Well, since the last article came out I found some other web sites that I wanted you to know about.
Of course, the internet is not just for checking your email, doing some Google searching, and reading the news anymore. Check the links below to see what else you can now do:
1. Look at lots of statistics and compare your country to other countries in fields such as – infant mortality rates, taxes paid by individuals, taxes paid by corporations, deaths by guns, % of GPD paid for education, and much more: http://www.nationmaster.com/ This site is so full of information I’ve sent the link to many of my friends.
2. Here’s a great site for car owners. Track your cars (or motorcycles) services and get email reminders of the service due, check common problems and see reliability ratings and reviews of cars, and more. Look up your car and see what are the common problems you might expect to be coming up. IF you live in the US, you can even get repair estimates for your problems and find the local repair shop to handle it: http://repairpal.com/
3. Again for the US only (sorry), check to see what criminals live near you or a loved one. It gives pictures, addresses, and what their crime was:
http://www.criminalsearches.com/neighborhood/default.aspx
4. Do you often have left-over food after a nice meal? Well, don’t toss it. Do you have some interesting food in the refrigerator/freezer but don’t know how to make something with it? Find out what you can make with it:
http://www.lovefoodhatewaste.com/
5. Speaking of food. Check the calories in that McDonald’s Big Mac, or your tuna fish sandwich here:
http://calorielab.com/index.html
6. This helpful site presents user-submitted “rules of thumb,” which the community can rate for their usefulness. Want to harness the collective wisdom on managing your money, finding the perfect mate, or getting rid of back pain? RulesofThumb is the place to be. Whether the collective wisdom is on target, however, is a call you’ll have to make yourself. www.rulesofthumb.org
7. Given my experience with greeting cards, both e- and real-world, it comes as quite a shock that one of the funniest sites on the Web is an e-card service. Browsing through the site’s enormous collection of hilarious e-cards was enough to make me wish I had more friends to send them to. www.someecards.com
8. Plane ticket prices go up and down seemingly at random; you could buy a ticket today only to see the price sink (or spike) tomorrow. Farecast makes sense of it all by tracking pricing trends to let you know when it’s time to pull the trigger. Enter in your travel dates, and Farecast will give you a pricing chart going back several weeks, along with a recommendation of whether to buy or wait. farecast.live.com
9. Do you get an email from a friend that contains something that is ‘unbelieveable’? Well here are two reputable places to check out that email: www.snopes.com and factcheck.org. Both cover wacky emails and urban legends.
10.Want all the info about the old movie you remember but can’t remember the star’s name? Or, you want to know what other movies your favorite actor has done? Go on over to an old but still great site: www.imdb.com and check out everything about movies!
When you’re done with the computer for a while, here are three more web sites for your kids:
1. Protecting your kids on the Internet and teaching them safe browsing habits doesn’t have to be dull—so says Safe Surfer. The site is jam-packed with games, news, and resources aimed at helping kids protect themselves against the dangers of the World Wide Web. www.safesurfer.org
2. K-Ship1 – my kids love this site. It’s designed to make learning seem like not learning at all. It makes it fun! There are great games; world travel information about countries; a ‘submarine’ with underwater information about sea creatures; and lots of games. www.kbears.com
3. Kidssites.com has links to many kid’s sites divided into ‘Toddlers’, ‘Preschoolers’, and ‘Primary’. Then they are grouped within each category into games, coloring, stories, songs, e-cards, and more, with info about the content of each site listed. It makes it easy to find just the right web site for your child.
