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Top 100 web secrets
We've searched every corner of the web for the most useful (and useless) sites you've never seen. Download free movies and music, find the cheapest shopping sites, get a degree, make money, walk on Mars and much more.
We've searched every corner of the web for the most useful (and useless) sites you've never seen. Download free movies and music, find the cheapest shopping sites, get a degree make money, walk on Mars and much more.
1. Travel the world
If you've not ventured to Australia's world famous Lonely Planet site, do so now. You'll find images, maps, advice and personal stories from travellers around the world, which makes this an indispensable resource for anyone thinking about travelling. In addition to the pages upon pages of content, the site is a brilliant example of quality web design -- www.lonelyplanet.com took out the People's Voice Award for the travel category at 2004's Webby Awards.
2. Buy land on the moon
While the legalities of galactic body ownership are dubious at best, if you've ever wanted to be a celestial land owner, the internet can put you on the right path. Websites such as www.lunarrealty.com.au and www.moonestates.com have online shop fronts for this very purpose -- simply choose the amount of land and its location and you're away.
3. Surf like a ninja
Wherever you go online you leave a traceable footprint in the form of your IP address. In addition to your IP, cookies can store and release personal information, including browsing habits and credit card information. To avoid opening yourself up, services like Anonymizer (www.anonymizer.net) sit between you and the site you're visiting and effectively disguise your IP address. The site offers a free trial to get you started, or you can also head to sites like MultiProxy (www.multiproxy.org), which lists free, anonymous proxy servers available to the public.
4. Do your banking online
The ‘big four’ banks in Australia have offered online banking for a number of years, and many smaller banks and credit unions offer it too. It's a lot easier than telephone banking, and you are able to see in realtime any changes to your account, and then print them out. Most banks also provide extensive information about phishing scams, but as a general rule don't respond to any emails from a bank. Check out www.westpac.com.au, www.commbank.com.au, www.national.com.au, www.anz.com.au and others for more information.
5. Relive the old classics
It's easy to forget our gaming past when we're surrounded by the bells and whistles of Half-Life 2, World of Warcraft and Xboxes. But if you cast your mind back you won't remember the Atari 2600's basic graphics, or the C64's long load times - you'll remember the fun and enjoyment from watching a green square chase a blue circle. Fortunately, there are sites listed on the internet that are determined to keep the games alive. Check out www.the-underdogs.org for thousands of freeware games, open source projects, and the legally grey category of abandonware; or head to www.remakes.org to find out if your favourite classic has been remade.
6. Become a freemailer -- for free!
There were two significant events in the history of the net that shaped the webmail phenomenon: Hotmail and Gmail. Hotmail (www.hotmail.com) kicked off the then revolutionary ability to get a free, anonymous, and perfectly functional email address. Better still, it offered a feature that you couldn't get from your standard, paid-for, POP account: remote access from any net-connected PC. Gmail's (http://gmail.google.com) contribution is an extension of this -- its promise of 1GB storage not only offered an attractive online storage method, but prompted competitive offerings from other services like Yahoo!. In sum, it's safe to say a free webmail account is an essential part of being online, and there's never been a better time than now.
7. Research your family tree
As more and more archived materials are transferred to the web, the internet is becoming a valuable resource for tracing your family history. One of the best resources, for Anglo-Saxon Australians at least, is put out by genealogist Cora Num (www.coraweb.com.au), which hosts an exhaustive list of search engines and records.
8. Find that pesky error
Even Bill Gates suffers the blue screen of death from time to time (and unfortunately for Bill, it can happen in front of computer journalists when demonstrating a new operating system). To help those, like Gates, who run into unexpected errors, Microsoft's comprehensive Knowledge Base may provide the cure for what's ailing your PC. Head to http://support.microsoft.com/search to search the database or, if you know the six digit code that corresponds to the error, simply add it to the end of http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?kbid=xxxxxx. There's even an entry on searching the KB, which falls under item 242450.
9. Make your own music
Hip hop and dance music have shown us that you don't need to learn an instrument to be a musician, and there are plenty of free resources available for budding artists. Acid XPress (http://mediasoftware.sonypictures.com/download/freestuff.asp) is one of the best: it's easy to learn and there are plenty of downloadable samples to use as well.
10. Donate some CPU cycles
Much of our day-to-day computing uses less than five percent of our CPU's potential. With a standard 2GHz CPU, this wastage translates to around 1,900,000,000 clock cycles every second. Distributed computing has been around for many years, with SETI@home's (http://setiathome.ssl.berkeley.edu) extraterrestrial search being the poster boy, but it's not the only place to donate that extra time -- Folding@home (www.stanford.edu/group/pandegroup/folding), FightAIDS@home (http://fightaidsathome.scripps.edu) and Einstein@home (http://einstein.phys.uwm.edu) are other noble causes you can contribute to. Just head to the sites listed here, download the client software, and you'll be playing a role in solving the world's greatest scientific mysteries.
This article appeared in the May, 2005 issue of PC Authority.
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Comments: 1
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gilligan
Sep 8, 2008 1:29 PM
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You've doubled up on the '100' at the top of the page.
Comment made about the PC Authority article:
Top 100 web secrets ?
We've searched every corner of the web for the most useful (and useless) sites you've never seen. Download free movies and music, find the cheapest shopping sites, get a degree, make money, walk on Mars and much more.
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