SHPL- INTERNET LINKS

107 More Cool Sites

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Coolest Information Sites

2. National Weather Service provides severe-weather warnings, detailed weather forecasts, marine and aviation forecasts, Doppler radar, satellite images, and more.

3.1st Headlines: Current headlines with links to full story from 300+ newspapers, broadcast & online sources around the world.

4. Recalls was created by the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission. In light of several massive recalls of human and pet food, this is the authority to check.

5. AF, Acronym Finder will help you find out just what NBD, ROLOTFL, and other acronyms mean. It has more than 500,000 entries.

6. Presidents of the United States is part of the Internet Public Library and has biographical information for all the U.S. presidents. Everything from election totals to cabinet members is included.

7. The National Atlas Web site is easy to navigate. It has every time of map you can think of including the history of the Zebra Mussel migration.

8. The Encyclopedia of Earth lets visitors browse by article title, author, topic, content partner, or content source.

9. The National Institutes of Health serves as a quality portal for medical information. Has audio, text, diagrams and more. Check out the information about the composition and safety of household items.

10. SchoolMatters allows you to search and compare schools throughout the country. Lots of graphs and benchmarking tools.

11. Weather Bonk is a new “mashup” site which combines features of two web sites. Here the weather and Google maps allow you see detailed weather reports, traffic data, and weather cameras for cities around the world.

12. Internet Legal Resource Guide is a categorized index of more than 4000 select web sites with an emphasis on the US. Designed for laypersons also.

13. The World Factbook from the CIA offers up-to-date information on every country including maps.

14. Measurement Conversion has interactive calculators for many measurement systems from metric to U.S.

15. Wikipedia is a free encyclopedia. The hitch is that anyone can edit it. Take a look and decide. Seems to be especially good for techno terms.

Coolest "Learn Something" Sites

18. Purdue University's Online Writing Lab is an excellent source with examples for writing research papers using APA or MLA formats.

19. We All Use Math Everyday. Whether we find ourselves counting change at the grocery store or figuring out how much the price of gas has gone up in the past several weeks, it is certainly true that we all use math everyday.

20. Kitchen Chemistry. There is a great deal of chemistry going on in every kitchen, even though most cooks may not be aware of it. This site is not for the faint of heart.

21. How Stuff Works: Don't have a clue how something works? This site answers questions for you. Great for parents trying to help with homework.

22. The Library of Congress has indeed chronicled much of America, and this latest stellar effort will be of great interest to just about anyone with a penchant for learning about American history. Now has newspapers from 1900-1910, but will expand.

23. E-how provides clear instructions on how to do just about anything from how to play the kazoo to how to create a tile mosaic.

24. Don Vandervort’s Home Tips has advice on appliances, fixtures, safety. Does have some commercial links.

25. Jim’s Home Repair Stuff has tips like how to stop floor squeaks and how to make your hot water heater last longer.

Coolest  Culture and Museum Sites

28. United States Military Academy Digital Library is the oldest federal library in the United States. Site includes over twenty thematic collections.

29.. Douglas Menuez Photography Collection. Douglas Menuez began his careers as an intern with the Washington Post, and over the past several decades he has covered the AIDS crisis, the destruction of the Amazonian rainforest, and a host of other topics.

30. Aviation: From Sand Dunes to Sonic Booms. This National Register of Historic Places Travel Itinerary website will take you on a breezy and visually stimulating tour of some of the sites that document America’s aviation history.

Coolest Science, Space, and Nature  Sites

32. NOAA Watch: NOAA’s All-Hazard Monitor. When the weather outside is frightful (or even when it isn’t), budding meteorologists will want to turn to the NOAA’s All-Hazard Monitor website. The site also features information about weather in space, rip currents, and harmful algae blooms.

33. Astronomy Online is a website devoted to astronomy. The site has been the recipient of several awards over the past few years, and visitors looking for basic and accessible information about the world of astronomy will not be disappointed.

34. The Monterey Bay Aquarium has developed the Seafood Watch site to help people make informed decisions about purchasing different types of seafood.

35. Michigan DNR site for the outdoor enthusiasts among us.

36. The Hubblesite won a 2007 Webby award for their site. Lots of glorious pictures from space.

Coolest Health Sites

38. NHLNI (National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute) offers their own BMI calculator along with risk assessments.

39. Calories Per Hour calculates not only your BMI but also how many calories you would burn in a day if you did absolutely nothing. It has a list of hundreds of activities and can calculate how many calories you would burn doing each.

40. Joint site for the University of Michigan Medical Center and the University of Michigan Medical School with links to special studies at the Center.

41. Dr. Greene’s Housecalls is one of the best site for pediatric information.

Coolest Music Sites

44. Met Archives: The Metropolitan Opera. Listen to lovely recordings on the Met’s very enchanting Met Archives website. First-time visitors may wish to read over the introductory essay on the history of the Met, and then proceed to the interactive timeline, “Sights & Sounds of Met History”.

45. Songwriters Hall of Fame Virtual Museum lets visitors browse through the “Inductee Exhibits” area, which includes information about all the inductees over the past four decades, organized into three broad categories.Visitors can also listen to clips

Coolest "Reader" Sites

48. All Readers says “choose from hundreds of plot, theme, character, and setting options to find precisely what you're looking for!”

49. Bookfinder says “rather than selling books ourselves, we’ve created a free book search tool. We are a one-stop search site that lets you view the collections of over 60,000 sellers of new, used, rare, and out of print books.”

Coolest Entertainment Sites

52. Rotten Tomatoes reviews movies, videos, DVDs and video games from newspapers and online journals. One can even view trailers and movie clips. Also includes a blog for the Cannes Film Festival

53. Daily Sudoku lets you have a new number puzzle to solve every day. Caution: these little puzzles can be highly addicting.

54. Birth of TV has numerous clips of early television programs, insightful commentaries, and even early television guides.

55. Television Without Pity offers reviews of popular television series but with a sarcastic bent.

56. Jigzone is for jigsaw puzzle fans. Choose from hundreds of puzzles of all difficulty levels. Move the pieces with your mouse.

57. Trivia Portal is a trivia lover’s paradise. Wide range of topics and a number of contests.

58. Pubwalk is a mashup site with bar and restaurant reviews combined with a Google map. You’ll get a pushpin on the map which you click on for further information and reviews.

Coolest Computer and Electronics Sites

61. Yahoo Answers lets you ask a questions or answer them. All you need is a Yahoo ID.

62. Taming Computers offers tips & techniques for beginners.

63.  Jan’s Illustrated Computer Literacy 101 comes from a college professor and has lots of illustrations.

64. Hoaxbuster, from the government, is the CIAC Internet Hoax and Chain Letter pages. In addition to describing hoaxes and chain letters found on the Internet, learn how to recognize and get rid of them.

65. Download.com is another source for freeware and shareware.

66. Digital Photography Review offers the latest in digital photography and imaging news, reviews of the latest digital cameras and accessories, discussion forums, a large selection of sample images, a digital camera buyers guide, side-by-side comparisons and a comprehensive database of digital camera features and specifications.

67. Digital Camera Resource Page is designed to be an unofficial consumer resource for digital cameras. Its mission of this site is to provide honest reviews of digital cameras with no ads.

68. Digital Camera HQ helps shoppers compare digital camera reviews. Organized by price, resolution, size, and functionality.

Coolest Buying and Shopping Sites

71. Criterion Collection is a site to purchase DVDs. They release many foreign and domestic films that are hard to find. Site includes essays and reviews for most of the film releases.

72. Pricegrabber allows you to do price comparison shopping on just about any item you can think of.

73. CNET does reviews and price comparisons for electronic gear of all kinds.

74. Slick deal is a great place for deal watching.

75. Craigs List for the Detroit Metro area. Online classifieds. You deal directly with the seller, no fees, no guarantees.

76. Mighty Goods says “Mighty Goods is a shopping weblog. We look for things we really like, and then we put them here, right where you can find them.”

Coolest  Sites for Kids

79. Great Sites: from the Librarian's Guide to Cyberspace, a new cybercollection of links to more than 700 sites.

80. Yahooligans: a searchable index of the Internet for web surfers ages 7 - 18.

81. FEMA for Kids: Federal Emergency Management Agency has a site with games, stories, audios, fun facts, and other activities to teach children about disaster preparedness.

82. Kids in Mind offers detailed write-ups which are not reviews, but rather in-depth accounts of a film's content. Each movie gets a scorecard noting sexual content, violence, profanity, etc.

Coolest Travel Sites

84. One of my favorite web sites is chowhound.com. I use it before we take a trip to check out what the "locals" think the best places to eat are.

85. Kayak is an aggregator, it searches multiple sites and tells you the best deal. You then book with that site.

86. Mobissimo is another aggregator. You will probably get different results from each aggregator.

87. Travelaxe is an aggregator. Always check several sources to find the best deal.

88. SeatGuru lets you check seats on all airplanes. Find out which seat to avoid at all costs.

89. Currency Converter includes rates and currency photos. Also has a “historic lookup”.

90. Yellowstone Park is done the way a travel site should be. Can’t wait to use the site to plan my next trip. Site won a 2007 Webby Award.

Coolest Food Sites

92. Meals for You offers complete meal plans by weight loss, international, vegetarian, and gourmet categories.

93. EatChicken covers chicken nutrition, recipes, contests, etc.

94. Culinary.net has kitchen-tested recipes developed by leading food and beverage companies and associations.

Coolest Weird Sites

97. The Geographic Database of Bigfoot/Sasquatch Sightings and Reports: Again, pretty self-explanatory. Also has links so you can report your own Bigfoot sighting, if need be...

98. The South East Michigan Ghost Hunters Society : Gotta love a site with this introduction at the top of its home page: "Are you in need of an investigation or do you have a question about activity you might be experiencing? If so, click here."

Coolest Sites in General, or Everything Else

101. Girls and their mommas, local site.

102. Zillow offers free access to historical purchase prices, estimates of current value, square-footage and aerial images of houses across the country.

103. Ta-Da Lists lets you create lists for anything you need. You can even make lists for other prople or share your lists with the rest of the world.

104. Remember the Milk is another list makers’ site. This free one lets you make more detailed lists and can also be done as a calendar.

105. Urban Legends Reference Pages offers insight into urban legends, common fallacies, misinformation, old wives’ tales and more.

106. Pet Sitters International offers plenty of information for those wanting to be pet sitters and well as those looking for an accredited sitter. Just put in your zip code and you’ll get a list of services available in your area.

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