Portent

This is a bit of a gimmick and it shows in Dollars or Euros only (what about £ Sterling!). Enter your salary in and it shows how much you earn each second or minute etc.

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This is a bit different from the usual websites. It’s on one topic- about changing peoples minds and has over 2,200 pages on a wide variety of topics. Very nicely organised and laid out.

For instance some of it is about the brain, writing, NLP, theories. It’s difficult to sum up in one phrase except it is about changing minds. Changing someone’s opinion on something is a difficult thing to do. In my experience once someone has made their mind up about something or someone then moving them away from that opinion is a difficult, in fact near impossible thing to do.

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Wikipedia is tremendous though occasionally it gets a bit of a mauling because of errors, quality etc. It has now over 2 million english language articles and by any criteria has been wildly successful.

However the co-founder of Wikipedia, Larry Sanger decided that he wanted to go back to the roots and create a Wikipedia that was written purely by experts to guarantee the quality. According to Wikipedia (oh the irony!)

“The project aims to improve on the Wikipedia model by requiring all contributors to do so with their real names, by strictly moderating the project for unprofessional behaviours, and by providing what it calls “gentle expert oversight” of everyday contributors. A main feature of the project is its “approved articles”, which have each undergone a form of peer-review by credentialed topic-experts and are closed to real-time editing.”

In other words it’s closer to a traditional encyclopedia albeit online, possibly something like maybe Encarta. It has nearly 3,000 article since it launched in March 2007. More choice is a good thing!

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Anyone into sci fi will be aware of both these series (never mind Babylon 5, Deep Space 9 and others) and it’s fun in a way to compare the two main ones to see how they vary in technologies, size, number of planets, political systems etc.

This is an almost academical in its scope but much more interesting reading than most academic papers. It makes a point of sticking to the canonical (ie most representative) sources such as the film and TV series whereas some other sites might cite fan fiction or non main stream sources. The ST v SW debate has been ongoing in one shape or another (via Usenet to start with) for over 20 years and this site is a welcome addition.

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This is still in alpha so expect bugs, new features etc but it’s interesting. I love the name- it shows a bit of edginess as freebasing is a drugs term (not that I’m an expert!).

Put simply, it’s the web 2.0 Wikipedia. Using clever searching etc to enhance the user interface. I think Wikipedia is big enough to take competition and it might spur them on, although I love Wikipedia the interface is a little dull and searching is not great. Freebase uses its own API (Application Programming Interface) so users who are developers can create their own applications. This is what Facebook, Flickr etc (what is it with websites starting with the letter F?) do.

So an interesting one to watch. What will Wikipedia do in reaction? (If any).
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Sometimes it doesn't seem it, but Members of Parliament are elected to do your bidding. Theyworkforyou is a website that lets you check up on your MP, find out how they're voting or whatever. The site has been doing that for the last 5 years and has recently added an API so external developers can access the information.

My MP ("Are you listening Harry Cohen?" ( Lab))  in a reply to me five years ago said he was strongly against ID cards, he now votes strongly in their favour. He will definitely not get my vote!

If you want a free list of MPs you can even get that here- to get it elsewhere would cost nearly £100. This is a truly excellent site for making Parliament more accessible.

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The Norwegian Met Office has been in business for 70 years and have produced an excellent website in English as well as Norwegian that gives weather forecasts for seven million places around the world. They even provide the weather data free in XML.

However they are Norwegian tax payer funded so they’re hoping not too many people will use/abuse the service as traffic of course costs money. I think the EU should contribute funding for this excellent service.

Not only do you get a forecast up to a week ahead, you also get flash animations for the couple of days ahead. It’s easier to read and understand than the UK taxpayer funded site on the BBC and they don’t try to ram climate change down your throat!

It’s not unknown for people to put their name into Google and to search on it; nothing like vanity and a touch of narcism. This isn’t the first site to do it, googlism has been around for donkeys years.

This though, originally was an art project and has become a website. It generates a sort of digital DNA of your profile on the web, but unlike real DNA of course can alter. It’s quite colourful and could I’m sure be expanded further. I’d love to see category links so I can find out what the illegal links are!

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Despite the web-comic approach, this is a website for those who want to understand how things work. In this case it’s making a reader/write for sim cards and also how to wire up a pay-phone so you can use it for VOIP type calls.

there’s plenty of such information on the web but the web-comic approach makes it look good and easier to digest in bite sized pages. The culture of diy electrical projects seems to have declined in recent years as digital electronics moved into the integrated circuit era. there are no doubt some who regard dabbling in this sort of thing as a bit beyond the pale but not me.

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There are a lot of dodgy websites out there. Not dodgy as in my spelling but sites that are likely to try and infect your computer.

This site (mywot.com) provides a browser plug-in for Firefox that shows a green or yellow circle against websites found in searches. Wot is short for Web of Trust. Green are good guys, red are bad. for instance I was spammed by someone about a site called grouply.com. Mywot.com gives a warning about dodgy sites and lets you see comments from users. Out of 21 million websites covered, over a million are considered dodgy. This is what Firefox says about Grouply.com when I try to go there.

As you can see from the little badge in the top right hand corner, I’m happy to let the world know about Mywot.com. It was foundered two years ago by two Finnish students.

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No, I’m not linking to a very dodgy porn site! (Oh dear, I bet I’ve started a new meme!). Siz|Easy lets you enter the dimensions of common objects and then shows them rendered using Flash with multiple views.

In the example show the objects are mobile phones and a pack of playing cards. The purple is the iPhone, the green a pack of cards and here are three other phones there including two Blackberries. it’s an interesting site and very well implemented though not a site I can see myself using that often!

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I got scammed £52 on phone insurance by a company from Swansea called Sealaway. They get numbers from branches of CarPhoneWarehouse (who buy phone numbers in blocks and let you view a list of available numbers and choose one). The scammers presumably must view this system, guess numbers that have been taken and then phone you pretending to be CarPhoneWarehouse or others offering cheaper insurance. Yeah, stupid stupid me..

Only it’s not real insurance (not underwritten by anyone), I got phoned from 01792306900 and searching the web lead to me WhoCalls Me.com. Just put in a number and see if anyone else has reported it and loads of stories- over 7 pages on that number. So recommended as a place to look if you get phone calls that you don’t recognise. The site is very simple and fast; recomended.

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If you’ve ever wondered how much people get paid at small, medium or large companies then this is the site for you and it’s completely free. You can view companies (over 11,000) generally or enter your own and see a lot more.

What is quite surprising for example that at JP Morgan Chase a personal banker is paid between $30K and $48K with an average of $35K. That’s from 41 submissions. Not everyone who works in a bank gets paid well! It’s an interesting site but as it depends upon people submitting details, so you will get back more if you submit yours. Just be careful not to submit too much or you might accidentally provide enough for your employer to identify you!

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Tube Status Screenshot

I bought an iPhone six days ago and this was one of the first applications to go on it. It’s what you’d call a “Does what it says on the tin” application.

If you travel on the London Underground (The Tube as we call it) and have an iPhone this is a must. It shows you the current status of all the London Underground lines and by clicking on the icons you can see what the problem is. You could use the Safari browser on the iPhone and get this info from London Underground but this packages it up nicely. Highly recommended.

There’s a similar paid app but I haven’t tried that yet.

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(Note: Links go to UK Apple App Store)

You can use this as a bit of fun or more serious.

What I liked about the site was just how well it works and how well thought out it is. If I needed surveys, I reckon this would easily be worth $20 a month. As an example, heres a survey I created with it. Only the first 100 respondents can fill it in (limitation of free). As an example of a good Web 2.0 site, I reckon SurveyMonkey.com is up there with the rest.
Click Here to take survey

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