Good Web Based Services

which are free

Good online services you pay for have their own page

And good places for shopping online have their own page

Why bother with this page? Why not use Google to find "EVERYTHING"?? Because Google will find everything, and it won't make any editorial comments. And you have to know what to search for. This page presents some things that I, not robot, commend to you.....

The following are services in which I have no interest, apart from being a happy user. Well, unless you count being a minor shareholder in some cases, or places where I have posted "stuff", or participate in affiliate programs. But something gets listed here only if I would recommend a product to my maiden aunt, regardless of any (slight, in every case, except the space I've given Google for their clearly- not- from- me ads) chance of personal gain.

The links that follow are to the US site for most of the businesses. If you are in another part of the world, the site may re-direct you automatically, or maybe you'll want to seek out a local version. Sorry... I too resent the US seizing the ".gov" domain for the US government, as if any others were second class. My decision arose from the fact that this page is more likely to be found by a US reader than by anyone else.

Most of the following are services I "know and love", having used them for many years. I have at least make preliminary checks into the others. I started using most of them following recommendations from sources I have found to be reliable, not least the UK magazines Computer Shopper and PCW.)

This list is in three parts...

The first part is things that many web users may find useful.

The second part is things that will only be useful to people who have their own web pages.

Down at the bottom are some concluding notes and links which I hope you will check out.

First part: Services that many web users may find useful

Google: Surely you know about Google? Some people don't realize that there are other ways to go to a website. Be sure you take time to explore some of the "corners" of Google... it offers more than the search engine. (I will try to expand on this entry later.)

Wikipedia: Many people search the whole web when they want to "look up" something. If you are simply after some fact, such as you might find in an encyclopedia, try Wikipedia first.... it will save you wading through some of the dross that clogs the internet.

BBC News: Access this from time to time to stay up to date with some of the things that matter... efficiently. You get recent top stories in boxes, but, more usefully to me, a list, in newest- to- oldest of story subjects. I run my eye down the list. Most things I skip over. When I see something interesting, I right- click on it, open the story in a new tab, read it, and then close the tab... and "presto", the list of available stories reappears instantly. When I get far enough down the list that I hit a story I looked at previously, I know I've seen everything that is new.

Not really a "service" in the sense of other things here, but the BBC also, for a week, makes available any radio programme... so if you missed something, you can listen later. You will have to get your machine set up for playing audio transmissions, but it's not terribly difficult, and you have the first class help from the BBC to aid you.

Flickr: Addictive! View thousands of photographs, many of which are stunning. You'll need to learn a bit about using the site to avoid the dross... but it isn't hard. You can post up to 200 photos of your own for free. (To do that, you have to set up a Yahoo account.. not onerous, and also free.) Try using a search on a tag, and be sure to select for the photos to be sorted "most interesting first."

Independent Movie Data Base (IMDB): Watching a film that's really good? Wonder who directed it? What else did he/ she do? Just visit the IMDB. Lots, lots more. Not least trivia discussions.

Skype: Make phone calls to other Skype users for free, to ordinary phones anywhere in the world for less than 5 (US) cents per minute. Requires XP and a broadband connection. A USB telephone handset... a simple one is fine, and costs about $25, makes things seem more natural, but you can use any other microphone/ speaker arrangement that you wish. It is probably best to use headphones or a handset. Otherwise, the person you are speaking with hears a distracting echo of everything you say.

Snopes: Was there really a man with a JTOL unit who earned a Darwin Award? For intelligent... if sometimes obsessive!... discussions of things that seem too implausible to be true, visit Snopes. (Search for "rocket arizona" to find out about the Darwin Award.) (Not very useful... but entertaining, if you are a little bit twisted: Darwin Awards.

Tucows: There's lots of good software available via the web. Besides my modest guide to free Windows software, there's the much bigger and better operation at Tucows. They have editors who check what's in their library, and it is organized. If you distribute freeware or shareware of your own making, Tucows will put your program in their library for free, if it is good enough. (Their standards may be "a pain"... but they are also a great goad to get you to tidy all those loose ends you "knew" you ought to do something about! Be sure to download their guide to submissions. You can do a lot about your "cows" rating, just by RTFM. (Hmmm... wrote that, then went to the Tucows site, trying to find a link for you to their cow rating standards. Frustrating. Couldn't find it. If you find it, let me know? I know they published it in the past. Couldn't even find a sensible "help" button! But the software in their library is still great!) They will also encourage you to avail yourself of more services, which are not free.

TinyURL service: Ever wanted to email a long URL ("www" thingie) to someone? Or pass it on over the phone, or via other non computer channels? TinyURL is just what you need. You go to their site, type in whatever long URL you want, and they'll return something more manageable.

For instance, to visit the page you are reading from you can enter....

www.arunet.co.uk/tkboyd/hh6wf.htm

... or you can enter...

tinyurl.com/ypb6vz

If you are planning to USE a TinyURL you picked up somewhere not 100% reliable... and remember to allow for mistakes by others, as well as deliberate malevolence, you can enter....

preview.tinyurl.com/ypb6vz

... to see where you will go if you use the TinyURL you have.

Prairie Home Companion: Not really a "service" in the sense that the other pages listed here are, but I commend this site to you highly if your blood pressure has been pushed a little high by "life". It lets you listen to episodes of a weekly radio show that Garrison Keillor has been doing for many years. If you don't want to listen to the shows, there are transcripts of parts of them which you can read. You can listen to a whole show, or just segments of it.... Do give "The News From Lake Woebegon" segment, sometimes just called "monologue", near the end of the show, a try. Right up there with Charles Schultz, which, from me, is high praise.

Second part: Services that may be useful to people who have their own web pages.

Check your HTML.... is it valid? Are there mistakes? They may not prevent your browser from displaying your page in a reasonable form, but what will happen in other browsers? You might as well write HTLM that meets the official standards... not the tweaked ones that Microsoft programs generate, that result in code that works best, or only works in a Microsoft browser (funny that). All you have to do is go to the site, enter the URL of your page, and you'll be told of any problems. Don't be downhearted! At first, you'll have a little work to do, but you soon get the knack of sticking to the rules. I've done a page about using the W3C HTML validator for you.

Check your links.... This tool from the same people who provide the validator. It will check all of the links on your page, and alert you to any that are broken. Again, all you have to do is go to the site, enter the URL of your page, and you'll be told of any problems.

FreeFind: If you give your site a search tool, not only do you help your visitors, but you also help yourself. Google offers search bars, and I have no doubt that they are very good. Long before Google came along, I started with FreeFind, and I have had no reason to change.

I said that you help yourself as well as helping your visitors. With a FreeFind search bar, you get weekly emails to tell you what searches people have been doing. This helps you understand your customers, and to improve your pages.

You simply embed about 40 lines of code into your page, and FreeFind does the rest. You can see the code if you view the source of my Sheepdog Software homepage.... but don't worry, the nice people at FreeFind tell you exactly what you need.

Visitor tracking: Even if a visitor doesn't use the search bar I provide, I can learn a lot, thanks to the service from Extreme Tracking.

To quote from their site: "Conveniently arranged, numbers, percentages, stats, totals and averages. All the way up from simple counting your visitors until tracking the keywords they use to find you."

You simply embed about 25 lines of code into your page, and Extreme Tracker does the rest. You can see the code if you view the source of this page.... but don't worry, the nice people at Extreme Tracker tell you exactly what you need.

Google Adsense: This is not only free, but they pay you! And besides the lovely money, you get all sorts of information about the visitors to your site. One I particularly enjoy is a world map, flagged with the location of your most recent 150 visitors. It is quite spooky. Not only can you see where they are, but all sorts of details like who the ISP is, which may well be a corporation or government agency, how many of your pages they viewed, how long they stayed, what search terms they were using that led them to your site.

Dynamic DNS: If you have an "always on" connection to the internet, e.g. DSL, or broadband, you might want to consider hosting things directly from your own PC. There are security issues involved, so don't embark on this lightly... but if you feel ready, then the service provided by DynDNS may be of use to you. It solves the problem people who do not have a static IP address have. There's more on this in the pages about my FarWatch, a system that lets anyone with an always on connection and at least an old Win98 box set up something that lets them see that all is well at a monitored premise. They can check in on the premise from any internet terminal in the world. Mine has a temperature sensor (adds about $40 to the cost of the project), and I can see that the heating hasn't failed.

Page tested for compliance with INDUSTRY (not MS-only) standards, using the free, publicly accessible validator at validator.w3.org