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NEWS AND
INFORMATION
BY MARYANNE MURRAY
BUECHNER
We'll stay away from most of the
major news organizations; you probably already have those
Websites bookmarked. Instead, here are some less obvious
links, including an encyclopedia of how-to advice and a
Hollywood hot sheet, a lie detector and a blog-sifter, all
guaranteed to keep you in the know.
BBC.co.uk
This terrific source for war and
other world news has other sections worth exploring: BBC
Sport offers comprehensive coverage of sports around the
globe (including such pursuits as rugby and cricket) plus a
snazzy Virtual Replay interactive video tool (Macromedia's
Shockwave Player required) so you can experience the winning
goal from a variety of angles. In Science & Nature, you'll find a boatload
of material about the human body and mind illustrated by
top-notch graphics. Study the Nervous System, take the Senses
Challenge or play the Skeleton game.
Bloglines.com
If you want to stay
plugged into the world of politics, technology, show business
or any other area of professional or personal interest, you
have to read Web logs, a.k.a. blogs, regularly-updated
personal or collaborative online journals. The best ones are
in some ways more relevant and more influential than
mainstream media outlets. To keep up, let Bloglines track your
favorites and deliver their latest posts in one neat package.
Other good blog-aggregator services include Kinja.com, a
similar though somewhat shaky service (it just launched a few
months ago) that shows promise as a tour guide for those
entering the blogosphere for the first time, and Blogdex.net, MIT
Media Lab's study in "contagious media" that lists the
fastest-spreading ideas and news items based on how many blogs
are buzzing about them.
Ehow.com
The site for tips and step-by-step
instructions on how to do stuff. There's the practical (how to
teach a child how to tie his shoes), the creative (how to make
tile mosaics) and the merely suggestive (how to exercise at
the beach). The site's ads, supplied by Google and relevant to
your searches, were some of the least obnoxious we've
seen.
ET.tv.yahoo.com/newslink
Click here to get your
daily fix of showbiz and celebrity news. Articles are short
and sweet, which works for us: how much do you really need to
read about Britney Spears' knee injury or why Tom Cruise was
chosen to carry the Olympic Torch?
Factcheck.org
Voters, if you're sick of
being spun, take heart: here's a breath — make that blast — of
fresh air from the Annenberg Public Policy Center at the
University of Pennsylvania. The articles and feature stories
pick apart speeches, press releases, TV ads and other public
statements by politicians of all stripes — these days, mainly
Bush and Kerry — to set the record straight.
Fedstats.gov
Not the sexiest site on our
list, to be sure, but incredibly useful for gathering
statistics and reports from more than 100 government agencies.
Click on Key Statistic next to an agency's name (they're
listed alphabetically) to pull up links to other Web pages
containing relevant info. You'll have to dig a little, but for
many kinds of research this is a great place to
start.
Nationalgeographic.com/education
Type
"elephant" into the "One-Stop Research" search field to pull
up maps, facts and photos from the National Geographic
archive. Designed for educators, the site includes lesson
plans in various subject areas and a teacher store where you
can search for materials based on subject (mainly Sciences and
Social Studies, as you'd expect) resource type (books, maps,
software, etc.) or grade (K-12). Another must-click: nationalgeographic.com/news.
News.google.com
Keyword searches pull
up links to the latest stories, each with a note indicating
when it first appeared. The returns are culled from thousands
of online news sources based in the U.S. and abroad. You can
sort results by date or relevance; you can also request e-mail
alerts so you know when new articles are posted.
PBS.org/pov/borders/index_flash.html
If you
missed it on TV, click here to catch POV's Borders, a
thought-provoking PBS series about the environment. Topics are
timely and the content is playfully organized, with layered
title pages and lots of video clips, plus a couple of
interactive games (see the Earth section).
SEC.gov
An invaluable resource for anyone
interested in business, investing and finance, now more than
ever, thanks to new search tools and options. See "Filings and
Forms" (a.k.a. EDGAR) to access any public company's earnings
reports and other public documents, including mutual fund
prospectuses.
SSA.gov/OACT/babynames
What were the
most popular names for baby boys and girls in the 1880s? The
1960s? Last year? This cultural snapshot provides table after
table of popularity rankings by decade, by state, and,
starting in 1990, year by year. Data is based on a 5% sampling
of social security card applications. The site can't tell you
if your Conor will be the only Conor in his kindergarten
class, but it can tell you that Connor (spelled with 2 n's) is
a far more common spelling.
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