Stuff to keep you busy while I’m away: I’m off to …
October 27, 2006 | 10:38 am
Stuff to keep you busy while I’m away: I’m off to Ireland in a bit and don’t know how much time, if any, I’ll have to post while I’m over there (I may try to find an Internet café to do a post following the marathon on Monday, but otherwise, this is my first legitimate vacation in more than two years, so email, blogging and IM’ing won’t really be a priority).
To keep you occupied while I’m gone, I’m leaving a massive list of Web sites that either made me laugh or that I find useful on a regular basis. I have some other pre-written stuff that I may or may not post while I’m over there, but for now just assume I’ll see you reading here when I return.
There are more than 70 links here. They are broken into broad categories but otherwise are in no particular order.
Except for this one: on Monday, October 30 you can follow my progress and see my results in the Dublin Marathon by visiting the official race Web site.
Blogs
I have a couple of hundred blogs loaded into my RSS reader (and the blog roll to the left is way out of date in terms of what I read on a regular basis). What follows are not necessarily my favorites but a list of recent and not-so-recent finds that have been entertaining or useful:
- Not a blog but a tool for blog readers (and owners), MyBlogLog let’s you correspond with blog readers and find work that may interest you.
- Cheesy enough to be entertaining, Urban Monarch is the place to bone up on your doofus-hipster cred.
- Boing Boing is the well-known directory of wonderful things.
- There’s no need to waste time reading
- Not as good as the book, but the Freakanomics blog is still a daily stop on my reading list.
- Lifehacker is the best clearing house to find hundreds of sites, downloads and tricks for making life more fun and productive.
- Language Log is heady stuff but generally fun.
News
I read most of the “big” news sites. The following may help you do the same with more ease or may turn you onto different news sources.
- Google reader is technically a big, well-known tool, but it’s worth mentioning. I initially hated the overhaul that was launched earlier this month, but now that I’ve gotten used to it, it is by far the best reader out there. One suggestion: a button for the tool bar that would allow you to add pages to your shared page, much like del.icio.us.
- I used CRAYON (CReAte Your Own Newspaper) way back in 1998. I forgot all about it, saw that it’s up and running again and may give it another try.
- But in the mean time, Topix does the trick.
- Helium is probably the newest site on this list, so I’m wary of giving it a blind endorsement, but the concept is cool. It’s a “user generated article database yesterday and combines original writing with user rankings and profit sharing,” according to Techcrunch.
- 101 Sex Tricks
- I’m not a huge spectator sports fan – I don’t schedule my life around what time an obscure game is on t.v. – but I like to keep abreast of what’s important. Deadspin is a sports blog with just the right amount of snarkiness to keep me entertained.
Interesting Sites and Places to Kill Some Time
- Memory Hole “exists to bring hidden, lost, or forgotten info to light by way of posting documents on its home page.”
- 10X10 is updated hourly with 100 pictures that define the world at that given moment.
- I was sad to learn that the Black Table has gone away. I’m hoping The Morning News can fill the void.
- Dandelife lets you build your own personal time line and share your life. I started playing around with it over the summer but haven’t had time to do too much with it just yet.
- I’m not sure if I’m going to participate in Project 365, which has people taking and posting a photo a day, but it makes for some interesting viewing.
- Download lots of free music at Internet Archive’s Netlabels.
- When looks really do matter, YesNoMayB combines the time wasting properties of “Hot Or Not” with your favorite online dating service.
Travel
- There are a bunch of flight trackers where you can watch the progress of a loved one’s flight in real time, but this one has the best interface of the ones I’ve tried.
- Planning a group trip? Check out Trip Hub to keep your plans organized.
- RealTravel lets you share tips, tricks and advice with other travelers. It’s a relatively new site but seems to have tons of content (I’m using it for ideas for my
- Want to know if you’ll get screwed on exchange rates when you head overseas? Check out the Universal Currency Calculator.
- Seat Guru let’s you know which seats are the most comfortable on your flight. Consult it before heading to the check-in counter.
Running, Recreation and Health
- Previously profiled here, the Gmaps pedometer is great for planning out your route. It will even tell you how many calories you’ll burn on your run.
- Through Team In Training I’ve been running with the
- And since my Team In Training stint is nearly done, I can whole-heartedly recommend that you go out and do it – it’s been beyond life changing for me. Get information on getting started on their Web site.
- Go Ask Alice gives you answers to the embarrassing medical questions you were afraid to ask. It could possibly go in the time killing section for its ample and entertaining responses.
- Track your daily caloric intake at FitDay. It’s free and will make you think twice before super sizing.
Web Tools
- I also waste a lot of time at Stat Counter, which tracks the stats for this page. It’s free, the stats are comprehensive and its perfect to see how many times a day your stalker checks your blog.
- In the rare instances when Stat Counter has trouble identifying an IP address, I just plug it into the ARIN WHOIS Database Search – by far the best IP lookup tool I’ve used.
- Stalker wouldn’t have so much trouble hiding herself if she used The Cloak.
- As previously profiled here, the Way Back Machine is great for finding stuff that has disappeared from the Web.
- Copyscape lets you check to see if anyone is plagiarizing your blog or Web site.
- Pingoat lets you ping multiple services whenevr you update your site.
- This looks like a pretty cool tool for generating code if you want to let readers easily add your blog posts to any one of more than 30 social bookmarking sites Disclaimer: I couldn’t get it to work on my blog, but your results may vary.
- Localhostr let’s you quickly upload a file to the Web so you can share it with others. In terms of security, you get what you pay for from the free service, but for non-sensitive data it’s potentially helpful. It beats sending the unauthorized Lyonel Ritchie MP3 by email.
- Imeem is a social networking site. It’s sort of like MySpace for grown ups with a cooler interface, better features and no cyber kiddies sucking up bandwidth from 3:30 p.m. to midnight every damn day. It’s also a great place if you want something like Yahoo Groups but don’t like Yahoo.
- I don’t have enough events on my calendar to bother going through the rather lengthy set up process, but if I did, Group2Call would call me each morning and read that day’s events to me.
- You know you’re supposed to be backing up your computer, but you don’t do it (my own back up system involves two external hard drives that rotate in and out of a safe deposit box down the street). For those of you who want security without leaving home (and have the added bonus of being able to access your files from any computer), try Box.net. Your first gigabyte of storage is free.
Life In General
- Pollstar is fairly reliable for finding concerts. You can search by artist and city.
- But I like Tour Filter much better – you can plug in the names of your favorite bands and get an email as soon as they’re booked to play a show in your area (once I even got the email before the singer of the band I wanted to see knew the band had been booked for a gig).
- I haven’t played with it yet, but Slide comes highly recommended – it lets you easily create slide shows from your flickr photo albums, and then just as easily upload them to Web sites and MySpace pages.
- Need a custom t-shirt? Or a hundred? Custom Ink has been the best place to get them made in my experience.
- Before heading to the library to check out that coffee-stained classic, check out Gutenberg. The site has 19,000 titles, mostly from the public domain, available for download. Check out their Top 100.
- Painless breakups – just call the number, leave your pre-recorded message and be done with that skank or needy player. Their pre-recorded messages – which you can send to your own phone to see how the system works – are pretty funny.
- Get your drink on wherever you may be by finding a bar at uThirsty. The site combines Google maps with loads of information about happy hours and specials. The
- Once you’ve found the perfect bar, you need to get some friends to go with you. But scheduling an event (or a meeting at work) via email can be like herding cats. Use Doodle the next time you need to build a consensus on when to meet (it’s fast and free).
- Now available in 22 cities (including
- I haven’t tried it yet, but Qloud is supposed to be a great way to easily tag your songs in iTunes.
Personal Finance
- Prosper seems like a cool idea – you can get other users to bid to give you a loan, or you can bid to make loans to other users.
- The Motley Fool is a rather well known site, but an under-utilized corner of Fool includes dozens of different calculators for figuring out your finances and meeting your financial goals.
- Get Rich Slowly is a blog with lots of practical financial advice. To get a feel, check out the post on whether or not eating out is cheaper than dining in.
- Every journalist – particularly those assigned to write “record gas prices” stories – should have the Inflation Calculator as their homepage.
- Modest Needs is a nonprofit that hands out grants to people who are faced with unexpected emergencies.
- Doing your own legal work is like performing surgery on yourself, but every once in awhile you need a quick NDA. You can get basic legal forms here, and they’ll even pay you $50 if you can show that their forms don’t comply with state law.
- Money Magazine’s 25 rules to grow rich by (links to all four parts)
- Find freebies on Craig’s List with Comizo.
- Freelancers can track billable hours and project progress with Side Job Track.
Work, Reference, Writing and Productivity
- Writers of the world would get so much more done if they didn’t have distractions like email, RSS readers and instant messengers lurking behind their work space. You know the drill – you get in a groove and then someone IM’s you asking for your thoughts on last night’s episode of the Simpsons. That’s followed by six emails about weekend plans that need to be answered and then a quick check at Google reader where you have 100+ items for review. Temptation Blocker is a nifty little download that will prevent you from using any of those applications when you work. Granted, not having a Web browser when you’re writing is rough, but it’s a great tool for banging out first drafts where facts and word choice aren’t vital (unfortunately, their site is down as I write this, so I’m linking to the Lifehacker review of the download).
- Emurse is great place to build and store your online resume.
- While geared towards British writers, the BBC’s Web site has a section with good pointers on script formats.
- It’s very useful for fact checking and research, but at the same time I could waste hours on RefDesk.com.
- Courtesy of RefDesk I found an online atlas
- I use Dictionary several times a week to make sure I’m using the right word. But when I can’t think of the right word, this reverse dictionary is helpful.
- I’m doing preliminary research for my next book project and have been organizing my notes in Backpack. It basically a Web 2.0 rip off of Microsoft One Note but it has more features, it handles a lot better and you can work on your notes from multiple computers. If an when the book is published (we’re talking years from now) I plan to make all my notes public.
- Some people still like good old pen-and-paper for keeping track of appointments, addresses and other vital info. The Do It Yourself Planner is a cool, money saving concept that may get you organized.
- Any public records research should start at the Public Records Directory, which bills itself as the largest online resource.
- This guy’s so prolific he didn’t have time to design a fancy Web page: 50 Strategies To Make Yourself Work
- Joe’s Log Book is a neat, online tool that let’s you “record your thoughts, track your work travel and spending, watch your health, and track your dreams and inspirations.”
- Sick of all this talk about work? Call-In-Sick without having to get up at the crack of dawn.
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