Six Seven Cool Sites No One Knows About

Here are seven cool internet applications no one knows about ranked by usefulness and entertainment value:
1.	START – This is MIT’s online natural language search engine. It knows everything there is to know about geography, science, movies, and a host of other questions. Unlike other search engines that return a list of documents that you must then search yourself for the answer, START returns the answer to your question. Try questions like Which movies has Tom Cruise been in? or Show me a picture of the sun. or How far is Jupiter from Uranus? - Try your own.
2.	Froogle – Doing online shopping? Froogle is a service of Google. Type you desired item into Froogle to get prices from thousands of sites.
3.	Google Catalogs – Another service of Google, they have scanned in every page of every catalog published and made it searchable. Very cool.
4.	Yahoo Buzz Index – A lot of search engines give you some insight into what’s popular but yahoo puts a little bit of effort into editing the results to make them meaningful. See who hot and getting hotter or see what the French are really interested in. The poll is hardly scientific but it is interesting.
5.	Google Sets – Type in the first few items in a list and get the rest of the list. For example type in Ford and BMW and get all the other car makers. Great for researching a company’s competitors.
6.	Wikipedia – This is an open source, freely editable, highly used and updated encyclopedia. Using the WIKI format which allows any one to edit any page, the site relies on user input to self regulate. Very useful for those looking for content that is not protected by copyright.
7.	Archive.org – The goal of providing free universal access to all human knowledge may seem a bit lofty, but with a fairly complete archive of the entire internet going back to 1995, over a million books, 1000's of movies, and partners like the library of congress - this is definitly a cool site.

Worthless facts: The history of the sandwhich

This 17th century nobleman was a notorious gambler who didn't like to leave the table, even to eat. So he asked servants where ever he went to prepare him a slice of meat between two pieces of bread. This prompted the other gamblers to ask for the same..."like Sandwich's". But their is more to the story... Listen to Morning Edition audio

Web Collaboration Cutailed by Security

I have been trying to use frames to set up a simple portal for personal use. You know, a little yahoo, a little email, some links, etc...But ran into a brick wall security 'feature' of IE that will prevent you form showing a page from a different domain on you website (More Info). Of coarse there are ways around this. Basically any server side scripting language will allow you to capture content from the web and create discreet little portlets. This personalized view on the web is really the future of the web, unfortunately it takes more than DHTML to get you there. However, I did get one piece of external content integrated into my site with DHTML alone. See the the chat bot on the top of my page. This little fellow actually lives at Pandorabots.com. It is not the most elegant solution, but without the ability to host servlets at my ISP, this is what I'm reduced to. Time to dust off the old programing books.

Dream Job #415

A world traveler looking for new clues for Jeopardy. (website).

Here Comes HIPAA

The law that protect healthcare patient privacy is now in effect (Article). About a three years when this law was passed people predicted a surge of spending to get older systems complaint with the new law which prohibits any healthcare provider from divulging any of your personal information even as stuff as trivial as you name. Of coarse, these people failed to realize how cash strapped heath organizations really are or how much policy and behavioral change alone can reform a system, even without the fancy new information systems. Does this have implications for the hospital of the future, a place where at the touch of a button, your entire medical history is at their finger tips? Yes, but hopefully it will just make the system more secure thus keeping embarrassing stories about Richard Gere safely in the realm of urban legend.

Robots for sale or Rent

As an armature robot myself, I try to keep track of robot popularity, trends, and so on. I was surprised to find that ebay has 586 robots for sale right now ( Ebay - Items matching 'robots')! I know what your thinking, cuz I am thinking it too, if only this information was useful and not just a big waste of blog space.

Potent Quotables for 800 Alex

"For those who have done something they consider worthwhile, communication to the future is an almost irresistible temptation, and it has been attempted in virtually every human culture. In the best of cases, it is an optimistic and far-seeing act; it expresses great hope about the future; it time-binds the human community; it gives us a perspective on the significance of our own actions at this moment in the long historical journey of our species." - Carl Sagan

Yahoo! News - Across Generations: SETI Looks to the Future

Yahoo! News - Plumtree Sales Take A Tumble

I found it! Ever work with a server that wont let your dreamweaver mx sync because it says time and date cannot be found...well here is the solution. It is a little tricky but you can do it. Fixing the "Cant determine Server Date and time" Error in DWMX - Dreamweaver MX and UltraDev Zone - DMXzone.COM

CoolHomepages.com offers a nifty little program to help designers select a color scheme. They call it "The Color Schemer: The Ultimate Web Designer's Color Tool". While this is a good tool for finding complementing colors, it does not make the task any easier. The selection of a color scheme is often one of the most difficult parts of defining a brand. Colors and other visual imagery convey the emotional part of a brand promise. When I talk to my clients about brand, I try to always follow it with the word promise - because that is basicly what a brand is, a promise to the user. Color helps to convey promises related to freshness, speed, professionalism, secruity, and other important promises users look for in web applications. This is a huge topic that I want to touch on more and will return to this topic soon.

Take a look at the new Yahoo! Search

Information for the people, by the people...

Thomas Jefferson, whose library became the core of the Library of Congress*, arranged his books into three types of knowledge, corresponding to Francis Bacon's three faculties of the mind: Memory (History), Reason (Philosophy) and Imagination (Fine Arts). At the time, there was no formal or standardized method for categorizing books. Most libraries at the time were arranged alphabetically but this system, while great for locating a specific known item, is not conducive for browsing or locating similar sources of a given subject.
On Memory, Jefferson wrote that "it is the duty of every good citizen to use all the opportunities which occur to him for preserving documents relating to the history of our country." Memory is the core of history, and shared memories constitute the core of a common national past.
In Jefferson's library, the category of Reason included government and law, science and invention, and the exploration and mapping of the natural world. Imagination included books on architecture, music, literature, and criticism has grown to include all forms of American creativity.


*After the British burned Washington, including the Library of Congress, during the War of 1812, Jefferson offered to sell, and Congress agreed to buy his collection of books to replace those lost.