Back in the mid-to-late 1990s, there was a local Portland internet service provider called Teleport, located inside the Spalding Building on Southwest Washington Street downtown. One of the employees there had a daily feature on Teleport's website called "World Wide Web Today", which he eventually made a standalone site called WebToday.
Many other locally-based, small ISPs existed at the time, alongside community-based non-profit "freenet" systems, and many of them had similar web pages or newsletters. Before sophisticated search engines and social media, those pages introduced users to many useful and fun resources one could find online.
This page serves as a homage to that tradition, and also as a way for me to share many of the cool things I find online outside the short lifespans of social media timelines.
This will be a very eclectic one, covering many different subject matters.
The newest entry is at the top.
In the early, optimistic days of the information superhighway, cyberspace was a freewheeling, borderless place populated by cypherpunks, libertarians, ancaps, and imaginative visionaries all experimenting with new ideas. One such idea is the concept of internet-based sovereign states. The Republic of Lomar was one of the first such projects with serious intentions and visions, founded by Laurent Cleenewerk de Kiev (who is now a university professor and an Orthodox priest).
The Republic of Lomar (archived)
Despite the secrecy and strict information control, it isn't hard now to learn about the Democratic People's Republic of Korea. There are many online resources, both official propaganda sources (such as Rodong Sinmun and Naenara) and external sources (such as Koryo Tours and NK News). OpenStreetMap and Google Maps also have detailed information about DPRK. But in the 1990s, it was next to impossible to find information about North Korea. Likely the very first North Korea website that came into existence was oddly enough, created by a certain Japanese businessman who visited Pyongyang once a month.
The people who created PixelFed are now almost ready to release Loops, a decentralized and open-source alternative to TikTok. Like PixelFed, Mastodon, Pleroma, and Diaspora, Loops can be self-hosted on your own VPS.
Benefit companies, sometimes called social purpose corporations, are for-profit businesses that by their articles of incorporation, prioritize the "greater good" over a maximization of shareholder returns. Oregon began its version of benefit companies 11 years ago and as of this writing, there are 3,112 such companies that are active. (They are not to be confused with the B Corp certifications by B Labs. Some benefit companies are certified B Corps while many others are not, but the idea behind them are largely the same.)
Active Benefit Companies (Oregon's Open Data)
A cybersecurity researcher figured out that he could embed a game in the form of a PDF file. It can be played inside a Web browser that can display PDF, such as Firefox.
This ArcGIS map shows railroad tracks in the United States, Canada, and parts of Mexico.
Blockbuster Video is still live in Bend, Oregon, and is a major tourist attraction of Central Oregon, in addition to being the last functioning video rental franchise in the world.
Blockbuster Video, Bend, Oregon
Through the history of the Esperanto language, the People's Republic of China has been its biggest supporter. In the past, schoolchildren would learn Esperanto before they did English. In December 1964, Radio Peking began its international broadcast in Esperanto. This tradition still lives on as part of China Global Television Network.
One of the lesser-known products of Google is Google Arts and Culture, which has made available digitized collections of art museums from around the world.
Google Arts and Culture collections
This FLOSS malware scan app for Android is fast and low on resource consumption.
You can create your own guess-a-word puzzle like the New York Times' once-popular Wordle, and challenge your friends to play it.
Language Transfer, or the "Thinking Method," was invented by Mihalis Eleftheriou. This website gives absolutely free language learning courses (7 languages for English Speakers, as well as English for Spanish speakers) based on this method.
In the latter half of the 90s, the popular adoption of the World Wide Web accelerated. Along with it came many questionable schemes to make money off this new phenomenon, and the "information superhighway" was still a Wild West. "PC-SUPER-MLM" and its sequel "PC-SUPER-PARTNERS" were two of the earliest and most widespread chain-letter schemes that were adapted to the new cyberspace. PC-SUPER-MLM claimed to be an automated multi-level marketing business that sold a series of "Info-Reports." In reality, users were given a list of mailing addresses (of their uplines) to send a $5 bill. The users then used the software to duplicate the software but now with their own mailing address at the top.
One of PC-SUPER-MLM distribution websites that inexplicably still survives to this day
PC-SUPER-MLM spams inundated listservs and newsgroups.
Just about every website or app has TOS. The problem is that most people don't read them because they are just long and look like all the other lawyer-generated, cover-your-ass documents. This site summarizes and ranks the TOS of major websites and apps.
With ArtExplorer, you can find artworks from the vast collections of the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam by keywords (for example, "cats" or "Chinese calligraphy" or "watercolour flowers"). Search terms can be in English, need not be in Dutch.
Use this chart to find complementary colors for any color, as well as to look up RGB, HSV, and Hex values for colors.
Slide rules used to be indispensable in engineering and math before the widespread use of electronic calculators. They even helped put a man on the moon. This digital emulation of a slide rule is available for Android, Windows, MacOS, and Linux.
While today is the first day of a new year, it is not always the case around the world.
Gregorian calendar date to Julian, Hebrew, Persian and Islamic
Gregorian calendar date to Chinese lunar date
It has been already a quarter-century since that New Year's eve. Fortunately, there was no major catastrophe that was predicted.
Here are some artifacts from the months and days leading up to that night.
Y2K swept the nation 25 years ago: Historical photos show millennium panic in America (USA Today)
National Museum of American History
This website (mobile-friendly) shows the real-time locations of buses, along with some geeky data such as vehicle models, whether the buses are running late, and what the next stops are. It covers most of the West Coast (including TransLink, Sound Transit, Metro, C-TRAN, TriMet, and more), as well as Denver, Minneapolis, New England, Philadelphia, DMV, and Montreal.
Cats and sinks. Sinks and cats.
This interactive map shows which Indigenous First Nations inhabited where you are standing now. Click on the map and you can learn more about their history, language, and territories. Despite the .ca domain name, the map covers the entire Americas, Australia, and New Zealand, as well as parts of Asia, Russia, Africa, and Oceania.
Today I'd like to encourage you to check out your local public library. Many libraries today are more than stacks of books. Your library card could open doors to otherwise really expensive subscriptions, such as hundreds of magazines and even your local daily newspaper, through the library website's "online resources" area or via the Libby app. In some areas, you can sign up for a "digital-only" library card online, without even visiting a library.
Amazon and Barnes & Noble have cornered the market in online book sales, but there is an alternative that directly helps your local neighborhood bookstores, right in the comfort of your own home. The convenience of Amazon but without enriching Jeff Bezo$.
Long before all the Facebook and Instagram pictures of cats and Christmas trees, there was this page!
The Book of Common Prayer (BCP) is a distinguishing feature of Anglican Christianity. First written by Thomas Cranmer, BCP and its variants are used around the world by the members of the Anglican Communion as well as by others. This online version of the Episcopal Church (USA) Book of Common Prayers automatically inserts appropriate prayers and Bible readings for the day and displays them for ease of use.
The publisher of the Liberation and Inclusion Translation Bible (LIT Bible) has created a custom-programmed ChatGPT chatbot to answer questions about the scriptures and theology from the perspective of liberation theology.
This interactive map shows nature restoration projects around the world and in your area.
This daily game shows an aerial photo of a random city and you have six chances to guess where it is.
Do you know how to start a fire? How about telling approximately what time it is when you don't have a watch and your phone is dead? What is a "trail bread"? A "pine needle tea"? How can you find water, or for that matter, which way is the north? Learn all about important survival skills before you go camping or hiking, with this video series. A new episode every other Wednesday!
The University of Oregon has archived and digitized just about every newspaper that has existed in Oregon since the 19th century. (Note: Some of the major papers such as the Oregonian and the Statesman-Journal, as well as the defunct Oregon Journal, are not included except for issues for which the copyright protection had already lapsed. Also, publications from the CMG Oregon/former Pamplin Media-owned newspapers, such as the Portland Tribune, are not included due to copyright issues.) Whether you're looking for an issue of the Oregon Mist from 1895 or Just Out from 1995, it's there.
Historic Oregon Newspapers (U of O Libraries)
Use AddAll to check the prices on all major online booksellers (including Powell's Books) and find the best deals on new and used books. Search results include any applicable delivery charges!
The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), one of the oldest and largest digital rights organizations, has assembled a useful collection of actionable information to protect yourself from surveillance.
Every artist benefits from learning how to draw humans. No wonder why every art school requires its students to spend many hours in life drawing studio classes. While there is no substitute for living, breathing, three-dimensional art models, the second-best option is to draw from lots of reference photos. Line of Action is a great place to start practicing, for free.
While there are several online radio streaming apps exist for Linux, Radion is unique in that it runs in a command-line interface (i.e., terminal). With low memory usage, this is ideal for multitasking. Your favorite radio stations can be added by manually editing a configuration file.
Use this tool to find which county in the United States aligns most with what you value the most. You can also learn about each state and county and its statistics.
by each county (example: Clackamas)
Online Wordpad is a simple notepad web app that requires no installation, suitable for use on public computers (such as libraries). It allows for writing and editing of plain text files, which must be locally saved. There is also a separate web app on this site for typing formatted texts and exporting the texts to PDF files. Both apps can be used inside a mobile browser.
(with formatting, export to PDF only)
Delete your news apps! (July 8, 2024)
Social media fundamentally transformed the way in which people consume news, and it has become a unmitigated disaster. Social media and algorithm created echo chambers and led to the growth of hyper-partisanship, culture wars, and extremism. An old technology, Real Simple Syndication (RSS), puts users back in control. There are many RSS reader apps for both desktop and mobile devices. However, their user interfaces may be cranky and since these apps download and store content on devices, they can take up a lot of disk space. This is not to mention that you'll need to set up RSS and subscriptions on each and every device you may use. Commafeed provides an easier alternative. Just like a web-based email such as Gmail, this is a web-based RSS reader with a simple and easy-to-use interface. You can use both desktop and mobile browsers. Podcasts play directly in Commafeed.
Maybe you found an interesting infographic on someone's Instagram feed. Maybe you want to post your Instagram photos on Pixelfed. Meta has made it difficult to save pictures from Instagram on your computer. This downloader does it with ease.
Profile Downloader for Instagram
Bluesky is rapidly gaining popularity. Bluesky has a 300-character limit, just above X's 280-character limit but not as much as Threads' 500-character limit. Use Bluesky Thread Composer to write a long post and split it into a multiple post.
Books are expensive nowadays, and inflation is affecting the disposable income of many people. What if you could find a book at a nearby library (often even electronically) whenever you are on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Goodreads, or the Storygraph? The Library Extension automatically looks up your library's catalog and tells you if that book is available for checkout. You can then place a hold online through your library's OPAC, or even check out an electronic copy and start reading right away with the Libby app.
For both Firefox-based and Chromium-based browsers. It does not work with Firefox for Android, however.
The Internet Sacred Texts Archive (ISTA) is one of the longest-running websites of its kind, containing a large collection of traditional religious texts from around the world.
With PDF Tool you can remove unwanted pages from a PDF file, merge two files into one or split one PDF into two separate files, "optimize" (shrink the file size of) a PDF, encrypt a PDF file, and sign a PDF file. Unique to this is that all these operations happen on your computer, inside a browser, and no files and their contents are uploaded to any server.
Typically when you go to a weather report website, local precipitation data comes from a nearby airport, which may be miles away. You can check a hyperlocal map of precipitation data on CoCoRAHS, a volunteer-powered network of precipitation statistics throughout the United States, Canada, and the Bahamas.
CoCoRAHS Interactive Precipitation Map
CoCoRAHS Data Explorer (nice data visualization!)
Did you find some random food ingredients in your kitchen and are not sure what to do with them? Is your local supermarket having a special promotion on rhubarb and kale? Did you stop by a food bank and end up with an odd assortment of surplus produce? Fret not, Food Hero is here! Find recipes and tips by ingredients. You can also find recipes with five ingredients or less, or 30 minutes or less!
Food Hero (Oregon State University Extension Service)
Héroe de Alimentos en castellano (Universidad Estatal de Oregon)
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