R.G. "Ralph" Dunlop points out that My Polling Place, which I plugged yesterday, produces wrong maps of polling places. R.G. didn't know he's supposed to vote near Preston Highway. Maybe the site's claim to be supported by the People for the American Way Foundation is a sham, and it's a Republican plot to keep liberal journalists away from the polls...

There is now an online archive of more than 6 million British American Tobacco documents as the result of a lawsuit brought in Minnesota. BAT, as you may recall, owns the recently departed Louisville company, Brown & Williamson. Maybe there's a local story in that pile.

"PolicyBot is the Internet's most extensive clearing-house for the work of free-market think tanks, with more than 12,500 studies and commentaries from over 350 think tanks and advocacy groups."

At My Polling Place you can type in a street address and zip code and find out where your polling place is, get a map and driving directions, and learn what type of voting machine is used. It aims to cover the entire U.S. It already includes Jefferson County.

Late last month the Center for Public Integrity put its "Outsourcing the Pentagon" database on the Web. It helps you search for Defense Department contracts from 1998 to 2003, including the companies, the amounts of their contracts, the products they sell, the political contributions they make, and their lobbying expenses.

PC Magazine lists its top 101 Web sites, including the option to download them all and add them to your bookmarks in categories.

The Online Guide to Whistling Records "is the result of over ten years of collecting whistling records. It is, to the best of my knowledge, the only site of it's kind in all of cyberspace," so says the Webmaster. "You'll find over 100 MP3s from whistlers around the world, discographies, album covers and more. Don't miss the section on vintage training records for parakeets and canaries!"

The Department of Defense Directorate for Information Operations and Reports offers statistics on military and civilian personnel, casualties for current and past wars and more. Some of the information is for military eyes only.

The U.S. Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board investigates chemical accidents. It's Web site includes reports on current and completed investigations, contacts and an explanation for reporters of their role when there is in an accident.

Chemicals, the Press & the Public is a guide to covering chemical accidents and hazards.

fashion net is "the guide to all things chic." I wouldn't know how to judge that claim, of course.

The Electoral Vote Predictor summarizes the latest polls on the presidential campaign, predicts the outcome for each state, and lets you download the data as an Excel spreadsheet.

You can search the sex offender registries of many states at once at the National Sex Offender Registry. Kentucky's isn't included for some reason, but Indiana's is.

The Virtual Chase, a research site for lawyers, offers a guide on "Evaluating the Quality of Information on the Internet. ... This guide defines the criteria, documents incidents of questionable, false or fraudulent information as reported in the news or trade literature, provides examples of Web sites that illustrate good or bad information, and suggests strategies that help you detect bad information."

This article, "Helpful Advice on Computerized Data Handling in Social Surveys," offers good advice that applies to CAR as well.

AspMap "is a high-performance, Internet mapping component for embedding spatial data access, display and analysis capabilities in ASP and ASP.NET applications and services. AspMap gives you the ability to generate map images, drill-down capability, thematic mapping, point-to-point routing and other features that - generated on the server - will make the map images fully interactive on the client-side. AspMap can create images in any standard image file format, or even send a bit-stream directly to the browser. Whether you have a local government web site, a real estate web site or a vehicle tracking web site, or you provide location-based services, AspMap can give you the functionality you need to turn the occasional visitor to your site into a regular user."

A lawyer's take on how to compare databases:

"How do you look at one database and compare it to another? It's not as difficult as you think. With a little time -- and some common software tools you probably already have in your office -- you might even be able to do the work yourself. "

The non-profit National Student Clearinghouse is "the nation's trusted source for student degree and enrollment verification." With a credit card you can verify whether someone really has a degree they claim. The charge per confirmation is $2 to $2.50. "More than 2,700 colleges, enrolling 91% of US college students, participate in the Clearinghouse." Sounds like a good alternative to the sometimes frustrating process of calling the school directly.

LLRX.com has a roundup of federal and state election resources.

CNET tells you why RSS is important.

I just got around to reading the latest IRE Journal. It includes an article on an Argus Leader, S.D, computer-assisted project project on pardons and clemencies:

"We did get a little help from outside the office. Former Argus Leader assistant city editor Mike Trautmann, now of The (Louisville) Courier-Journal, helped crunch the data. Specifically, he calculated the demographic profiles used primarily in our graphics."

I mentioned this to Trautmann in the elevator this morning and he replied: "I don't remember doing that."

So there you have it - CAR, the forgettable skill.

I haven't visited the site in a while (at least two years, someone pointed out to me after this was first posted) so this was news to me, and maybe to you too: The Kentucky Corrections Department's inmate search, KOOL, now returns photos of prisoners. Only currently incarcerated prisoners are included in the KOOL database.

MissingMoney.com helps you search for unclaimed property, either by state or by doing a national search (though not all states participate). Give it a try: I recently found nearly $1,000 in Florida that belonged to my father, who died in 1979. It was from an insurance policy he once had. My mother did claim it and I got half. We're still waiting on word about another unknown amount in my father's name found in California...

Typophile "is an open typographic community. We make available discussion forums and resources for type design, theory and technique for professionals and beginners. Our aim is to foster greater awareness and provide a forum for designers and users in an environment that remains free through the generous support of members and sponsors."

You can get lists of National Institutes of Health grants by state, including the recipient's name, project title and amount, in a format for importing into Excel at the Office of Extramural Research's Web site. Undoubtedly there's news there.

ResourceShelf reports on U.S. Post Office office database on the Web: Find postmasters by city, where postmasters have served, postmasters by city, county or state, discontinued post offices and post offices by zip code and more. There's a list of frequently asked questions too.

The Worker Health Chartbook is a reference "on occupational morbidity and mortality in the United States. ... the Chartbook includes more than 400 figures and tables describing the magnitude, distribution, and trends of the Nation’s occupational injuries, illnesses, and fatalities."

The National Fire Department Census Database lists fire departments registered with the U.S. Fire Administration and provides basic information about each one.

I'd put this first but since most of you can't install it on your work PCs, I won't. Last week Google unveiled a free "Desktop Search" application that makes it much easier to find stuff on your computer . If you want evidence Microsoft is a bloated, unimaginative monopoly all you have to do is compare its search programs with Google's. Trying to find anything using the Windows or Outlook find functions is a slow, frustrating experience. Google's search, meanwhile, is lightning fast. Google indexes Word, text and Excel files, Web pages browsed with Internet Explorer, Outlook email, AOL instant messages and Powerpoint presentations on your PC and integrates the results with your regular Google searches. It also keeps cached versions of what you look at on your PC so you can go back and see how documents or Web pages have changed. Google promises that it doesn't collect information about what's on your PC or share it with anyone else.

There are already programs out there that do even more than what Google does, but most cost money (such as X1 and dtSearch) and can be less convenient to use. Two free ones I've tried and can recommend are Wilbur and Copernic Desktop Search. Google's search isn't perfect. For example, it doesn't index is PDF files, while Copernic, dtSearch and X1 do, but Google's is still in the experimental "beta" stage. It promises to add more file types and make other improvements. You can read more about it here, here, here, and here.

This is the kind of thing that can save you a tremendous amount of time, since we all waste a lot of time trying to find old documents or email. Try it at home - and maybe you'll be so convinced of its value you can convince the powers that be to allow you to use it at work.

LexisNexis has a page devoted to presidential campaign news, including transcripts of the debates (last night's hasn't been posted as of 9:30 am), speeches and information on issues.

SearchEngineWatch has a blog. It's a good source of information on new search engines and changes to features of existing sites.

The Internet FAQ archive collects lists of frequently asked questions from around the Web.

Teaching.com offers "Free, non-commercial educational Web services for educators and students." It claims "Over 1,300,000 hits per month, 89,000 unique visitors per month, over 200,000 current registered members from 112 different countries."

An editor at The Oregonian writes about how reporter Steve Suo used social science methods and computer-assisted reporting to develop a two-year project on meth. In it he quotes one of my former professors, Philip Meyer at the University of North Carolina, who has long argued we should use those methods more:

"I think in the long run, these ideas will prevail because journalism is in an identity crisis now. Now, journalists are professional amateurs. They are going to have to develop better tools to distinguish themselves from the pamphleteers on the Internet."

It's a little late in the game for this, but here's the League of Women Voters on "How to Watch a Debate."

"The USDA Economics and Statistics System contains nearly 300 reports and datasets from the economics agencies of the U.S. Department of Agriculture. These materials cover U.S. and international agriculture and related topics. Most reports are text files that contain time-sensitive information. Most data sets are in spreadsheet format and include time-series data that are updated yearly."

You can browse RAND reports on health care here - including reports on aging, alternative medicine, end-of-life care, environmental health and much more.

"The IRE and NICAR Database Library has just updated its Consolidated Federal Funds Report database. The Consolidated Federal Funds Report (CFFR) includes records of Federal Government expenditures or obligations to states, counties and local agencies, including: social security payments, grants, procurement contracts, salaries and wages, direct loans, insurance, etc." Cost is $75.

FindLaw's Newsmaker Coverage "gives you a more in-depth look at high-profile attorneys who are running for public office or have attained positions of the highest authority and influence within the government. Each Newsmaker Profile features some of the cases the newsmaker litigated as an attorney, a brief biography, news and commentary, and links to the newsmakers' Thomson Legal Record."

POLLING 101 is "a simplified glimpse into some of the fundamentals of public opinion polling."

CAR in Canada is "A new web site devoted to computer-assisted reporting in Canada." "It's a modest start," the creator says, "but right now has pages summarizing some of the best Canadian CAR stories of the last decade with links to the actual stories where possible, an FOI page with links to provincial and federal FOI sites from coast to coast in Canada, links to downloadable government databases, and much more."

College Gridirons is "Your Source to all Division 1-A College Football Stadiums!" and Stadiums of the NFL is "Your ticket to every NFL stadium from the past to the future."

You can confine your search on Google to just magazine articles or book excerpts. ResearchBuzz shows you how.

The New York Public Library offers a large collection of "Articles, Webliographies and Research Guides" - on everything from presidential elections to breast cancer.

TunesTracker "is a tool for iTunes Music Store addicts. It will search the iTunes Music Store daily for your favorite artists, and send you an e-mail when there are new songs by those artists."

The Vehicle Inventory and Use Survey is done every five years and "provides data on the physical and operational characteristics of the nation's truck population. Its primary goal is to produce national and state-level estimates of the total number of trucks."

IRE is offering a "Better Watchdog Workshop" in Bowling Green, Ky, Oct. 16-17. "This workshop is intended to help those journalists at small- to medium-sized news organizations -- and those in bureaus of larger organizations -- to learn the investigative skills that keep government and business accountable and to produce enterprising and informative stories," the org says. "Critical among the skills is the ability to use federal and state FOI laws to open the doors to public information." It costs $60 for professionals and $30 for students and the online registration form is here.

NetNews Tracker "is a clipping service for Usenet newsgroups. It will search newsgroups twice daily for any phrases that you choose, then delivers any hits to you via e-mail. You can use it to monitor newsgroups for your name, company, product, URL, or any other topic of interest, and never miss any discussions on that subject." It's free.

The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame offers a visual timeline - "an interactive, animated compendium of rock and popular music history." "Discover unexpected connections between artists. Track the growth of a musical movement. Zoom in on the day the Beatles invaded America, or out to a bird's-eye view of the blues' sweeping influence," the site says. "It's all here."

Seems kind of pointless now that they're rationing flu vaccine for most of us, nonetheless The American Lung Association offers a flu shot locator to find flu shots wherever you may live.

Who2 promises to "Find Famous People Fast!" "For each famous figure, Who2 gives you the hard facts you're most likely looking for: birth and death dates, famous works, notorious trivia. Then -- in case that's not enough -- we sift the Web and pick out the four best sites for additional detail," the site says. "... We mean to be the Web's most direct guide to facts about famous people."

An LLRX columnist explains your FOIA rights in 7 grafs.

If you want to learn how prominent journalists of the 1970s sucked up to a powerful man, read this Slate article and peruse the transcripts it quotes that are now on the State Department Web site. The National Security Archive sued to force the release of recordings of conversations between then-Secretary of State Henry Kissinger and journalists such as James Reston, Marvin Kalb and Ted Koppel (as well as politicians, world leaders and other notables.) One juicy example: Kalb, who now opines on media ethics from a perch at Harvard, rounded up names of potential candidates to be Kissinger's spokesman while reporting on Kissinger for CBS.

The National Association of Securities Dealers has an online database where you search for registration and licensing information on stockbrokers and their firms. It has information on "over 850,000 current and former NASD registered individuals and over 6,000 current and former NASD registered brokerage firms."

The National Council on Public Polls offers "20 Questions A Journalist Should Ask About Poll Results."

You can search for National Center for Education Statistics publications and data here.

Garlic Central is "a free resource all about garlic - the stinking rose."