Movie Recommendations

Movie Lens http://movielens.umn.edu/ is a site where you rate movies you have seen. Then the site generates recommendations for you. It does this by comparing your ratings to those of other people and matches you up with folks of like mind. Then it finds movies they loved that you haven’t seen and lists the ones you should like. You can also use it to keep track of movies you’d like to see or those you have seen.

So the whole idea is that you get movie reviews from real people who have something in common with you (as opposed to critics who don't like what you like). I have to say, now that I've reviewed a lot of films on this site, that it is very accurate about predicting how much I'll like a movie.

The Internet Movie Database

Who is that actor and what have I seen him in before? The Internet Movie Database www.imdb.com is the official place to get answers to all your movie questions. Now you can sleep at night.

This Week at the Video Store

So you don’t want to spend about ten bucks for a movie ticket? Time to check out what’s new at the video store with http://www.onvideo.org/reviews.htm. This site lists brief reviews of the top films of this month, last month and so on until you find one you want. Movies are rated on a scale of one to five.

TV listings

Yahoo, TV Guide, HDTV magazine
When we cancelled our newspaper subscription years ago, I worried about how I would find out what is on TV. But simply disposing of the pounds of paper that arrived each Sunday was daunting; on top of that, the listings were incomplete. Now, however, no one with internet access need ever worry about that again. These sites: http://tv.yahoo.com/ and www.tvguide.com/listings/ provide you with searchable, up-to-date listings.

OK, but what about HD TV listings? In addition to the TV guide site above, www.titantv.com/ is a great source for this, but you might not be able to access it from behind a firewall (using your computer at work). I love having my HDTV listings emailed to me each day by HDTV Magazine http://www.hdtvmagazine.com/subscribe.php (of course, this is free).

Craig’s List

While newspapers have always maintained a lock on local classified ads, a quiet revolution has been taking place. http://Craigslist.org has become the free, online (but still local), alternative. That’s right you can sell your boat, car or goat on Craig’s list without paying a cent either when you list it, or after the sale is complete. You can find a job there, too. When you list your item for sale, Craig’s list does not publish your email address. Rather, it forwards emails to you from interested buyers. Then, if you want, you can correspond directly with them. You can also post pictures of items for sale. All of this is paid for by the job ads (which are not free to list but are free to answer).

Since it is local, there are actually 450 sites in the US and 50 countries with 20 million people using this service each month making it the site with the 7th highest traffic in the world. The only downside is that you need to live near one of the 450 cities, but that would be most people in the US. And if you don’t, odds are Craig’s list will come to you soon; they added over 130 cites in November of 2006.

Rotten Tomatoes

I love movies. There are movie sites that do everything but pop the popcorn.

Rotten Tomatoes http://www.rottentomatoes.com/ is here to help you tell the good from the bad (and the ugly). Movies are reviewed by dozens of critics and the percentage giving it a thumbs-up is computed. If a movie rates 60% or higher, they grade it “fresh.” Less than that and it gets a “splat.” The really nice feature I like is their newsletter http://www.rottentomatoes.com/features/newsletter/. Every Friday, I get an email with reviews of the latest films in theatres and on DVD. The only problem is DVDs come out on Tuesdays so the new ones are gone by then.

Free Web Hosting

So you want your own website but don’t want to pay for it? No problem! Go to http://pages.google.com/ and set up your personal site. Unlike the similar service from Microsoft, this does not require a credit card (because it is free and will apparently remain free), is quicker and easier to use and allows you to do cool things like upload HTML. That means you can, if you want, create pages (in applications like FrontPage) that are more interactive with the users and link to other pages. Or you can simply create the site using Google’s on-line tools. I have a page with a free account here: www.contemporaryworship.net. This is a Google Pages site that I do not pay for. I do pay GoDaddy.com $7 a year for the use of the name (contemporaryworship.net) but I don’t have to. It’s just that most people probably wouldn’t remember http://bkunkle.googlepages.com/index.htm as easily. You can store up to 100 MB of stuff on these pages. Pictures of your dog, your vacation, recipes—anything you feel compelled to share with the world can go here. And, if 100 MB (which is a lot) is not enough, well there may be ways around that too. I don’t see why you couldn’t get two Google Pages and link them together for twice the space.

Read the Funnies On-line

Newspapers aren’t as popular as they once were. But why should you miss your favorite comic just because you no longer subscribe (or your paper dropped your favorite comic)? This site www.gocomics.com will email you one free comic of your choice each day, and they say they have more daily comic strips than any other source - in print or online. This means that you can get just about any comic emailed to you each day for free. You can also go to this site and read today’s strip for all of these comics and you can go back and read a month’s worth of archives of them too. But that is cumbersome and the website does have a lot of ads and pop-ups. However the comics that are emailed are no trouble at all. And if you want more than one strip mailed to you daily, you can get that for a fee.

Forward This and Win a Prize

You receive an email from a trusted friend. As a favor to you, they warn that waterproof sunscreen causes blindness or that Pepsi eliminated the words “under God” from the pledge of allegiance. Or they warn that you can be strangled by shrink-to-fit jeans or poisoned by the glue on ATM envelopes or by madmen randomly handing out tainted Halloween candy. Or that swallowed chewing gum stays in your system for seven years or that a fast food restaurant is the world’s largest purchaser of bovine eyeballs. Or that signing a petition can get Yasir Arafat’s Nobel Prize revoked. Or that you can win a cash prize for forwarding an email.

So you forward this email on to all your loved ones because it is important stuff that can keep them out of trouble or help right a terrible wrong. Then one of the recipients tells you that you’ve been suckered by another urban legend and you feel like an idiot. All of the above legends are listed as false on what is probably the most authoritative debunker of myths, http://snopes.com/. Before you warn your grandchildren about LSD-laced cartoon tattoos or that canola oil is toxic, check here first. Oh, by the way, some urban legends are true and for some the jury is still out. These are covered at this site too.

This Is True

While truth may be stranger than fiction, it can also be funnier. Once a week, I get a free email with true stories in the news that range from the asinine to the ridiculous. http://www.thisistrue.com is the history's first for-profit e-mail publication and it now reaches more than 120,000 readers. These are amazing stories from legitimate publications about bizarre subjects like dumb criminals, ignorance in high places and everything in between.

Google Desktop Search

This might be the best thing from Google ever. Install this on your computer and it will index all your files when you are not using the machine. Then all you have to do to find anything on the machine is hit the Ctrl key twice and type in what you want. It will quickly list all the data on your computer that match your search. Of course, if the file, email or website you want isn’t on your computer, you can use the same tool to search the internet.

Plus, there’s a toolbar that can sit on the side of your screen (it can hide there) with all kinds of useful gadgets (and dozens to choose from). Useful gadgets include the current weather conditions, a scratchpad, a battery meter, my most recent email and the latest news.

The Weather Quicker Than Looking Out the Window

There are lots of weather sites out there. Most have so many details, slick graphics, features and pop-up ads that the weather has changed by the time you're done surfing. But the National Weather Service Forecast http://www.crh.noaa.gov/ gives you the forecast, the current conditions and it loads up fast with no ads, pop-ups or anything annoying. The forecast is pretty much the same on every weather site, so why not go to the one that wastes the least amount of your time?

Rminder.com

You know now that you will need to do something later. But will you remember that important thing you have to do, person you have to meet or place you need to go? All you have to do is go to www.rminder.com and enter you phone number (or better yet, your cell phone number), a typed message and a time to send it. Then at the appointed time, r-minder calls your number and reads the message to you. Of course it’s free. And the phone number need not be your own; you can call anybody and tell them anything. There have to be a thousand uses for this.