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"The Hype Machine keeps track of songs and discussion posted on the best music blogs," the site boasts. "Easily listen, discover and buy songs that everyone is talking about!" My first thought reading this: Is this hype?
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.
Both my kids take piano and both already know far more about music than I ever will (Even the words to Jingle Bells, the Star Spangled Banner and Happy Birthday are beyond me, much less the ability to sing any of them on key). You, however, may be interested in the Virginia Tech Multimedia Music Dictionary. A particularly useful feature is it provides audio recordings on how to pronounce musical terms such as "Sackpfeife."
Google has added new music search features. "Now you can search for a popular artist name, like the Beatles or the Pixies, and often Google will show some information about that artist, like cover art, reviews, and links to stores where you can download the track or buy a CD via a link at the top of your web search results page," its blog says.
Creative Commons Search "helps you find photos, music, text, and other works whose authors want you to re-use it for some uses -- without having to pay or ask permission."
The MusicWeb Encyclopaedia of Popular Music has nearly 4,000 entries on performers, songwriters, producers and record labels.
Font lovers (and who isn't, really?) will want to check out the Encyclopaedia of Typography and Electronic Communication.
WorldAtlas.com offers lots of maps as well as many geographical facts and figures. Here's Kentucky's page and here's Indiana's.
"The Plain Language Action & Information Network is a government-wide group of volunteers working to improve communications from the federal government to the public." It offers "resources to help writers achieve the goal of clear communication." My first reaction when reading about this site was, "Huh?"
musicplasma is a music search engine that "helps you identify all the artists fitting your musical tastes."
Read summaries of European news at Euronews.
Librarian Gary Price lists some of his favorite news search and browsing sites:
He mentions them in the context of MSNBC offering its own "newsbot."
The AMG All Music Guide is "one of the most comprehensive, authoritative sources for music information on the web," SearchDay says. "The site designers took full advantage of the interactive capabilities of database technology. Just about everything in the All Music Guide database is massively cross-linked, allowing you to not only get full information about a particular artist but making it easy to simply click through for information on related artists, musical styles, instruments... the range of interlinked information is truly impressive."
Download.com has begun offering free music downloads.
The Guardian compares the efficiency of Google searches to using the telephone or a librarian. Short answer: Google isn't always the best choice.
Meat producers, who don't want to let their fellow flesh peddlers test every cow for mad cow disease, can turn to MeatNews.com, which has a meat-specific search engine, for their own self-serving view of the world.
U.S. Department of Agriculture offers a database of exporters and other international trade contacts.
You can get a copy of the now famous Army report on U.S. torture - er, abuse - of Iraqi prisoners at The Smoking Gun (PDF).
