My Salon Blog colleague Ted Ritzer keeps a list of Useful Web Sites (for all web users, not just bloggers) originally compiled by Kevin Kelly, of Wired, The Well, and Whole Earth Catalog fame. Kevin no longer maintains his list, and instead has an intriguing Cool Tools site, but it’s only for the rich — virtually everything on the site costs money, often a lot of it. So Ted and I agreed it’s time to update the Useful Web Sites list, and we need your help. What links and free downloads should every self-respecting Internet user have on their desktop?
The list should not include pay sites, nor should it include news sites, blogs or other sites that appear on blogrolls (too many, and too subjective). Nor should it include highly specialized sites (I have a personal list of favourite genealogy sites, but I realize that few people would consider these ‘essential’). To make the list manageable, I’ve identified 21 categories for the essential links (let me know if you think I’ve missed an entire category). If I get enough response, I’ll publish a list of the Top 3 in each category and keep it on my sidebar or Spurl it (Spurl lets you keep your web bookmarks online and share them with others). The examples shown for each category are my personal favourites and some of them are eccentric, so they may not make the Top 3 list. Quite a few of them come from the excellent Jason Lefkowitz’ Quality Software list (thanks to Internet Time for the link):
What are your essential links and invaluable free downloads? |
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--- My Best 200 Posts, 2003-22 by category, from newest to oldest ---
Collapse Watch:
Hope — On the Balance of Probabilities
The Caste War for the Dregs
Recuperation, Accommodation, Resilience
How Do We Teach the Critical Skills
Collapse Not Apocalypse
Effective Activism
'Making Sense of the World' Reading List
Notes From the Rising Dark
What is Exponential Decay
Collapse: Slowly Then Suddenly
Slouching Towards Bethlehem
Making Sense of Who We Are
What Would Net-Zero Emissions Look Like?
Post Collapse with Michael Dowd (video)
Why Economic Collapse Will Precede Climate Collapse
Being Adaptable: A Reminder List
A Culture of Fear
What Will It Take?
A Future Without Us
Dean Walker Interview (video)
The Mushroom at the End of the World
What Would It Take To Live Sustainably?
The New Political Map (Poster)
Beyond Belief
Complexity and Collapse
Requiem for a Species
Civilization Disease
What a Desolated Earth Looks Like
If We Had a Better Story...
Giving Up on Environmentalism
The Hard Part is Finding People Who Care
Going Vegan
The Dark & Gathering Sameness of the World
The End of Philosophy
A Short History of Progress
The Boiling Frog
Our Culture / Ourselves:
A CoVid-19 Recap
What It Means to be Human
A Culture Built on Wrong Models
Understanding Conservatives
Our Unique Capacity for Hatred
Not Meant to Govern Each Other
The Humanist Trap
Credulous
Amazing What People Get Used To
My Reluctant Misanthropy
The Dawn of Everything
Species Shame
Why Misinformation Doesn't Work
The Lab-Leak Hypothesis
The Right to Die
CoVid-19: Go for Zero
Pollard's Laws
On Caste
The Process of Self-Organization
The Tragic Spread of Misinformation
A Better Way to Work
The Needs of the Moment
Ask Yourself This
What to Believe Now?
Rogue Primate
Conversation & Silence
The Language of Our Eyes
True Story
May I Ask a Question?
Cultural Acedia: When We Can No Longer Care
Useless Advice
Several Short Sentences About Learning
Why I Don't Want to Hear Your Story
A Harvest of Myths
The Qualities of a Great Story
The Trouble With Stories
A Model of Identity & Community
Not Ready to Do What's Needed
A Culture of Dependence
So What's Next
Ten Things to Do When You're Feeling Hopeless
No Use to the World Broken
Living in Another World
Does Language Restrict What We Can Think?
The Value of Conversation Manifesto Nobody Knows Anything
If I Only Had 37 Days
The Only Life We Know
A Long Way Down
No Noble Savages
Figments of Reality
Too Far Ahead
Learning From Nature
The Rogue Animal
How the World Really Works:
Making Sense of Scents
An Age of Wonder
The Truth About Ukraine
Navigating Complexity
The Supply Chain Problem
The Promise of Dialogue
Too Dumb to Take Care of Ourselves
Extinction Capitalism
Homeless
Republicans Slide Into Fascism
All the Things I Was Wrong About
Several Short Sentences About Sharks
How Change Happens
What's the Best Possible Outcome?
The Perpetual Growth Machine
We Make Zero
How Long We've Been Around (graphic)
If You Wanted to Sabotage the Elections
Collective Intelligence & Complexity
Ten Things I Wish I'd Learned Earlier
The Problem With Systems
Against Hope (Video)
The Admission of Necessary Ignorance
Several Short Sentences About Jellyfish
Loren Eiseley, in Verse
A Synopsis of 'Finding the Sweet Spot'
Learning from Indigenous Cultures
The Gift Economy
The Job of the Media
The Wal-Mart Dilemma
The Illusion of the Separate Self, and Free Will:
No Free Will, No Freedom
The Other Side of 'No Me'
This Body Takes Me For a Walk
The Only One Who Really Knew Me
No Free Will — Fightin' Words
The Paradox of the Self
A Radical Non-Duality FAQ
What We Think We Know
Bark Bark Bark Bark Bark Bark Bark
Healing From Ourselves
The Entanglement Hypothesis
Nothing Needs to Happen
Nothing to Say About This
What I Wanted to Believe
A Continuous Reassemblage of Meaning
No Choice But to Misbehave
What's Apparently Happening
A Different Kind of Animal
Happy Now?
This Creature
Did Early Humans Have Selves?
Nothing On Offer Here
Even Simpler and More Hopeless Than That
Glimpses
How Our Bodies Sense the World
Fragments
What Happens in Vagus
We Have No Choice
Never Comfortable in the Skin of Self
Letting Go of the Story of Me
All There Is, Is This
A Theory of No Mind
Creative Works:
Mindful Wanderings (Reflections) (Archive)
A Prayer to No One
Frogs' Hollow (Short Story)
We Do What We Do (Poem)
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Reminder (Short Story)
A Canadian Sorry (Satire)
Under No Illusions (Short Story)
The Ever-Stranger (Poem)
The Fortune Teller (Short Story)
Non-Duality Dude (Play)
Your Self: An Owner's Manual (Satire)
All the Things I Thought I Knew (Short Story)
On the Shoulders of Giants (Short Story)
Improv (Poem)
Calling the Cage Freedom (Short Story)
Rune (Poem)
Only This (Poem)
The Other Extinction (Short Story)
Invisible (Poem)
Disruption (Short Story)
A Thought-Less Experiment (Poem)
Speaking Grosbeak (Short Story)
The Only Way There (Short Story)
The Wild Man (Short Story)
Flywheel (Short Story)
The Opposite of Presence (Satire)
How to Make Love Last (Poem)
The Horses' Bodies (Poem)
Enough (Lament)
Distracted (Short Story)
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A Conversation (Short Story)
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My Other Sites
Going to give Spurl a try. Thanks for the link.My bookmark favorites is a monster!–Go Flames!
A free source of images is not one of your categories, but my single most useful and inspiring web site is The Astronomy Picture of the Day. Astronomers Jerry Bonnell and Robert Nemiroff offer up a new, high-res, beautiful and often startling image every day to help expand your thinking to the global and universal. A terrific archive, too.
A free source of images is not one of your categories, but my single most useful and inspiring web site is The Astronomy Picture of the Day.<a/> Astronomers Robert Nemiroff and Jerry Bonnell offer up a new, beautiful, often startling hi-res image to expand your thinking to the global and universal. Great archive, too.
One more time…A free source of images is not one of your categories, but my single most useful and inspiring web site is The Astronomy Picture of the Day. Astronomers Robert Nemiroff and Jerry Bonnell offer up a new, beautiful, often startling hi-res image to expand your thinking to the global and universal. Great archive, too.
WWhois Version 2.1 Author: Song Huang song@softgears.com SoftGears Company Copyright 2001 – 2003 http://www.softgears.comBest damn command line whois program I’ve run across – I use constantly all day in my work
wikipedia.com is quickly becoming one of the most useful things on the web.Also: Feedster.com, whois.sc, spamcop.netI might blog more later.
Hmmm — two votes for whois — that’s a surprise to me. Keep ’em coming, everyone.
To keep abreast of search engines/research choices and utilize Google-alternatives, I recommendFagan FinderFor network security, you can’t beat Zone AlarmFor text editing, I’ve long loved the versatility of Note Tab.And a download site I recommend:NONAGS
Free AntiVirus – AVGFree Firewall – Zone AlarmcheersDermot
The things are cool tools are very pricey. I like Meta-Efficient (http://reactual.com) – similar but more focused and takes price in account.
cyberbuddy from thecyberbuddy.com. built for im, i’ve never used it as such, but it’s a fine mail checker/spam deleter and backup alarm clock.worldtime (pawprint.net) is the absolute best timepiece/synchronizer i’ve found.desktop weather from weather.com.avg and zone alarm, absolutely on my computers. when other people tell me that, for whatever reason, they’ve just learned that they should have had av software, i send them to the free online panda service, for emergency cleanup. seems to have worked well for everyone so far.odigo (odigo.org) can still be good when you get a sudden urge to talk to a total stranger in a specific place. and did i mention that irfanview is not just an image viewer, it’s a great little image editor and file manager too.looking forward to the completed list.thanks dave.
I would add Belarc advisor which creates a printable and very comprehensive list of all the specifications and software on your computer. Very good when you need to know detailed details of your system:www.belarc.com
Dave, I love this idea. Virtual barn-raising. Since I first got on the web (pre-Netscape), I’ve maintained link lists online. They’re becoming an obsolete way to keep one’s online reference library, but the content’s still useful. See, for example, http://www.internettime.com/enew.htmThanks for doing this!