Before the internet if you wanted to access information you had to go to a library, which having limited shelves and storage space had to choose what it had available. The internet has removed that restriction but still, finding information on specialist stuff requires a bit of digging.
Pinouts.ru is one such specialist site. It provides information on pinouts- eg those funny connectors you see on electronic devices as well as inside them. There is a lot here for the electronics specialist or merely the curious. A little bit out of the normal but an excellent resource nonetheless.
Popularity: 3% [?]
Maps, especially online have always been restrictive in what you can do with them due to copyright etc. But there has been an international movement dedicated to providing unrestricted alternatives and as you can see, this map of my part of London is pretty good. I’ve put a blue rectangle around the area in the top map which the bottom map shows.
Like Google Maps you can zoom in and out and drag the map. No satellite data of course!
Not all streets are currently labelled- mine isn’t, but I could sign up and add it in. As more and more people sign up this becomes more and more valuable. One danger is of course that people will be lazy and copy data from commercial or copyright maps and that could be a problem. It’s not unknown for cartographers to introduce fake streets etc to try and spot when people copy their work.
So if you have a spare moment or two, why not help this map by signing up (no costs) and adding your local information.
Link
Popularity: 16% [?]
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?
So an interesting one to watch. What will Wikipedia do in reaction? (If any).
Link
Popularity: 11% [?]
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.
Popularity: 12% [?]
If you want to find out statistics about the UK, jobs, population, etc the National Statistics website is an excellent source. Most of the material there is Crown Copyright which means it can be quoted or used so long as you acknowledge the source and don’t try and do anything stupid like sell it.
While looking for something there I came across the map shown which shows which areas have received the most immigrants (legal ones that is) between 2004 and 2006. Living in the South East it’s easy to fall into the trap of thinking that the whole world lives here but in fact as the map shows, immigrants have settled in many parts of the UK, even 22 in Larne (in N. Ireland) where I took my driving test 30 years ago!
The picture and link below link to a PDF.
PDF Link
Popularity: 8% [?]
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.
Popularity: 8% [?]
This is not a website to recommend to those of a monotheistic outlook on life (“One God”). But if you’re into pantheism or just interested this has lots of information on Gods from many cultures- American Indian, Chinese and many more, 154 gods in total, 316 with their alternative names.
There’s also a lot of related stuff such as 578 Saintans and their alternative names, ancient numerology, even Lego Gods. It’s very well done.
Popularity: 14% [?]
I think this is an excellent idea and hope other third level educational establishments will follow- MIT already do this but not on youtube. The University of California, Berkeley has done a deal with youtube to host videos of their lectures.
These comprise biology (39 lectures) , physics (26 Lectures) and search engines(6 lectures) which is a bit of an odd mix. If you want to see and hear what Sergey Brin (co-founder of Google is like), have a look.
Popularity: 10% [?]
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.
Popularity: 6% [?]
Government websites don’t usually show up here but I think this one on vehicle recalls warrants coverage. (It’s UK) - a database of all vehicle recalls that you can query to see if your vehicle has had anything wrong with it.
It used to be you had to phone or call in a dealer to find out vehicle recalls information- I had to once with a Ford Orion that needed the jockey wheel replaced. This is a vitally important wheel that was originally plastic in the 1.8 Diesel engines and could break. If that went you lost your timing belt and most likely turned the engine into a pile of useless scrap metal. Ford issued a replacement metal wheel.
So if you buy a 2nd hand car you know where to look, to check for vehicle recalls.
Popularity: 7% [?]
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!
Popularity: 6% [?]
If you have ever read the book “Wisdom of Crowds” by James Suriewicki, this might give you an idea of what vosnap is about.
Its an easy way, using social networking to ask others what their opinion of something you are planning to do or thinking about. E.g. Someone asked ““Should I get drunk on my flight to MIA tomorrow?”” - the results were “Duh”, “yes” and “never”? You have to register to use this site.
It’s a novel concept though having one website for this, something which could probably easily be incorporated into other social networking sites seems a bit limiting.
Popularity: 6% [?]
This is an interesting idea. Authors (in the UK, USA, Australian and Canada) who are doing a book tour to promote their books can connect with audiences via this free site. Likewise the audiences can find out- it’s not the easiest thing to find out- where do you look for information about forth coming book tours?
The site itself is well done, though restricting search to zip codes is perhaps a little limiting (hey guys- we use Postcodes!), so perhaps the majority of stuff there is US based but with provision for the other countries. But a good idea nonetheless. You can also read about some of the worst tours from the authors themselves!
Popularity: 5% [?]
This is an article that compares the monthly lists of the 100 most visited Wikipedia pages for the period of September 2006 to January 2007.
A software package called searchCrystal is used to visualize the overlap between the five monthly Top 100 lists to show which pages are highly visited in all five months; which pages in four of the five months and so on. Almost 40 percent of a month’s top 100 pages are visited in all five months, with 25 percent highly visited only in a single month.
I’m into visualsations- part of me is fascinated by the way extra insights can be gained just by viewing figures in different ways. This shows the data in three different ways- you may find the writing a little “dusty” that’s academics for you! But the three graphics are interesting.
Link
Popularity: 5% [?]
It has never really been easy to show just how devastating a nuclear weapon is, in film. The TV series Heroes in episode three uses the approaching clouds of dust (also used in Battlestar Galactica), a popular method I think, since footage of the Twin Towers collapse on 9/11. Understandably, there are few survivors to the close up of a real nuke blast!
The Nuclear Weapon Archive is a very detailed look at Nuclear Weapons with statistics, list of arsenals, articles with photos and comment. I didn’t appreciate for instance that 130,000 weapons have been built since 1945. No technical specifications of weapon designs are found on this site. All information is from public sources, or based on reasonable inference or speculation from public information.
A google search of the site reveals 331 pages. My only complaint about the site is the poor navigation. Like many sites that are labours of love, it has evolved and is in my opinion, in need of a good redesign! But the content can not be flawed. Excellent stuff.
Popularity: 6% [?]