networks rather than available through web access.

Turbo10 asks you to create your own collection of search engines by selecting from its bank of over 1,100. Then run a keyword search. Turbo10 searches up to 10 search engines and groups results into topic clusters. It works quite quickly, though not all engines will respond.

Create collections for different purposes: one for recipes, computer and internet, and another for general web search.

Unfortunately, the engines are not organized by topic, making it difficult to find the best engines for your collection.

However, that aside, this is a metasearch engine to use.

Turbo10 presented its technology at the 12th International World Wide Web Conference. The Mechanics of a Deep Net Metasearch Engine (pdf).

May 2, 2003

WikiWiki

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In Hawaiian, wikiwiki means quick, but on the Web, wiki is a kind of online-community where people write on a topic and edit each other's web pages using collaborative software - also called wiki. This is spirit of the web - free, open, and unrestrained.

The biggest wiki of them all - the Wikipedia - has a page describing WikiWiki.

Wikepedia is a free multilingual encyclopedia on the Web that was launched in January 2001.

Anyone can contribute and 7,000 have registered to do so. In April 2003, it had 118,000 articles. These are organized by subject - Philosophy & Natural Science, Applied Arts and Sciences, Social Sciences, Culture. But there are several other category schema. - even an historical timeline that begins in the 4th century BC with Mesotopotamia.

Consider literature. The article opens with - "it [literature] is literally "an acquaintance with letters" ". It was last changed on April 21, 2003. A log shows the entries in which participants added content and links. The Discuss option allows for comments and debate about the content.

It's not to be used as an authoritative source but there is a civility and a "for the sake of learning" ethos that probably keeps the articles largely factual.

Either way, it's a fascinating social experiment.

Not your father's encyclopedia by Kendra Mayfield. Wired (Jan 28, 2003)

April 18, 2003

Travel

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Roughly 10 percent of US Internet users make their travel arrangements over the Web according to Pew Internet Life. In 2002, the Travel Industry Association of America put online travellers at 96 million and noted a marked increase in online booking. (Online Travel Booking Jumps in 2002 Dec 2002)

One of the best sites for planning a trip is TripAdvisor.com. Comscore Networks, the consumer research firm, placed Trip.Advisor in the top 15 travel sites worldwide. Forbes.com just added it to its Best of the Web (April 2003) and especially recommended it for up-to-date reviews and ratings of hotels and resorts.

TripAdvisor is all about destination. It acts, as Chris Sherman once said as an "online concierge". It brings together deals from Expedia, Travelocity, Orbitz and others, and promises "unbiased reviews, articles, recommendations and opinions"

Articles and reviews are gathered from the Web on accomodations and places. For example, there are excerpts from 8 guidebooks for Venice including Frommers and Fodors, and 51 travel articles from newspapers and other travel sites. There is information on 399 hotels rated according to reviews in guidebooks and by travellers complete with the actual review.

There are also newsletters on travel news and deals for a destination.

Bon voyage

Featured Site
March 29, 2003

News

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Several monitoring services report that war surpasses sex and travel as top search terms. traffic to the top 15 news sites has soared as people look for news and variety and independence of view. . (War coverage takes over as top Internet search by Mike Ingram at WSWS.org)

One place for getting a world view is Newseum.org

Newseum is an interactive museum of news on the Web virtually as a Web site and physically on display in Washington DC. It is funded by the Freedom Forum, "a nonpartisan foundation dedicated to free press, free speech and free spirit for all people".

The Web site carries 192 front pages of newspapers from 26 countries. Of these 131 papers are from the USA and 6 from Canada.

Scan the top concerns from all parts of the world by mousing over the icons. The page may also be downloaded in pdf format. There is a link to the web site - though it may not necessarily have the same stories or format as the newspaper.

Browsing is also easily done from the "page list", organized by name or country, or viewed as dots on a map.

The Cyber Newseum, in addition to Today's News, has collections for notable days or subjects - War in Iraq, 9/11, Berlin Wall, political cartoons, space race and many more.

Featured Site
March 10, 2003

March Break

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There are games and puzzles and brainteasers galore on the Web. Any directory will get you find them for you. Here are a few picks.

JigZone Start with a simple 6 piece puzzle and move up to the largest at 247 pieces. As pieces are fitted there is a satisfying click. A timer counts the minutes and can be paused. When really stumped, pressing Solve puts all the pieces in place. Members can upload photos to create their own puzzles. Uses Java.

Thinks.com has been recognized as an education site and an entertainment site. It has jigsaw puzzles, word search, crossword, and codebreakers. The Web Guide has collections of many different puzzle types.

Electro Air Hockey starts off with the famous the famous hockey da-da da-dah. It's Flash. Two players face off with from the centre to get the puck in the opposite net. It's really addictive.

Puzzles.com from Binary Arts, a toy company, has puzzles of all types for beginner and expert. Puzzle Links has the "best on the Web" and features new puzzles every week. Put together, take apart, slide blocks, mazes and even e-card tricks.

Miniclip.com Tetris There are likely thousands of tetris sites but this has music (not good music) and is a little slower than the others. Requires flash. (Close the browser window to stop).

Tucows.com has puzzle and game software that can be downloaded to PDAs for use on the long commute - a good reason for using public transit.

February 15, 2003

The Funnies

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Cartoons on the Web take on extra dimensions with animation and sound. This can give a real edge to the new breed of "editorial cartoons". Idleworm, in particular, has been receiving attention.

Idleworm is the work of Dermot and Caragh O'Connor - an Irish pair who are anti-war and have the bite to say it. Their Gulf War Game was found by Reuters in February and thousands have viewed it since.

Players assume the role of President George Bush, as he receives briefings and decides to attack Iraq. Disaster follows as the middle east erupts in explosions.

Net game simulates 'worst case scenario' in Iraq CNN.com Tech (Feb 10, 2003)

Ranan Lurie creates animated versions of his cartoons for newspaper websites. Lurie takes on the big issues too - war, middle east, poverty. View them at Cartoonews.com.

Lurie Lures Readers With Animated Cartoons Dave Astor. E&P (Feb 6, 2003)

Infospace keeps to a lighter script. It provides animated cartoon news to client portals like Verizon and SearchBug. Headlines scroll by while cartoon characters comment humoursly.

Animinated cartoons are not new. J.D. Lasica described the state of cartooning in March 2002 his article Let's Get Animated (Online Journalism Review), including the methods, types, and artists. Many of the links still connect.

January 23, 2003

E-Books

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E-books don't get the same press they received in the heady days of products like RocketBook (now Gemstar) or the services of NetLibrary (bankrupt and bought by OCLC) but they are far from dead. Microsoft Corporation, Adobe Systems and Palm Digital Media are very active in creating technologies such as Tablet PCs, PDAs, and reading software. These companies as well as publishers and some libraries are members of the Open eBook Forum, a nonprofit trade and standards organization for the promotion of ebooks.

OeBF has two websites for people interested in ebooks and Barnes and Noble has an online store devoted to them.

Open an eBook describes ebooks, their advantages, devices and software needed (any computer will do), and where to find ebooks. Has a starter list of free ebooks.

eBook Locator is a search engine to a database of thousands of ebooks with reviews, excerpts, and author bios. Browse by subject or search by keyword.

Barnes and Noble - Free eBooks for the Microsoft Reader - has mystery, literature, poetry, philosophy, science.

Internet Public Library Books Collection has links to 20,000 titles - free but in plain text format.

For more about the ebook industry see Open eBook Forum Releases Industry Report by Paula Hane. Information Today (Sep 2002)

January 1, 2003

Smart Mobs

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Howard Rheingold has noted a new social revolution taking place on the Web. The first was the formation of virtual communities which he wrote about in 1993 in his book "The Virtual Community". Today his prescient eye considers the widespread use of wireless connections for text and voice messaging especially by the young.

"Smart mobs emerge when communication and computing technologies amplify human talents for cooperation. The impacts of smart mob technology already appear to be both beneficial and destructive."

A smart mob is created from people who use mobile communications, PCs, and the Internet to come together virtually and actually. Smart mobs use their handhelds for everything from celebrity spottings to revolutions (as happened in the Phillipines).

Rheingold sees good and bad in these developments - promising for grassroots social action but menancing for government surveillance.

This month's feature site relates to Smart Mobs.

Smart Mobs - the official site by Howard Rheingold with table of contents and introduction to the book. Rheingold discusses and provides updates on the issues raised in the book.

Online Chat Session with Howard Rheingold at The Well on November 21, 2002 with subsequent postings.