Popular urls

Popurls aggregates on one page the "most popular" links from other sites -- including digg.com, del.icio.us, reddit.com, flickr.com, newsvine.com, youtube.com, and many more.

Crediting newsroom researchers

AJR writes that "Newsroom researchers are beginning to get the credit they deserve":

Not that long ago, newsroom researchers received very little credit for their work. They had the thankless task of providing much of the information that ultimately ended up in award-winning stories, yet no one ever knew who they were or what they'd done.

That, however, is changing. Their names appear with increasing frequency in bylines or taglines, and some ... are now part of teams that compete for and win Pulitzer Prizes.

On the same theme, earlier The Washington Post ombudsman wrote about "The Post's Unsung Sleuths."

Netvue

Netvue is a picture, graphics and animation search engine that shows images in their original size, not only as a puny thumbnail, and lets you view them as a slideshow. My first impression is that it is better than other image searches I've tried.

Wildfire incident database

The U.S. Forest Service's InciWeb reports wildfire incidents, including how well-contained the fire is and the number of acres involved. It's searchable by state and you can subscribe to a feed to keep up with new incidents without having to revisit the site.

Indian news

Indianz.com is a Native American news site. It offers sections on Arts & Entertainment, Business, Education, the Environment, Health, Sports, and, of course, Abramoff. 

Clipart for students and teachers

Clipart ETC from Florida's Educational Technology Clearinghouse is a library of free clipart for students and teachers. It has more than 14,000 images in different sizes and formats, including complete source information for proper citations in school projects.

NYT election analyzer

The New York Times offers an interactive graphic that helps you analyze upcoming elections.

Jonko Online Auto Repair

Jonko Online Auto Repair" is an automobile reference and opinion site that offers a variety of auto repair tips, tricks, and tutorials":

The Jonko.com staff is comprised of a handful of motivated individuals who volunteer their time to create and manage the site. Unlike 'real' e-commerce companies and dotcoms, Jonko.com is not losing money, near bankruptcy, or a penny stock. Also unlike a real dotcom, we are not paying our staff ungodly amounts of money. (We have been known to give away a T-shirt or two...)

Story Starter

The Story Starter randomly generates the first sentence for a novel or short story. It says it can generate "more than 114 million different story prompts." An example: "The boring haircutter rode the bicyle (sic) into the witch house for the team." Apparently spelling isn't a priority, but maybe it is a step above Snoopy's "It was a dark and stormy night ... "

PopUp Politicians

With PopUp Politicians you embed a little code in a Web page and it creates a popup with information about a politician, including links to background information (from Congresspedia), campaign finance history (from OpenSecrets) and voting records (from the Washington Post). From the Sunlight Foundation.

Musiclens

With Musiclens you specify the kind of music you want - including volume, tempo, genre, sex of the vocalist, mood, period and more - and it selects titles that match your preferences. You can then sample your choices or buy them. The site says it's an entry in a contest for software that best helps you find music that matches your taste.

Jewish Webcasting Guide

The Jewish Webcasting Guide is a gateway to Jewish audio and video programming on the internet.

"The world's biggest collection of links that anyone can edit"

So boasts Chainki. It takes the content from the open directory project, which is a huge collection of categorized Web links, and turns it into a wiki.

Create and share diagrams online

If you want to design a flowchart, piece together a Mob network or model your organization's hierarchy, you can install Visio, OpenOffice.org's Draw, ConceptDraw, Dia, SmartDraw, or OmniGraffle, or you do it online for free at Gliffy.com. You can even collaborate on them over the Web, or export them to image formats like jpg or png. Here are some examples. The site's free in its beta-testing phase, but eventually they will have a limited, free, ad-supported version and a for-money version.

NativeWeb

NativeWeb is a gateway to information about indigenous cultures around the world.

Who or What Constitutes Media under the FOIA?

LLRX.com's FOIA Facts asks, "Who or What Constitutes Media under the FOIA?" Members of the media get Freedom of Information Act fees waived, but how do we make the distinction (and should we) in the age of self-made webmasters and bloggers?

Health comparison shopping

This is an impressive site: Healthia lets you compare the price of different hospital medical procedures, search for and rate doctors and dentists, find Health Savings Accounts and compare the costs and benefits of different health plans. It claims to be "the nation's first integrated comparison-shopping portal for healthcare products and services."

PokerMashup.com

PokerMashup.com plots the five "closest live, real-money games" for your ZIP code.

Phone Validator

The free Phone Validator will tell you whether a particular phone number is a cellphone or a landline phone, the company that issued it and the phone's location. It also links you to other sites that will do a reverse search on the number to find out who the number belongs to (although you may have to pay for that privilege, assuming the owner can be identified at all).

Database of sources

The Virtual Chase, a legal research site with many high-quality tutorials on researching public records, companies and people, now offers a Database of Sources. "The database contains abstracts and links to Web-based sources of information for conducting research on companies or people and for finding legal or factual information," the site explains. "You may browse the database by subject or search it by keyword."

Coupon search engine

CouponCabin is a coupon search engine. ResearchBuzz says unlike many such sites, it's worth a look.

Apartment ratings

ApartmentRatings.com promises "The most comprehensive database of apartment ratings and reviews anywhere! Find out what tenants say BEFORE you sign a lease." SearchEngineWatch reports that Apartment Ratings has introduced a new service called "What the Neighbors Pay," comparing apartment rents to averages for an area. Here's its Louisville map.

Our media

Ourmedia.org calls itself "The Global Home for Grassroots Media":

Ourmedia is a global community and learning center where you can gain visibility for your works of personal media. We'll host your media forever — for free.

Video blogs, photo albums, home movies, podcasting, digital art, documentary journalism, home-brew political ads, music videos, audio interviews, digital storytelling, children's tales, Flash animations, student films, mash-ups — all kinds of digital works have begun to flourish as the Internet rises up alongside big media as a place where we’ll gather to inform, entertain and astound each other.

The site says it plans to become a 501(c)(3) non-profit.

Stat Trek

The goal of Stat Trek "is to help you solve common statistical problems - quickly, easily, and accurately - without having to ask anyone for help." It offers free tutorials, tools and a glossary.

Yearning for the green screens of the past...

Proving the adage that everything old becomes new again: The free WriteRoom (for Mac OS X only) promises "Distraction free writing." It does this by recreating the green text on black screen of computer terminals from 30 years ago. "Walk into WriteRoom and your busy computer life fades away," the creator boasts. "The distractions of e-mail, the web, and your thousand desktop icons are gone. Only you and your text remain. This is a place where work gets done and procrastination has no place. When you've finished exit your WriteRoom, and you are back in the busy world with your work in hand." There's also a Windows imitator, called Dark Room. InfoWorld columnist Jon Udell touts the experience on his blog. Ah yes, how I yearn for the bygone glories of Atex...

Simile timelines

Newspapers use timelines all the time to explain complicated series of events, and savvy investigators use them because they make it easier to organize research and spot suspicious happenings. You can buy specialized software to make them, such as TimeMap or TimeLineMaker, or you can simply use a database to organize the information. Now there's Simile Timeline -- free, open source software that makes it easy to make slick, interactive timelines for the Web. Matt Waite whipped one up about his career to demonstrate how simple they are to make. And Will Sullivan, the The Palm Beach Post's interactive projects editor, used Simile to explain a dike's history (no cheap jokes, please).

Philosophy resources

PHILWEB is a guide to philosophy resources on and off the Web.

Kiss n' Sell

This British site, Kiss n' Sell, wants to be an "eBay for journalists": "Got something you'd like to sell to the media? Kiss n' Sell is the only site in the world dedicated to helping you get the best price for your real-life story or pictures," proclaims the site, the (alien?) brainchild of a British publicist.

Can the Government Copyright Public Records?

This article from the Virginia Lawyers Weekly asks, "Can the Government Copyright Public Records?" "While copyright law prohibits the federal government from holding copyright in works created by federal officials and employees, it is silent about whether state and local governments can hold copyright in their publications," writes Becky Dale, who mentioned her two-year old article recently on FOI-L. Dale also mentioned on FOI-L that after her article was written there was a December 1994 Florida Appeals Court decision (PDF) that said a Florida agency couldn't copyright GIS maps.

ArtLex Art Dictionary

The ArtLex Art Dictionary offers definitions of more than 3,600 art terms, including example images and help on pronunciation.

Overheard on Google Maps

Overheard in New York is a hilarious compilation of verbal exchanges from the streets of New York, and Overplot plots them on a Google map of New York. There's now also Overheard at the Beach and Overheard in the Office. (Geek aside: The creator of Overplot also explains the clever programming required to make Google Maps perform adequately when plotting thousands of points.)

Globe4D

Students seeking a Master's of Science in Media Technology from Leiden University in the Netherlands created Globe4D, "a four dimensional direct manipulation device for globe viewing." "Unlike conventional globes, Globe4D shows dynamic images which can be viewed from all angles," the site says. "This is a new way of displaying and interacting with geographical data over time." This movie makes that clearer.

Rewards For Justice

Rewards For Justice, from the FBI and the federal Diplomatic Security Service, gives information about terrorists wanted by the U.S. government and tells how much it will pay in rewards for information on their capture. The site says the program has already paid more than $62 million.

TurnHere

TurnHere, "Short films, cool places," shows video guides to travel, restaurants, hotels, local events and music.

ShareSleuth.com

ShareSleuth aims to do "independent Web-based reporting aimed at exposing securities fraud and corporate chicanery":

Unlike mainstream media outlets, we're going to have a clear bias – against deception and corruption. We're going to depart from the traditional "he said, she said" model of journalism, with its false balance and toothless objectivity.

We're going to name names and show our evidence, by linking to documents, photographs and other information. We think that approach provides greater transparency than most newspapers, broadcast outlets and Internet news sites currently offer.

The site is funded by Mark Cuban, the co-founder of Broadcast.com and owner of the Dallas Mavericks. Cuban "in certain instances ... is going to make personal investments based on information we uncover," writes editor and president Christopher Carey, a former business reporter for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. Carey adds that "Those investments will be fully disclosed, so that readers can evaluate any potential conflicts of interest." BusinessWeek, CNet, Talking Biz News, AP and BusinessJournalism.org are among those who have written about the venture.

Nature: Top five science blogs

Nature asks the people behind Technorati's five highest-ranked science blogs to explain the reasons for their success.

TVNewser

TVNewser is a blog about TV news ("the news about the news"). USA Today wrote about its 20-year-old author earlier this week.

What Is a Wiki (and How to Use One for Your Projects)

"A wiki is a website where every page can be edited in a web browser, by whomever happens to be reading it," the article from the O'Reilly Network explains. "It's so terrifically easy for people to jump in and revise pages that wikis are becoming known as the tool of choice for large, multiple-participant projects. This tutorial is about how to effectively use a wiki to keep notes and share ideas amongst a group of people, and how to organize that wiki to avoid lost thoughts and encourage serendipity."

Library of Free Data Models

If you have to build a database for a specific purpose here's a large Library of Free Data Models you can use. The author will even email you an Access database based on one of the models if you ask.

America's Hidden History of Racial Expulsions

Elliott Jaspin of Cox News Service used Census records dating back to the Civil War and years of research to document "America's Hidden History of Racial Expulsions":

Beginning in 1864 and continuing for approximately 60 years, whites across the United States conducted a series of racial expulsions, driving thousands of blacks from their homes to make communities lily-white.

In at least a dozen of the most extreme cases, blacks were purged from entire counties that remain almost exclusively white, according to the most recent census data.

Some of the places Jaspin highlights in "Leave or Die" are in Kentucky and Indiana:

Marshall County, Ky., where in 1908 vigilantes led by a local doctor posted notices telling blacks to leave. More than 100 armed and hooded men raided the town of Birmingham, picked about a dozen people at random and tortured them. An elderly black man and his two-year-old grandchild were killed. Nearly two-thirds of the blacks left. ...

Laurel and Whitley, neighboring counties in Kentucky, where in 1919 whites, believing that the arrival of a black railroad construction crew had spawned a crime wave, rounded up blacks at gunpoint, herded them to the train station and forced them to leave. ...

Washington County, Ind., where blacks were driven out between 1864 and 1867, apparently by whites alarmed that the Emancipation Proclamation could allow blacks to vote and become full citizens. Two black men who did not leave were killed. ...

Vermillion County, Ind., where in 1923 the then politically powerful Ku Klux Klan drove the expulsion of blacks from the mining town of Blanford after a white girl said she was assaulted by a black man.

FindMe

FindMe is a Web site where adopted children looking for their birth parents or birth parents looking for children they gave up for adoption can register in the hope of finding eachother.

Internet Off-Broadway Database

The Lortel Archives - also known as the Internet Off-Broadway Database - is a searchable trove of information on shows produced Off-Broadway in New York. It has information about when shows were performed, how often, producers, directors, designers, managers and more.

Peter's Online Typing Course

It pains me to see journalists using two fingers to type. Let me take this occasion to urge them to check out Peter's Online Typing Course, "Online Typing Lessons for Everyone!" "Here you'll find a set of free online typing lessons and typing exercises for beginning typists, and frustrated hunt-and-peckers who want to move from four-finger typing to full-blown touch typing," the site says.

Journalists don't use FOIA much

A study (PDF) by The Coalition of Journalists for Open Government shows that journalists make only 6 percent of federal Freedom of Information Act requests. Businesses, meanwhile, make 60 percent. "Many reporters say it takes too long to get information through FOIA to make it a meaningful tool for newsgathering," the coalition says.

Improve your public speaking skills

The Virtual Presentation Assistant "is an online tutorial for improving your public speaking skills. "

Army Intelligence and Security Doctrine

The Army provides online policies, regulations, pamphlets, field manuals and training materials on its intelligence and security doctrine. This includes the "Department of the Army Freedom of Information Act Program," "Legal Lessons Learned from Afghanistan and Iraq" and the "Operational Law Handbook," a 600-page manual intended to help Army lawyers "recognize, analyze, and resolve the problems they will encounter in the operational context." Less weighty tomes include the "Army Band Section Leader Handbook."

The value of search histories

Researcher Mary Ellen Bates explains the value of search engines that track your search history.

S.O.S. Mathematics

S.O.S. Mathematics is a primer on high school and college-level mathematics.

The Zoom List

ZoomInfo aggregates information about people and companies found freely on the Web. It's now added The Zoom List, which is a directory of companies, products and services. You can drill down the various categories and find basic contact information, organization descriptions, lists of key people and links to related Web information.

The Software Internet Database

The mission of The Software Internet Database: is "to compile the largest database of software titles and credits on the Internet. This includes all types of software such as operating systems, security, financial, mapping, browsers, video editing, games, word processing, and more." They want you to help make the database complete by submitting software you know about that's not already in there.

Wired's guide to detecting the NSA

A Wired.com blogger claims a standard Windows software tool, tracert, shows the NSA tapping Internet traffic (that's assuming what's been publicly reported about secret "AT&T spy rooms" is true.) For the record, when I use the tool from home, it shows my traffic going through AT&T switches.

InfoWorld: Open government meets IT

Anyone who's been in endless round-robins with government bureaucrats in an effort to get public data has to hope this is the start of a trend: The District of Columbia has begun releasing data on city government operations on the Internet in an analysis-friendly format, InfoWorld's Jon Udell reports. Udell quotes the director of the DCStat program, Dan Thomas, on the release of data, such as requests for street repaving and gutter repairs, as XML: "Our expectation is that it will spawn mashups, analysis, and who knows what ripple effects. We also expect it will motivate government agencies to seek and sustain high levels of performance." Udell writes on his blog that there's already one such mashup, and he's heard from Rhode Island, which is also making it easier to get at government data.