Research Beyond Google

Here is a handy list of resources (mostly free) that are good alternatives to Google when doing serious research.

wikiHow

wikiHow is basically a big wiki-style how-to manual. Check it out, there are some interesting articles in it.

The Brewing Encyclopedia

Brewwiki is basically a wikipedia for people who brew their own beer.

It's Weather

itsweather.com is a mashup of the Google Maps API and local radar maps. It also allows you to overlay StormTrack dots that indicate the location and severity of independent storms. Note that the "Find Address" functionality only works if you enter a complete street address. Also, the tool has loading issues where it will not completely refresh the screen when you move from one location to another or shift from one view to another. Hopefully, they'll fix these issues soon.

Mmmmmmmmm . . . . Root Beer

Anthony's Root Beer Barrel has reviews and ratings of 321 different root beers. In case you're interested.

Firefox Extensions

Extensions for Firefox are awesome. They're part of what makes Firefox great. Here are some of the best that I have found:

• Tab Mix Plus - Includes a ton of options and settings for how tabs and tabbed browsing operate. This is definitely better than the previous best extension for tabs, Tabbrowser Preferences.
• Google Browser Sync - Allows you to tie certain browser-specific user information, e.g., cookies, history, bookmarks, saved passwords, and sessions, to your Google Account. You can then sync any (Firefox) browser on any machine using your Google login. Thus, you can maintain the exact same list of bookmarks (and their folder structure) with very little effort. I love this one (although, I admit, all I use it for is the bookmarks). Think of it as logging in to your browser the same way you log into a specific computer - all your preferences come with you no matter what machine you're using.
• Image Toolbar - This extension gives you an IE style image toolbar when you hover over an image. The settings are fairly customizable. This one is quite handy.
• Download Manager Tweak - Gives you options such as loading the Download Manager in the sidebar or in another tab. Very nice if you do a lot of downloading since the standard Download Manager is so annoying.
• All-In-One Sidebar - While I don't find this one all that useful, I can see how it would be wonderful to anyone who uses the sidebar for more than one thing. I really only use the sidebar for bookmarks, but this extension allows you to change the content of the sidebar (between, for example, bookmarks, history, download manager, extensions window, page properties, etc.) simply by clicking one of the small icons it places next to the sidebar. Apparently, this mimics Opera's sidebar quite a bit.

If you know of any other really good ones, let me know.

Another Gas Website

This one includes nifty extras such as price trending charts, price map (broken down by county), etc.

See also, this previous post.

Some Handy Web Resources

• A bandwidth performance tester. (If you don't know what that means, you don't need it ;-))
• Ever wonder where those "stock" photos of people, places, and things that you see all over come from? iStockPhoto.com of course!
• This Lightweight Visual Thesaurus is pretty cool. Try it out (because it will take a lot less time and be much more effective than me trying to explain in words how it works). N.B. - I know of a couple of tools like this that are available on the web, but this is the only free one of which I am aware. Also note that you can drag and drop the anchors of the visual as you see fit (which is handy since the system does not always present it in the most user friendly fashion.
  

Classic Movies Available for Download - Free & Legal

There are a couple of sites that offer free, legal downloads of old, public domain movies. These movies are public domain because either they were never protected in the first place or their copyrights have expired.

Veoh was originally intended to be a place where people could post their own home videos (and they have - 10,000 of them), but it has also become the platform for old cult movies.

Public Domain Torrents, on the other hand, is devoted to Classic and B-rate movies.

Gas Price Tracking Websites, et al

There are a number of different websites, which all take a number of different approaches, that track gas prices and can tell you where the cheapest gas is in your area. The two that stand out to me are (in no particular order):

MSN Autos - Local Gas Prices, the upside of this site is that their pricing data is provided by OPIS (Oil Price Information Service) - which makes it accurate. The downside is that OPIS data, even though it is updated nightly, might not be truly up to date. It may be up to 7 days due to the electronic processes by which they collect their data (e.g., through credit card transaction records). As well, the mapping element is provided by MSN MapPoint - which means that you can't scroll a map the way you can with a GoogleMaps mashup (in fact, you can't scroll this map at all). You can zoom, though, within the specified zip code without requiring an annoying page refresh.

Map Gas Prices, the upside of this site is that their mapping element is provided by GoogleMaps, so you can scroll without requiring a page refresh. Also, users can enter pricing data directly - which means that this site may be more up to date, but it also may be inaccurate due to the possibility of human error. It is unclear whether all of the pricing data on this site is obtained merely through user input (which I doubt, since 110,000 price points is an awful lot of user input), or if user input simply supplements data acquired through other means, e.g., OPIS. Another nice feature of this site is that you can sign up for automatic alerts via email for the lowest price point near you.

Map Gas Prices is produced by a company called Orbizon, Inc., which also produces a site called Map Sex Offenders, which (yes, you guessed it) displays the registered street addresses of registered sex offenders on a GoogleMaps map - this data is compiled from the web-based databases of various states.

Free 411

I know I've already told some of you about this, but, for those of you who haven't heard about it yet:

1-800-free-411 is a service that gives you free 411 directory assistance any time. The catch is that you have to listen to a 15 second ad. But hey, it saves for a buck or two.