Need a break from your work? Visit the WebMuseum at the Louvre.
You could check the news at CNN, The Economist, The Wall Street Journal, or Business Week (all are
). At
times, you
also may wish to refer to the Christian
Science Monitor, the Jerusalem
Post, and Jordan's Star
weekly. For a source of news from Israeli intelligence sources,
see Debkafile.
For a different perspective, see the Arab news agency, Al-Jazeera.
You can find news and opinion from the French press at the Tocqueville
Connection and from the Greek press at eKathimerini.
Want privacy on the Web? Use the Anonymizer to visit a web site anonymously. If you are concerned about cookies that may have been deposited on your hard disk, you should configure your browser to warn you in the future, when a site wants to deposit such a cookie on you drive, and see Cookie Central for information on "persistent cookie" technology.
If you receive unsolicited e-mail (SPAM) that you feel should be investigated, forward it to the Federal Trade Commission at UCE@FTC.GOV.
Before you buy anything expensive, see the information and ratings
in ConsumerGuide
Interactive and Consumer
Reports online, and see the consumer chat and ratings at consumerreview.com.
Also see CompareNet. Then
to buy or sell just about anything at auction prices, try the online
auction
at eBay. For consumer
information
that is specific to buying or renting a car, see the Travel Section of
this web site. For unusually extensive reviews on coffee makers, see CoffeeGeek.com.
For classified ads to local services, see craigslist.com and backpage.com. I've provided the link to the Kansas City services, but you can choose any major city from there. Also see care.com for a cumulative list with a narrower focus and for contractors and other home services, Angie's List. While craig's list does not charge for use of its classified ads, the other two require membership and fees from users.
With the growing problems of identity theft and the importance of
having a good credit rating, it can be worthwhile to request an annual
free credit report. While there are various services that provide
those reports along with monthly monitoring for a fee, there is only
one authorized under the Fair Credit Reporting Act to provide the
reports annually from the three major credit rating services for
free. To be sure that you have gone to the correct site and not
revealed your Social Security Number to a fraudulent site or to one
that will begin billing you for monthly monitoring, it is best to find
the authorized free annual service either through the Wikipedia link or the FTC link.
Alternatively, you could trust no links to that site and instead type
the following URL directly into your browser:
https://www.annualcreditreport.com/
The search for medical information has become one of the most active uses of the web. An excellent source is MedicineNet, which was created and is maintained by a group of physicians. In addition to the extensive amount of information supplied directly by these physicians in this site, the site also contains a large list of links to other medical sites. But don't bother searching elsewhere until you've found what these physicians have put online in their own valuable site. For a general medical resource site, see the consumers' section of WebMD. For information about and RATINGS OF physicians, hospitals, and health plans, see HealthGrades.com and the AMA's Doctor Finder. To check for reports of professional misconduct by physicians, see docfinder. Regarding hospitals, see the US News rankings, health care choices, leap frog, and the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations. For information about physicians and hospitals in the Kansas City area, see HealthyKansasCity.org.
To search for a doctor in the United States, you likely will want
to
know whether the doctors you are considering are Board Certified in the
areas of specialization that concern you. You can check on that for any
physician by searching the American Board of Medical Specialties' Verification
of Board Certification.
For free legal advice, see FreeAdvice.com. If you should need an attorney, the first place to look is martingale.com,
where you can find peer review ratings of attorneys, both in terms of
ethical standards and professional expertise and knowledge.
Before you choose a movie to see, you may wish to check some
online
reviews. Especially recommended are James
Berardinelli's excellent ReelViews () and the Chicago
Tribune's Movie Archive (professional) ().
For links to other movie reviews, see Yahoo's
online
movie review links and the very colorful overview of critical reviews
at Rotten Tomatoes () and MetaCritic (). Here in the
Lawrence/Kansas City area, the popular nightlife newspaper
is The Pitch.
Food For Thought. (?
stars)
Groan. (zero stars)
Academic Information Service's Tax Guide for College Teachers.
Gossip: There is no shortage of gossip in academia. For the most notorious of the student gossip sites, see Juicy Campus.