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This page is a start on a list of internet sites I would commend to you as "destinations". I have other pages listing online services (including reference services), and sources of freeware, shareware. Below you will find websites which are worth visiting for the things you will be able to do there.
The page is new, inspired by my enthusiasm for the one site listed so far....
Zooniverse is a collection of projects which allow you and me to contribute to the work of real scientists..
It is a new twist, a new synthesis on ideas that have been present on the web for some time.
It combines the power of distributed processing with the power of individual human brains. There are also (good) elements of the forces which have made the likes of Facebook spread so explosively.... but don't worry, you can keep yourself to yourself... don't let the "Facebook" reference scare you off!
You do have to "register" at the site before you can participate in a project, but the demands for information are minimal. You can read about the different projects without registering. One registration suffices for participation in all of the projects.
I'm going to highlight three of the current projects... but do, I urge you, visit the Zooniverse site, give it a try... the specific project which appeals to you might be different from the ones that have caught my attention. They all "connect" your brain to a distributed processing task.
Ever dream of being an astronomer? But couldn't face the cold, late nights? Or maybe the light pollution in your area makes astronomy a non-starter?
Zooniverse to the rescue!
You can do real astronomical research... using some of the world's top instruments... even the Hubble telescope.
Various telescopes, etc, collect, forgive the pun, astronomical amounts of data. Someone has to sift through it. That's where you come in!!
There are a number of Zooniverse astronomy projects. Including ones which give you the chance to be the first person to notice a new supernova or a previously unrecorded comet. Yes, really.
The "Old Weather" project gives participants an image of a page from an actual ship's log. (At the moment, the logs are from World War One era shipping.) The participants then use their brains to extract weather data from the page, and enter it into a huge database.
What's it good for? As weather scientists attempt to improve their weather and climate forecasting, they often test their systems by saying things like "On 1 January 1950, the weather in London was.... What will it be on 1 July 1950?". They put the weather from January into their model, and then compare what the model says it "will" be in July with what the weather actually was in July.
The Zooniverse "Old Weather" project is extending the database available to the weather scientists so that they can do a better job.
In the Great Age of Discovery, mankind finally created reasonable maps of the coastlines of the continents of the earth. How cool would it have been to participate in that?
I can't offer you quite that experience, but you can contribute to an important similar venture... the mapping of the features of the moon's surface.
Who cares?
How can we properly study the moon without a decent map of what's there?
Or maybe you (like me) just have a touch of OCD? Ever play Sudoku? Freecell? Why not do something as compulsive, but with a touch of usefulness?
In the Moon Zoo project, one activity is mapping the features of the moon. No, "they" can't get a computer to do it "automatically"... yet.
Participants in the Moon Zoo Crater Survey are given a small bit of the moon to map. Yes, really. (And yes, there are checks in the system to filter out bad mapping.) The list of known craters, with notes on their size and nature, has been extended by work I have done, and you can add to that.
Zooniverse sends you a picture of a small part of the moon's surface, e.g....
Then, using the excellent tools provided, you mark up the page, indicating where craters are, what they are like, their shape, size, etc. (You don't have to mark every crater... just those over a certain size.) If unusual features are also present, you mark them too.... what you see below is the same page as the one above, plus my work marking what I could see....
Once I clicked "submit", new entries were on their way to the huge database of the moon's features. Is there a pattern to elongated craters? Where are linear features found? How common are "new"/"white" craters? You can help give real scientists the tools to explore these questions.
You do have to do a little bit of online "training" before you are admitted to the project, but it took me less than ten minutes, and was well presented.
To search THIS site....
(Click this to search the site without using forms, or just use...)
The search engine merely looks for the words you type, so....
Please also note that I have other sites; this search will not include things from them. Each site has its own search button.
My SheepdogGuides site.You can email this page's editor, Tom Boyd. Click here for details.
Page tested for compliance with INDUSTRY (not MS-only) standards, using the free, publicly accessible validator at validator.w3.org