Editor’s Note: This is a list of websites I have come across and found interesting. Listed here in case they are useful for others. There are no referrer links and each link tested clean on VirusTotal when posted.
Descriptions are provided when the title does not clearly convey content.
I recommend you take time to visit the Internet Archive, “a digital library of Internet sites and other cultural artifacts in digital form . . . provid[ing] free access to researchers, historians, scholars, the print disabled, and the general public. The Internet Archive provides the Internet Wayback Machine that has billions of usable webpages saved over time. Additionally, the archive has books and texts, audio recordings, videos, images, and software programs.
Table of Contents
Academia/Education
-Curriculum
- Open Syllabus Project: opensyllabus.org – “The Open Syllabus Project (OSP) collects and analyzes millions of syllabi to support educational research and novel teaching and learning applications. The OSP helps instructors develop classes, libraries manage collections, and presses develop books.”
-Data Comparison
-Literature Reviews/Systematic Reviews
- Campbell Systematic Reviews: campbellcollaboration.org – “[P]romotes positive social and economic change through the production and use of systematic reviews and other evidence synthesis for evidence-based policy and practice.”
- Systematic Reviews – Tools: libguides.adelaide.edu.au
- Systematic Reviews & Other Review Types: guides.temple.edu
- Systematic Reviews – The Process: guides.mclibrary.duke.edu
- Ten Simple Rules for Writing a Literature Review – Marco Pautasso: journals.plos.org
-Open Educational Resources
- Directory of Open Access Journals
- LibreTexts: libretexts.org – “The mission of the LibreTexts project is to unite students, faculty and scholars in a cooperative effort to develop an easy-to-use online platform for the construction, customization, and dissemination of open educational resources (OER), particularly for courses relevant to academic programs, to reduce the burdens of unreasonable textbook costs to our students and society.”
- OAsis – Commonwealth of Learning Open Access Repository: oasis.col.org – “[I]nstitutional repository for learning resources and publications.”
- OER Commons: oercommons.org – “[A] public digital library of open educational resources. Explore, create, and collaborate with educators around the world to improve curriculum.”
- Open Education Consortium: oeconsortium.org
- OER Knowledge Cloud: oerknowledgecloud.org – “[E]stablished to identify, collect, preserve and disseminate available documents of enduring value to researchers, industry, government, scholars, writers, historians, journalists and informal learners.”
- SkillsCommons Repository: skillscommons.org – “The US Department of Labor’s Trade Adjustment Assistance Community College and Career Training (TAACCCT) program has created a free and open online library called SkillsCommons containing free and open learning materials and program support materials for job-driven workforce development. . . . [t]he OER can be found, reused, revised, retained, redistributed and remixed by an individual, institution, and industry for FREE with the proper attribution to the original author of the resources.”
-Publishing
- The Scholarly Kitchen: scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org – “The mission of the Society for Scholarly Publishing is ‘[t]o advance scholarly publishing and communication, and the professional development of its members through education, collaboration, and networking.’ The Scholarly Kitchen is a moderated and independent blog aimed to help fulfill this mission by bringing together differing opinions, commentary, and ideas, and presenting them openly.”
-Podcasts
- The Measure of Everyday Life: measureradio.libsyn.com – “[W]eekly public radio program featuring researchers, practitioners, and professionals discussing their work to improve the human condition.”
-Research
-Scholarship Archives
- Controlled Lots of Copies Keep Stuff Safe (CLOCKSS): clockss.org – The world’s leading digital archive for academic publishers and research libraries…Academic books and academic journals preserved in our digital archive can be retrieved intact after disruptions to inform future generations of researchers…CLOCKSS is a shared dark archive…hosted on 12 servers around the world, at leading academic libraries, with robust infrastructure and security.”
- Portico: portico.org – “[A] community-supported preservation archive that safeguards access to e-journals, e-books, and digital collections. Our unique, trusted process ensures that the content we preserve will remain accessible and usable for researchers, scholars, and students in the future.”
-Statistics
- CIVIQS: civiqs.com – “Civiqs is a polling and data analytics firm that conducts public opinion research online. Since 2013, Civiqs has fielded over two million scientific research surveys, and collected more than thirty million responses to survey questions.”
- Seeing Theory – A Visual Introduction to Probability and Statistics: students.brown.edu
-Studying
- BeanBeanBean: beanbeanbean.com – Multi-level quizes funded by advertisements on General Knowledge, Geography, Language, Math, and Science. “Since BeanBeanBean’s launch in 2017, more than 700,000 players across the world have donated 30+ million beans… ‘beans’ collected by players into a dollar figure. This cash value is then donated to charity”.
- Free Rice: freerice.com – Multi-level quizes on a broad range of topics, funded by advertisements. “Every question you answer correctly raises 10 grains of rice for the World Food Programme (WFP) to support its work saving and changing lives around the world”.
-Videos
- Big Think – Smarter Faster: bigthink.com – “Actionable lessons from the world’s greatest thinkers and doers make the Big Think audience smarter, faster.”
- TEDEd: youtube.com
-Writing
- Academic Phrasebank: phrasebank.manchester.ac.uk
- 10 Tips on How to Write Less Badly: chronicle.com
- 15 Top Tips for Revising Journal Articles: simplysociology.wordpress.com
- 30 Tips for Successful Academic Research and Writing: simplysociology.wordpress.com
- How to Publish your Journal Paper – Understanding the Nuances of the Process Smooths the Publishing Ride: apa.org
- The Thesis Whisperer: thesiswhisperer.com
–Copy Editing
–Style Guides
–Text Conversion/Manipulation
Activism
Artificial Intelligence/Deep Learning
- DeepL – Translator: deepl.com – Translator for Dutch, English, French, German, Italian, Spanish, and Polish
- QuillBot: quillbot.com – “Submit [text] and Quillbot will change it to something different while maintaining the meaning.”
Consumer Information
- GetHuman: gethuman.com – How to get a human when calling customer service.
- Terms of Service – Didn’t Read: tosdr.org – “Terms of service are often too long to read, but it’s important to understand what’s in them. Your rights online depend on them. We hope that our ratings can help you get informed about your rights.”
Product Review Reviews
- Fakespot: fakespot.com – “Our patented algorithm looks for patterns to filter out reviews we think are unreliable.”
- ReviewMeta: reviewmeta.com – “[I]ndependent site that helps consumers get a better understanding about the reviews they are reading on various platforms”
Long Form Journalism
- Longreads: longreads.com – “[D]edicated to helping people find and share the best storytelling in the world. We feature and produce in-depth investigative pieces, profiles, interviews, commentary, book reviews, audio stories, and personal essays.”
- The Electric Typewriter: tetw.org – “Great articles and essays by the world’s best journalists and writers.”
Media
-Books
- Global Grey – Nothing but ebook: globalgreyebooks.com – Curated list of books in the public domain that have been “tidied up” to improve table of contents, readability, spacing, etc.
- LibriVox: librivox.org – “Free public domain audiobooks.”
- OpenStax Textbooks: cnx.org – “[H]igh-quality, peer-reviewed, openly licensed textbooks that are absolutely free online and low cost in print. For all our available formats, visit openstax.org and select the subject that interests you.”
- Project Gutenberg: gutenberg.org – Public domain books is various formats.
-Graphics
- Flat Icon: flaticon.com – “[F]ree icons available in PNG, SVG, EPS, PSD and BASE 64 formats.”
- Freepik: freepik.com – “Free graphic resources for designers”
-Images
- TinEye – Reverse Image Search
- Unsplash: unsplash.com – “[H]igh-resolution photos brought to you by the world’s most generous community of photographers.”
-Movies/TV
- DocumentaryHeaven – Food for your Brain: documentaryheaven.com
- Does the Dog Die: doesthedogdie.com – List emotional and physical triggers in movies for example: child abuse, sexual assault, snakes, strobe lights, suicide
- JustWatch – The Streaming Search Engine: justwatch.com – “We show you where you can legally watch movies and TV shows that you love. You are kept up to date with what is new on Netflix, Amazon Prime, iTunes and many other streaming platforms.”
- Top Documentary Films: topdocumentaryfilms.com
-Music/Audio
- A Soft Murmur – Ambient Sounds to Wash away Distraction: asoftmurmur.com
- Every Noise at Once: everynoise.com – “[A]ttempt at an algorithmically-generated, readability-adjusted scatter-plot of the musical genre-space, based on data tracked and analyzed for 2,066 genres by Spotify”
- Gnoosic – Discover New Music: gnoosic.com – “[A] self-adapting system that learns about the outer world by asking its visitors what they like and what they don’t like. . . . It will ask you what music you like and then think about what you might like too.”
- Music-Map – The Tourist Map of Music: music-map.com – Interactive visual map that plots an artist to other artists who are stylistically similar.
- Radio Garden: radio.garden – Interactive globe that highlights live streaming radio stations.
- I Love PDF: ilovepdf.com – “Every tool you need to use PDFs . . . [m]erge, split, compress, convert, rotate, unlock and watermark PDFs”
-Podcasts
- One Song: pod.link – “[E]ach episode of ONE SONG, break[s] down ONE SONG from the pop music canon that you know – or need to know – but have never heard quite like this.”
-PowerPoint/Google Slides Templates
Social Commentary
- McMansion Hell: mcmansionhell.com – “[A]ims to educate the masses about architectural concepts, urban planning, environmentalism and history by making examples out of the places we love to hate the most: the suburbs.”
Sound
Technology
- Down Detector: downdetector.com – “[P]owered by unbiased, transparent user reports and problem indicators from around the web. Downdetector helps people all over the world understand disruptions to vital services such as the internet, social media, web hosting platforms, banks, games, entertainment, and more.”
Travel/Geography
- Atlas Obscura: atlasobscura.com – “[G]lobal community of explorers, who have together created a comprehensive database of the world’s most wondrous places and foods”
- Flightradar24 – “[F]light tracker that every day tracks 180,000+ flights, from 1,200+ airlines, flying to or from 4,000+ airports around the world in real time.”
- GeoGuessr: geoguessr.com – Geographic guessing game. More info: Wikipedia
- MarineTraffic: marinetraffic.com – Live map of global marine traffic, providing information such as destination and ship type.
- Prepaid Data SIM Card Wiki: prepaid-data-sim-card.wikia.com
- Road Tripper: roadtrippers.com – Plan a road trip
- SeatGuru: seatguru.com – Find the best place to sit on a plane.
- The True Size: thetruesize.com – “Every map projection introduces distortion, and each has its own set of problems. One of the most common criticisms of the Mercator map is that it exaggerates the size of countries nearer the poles (US, Russia, Europe), while downplaying the size of those near the equator (the African Continent).”
United States Only Sites
-Consumer Information
-Politics
- Center for Responsive Politics: opensecrets.org – “[C]omprehensive resource for federal campaign contributions, lobbying data and analysis available anywhere.” More info: Wikipedia
- Vote Smart – Facts Matter – [F]ree, factual, unbiased information on candidates and elected officials.” More info: Wikipedia
Weather
- LightningMaps.org
- Ventusky: ventusky.com – “[I]llustration of the interdependence of the entire system, displaying the development of pressure, wind, cloud cover, precipitation, and temperature on the map.”
- Windy.com
Webcams
Uncategorized
- 7 Cups: 7cups.com – “Free, anonymous and confidential online text chat with trained listeners, online therapists & counselors”
- The Alphabetizer – Alphabetizes anything … and so much more!: alphabetizer.flap.tv
- Animated Napkins: animatednapkins.com – Learn to fold napkins
- Animated Knots: animatedknots.com – Learn to tie knots
- Copy Paste Character: copypastecharacter.com – “[C]opying the ‘hidden’ characters that comes with the computer’s typefaces, to be pasted into emails, tweets, text documents, forums and whatever else you might need to spice up with an extra ♔, ฿ or, ❒.”
- Difference Between: differencebetween.net – “Difference between similar terms and objects”
- Fake Name Generator: fakenamegenerator.com
- Have I Been Pwned?: haveibeenpwned.com – Find out if your information has been part of data breach.
- Information is Beautiful: informationisbeautiful.net
- Manualslib: manualslib.com – Search for manuals
- The Met Collection: metmuseum.org – “The Met presents over 5,000 years of art from around the world for everyone to experience and enjoy.”
- No Excuse List: noexcuselist.com – “The best place on the web to learn anything, free.”
- Risk Factor: riskfactor.com – “[O]nline tool created by the nonprofit First Street that makes it easy for Americans to find their home’s risk from environmental threats such as flooding, wildfires, extreme heat, and severe wind, and understand how risks are changing because of a changing environment.”
- Note: An impressive amount of general info is free, deeper insights require subscription.
- Spot the Station – International Space Station: spotthestation.nasa.gov
- Spurious Correlations: tylervigen.com
- Text Faces: textfac.es
- This to That: thistothat.com – What glue to use to glue two material together
- The Trebek Affirmations Soundboard – An Homage to Jeopardy: trebek-affirmations.com
- Who Samples – Exploring the DNA of Music: whosampled.com
- Worldometers: worldometers.info
- You’re Getting Old: you.regettingold.com
YouTube Channels
- Knowing Better – Wide range of informative videos, typically about social science topics.
- LegalEagle – Think Like a Lawyer – “Do you want to know how our legal system works? You’ve come to the right place. LegalEagle is all about giving you an insider’s view to the legal system. Have some fun and learn to think like a lawyer.”
- Rare Earth – “Unique stories, places and ideas from around the world.”
-History
- Puppet History – Each show focuses on a single story explained with puppets and expert guests
- Timeline – “World History Documentaries”
-Language
- LetThemTalkTV – Explores a wide range of English language topics.
- Otherwords – Find the fascinating and funny stories behind the words and sounds we take for granted.
-Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM)
- Domain of Science – “[Maps] out all of the domains of science using infographic[s]”
- Numberphile – “Videos about numbers – it’s that simple.”
- Veritasium – “[A] channel of science and engineering videos featuring experiments, expert interviews, cool demos, and discussions with the public about everything science.”
Citing the OESD: Please see the front page for general citation information or any definition for specific citation information.