Somehow the continuing stories of bombings and terrorist attacks on the nightly news can leave us saturated and jaded with such atrocities. And that’s only a small part of what’s going on as can be seen at GlobalIncidentMap, a display that locates terrorist  attacks and other suspicious events. The flashing icons displayed on the world map may well be concentrated in the Middle East, but there’s also many in the USA and elsewhere. Hover over an icon for a brief headline then click it for the details. (Jim Moohan)

By the numbers—what’s going on in the world today and so far this year? Births, deaths, new cars, bicycles, computers, books, newspapers, movie visits and many others—they’re all listed at Worldometers with the numbers increasing inexorably as you watch. (Jo Ann Sanderson)

“One of the most exciting things to happen on the Internet lately is social news. Sites like NowPublic let visitors post stories from around the Internet. Other visitors can comment on the stories. Visitors to NowPublic can vote on stories. Popular stories are placed more prominently on the site. I like NowPublic because it lets users post photos, videos and audio alongside comments. So there’s no shortage of interesting content. Best of all, NowPublic helps you discover stories you might otherwise miss.” (Kim Komando)

“We are what we eat” is the motto of Fridgewatcher. This site posts photos of the insides of refrigerators from around the world, so that others can gawk at them—and submit comments on them. Personally I find this rather repellent and would prefer people find something more useful to do with their time. Still there’s no accounting for tastes. (Kim Komando)

What is your visual DNA ?-–whatever that means. If you’re curious to find out, visit Imagini Visual DNA and take the test. Choose your preferred photo out of the twelve on each page, and then you’ll be presented with a highly scientific personality analysis. Ray and I thought ours were pretty reasonable. Give it a try! (Ray Garcia)

I suppose we are all gamblers at heart—especially when there’s nothing to do except enter one of the hundreds at Mr. Sweepy’s Sweepstakes Today. Prizes include cars, HDTVs, weekend getaways and of course good old cash. Registration is free, and you’ll also have access to coupons and freebies. (Kim Komando)

How’s your vocabulary? Want to give yourself a vocab test and at the same time donate rice to a third world country? That’s right, FreeRice is an ingenious site that tests your vocabulary and donates twenty grains of rice for every correct answer. The rice is provided by advertisers. You’ll be surprised at how quickly you can build up a sizable donation at this UN sponsored site. (David Henry)

      There are quite a number of free online personality-type tests at Similarminds.com. Are you left-brained or right-brained? Take the Compatibility Test, the Career Test, or the good old Intelligence Test. These tests seem pretty accurate if the questions are answered honestly. (Tom Kochansky)

How can you make it more interesting for people to see your photos? Albums, projectors, TVs all have their advantages, but Mapwing  lets you add movement and interactivity. Explore the virtual tours that others have created from their photos with pan, zoom, fade, and switch, and then maybe give it a shot yourself by uploading your snaps with a free membership. (Kim Komando)

If you have a few nice portrait photos on your computer, you can have a lot of fun at Stars In You. It uses face recognition technology to match your features with those of celebrities and shows you the comparison side by side. They make it easy to upload your photo, and then to e-mail the result to your friends. Give it a try and you will be amused and maybe surprised by the results. (Kim Komando)

If you have dabbled with one of the graphic programs like Print Shop, why not jump in with both feet into the deep end at aniBoom—the home of animation, where you can join the wild computer animation fraternity at no cost. If you want to make movies but somehow lack acting talent, this may be just the ticket. Just a keyboard and mouse and the online Shapeshifter software and tutorial will get you started. (Kim Komando)

Cool Stuff seems to be a logical spot for an educational website on Discovering Antarctica. This is probably aimed at high school students in the UK, but you too will find it entertaining as well as instructive. With facts in compact paragraphs followed by video clips and interactive quizzes, this has got to be a great way to learn about this – or indeed any – subject. (Kim Komando)

If you are using Google Earth you know how fantastic this free program is, and you should now update to the latest version (4.2). If you don't know about it, you should have it!  You can zoom into any place in the world and it's just like being there with buildings and terrain now in 3D and many other features.  This is the program that all major news networks such as CNN use to show you places that are in their featured news stories.  Here's the site where you can read about it and download the 3D version.  You should have a high speed connection to the net and have a reasonably fast computer for best results. (Gary Stanley)

If you are familiar with Google’s map feature, you will love Panorama Explorer. The idea is to combine Google maps with photos of sites all over the world, contributed by travelers like you and me. You click on a little yellow dot to see a photo at that location, bringing life to the map, as it were. If there are multiple photos at the same location, like London, the dot will be orange or red. Then you can zoom in to separate out all the photos. (Kim Komando)

Are you good at spotting a trend? So what do you think of OneKeyAway, the latest dating/mixing idea—out of California, of course. You describe yourself, your interests and what you are looking for in the opposite sex. This is added to a database and then you go to a party where you and the other guests wear a key. Point to another person’s key, a computer does its thing on the data base and presto! the key will flash red (stay away buddy), yellow (maybe) or green (let’s talk). Is it coming to Tampa? Don’t hold your breath. (Yahoo News)

Are you feeling a bit jaded or bored with life? Then why not spring for the fastest production car on the market, the Bugatti Veyron 16.4? It will set you back a cool $1,400,000+ but what’s that when you know her top speed is 250 mph? Of course for that you’ll need to take the car to a test track with several miles of straight flat road—such as the one in Germany used in this hair-raising video. After a run like that you will probably need a new set of tires—and the tank will be empty in 12 minutes! Ten radiators—can you imagine? The 16-cylinder engine produces 1000 hp and will take her from 0 to 60 mph in 2.5 seconds flat. (David Henry)

Snowflakes are six-sided, right? Not entirely; there are multiple forms and an International Classification of snowflakes along with some spectacular close-up photos at SnowCrystals.com. This is “Your online guide to snowflakes, snow crystals, and other ice phenomena.” All you ever wanted to know about them, plus a lot more, like Snow Flake Hot Spots, Make Your Own, and the perennial question No Two Alike? Some people actually devote an entire lifetime to the study of snowflakes. (Kim Komando)

If like me, your cooking is limited to boiled, poached, fried or scrambled eggs, you might want to try your hand at Cooking By Numbers. The idea is you look in the fridge to see what’s there and check off those ingredients on a fridge list. Plus there’s also a cupboard list. Submit your lists, and the site returns you several recipes—and even grades them on a scale of one to five. Couldn’t be easier, right? We’ll see. (Kim Komando)

“Things Other People Accomplished When They Were Your Age.” You can enter any age and see what some famous people did at that age. Or you can hit the Random button and see displayed accomplishments at the age that appears. Don’t be shy, you can even submit your own striking accomplishment, and the site owner will consider adding it. (Smart Computing)

Surrounded as we are by the hurly-burly of everyday life, it comes as a pleasurable relief to read such a heartwarming story as Operation Migration. This is currently focused on that magnificent bird the Whooping Crane, which is being carefully guided back from the brink of extinction. Each year, an ultra-light aircraft leads the whoopers on a 1200-mile migration from their summer home in Wisconsin to their wintering grounds in Florida. (Uncommon Travelers)

I couldn’t resist including Cargo Law because it opened up for me the fascinating world of commercial sea and air cargo—gone wrong. There are stories of ships lost mysteriously at sea, a 747 aircraft crashing on takeoff and piracy on the high seas. Most are illustrated with on-the-spot photos, even videos—the evidence carefully gathered by a law firm involved in handling insurance claims. Those in the trade pitch in to help solve or explain such mysteries. And it’s great to hear the “Dragnet” theme again. (Derek Lore)

Isn’t it nice to get a peek into the fortunes of the very, very rich? Specifically, take a look at Forbes’ Billie-anthropists story on the major philanthropic pledges of 2006. There's Richard Branson, Warren Buffet, Bill Gates, T. Boone Pickens, George Soros and Oprah Winfrey among others. They gave their millions—sometimes billions—to feel-good causes from AIDS to Stem Cell Research. These people tend to look quite ordinary in their photos. (David Henry)

Are you a very “organized” person? Have you ever wanted to bring some kind of order to your personal library? For starters, do you know what books you have? Go to LibraryThing, sign up once, and “enter what you're reading or your whole library—it's an easy, library-quality catalog. LibraryThing also connects you with people who read the same things.” (St Petersburg Times)

People find other folks’ photos and post them on Look At Me, a collection of lost, thrown away or discarded photos. For me it is strangely compelling, a bit like taking a peek at someone’s private diary. Many of them are older black and whites, and one begins to imagine who that person might be, where the photo was taken and if there’s a story behind it. (Kim Komando)

If you have a spare $200,000 lying around, you can now book a suborbital flight into space on Sir Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic. With deposits from 200 passengers already, his firm plans to launch the spaceship with its first six fare-paying passengers from the Mojave Desert in California in late 2009. The video makes clear the dedication and determination of Branson’s team and his willingness to risk an enormous fortune on his latest commercial venture. (David Henry)

Remember how your grandma told you not to trust what you read on the Internet? We have by now learned if it doesn’t ring true, it probably isn’t. (“Free $1000 Gift Certificate”) The same is the case for photos, which you can see admirably demonstrated at Brian Dilg Photography. Admire that gorgeous photo and then hover your mouse over it; you’ll see what it looked like before it was adjusted by digital imaging software. It’s brilliant. (Kim Komando)

Professional and amateur graphic designers will appreciate the thousands of fonts available for download at Dafont; most of them are free. I am quite amazed at the never-ending creativity of those artists who continue to come up with new fonts, when you think that all the design ideas would have been exhausted by now. And in most cases they make them available to fellow artists for free! (Kim Komando)

Do yourself a favor and prepare ahead of time in case you are in an accident. Input your driver’s license # and emergency contact information to this Florida Highway & Motor Vehicles site.  This information is only available to emergency services, so that in case of an accident, law enforcement can retrieve this information so they know who to contact if you are unable to. Sounds like a good idea. (Terry McIvor)

“I remember contributing to a time capsule back when I was in elementary school. It was amazing to see how much things changed in the course of a school year. Since then, I've always been fascinated by time capsules. It's interesting to see what other people put in them. Yahoo! recently launched its Time Capsule project. The time capsule will be opened in 2020. Copies will be given to the Smithsonian. Look through others' submissions. They're impressive.” (Kim Komando)

A very moving tribute to individual servicemen who died in the service of their country can be found at In Remembrance. Loved ones, family and friends assemble photos to prepare an audio visual album that can be shared with others. Elsewhere on this site, individual profiles and guest books of over 3,000 men and women honored here can be searched for by name, state, rank, base, etc. (Kim Komando)

Computer-generated graphics have become startlingly good. Anyone who's seen some of the recent blockbuster movies knows this. Sometimes, they are so good they're indistinguishable from reality. Care to disagree? Then take the Fake or Foto test at Autodesk. It presents you with a series of 10 images. All you need do is select which are real and which aren't. I was amazed when my guesswork got me a score of 7/10 especially when I saw the correct answer for each picture. (Kim Komando)

What an enterprising pair of kids are Isabella and Olivia Gerasole, of Chicago!  Their website Spatulatta – Cooking 4 kids online is such a visual delight that it won a James Beard Foundation Award. At ages 10 and 8, the sisters are the youngest people to win the prestigious award. Their site is geared toward teaching kids how to cook. Clicking this link also lets you listen to their fun interview on NPR. (NPR)

There’s some rather heavy-handed satire at Snafu University –“A School Even YOU Can Get Into!” Click on Academics, Social Life, Our Classes, Our Faculty, Sports, and Admissions to see just what you’ve been missing all these years! If in doubt, click Get Involved, then “watch the movie” to view Dean Dean’s persuasive video; and afterwards, all you have to do is click on the You’re In! ® button to fill in the preapproved Undergraduate Application, as nobody is refused at Snafu University. (Netsurfer Digest)

I would hazard a guess that not one of my readers is likely to take up the seemingly crazy new sport of cluster ballooning, where you ascend into the sky by dropping a sack or two of ballast and descend by puncturing a balloon or two. Started by a crackpot in 1982, it has now become institutionalized with a tour known as States of Enlightenment that appears at regular ballooning festivals across the country. Read and view the colorful stories at Ballooning in the Sky. (Netsurfer Digest)

Time machines have always had a fascination for most folks. Well, here’s one with a difference at FutureMe, whose founders claim they will send you an e-mail on a date you specify in the future. You write the e-mail to yourself now and it will be sent to you—later. You can make it private (no one else sees it) or public (so anyone can read it now). People’s ideas of “the future” vary from a day or two to thirty years. (Washington Post)

“Non-alcoholic beer? That's like kissing your sister.” There’s an example of a cute phrase or expression (like kissing your sister means “an unsatisfying substitute”) of which there is a collection at What Does That Mean? A Canadian site, it offers and explains off-beat US, Canadian and British usage. Register and you can contribute your own example. (Netsurfer Digest)

Mens sana in corpore sano was my teachers’ philosophy at school, meaning A healthy mind in a healthy body. For the first part, you can exercise your mind at the AARP Magazine games site where you will find out how well you get on with their daily crossword or jigsaw puzzles, trivia questions, brain teasers, solitaire and those beastly Sudoko puzzles. (AARP)

Surely every Internet user by now has received an e-mail from someone in Nigeria or elsewhere asking for help in laundering a large sum of money, like $10,000,000, in return for which you would share in the loot--typically at 25%. Apparently this type of scam succeeds in hooking folks who don't get suspicious even when they have to pay a few thousand dollars up front in order to initiate the big transaction. Some recipients ("scam baiters") decided to play along with the game by e-mail and in turn have caught the originators in various traps of their own devising. There's a fine collection of such scams and the scam-baiter follow-ons for your amusement at Scam-o-Rama. (NPR)

Where and how did all those company names and acronyms originate? You can get a handle on many at Wikipedia's List of Company Name Etymologies page.  Whether it's Adidas, Alfa Romeo, Wendy's or Yahoo! there is often an interesting story behind the names we take for granted; Apple, Häagen-Dazs and Kodak I found to be particularly fascinating. (Wikipedia)

Ever suspect that there's more to your dreams than meets the eye? Dream Journal  gives you space to log and even analyze your dreams online. You can keep your dreams private or let others share in your secret world. You may solicit interpretations from other site visitors. Done logging your dream? The site will automatically scan it for keywords out of its master dream symbol dictionary and offer you a list of potentially useful symbol definitions. It also keeps stats on how cohesive your dream was, what emotions you experienced during the dream and what your most frequent dream symbols are so far--which is very handy. You can search through other folks’ dream journals and profiles in many different ways. One of my favorites is to see what different people were dreaming on the same night. The links page has great fodder to keep you busy for days...or perhaps nights? (Russil Tamsen)

Those clever folks at Google have done it again, this time in the world of maps. If you have been in the habit of going to mapquest.com for a road map or directions, give Google Maps a try. You'll find it easier and quicker to get where you want by dragging the maps around.   Plus there is a powerful search feature that lets you zero in on businesses, restaurants, theaters, and the like without having to know their name. And you can get driving directions, of course. I suggest you "Take a tour" first, or click the "try it" examples. (David Henry)

There have been some remarkable shifts in name preferences in recent years, particularly toward biblical names. This is all illustrated ingeniously and clearly at The Baby Name Wizard, where I learned that David was the second most popular boys' name in the '60s but has dropped off to number 14 in 2004. It's rather fascinating to watch the rise and fall of names since 1900 and to observe the current steeply rising trend for biblical names such as Jacob, Hannah, Luke and Jonah. The home page lets you sample the entries (teasers for the book sold here) that give some explanations of each name. (Tourbus)

You sometimes hear from certain philistines that modern art is rubbish. Dripping paint buckets onto a canvas or assembling trash can contents into an artistic statement are examples of what they deplore. Why not have a go yourself and see what it is like from the artist's side to create your own work of modern art? There's another effort now from Zefrank to let you do this, at The Scribbler. Sketch your idea on a computer screen, click the scribbler button, and watch your masterpiece unfold before your very eyes! You can experiment with colors and other variables to tweak the results many ways. Be sure to visit the many other imaginative projects on Zefrank's home page. (Netsurfer Digest)

The United States Post Office has finally caught up with its Canadian counterpart to offer personalized stamps for sale, via an outsourced operation. You send Photo Stamps a non-prurient photograph, and for $16.99 they will send you a sheet of twenty 37¢ stamps that you can use just like the regular ones. It works out at 85¢ per stamp. Discount pricing is available for purchasers of multiple sheets. (AARP)

There's a baffling trick where the protagonist attempts to read your mind, or in this case, guesses the number you have in mind. Give it a try at Fido and then ask yourself, How does he do it? If you go to the parent site, you'll find plenty of commercial creativity coming from Ireland. (..?..)

We've reported before on the IG Nobel awards for scientists who invent weird and useless things, but what about the Stella Awards? They were inspired by Stella Liebeck, who spilled a cup of McDonald's coffee onto her lap, burning herself, and who was subsequently awarded $2.9 million in damages. Ever since, a "Stella Award" has been applied to certain wild, outrageous, or ridiculous lawsuits, including bogus cases. You can find the pathetic cases for 2003 and 2002 described at the True Stella Awards website. (Tourbus)

There's an unwritten rule at David's Links not to publicize groups that solicit charitable contributions; we think our readers probably receive plenty of such solicitations anyway. So my excuse for breaking this rule in the case of People for Children is to show you a brilliant website design and some of the most creative computer-animated graphics I have ever seen; that's why it's here in Cool Stuff. If you are moved by the facts presented here about debt bondage, sex slavery, and trafficking in persons, so much the better. This is a project of the Ricky Martin Foundation; don't forget to view his video statement. (Yahoo!)

One of the ingenious capabilities now available on the Internet is the Virtual Reality panorama. It sets you in the middle of a 360 degree image that you can pan around, up and down, and zoom in or out with your mouse, provided you have Quick Time installed. "It's almost like being there." On the Summer Solstice weekend, June 19-21, 2004, more than 110 photographers in 32 countries around the world created VR panoramas with the common theme of World Heritage. World Wide Panorama showcases the results of their efforts. There's also a link to the Bridges panoramas created during the Equinox weekend in September 2004. I found it most useful to view the thumbnails index first. (Netsurfer Digest)

Can you locate Iowa, Nebraska, and Indiana on a map with only state outlines shown? Too easy? How about if the map is blank? Or what about matching states with their state capitals? Many of the interactive games at Sheppard Software come in Beginners, Intermediate, and Advanced versions and are used by schools all over the world. There are various International geography games, word games, and trivia games, and quizzes too; so there is something here for everybody. Learning was never as much fun when I was a kid. (Tourbus)

Ye Gods! I never knew there were so many -- Gods, I mean -- as can be found at Godchecker. I passed over the African, Australian, Aztec, and many other Gods and turned quickly to the 366 Greek Gods described here, a few of whom I had been mildly informed about in school. To give you the flavor, here's a piece on Apollo, currently fifth on the Top Ten Gods list. "Apollo...Also he has undiminished Beauty and Virility. You name it, he has it. Thoroughly sickening to us mere mortals. But he is not entirely the Mr Nice Guy he would have us believe. There are women he pursued who won't talk due to transformation or worse. Daphne is now a laurel tree and Clytia is a sunflower." (Netsurfer Digest)

Surely everyone has heard of crop circles by now, especially since Hollywood's interest as expressed in the movie "Signs."  There are now thousands of websites dedicated to this worldwide phenomenon, some by serious researchers, some by cranks. I've chosen The Crop Circular because it tries to report in an objective manner on others' discoveries and research into various aspects of the phenomenon. It patiently tells you about those who have admitted making them but is clear that is by no means a complete answer. It certainly does not believe they are created by aliens or energy vortices but has no convincing alternative theory either. (David Henry)

One of the more respected TV shows based on investigative reporting is PBS's Frontline. Their website lets you view selected programs in their entirety, broken down into easily digestible ten-minute chunks. I appreciated The Alternative Fix, a study of alternative medicine, and Tax Me If You Can --an investigation into the bogus tax-shelter business and the highly respected accounting, banking and law firms that are behind it. (Tourbus)

If you were trying to choose a university to attend, how would you find out about it? One way is to visit their websites, and one of the best is at Explore Cornell, a multimedia magazine dedicated to Cornell University research, instruction and facilities. This site, so professionally done,  may challenge others to meet or surpass this outstanding collection of images, panoramas and descriptions. Stunning! (Netsurfer Digest)

No doubt there is something pretty new for the internet at Their Circular Life. Filmed from a fixed position in a busy city in Italy, it shows the comings and goings of people and vehicles throughout a twenty four hour period. But you control the rate at which the images change; you can slow it down or even stop it. I think the authors are trying to get you to appreciate that life doesn't have to be full of hurry and stress. A great idea. (St Petersburg Times)

Sometimes I do a double take at a street or other sign that may be peculiar, strange or funny; unfortunately, I don't usually have a camera with me to record it. The author of Signs of Life has no such problem and captures all sorts of "Photographs of signs that transcend their objectivity to reveal our humanity". You can submit your own masterpiece to add to this whimsical site. (Yahoo!)

Time magazine has an annual feature called Coolest Inventions of the Year. For 2003, their illustrated descriptions include a camera-phone, the iTunes Music Store, a car-boat and a remote controlled golf caddy, among many others. And you can also look up the winners for 2001 and 2002 such as a robot vacuum, Cindy smart doll, self cleaning windows and an artificial liver. The home page gives free access to recent Time articles. (Netsurfer Digest)

Tourbus newsletter has performed a yeoman service for those of us who receive strange e-mails displaying some of these odd designs, animations, and just sheer weird stuff.  They have gathered a number of these oldies but goodies together on their Very Strange Things on the Web sub-site. You'll perhaps recall Watch Paul Dance, All Your Base Are Belong To Us, The Traffic Cone Preservation Society, and 75 Years of Band Aids. (Tourbus)

Want to know how popular your first name is today as compared to, say, fifty years ago? Type it in at the Name Popularity site, and they will show you graphically how it has changed during the decades since 1900. I was astonished to learn that David was the second most popular name given to boys in the 1960s; even today it is 11th. You can also get birthday reminders and send e-cards at this site. (Al Hopper)

If your religious life has been rather unsatisfactory and you would like to try something different --and you have a good sense of humor--by all means surf on over to Holy Corporation. There you can purchase a Buddhist Plug 'n Pray Kit, containing everything you need to get converted quickly, including user's manuals on CD-ROM, live chat and online help. Or you can choose Christian, Jewish, Muslim and Hinduism kits with the usual commercial trappings--coffee mugs, T-shirts etc. (Netsurfer Digest)

George Reiger claims to have more Disney objects tattooed on his body than anyone else--a total of 1,501 in fact! Not only that, he is also the only person with a custom built Disney House in the world with over 19,000 Disney items, it says here at Disney Tattoo Guy. Can you believe it, and that as a result he makes many personal appearances on TV? Wonders never cease. (Netsurfer Digest)

Whatever happened to those futuristic projects like flying cars, food pills and smell-o-vision? You can find out at RetroFuture, where those visionary projects are described, dissected, analyzed and either rejected outright or cautiously placed on the back burner until better science and / or more money is forthcoming. The military is often involved in promoting or quietly funding some of these bizarre notions. (Netsurfer Digest)

If you're planning a big birthday party, wedding, celebration or other group get-together, it can be a chore to send the invitations, and track acceptances, changes of mind, and regrets. You can have this all done for you automatically by a free e-mail service, using elegant designs, reminders, confirmations and the like at eVite. You can use it for public as well as private events. (David Henry)

They say a picture is worth a thousand words, but can you write an essay of up to 1000 words about your favorite photo? The premise of A Picture's Worth is just that, and the results for those that are accepted on this site are often profoundly moving; they cover the range of human emotions, from wonder to sorrow to nostalgia to joy. A new picture and accompanying essay is posted every day. (Netsurfer Digest)

Ladies, have you ever had the urge to have a computer mouse with a built-in powder compact? Guys, want to check out the Boob History Timeline? Or look up the weird Actual Town Names from Around the Globe? These and other amusing trivia can be found at Sips from the Dribble Glass of Life, a website to visit when you have nothing better to do. Billboards We'd Like to See, Funny Photos, Jokes and Useless Trivia are guaranteed to help you pass the time of day. (Netsurfer Digest)

Think you can tell the difference between a serial killer and an inventor of a computer programming language just by studying their photograph? That's exactly what I did at Malevole and scored eight out of ten correct, surprising even myself. Check out the parent page, too. (Netsurfer Digest)

What does a person look like who is happy, sad, angry, drunk, sneeze coming, or stressed out, etc?  You can get Eric's ideas with the hundreds of images of himself at Eric Conveys an Emotion.  It makes you wonder when you find that his Guestbook has over 17000 entries, mostly from people who claim they find the site hilariously funny. Wonders never cease. (Eric claims his site is "pointless".)  (Netsurfer Digest)

How long are you likely to live? For me, the answer differs depending on who is asking the questions. The Harvard academics at Livingto100 say my life expectancy is to 85.8 years, what's yours?

The FBI has its eye on you! If you want to find out the very latest in anti-terrorist snooping, check in at the Terrorist Tracker. They are now able to see every mouse movement or click you make on your PC. Privacy advocates say this is bad, but the FBI says you will never even notice, and you will have nothing to fear if you are an honest citizen. Bah!  (Neat Net Tricks).

It's amazing that people will devote lots of time and effort to doing something that seems quite useless. Such was my thought as I browsed around in The Dialecticizer, where you type in some text and it is immediately translated into a version in Cockney, or Svedish, or Hacker, or Elmer Fudd--whoever he is. They will even convert any web page into your chosen dialect.  When I asked for a Redneck version of David's Links my archive links were changed from Cool Stuff to Right Fine Stuff, Genealogy to Junealogy and Government to Guvment. Cool? (Zargon)

Phoons from around the world are in fact photos of folks in a fancy pose that seems to strike an amused response both in the posers and the viewers. As a fad, this is on a par with hula hoops and pet rocks, but with the difference that it has inspired a ton of sheer human creativity, including inventing a new word. Go see for yourself. (Netsurfer Digest)

Perhaps as a child you took devilish satisfaction in knocking over your playmate's building blocks, but how would you like to earn your living by blowing up buildings? There are firms that make a handsome profit imploding structures around the world. Apartment blocks, commercial towers, smokestacks, bridges -- they must be demolished in a way that doesn't clobber an unintended person or structure.  Learn some tricks of the trade and view some stunning film clips at Implosion World. (Netsurfer Digest)

Here's a neat idea.  Instead of constantly being urged to strive to reach your potential, how about reducing your goals instead?  That way, you can reach your potential without striving too hard.  Find out more at Despair, Inc. where you can look for a suitably demotivating photo you can put up next to your desk, and get de-inspired whenever you feel the need just by looking at it. You might also join their Wailing List or buy a Despairware cap or coffee mug. (Betty Lucas)

Have you ever wondered what it's like to be an air traffic controller?  You can get a rough idea of one of the instruments they use by visiting SFO Near Live Flight Tracks.  You'll see a map of the San Francisco Bay area with its three major airports; superimposed on the map are little icons representing aircraft moving across this airspace, landing, taking off and transiting the area.  I recommend you read the Guide to the Flight Track Display to understand exactly what you are seeing; for example, "It is not uncommon to see tracks occasionally disappear as the information is updated". (Neat Net Tricks)

You are in one of the world's great museums and want to leaf through a precious book they have.  No way; it's on display in a glass case and you're allowed only to look, not touch.  Thanks to an innovative project at the British Library, some museums can now let you (virtually) touch and turn the pages of several priceless books using touch screen technology.  Touch the cover with a fingertip and the book opens. Slide the fingertip right to left across a right-hand page, and it turns over. Let go too soon and the ''page'' flips back. At home, you can use your mouse; it's not the same, but it does give you the idea. (Jim Moohan)

This site is all about Near Death Experiences or peoples' recollections of what happened after they "died", often on the operating table, and then subsequently came back to life.  Some are by known names, like Edgar Cayce, Carl Jung and Peter Sellers, but most are by apparently ordinary people. Pretty curious.  (Chuck Runkle)

There's a very simple psychological test you can take in five minutes at Color Quiz. I was asked several questions and had to answer by clicking on one of a set of colors.  I was quite amazed by the results presented to me: they seem to have analyzed my personality remarkably accurately. Perhaps it was just a coincidence, but then again maybe it was not.  Try it for yourself. (Neat Net Tricks)

Hobbyists of the World, Unite!  to view Henry Lim's amazing project to build a harpsichord out of Lego, that is. The strings are made from standard wire, but the rest of the five octave instrument is entirely constructed of Lego, an estimated 100,000 pieces in all. You can not only view its construction progress and the  handsome looking result at Harpsichord, you can even hear it played as an mp3 file. Not unexpectedly, the sound was a bit off, but that wasn't really the point. (Netsurfer Digest) 

Want to read about the election of President Chelsea Clinton?  Or the cloning of Bill Gates?  Or the uniting of the three major religions in Jerusalem?  Just click on over to Chronicles of the Future, where you'll find imagined future events written as news stories.  Offered for each decade until 2050, many of these stories  seem to be quite feasible.  Plus there are discussions on topics like Who would actually want to live for ever?  All highly entertaining stuff from a British Sunday newspaper. (Neat Net Tricks)

 Whatever does a whale sound like? You can hear live  whale noises recorded by a hydrophone off the coast of Maui at Whalesong.  They include strange whistles, gurgles, wails, booms and many other mysterious sounds.   So what are the wild whales saying?  I don't know, but  I like to listen to them conversing in the background, it's fascinating.  This  is a highly successful volunteer project; read how it's done at Sound Info. (Carmen Crum)

What happens when a tugboat on a flooded river encounters a low bridge can be viewed in a sequence of nineteen photos at Tugboat, subtitled Don't try this at home.  It's amazing that someone had the presence of mind to keep a camera snapping while this unfortunate event was in progress, and perhaps even more remarkably the captions have been purged of the colorful language likely to have been used at the time. It could be a slow download unless you have a broadband connection. (Netsurfer Digest)

It seems there is no limit to the credulity of the human species, judging by their willingness to believe in the most outrageous pranks foisted upon them on April Fools Day.  These stories have been resurrected from the archives of American and English newspapers and are reproduced at the April Fools Day Gallery. Most are from  papers since WWII, but you will also find some hilarious japes from the 19th century. The origin appears to be related to the change over to the Gregorian calendar in the 16th century. (Netsurfer Digest) 

Maybe folks would quit e-mailing me corny jokes if they would only visit Ziggy Zapata's Humour site instead (note spelling).  Sigh!  Here you will find many of the funny or just plain weird stories cluttering up mail boxes around the world.  Plus you can find Dumb Packaging Labels (daft instructions found on consumer goods), the Darwin Awards (folks who killed themselves doing really stupid things) and the Stella Awards (for the most frivolous lawsuits with ridiculous monetary awards).  (Village Views)

You always wanted to read Alice in Wonderland (or Hamlet) all the way through, but just never got round to it?  Well now it looks as though you can, without actually reading it.  A true genius has been thinking, and programming, "outside the box" at Text Arc.  Use a very fast PC and close all other applications. If you persevere and just watch the screen, you'll soon learn what Alice is all about.  The method applies to any text, so it's well worth monitoring this exciting new development. (Netsurfer Digest)

 "Mirror, mirror, on the wall..." The Mirror Project is a growing community of like-minded individuals who have photographed their likenesses in a variety of reflective surfaces.  Mostly young people, including many non-Americans, they often accompany their image with a few words describing why and where they took it. The site works best with a broadband connection.  (Netsurfer Digest)

A charming, delightful flash animation with animals and plants that come to life when clicked.  There seems to be a never ending series of movements and sounds that result from your clicks as this magic landscape slowly changes from day into night.  There is a secret (and insane) animation hidden in the site if you can solve the riddle and the sleepy little chap's walkman plays relaxing tunes if you click on it. (Dominic Henry).

What on earth is going on at  Yugop?  Well, it is crammed with what seems like whimsical artistic doodling.  Click any of the dots at the bottom of the screen to view mysterious constructions that often interact with your mouse, but may just leave you frustrated. The third dot leads to the Industrious Clock  where you'll see the (24 hour) time shown in a very cool way. (Tourbus) 

It's hard to describe what you find at LinkdUp except to say that it's full of exploratory Flash interactive designs.  Based in London, the site has attracted many artists who want to let their imaginations run riot with the new media represented by Flash.  Some don't make much sense, others take your breath away with the boldness and sheer creativity of their images.  It claims to be "Purely aesthetic or experimental" with hours of playtime.  (Neat Net Tricks)

I found a site that's pretty indescribable.  Fusion Anomaly is however, vastly interesting, even entertaining, if you don't mind following the author's articles that wander from one fascinating topic to another even if only remotely related.  Beatles, Zen, Crop Circles, Pyramids,  Illuminati, James Joyce, DNA, Pink Floyd, Butterflies, Easter Eggs, Schoenberg, Virtual Reality, and on and on. (Netsurfer Digest)

And now for something completely different.  If you would like to stretch your wings, or contemplate your true inner self, you can do anything at zombocom, anything at all.  As long as your speakers are on, the only limit is yourself. (Tourbus)

You can fantasize all you want at The Hero Machine, a fun interactive site that lets you indulge your innermost creative instincts.  Start by choosing from among several hero types to view a raw drawing of him.  Then proceed to fill in the design with choices of eyes, nose, mouth, eyebrows, mask, beard and hair.  Then you can dress him up with your own choice of headgear, gloves, coat, belt, boots and so on, coloring them as you go.  There are female heroes too; its like Barbie and Ken for grown ups.  (Netsurfer Digest)

In the early days of the Web, someone came up with this bright idea: let's arrange things so that certain clicks result in a free donation to a charity.  The result was The Hunger Site, where each click (only one per day) provides 1.1 cups of food to hungry people around the world.  The money comes from companies who support the idea and gain goodwill as a result. This powerful concept proliferated to many other good causes, say breast cancer research; they are all linked from Quick Donations. (Tourbus)

He's a professor emeritus of sociology at Western Washington University, but I think of Ed Stephan as a renaissance man, based on the spectrum of interests and expertise on display at this personal website.  Plus there is a wide range of links to his interest areas, in stamps, cartoons, opera, flix, baseball, astronomy, woodworking, painters, etc.  Try the animations, some of which are quite ingenious.  (Netsurfer Digest)