Information Links

Isaac Asimov wrote of a fictional project to catalog the knowledge of the universe in his Foundation Trilogy of science fiction novels. The Internet contains the closest thing to the sum total of accumulated knowledge of the human race. We have moved from the Industrial Age to the Information Age. According to Alvin Toffler (The Third Wave), to compete in the Information Age, we must be able to rapidly use that information. The following links are massive collections of knowledge.

General Information

These sites provide general information on a particular subject or information on a subject that doesn't quite fit in another category.

AcronymFinder (Find the meaning of acronyms, abbreviations or initialism)

Answers.com (Ask a question, get an answer)

Carnegie Mellon Library (One of the best digital libraries @ CMU)

Charity Navigator (Is the charity real and what do they support?)

CIA World FactBook (Facts about every country from the CIA)

ConvertWorld (Convert from anything to anything)

CourseWare (Free on-line open courses from UC Irvine)

Criminal Searches (Does that maid, gardener or handyman have a criminal record?)

Digital Universe (Combines digital mapping portals)

DocuTicker (Subscribe to reports from government agencies, think tanks and info sources)

eNature (Wildlife and field guides)

Encyclopedia of Life (A page for every species)

Felon Spy (Search any neighborhood for convicted felons)

GOES (NOAA's Geostationary Satellite Server - think weather)

Google Help (All the things Google does and how to use it)

Google Maps (The best mapping site!!)

Google Video Search (Only for broadband - video search engine)

InfoBox (A collection of computer tips, information and tutorials )

InfoPlease (The on-line encyclopedia)

Learn out Loud (An audio/video learning resource)

Live Local (The Microsoft Windows mapping site)

Live Mochal (Learn another language for free)

Made How (Details how many common products are made with videos)

Museum of Museums (Find museums here - both point & click and brick & mortar)

Online Documentaries (Online videos of documentary films)

Online Schools (Where to get a real degree online)

Pretrieve (Search public records for free here)

Public Archives Films (Watch Public Information films from the National Archive in Britain)

Public Data (Links to every state)

Rules of Thumb (Every rule of thumb in one place)

Sacred Texts (The classic sacred texts in the British Library)

School Matters (See where Standard & Poor's ranks a school)

Sexual Offender Registry (By zip code)

Snopes (Is it true or an urban legend? Find out here)

Speed Traps (The national list by city and state)

TED (Inspired video talks by the world's leading thinkers)

Time & Date (Create calendars/clocks around the world)

Truth or Fiction (Check out rumors and email stories)

UPC Database (Determine who made anything by UPS barcode)

Virtual Gumshoe (Start here to locate information on people)

Weather (Get the weather for anywhere)

vPike (The virtual turnpike. Who took all those pictures?)

Whatis (Find the definition of computer terms)

Wikipedia (The self-correcting Internet encyclopedia. Great source on anything new in any field.)

Windows Shortcut Keys (Text short cut keys for Windows, courtesy of Oxford Physics)

WiseGeek (Original information on nearly 30,000 subjects)

WorldCat (Search 1.3 billion items in 10,000 libraries)

Worldometer (World stats in real time)

YearByYear (What happened in the year you were born?)

Your Street (Local news and conversations for your town)

Genealogy

The Internet puts world wide family history resources at your disposal. Once hooked, try to get some sleep.

Cyndi's List (A directory of genealogy sites - an Internet institution)

Ellis Island Online (Search immigration records from Ellis Island)

Family Search (The LDS search engine)

Footnote (Over 20 million+ source documents)

GenWeb (Probably the best genealogy research site)

LDS Catalog (A geneaology resource from the LDS church)

National Genographic (Macro genealogy - trace your heritage 50,000+ years)

RootsWeb (Lots of contributed information - not all valid)

U.S. Gov't resources for genealogists (Lots of contributed information - not all valid)

VetRecs (Request copies of Military Personnel records from the National Archives)

History

Sites that make history come alive.

America by Air (The history of American aviation exhibit at the Smithsonian)

Art History (Look at art over time and style)

Biography of America (An Annenberg project)

British Library (Flip through Leonardo's sketch book)

British National Archives (Search through history or family history)

Dead Sea Scrolls (Examine high resolution images of the scrolls)

Footnote (The place for original historical documents)

HyperHistory (Navigate 3,000 years of world history)

Historical Maps (A collection of historical maps for genealogy)

Journey of Mankind (Trace man's migration for 150,000 years from the Bradshaw Foundation)

Maps of War (Interesting historical site. See how an area has changed over time.)

NNDB (Find bio information on a name in the news)

On This Day (Find out what happened on this day in history)

Oxford Project (21 years in the lives of Oxford, Iowa residents)

Sistine Chapel (Explore Michelangelo's masterpiece from your computer)

Sound Recording Archive (At the British Library)

Who's Alive and Who's Dead (A site that tracks of famous people have died)

Wonderful World (The National Geographic global knowledge project)

Internet Books

The copyright laws prevent the publication of many books on the Internet. In 1992, Project Gutenberg was started at the National Center for Super Computing Applications at the University of Illinois. The original intent was to put 20,000 books on the Internet by 1999. When Mickey Mouse, at age 75 was about to go into the Public Domain, the Disney Company lobbied Congress to extend the Copyright laws from 75 years to 125 years. This dramatically reduced the number of books available to Project Gutenberg from 20,000 to 10,000. Since Gutenburg, numerous other efforts have been made to put copy righted books on line with proper attribution to the Copyright Holder. Some authors are giving up their Copyrights to publish online. Other books are available for a fee.

Amazon Bestseller (The Amazon best selling, most gifted and most wished for books)

Bartleby (The great books on-line)

eBooks@Adelaide (The University of Adelaide on-line and ready for download)

eBooks (Download ebooks here - many free)

Etymology (Online etymology - look up word origins)

Feedbooks (Download public domain and new books to any mobile device)

Freedict (International dictionaries - translate to/from English.)

Forbidden Library (Read and order banned and censored books here)

From Old Books (High resolution illustrations and illuminations from old books)

Google Books (Search an entire library for information or the right quote)

Hyper Dictionary (A dictionary of English, computer terms, medical terms and more)

Internet Encyclopedia (A online encyclopedia)

Internet Public Library (An online public library)

LivbriVox (Listen to or download podcasts of books in the library)

Martindale's (The reference source)

Merriam Webster Online Dictionary (A complete online dictionary)

Merriam Webster Visual Dictionary (A visual dictionary)

NYT Book Reviews (See the current best sellers in all categories)

Open Library (Read or listen to books in the library)

Project Gutenberg (Download complete books and historic documents)

Planet PDF (The classics in PDF format)

Questia (The world's largest online library - $100/year but well worth it)

Quotations Page (Who said that? Find out here.)

QuotationsDot (Find the perfect quotation for any purpose)

World Cat (Search libraries around the world)

Worldia (The Internet dynamic dictionary)

Internet Newspapers and Magazines

Linotype machines were the common method to typeset newspapers and magazines from 1920 to the early 1960's. Linotype machines were expensive, labor intensive and inaccurate. When Computerized Typesetting was introduced in the 1960's, nearly every newspaper and magazine went to the new technology. Even with the high cost of early computers, it was less expensive than Linotype machines, more accurate, saved time and provided a repository of content for computer searching. When the Internet came along the newspapers only needed to point their Web Server at the database and they were on line for nearly no cost. So every newspaper IS on-line and free because the content was already in a computer database. The few that charge provide valuable daily information like The Wall Street Journal or Investor's Business Daily.

For more information on Linotype machines see linotype.org

Arts and Letters Daily (Find any newspaper or publication.)

Australian Antarctic Magazine (All about the South Pole from "down under")

Australian News Links (News from sources in Oz)

Christian Science Monitor (One of the best and most most unbiased news sources)

Front Pages (Front pages of 100's of today's papers)

Global Newspapers (Select a country and find a paper)

Google News (Your complete source for news)

Google News Archive (Search the archive for past stories)

InstaPaper (Save news articles and read later)

Live News Cams (Television news feeds from your choice of cities)

LookSmart Findarticles (Search and read 5.5 million articles from over 900 publications)

MediaFetcher (Search for an article, name or image across the Internet)

NewsMuseum (See the front page of newspapers by clicking on a city)

NewsPaperMap (Use a map to find your newspaper of choice)

NewsVoyager (Find any newspaper in the country)

Pravda (Visit the farm team for CBS, NYT and Newsweek. Strong on opinion - weak on facts.)

Regret The Error (reports on corrections, retractions regarding accuracy in the media.)

ScienceNews (Latest news from all fields of science)

Ten by Ten (A unique way of looking at the news)

Internet Picture Sites

Sites with great photographs. Many with photos not available anywhere else.

Architecture (America's favorite architecture from AIA)

Astronomy Picture of the Day (Discover the cosmos courtesy of NASA)

Best of the Hubble (From the Space Telescope Science Institute)

Historic Newsreels (Historic movies from the Internet Archive)

Hubble (Everything about the Hubble Space Telescope)

Hubble Heritage (Pictures and more from STSCI)

Microscope Imaging Station (at the Exploratorium in San Francisco)

Medieval Medical Illustrations (at the UNC library)

NASA Images (an Internet archive of NASA images)

Newser (A quick visual look at the news)

PanoramaExplorer (Add pictures to a satellite picture)

Smithsonian Photography (The photographic archive)

Visual Dictionary (A collection of cataloged photographs)

World Wide Telescope (A project from Microsoft Research)

Science, Mathematics and Higher Education

These sites are devoted to scientific interests, mathematics and higher education. MIT, for example has thousands of courses on the Internet - no degree, but they are free for the taking. Complete with video lectures, tests, course notes. Also, be sure to Google iLectures for a search of current on-line lectures.

Anglosphere Institute (All cultures are not the same)

Ascent of Man (All 13 episodes of Jacob Bronowski's BBC series)

Association of Science Technology Centers (Links to lots of Science Museums)

Astronomy Media Player (Podcasts on astronomy)

Human Genome (The Human Genome Project)

Astrophysics at Harvard (A Harvard/Smithsonian project)

Bethe Lectures (Streaming video lectures of Hans Bethe on modern physics)

CERN (The European Organization for Nuclear Research - home of the LHC)

Climate Data (Is it really warming? Check the facts at NOAA)

Doppler Radar (The National Weather Service Doppler radar sites by city)

Education Portal (Find an on-line university for a degree or to audit courses)

Einstein Online (The complete works online)

Encyclopedia of Philosophy (at the University of Tennessee in Martin)

ESA (The European Space Agency)

ESO (The European Southern Observatory in Chile)

Exploratorium (The San Francisco science museum)

FermiLab (The National Accelerator Laboratory in Batavia, Ill)

Genetic Engineering News (All the latest on this important subject)

Hubble Space Telescope (All the images are here)

Human Genome (The Human Genome Project)

Junk Science (Debunk global warming, second-hand smoke, DDT, creationism)

Library of Law (Learn the law or find legal information)

LIGO (Laser Interferometer Gravitational wave Observatory)

Living Reviews in Relativity (Keep up with the latest from the Max Planck Institute)

Mammal Species of the World (Find the scientific name and classification of any mammal)

MathWorld (The Web's most extensive mathematics resource from Wolfram)

Max Planck Institute (for gravitational physics in Potsdam)

MIT Open Courses (Most MIT undergrad courses are available free online)

MIT World (Attend guest lectures at MIT)

Molecular Expressions (Exploring optics & microscopy at Florida State)

Nobel Prize (Everything you wanted to know about the Nobel Prize including laureates)

Open Courseware (Look at all the universities that offer open courses)

Periodic Table (Dynamic Periodic Table)

Periodic Videos (A video of each element. One can spend weeks on this site.)

Human Protein Atlas (An atlas of human proteins)

QED (The sum of mathematical knowledge held at Argonne National Labs)

Research Channel (Video lectures from leading universities)

RHIC (The Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider at Brookhaven)

Scanning Electron Microscope (Be sure to view the images)

Science Daily (Your daily science source for research in any field)

Science Now (The magazine from AAAS to promote science advancements)

Scirus Search Engine (For peer reviewed scientific/medical information)

Sky Eye (Keep up with astronomical events)

Snow Crystal (The physics of snowflakes from CalTech)

SOHO (Real time solar images from the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory)

Space.com (All about space, spaceflight and astronomy - lots of videos)

Stellarium (The Open Source planetarium)

TED (Ideas worth spreading. Another site to spend a lifetime.)

Turnbull Math (The math department at St. Andrews)

Video Lectures (From many well known scientists)

VLA (The Very Large Array in Secorro, New Mexico)

WikiGenes (Find the purpose of any gene in the human or canine DNA)

Telephone Help

These sites will help you on the telephone.

AnyWho (The AT&T Information site. Yellow, white pages + reverse lookup)

Argali (Search all the on-line telephone directories)

DeadZones (Map of the places where cell phone don't work)

Google 411 (Google on your phone)

Hard To Find 800 Numbers

Infobel (The international telephone directory)

IVRhacks (Another database to get around annoying telephone menus)

Talk to a human (The keys to escape telephone hell from Intuit)

Yellow Pages (With White Pages too)

Legal Sites

Sites to help you with the law.

FindLaw (Your database for all legal specialties or to find a lawyer)

Legal Zoom (Legal documents for every state. Less expensive than a lawyer.)

NOLO (Legal information, books and documents)