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Curious Cat Web Directory: sites

• Bank Simple - New bank from the lead developer of Twitter. "BankSimple was born out of our frustration with banking. We were fed up with our banks: the fees, the constantly changing rules, the crappy customer service. We saw an opportunity to fix these issues by making banking simpler."
• xkcd - "Warning: this comic occasionally contains strong language (which may be unsuitable for children), unusual humor (which may be unsuitable for adults), and advanced mathematics (which may be unsuitable for liberal-arts majors)."
• Bloomberg - Good source of business news.
• Gmail - Email from google. Excellent search and spam filtering.
• RubyonRails.org - "Ruby on Rails is a breakthrough in lowering the barriers of entry to programming. Powerful web applications that formerly might have taken weeks or months to develop can be produced in a matter of days." Tim O'Reilly
• Railscasts - Great videos explaining how to do all sorts of useful things with ruby on rails from Ryan Bates. Great stuff.
• BBC News - World news from the British Broadcasting Company.
• The Motley Fool - A site for individual investors that seeks to educate investors so they can make wise decisions (instead of being taken advantage of).
• Hotwire - Find great travel deals with a web site that is easy and quick to use.
• Washington Post - News from Washington DC on the USA and the world.
• Yahoo Finance - Good source for stock news and portfolio tracking. The site also offers active investor forums on individual stocks.
• Zappos - Mission: to provide the best customer service possible. They were purchased by Amazon in 2009.
• CSS Templates for Free - CSS4Free provides free CSS based website templates for you to preview, rate, comment on, and download.
• Grooveshark - Listen to music online.
• Curious Cat Travel Photo Blog - Travel photos of National Parks in the USA and around the world by John Hunter.
• Stack Overflow - Question and answer site for programmers.
• The Superficial -
• Variety -
• boingboing - Find interesting stories from around the web. Bias toward counter culture, sticking it to the man, home engineering and artistic flourishes.
• Hacker News -
• Reddit - Reddit is a source for what's new and popular on the web. Users like you provide all of the content and decide, through voting up what's good and down what's junk. Links that receive community approval bubble up, so the front page is constantly in motion and (hopefully) filled with fresh, interesting links.
• Google - The default search for most everyone.
• Bing - Microsoft's attempt to compete with Google.
• ESPN -
• Sports Illustrated -
• BBC Sport -
• Mayo Clinic - Detailed health information from the experts at the Mayo Clinic on a wide variety of topics.
• Web MD - WebMD provides valuable health information, tools for managing your health, and support to those who seek information.
• Science Blogs - Huge site with many excellent blogs by scientists focused on exploring science.
• You Tube - Huge online video site.
• Sinatra - Very light Ruby framework. Can be integrated with rails.
• Curious Cat Science and Engineering Blog -
• Amazon - The number one shopping site for nearly everything: books, gadgets, music, movies, electronics, clothes, gardening supplies, toys...
• Monster - Large, worldwide, job site.
• Career Builder - Over 1 million jobs listed.
• Khan Academy - Over 800 free well done educational videos on algebra, geometry, calculus, finance, statistics, economics... Bill Gates touted the "unbelievable" 10- to 15-minute Khan Academy tutorials "I've been using with my kids."
• Escape 101 -
• ePassport Photo - Create you passport photo online and have it mailed to you for a large savings.
• Kiva - Kiva's mission is to connect people, through lending (micro-finance), for the sake of alleviating poverty.
• Meet Up - Meetup is the world's largest network of local groups. Meetup makes it easy for anyone to organize a local group or find one of the thousands already meeting up face-to-face. More than 2,000 groups get together in local communities each day, each one with the goal of improving themselves or their communities.
• Curious Cat Management Improvement Portal - Resources to help managers including: books, articles, blogs, jobs, seminars and more.
• Linode - VPS provider with very good rates and excellent reliability and support. Favored by ruby on rails developers especially.
• Slicehost - "We built a hosting company for people who know their stuff. Give us a box, give us bandwidth, give us performance and we get to work. Fast machines, RAID-10 drives, Tier-1 bandwidth and root access. Managed with a customized Xen VPS backend to ensure that your resources are protected and guaranteed." They offer very good resources on managing a server, even for the inexperienced.
• oDesk - Make money by working for others. Bid on jobs via oDesk's huge number of projects and long term jobs.
• Google Ad Sense - The most popular ad platform. Use the simple process to ad code to your site and let Google find the best ads to show and split the revenue with your site.
• Abduzeedo - Abduzeedo is a blog about design. There are all sorts of articles for those who want to look for inspiration. Also you will find very useful tutorials for the most used applications out there.
• Remodelista - Very nice site to get ideas on remodeling your house and good architecture design ideas.
• Duck Duck Go - Really nice site that actually innovates on search. Gives great results. I still resort to Google a great deal but Duck Duck Go is my first option.
• Blekko - Blekko is a way to search the web using slashtags. slashtags search only the sites you want and cut out the spam sites. use friends, experts, community or your own slashtags to slash in what you want and slash out what you don't.
• Travelocity - Huge site to book travel and compare costs of airlines, hotels, etc..
• externs.com - Site for find and listing internships.
• Internships.com - "World's Largest Internship Marketplace."
• externs.com - Find internship opportunities by geographic location and find virtual options you can participate in from anywhere. Special focus on science and engineering internships.
• Linked In - Social networking site for businesspeople. Post profiles. Link to colleagues. Look for jobs. Have those looking to hire find you.
• Twitter - Tweet in under 140 characters to the world and join the social media revolution.
• gandi.net - Web site domain registrar that treats customers with respect. "We are honest about what we do; we will be straightforward in how we deal with you. We will not exaggerate or over complicate things. We will give you what we promise to give you. "
• 500 Square Feet - Design ideas for small spaces.
• 1Password - 1Password can create strong, unique passwords for you, remember them, and restore them, all directly in your web browser. You can also store your details "in the cloud" using dropbox. Very well done application. It isn't cheap but it is a good tool for making your information more secure.
• Hipmunk - Excellent, easy, uncluttered interface to find and view flight options. Then you link offsite to make a purchase. Excellent design and usability. By one of the co-founders of Reddit.
• Jubak Picks - Blog by Jim Jubak with stock picks along with market and economic commentary.
• Knight Science Journalism Tracker - "KSJ Tracker ordinarily includes brief descriptions of news stories with some commentary, headlines and links to their publishers' Web sites - some of which require registration to gain access. Priority goes to stories that report or analyze new scientific research, and to reports on science policy and issues. Less attention is given to brief reports and updates that add little to what has already been in the news."
• Consumerist - Great site. Read about (mostly) poor customer service. Find out what companies to avoid doing business with unless for some reason you like being mistreated by poorly run companies.
• Inhabitat - "design will save the world"
• Google Webmaster Center - Resources from Google including tools and information about issues they are having with your sites.
• Trickle Up - Trickle Up specifically target people who are unreached by microfinance or other service organizations, and provide them with the resources they need to build a sustainable livelihood that improves their quality of life. One method used by Trickle Up is spark grants: participants receive a seed capital grant that covers start-up costs or helps to expand an existing microenterprise.
• elance - Marketplace to match those with projects to outsource and those in search of freelance money making opportunities.
• Github - Very easy to use code repository.
• Book Depository - UK based book seller with free shipping worldwide.
• Curious Cat Travel Photos - Travel photos from trips with a focus on national parks and hiking.
• Curious Cat Travel Photos - Travel photos from trips with a focus on national parks and hiking.
• Open Photo Project - Free, open-source software service to host your photos - either using your cloud based storage (Amazon s3, dropbox) or your web server.
• Molon: Thailand Photos - Photos from thailand.
• Netflix - Extremely limited geographically (USA, UK, Ireland only?).
• Frequency - Web site that aggregates online video content feeds in News, Sports, Entertainment, Technology, Music and more.
• Vagabond Family - "Living a travel (or nomadic) lifestyle throws a lot of challenges your way and we are here (as a group) to help you prepare, plan and live a less common lifestyle with your children."
• Magic Travel Blog - Tanya and Andrew detail their adventures from Malaysia to Japan and everywhere.
• Customer Service Scoreboard - The data from these voluntary review sites have issues, but they do also provide some benefit. And you can read the reviews for greater detail.
• Feedback Army - Quick and easy feedback on your site using distributed army of reviewers. Submit questions about your site and receive 10 responses from reviewers. Inexpensive too.
• PRI's The World - A one-hour, weekday radio news magazine offering a mix of news, features, interviews, and music from around the globe. Co-produced by WGBH/Boston, Public Radio International, and the BBC World Service.
• Radiolab - "Big questions are investigated, tinkered with, and encouraged to grow. Bring your curiosity, and we'll feed it with possibility."
• this American Life - This weekly public radio show is produced by Chicago Public Media, distributed by Public Radio International, and has won all of the major broadcasting awards. It is the most popular podcast (based on number of downloads).
• Pad Mapper - Well designed site that overlays rental matches on a map based on your criteria (number of bedrooms, price...). Uses Craigslist and other listings.
• Corporate Housing by Owner - Short term housing rental by direct from owners. Nice interface mapping availability on a map.
• Etsy - Platform to find many interesting offerings from artisans (cloths, jewelry, toys, art...)
• Africa Past and Present - "Africa Past and Present is a podcast about history, culture, and politics in Africa and the diaspora. The show highlights interesting and significant people, ideas, and discussions in African Studies from a wide range of disciplines and perspectives. Our mission is to broaden the availability and accessibility of cutting-edge knowledge relating to African experiences and to do so in a down-to-earth and informed manner. Shows feature interviews with eminent scholars and persons, commentary on current events, and issues and debates of relevance to Africans at home and abroad. Africa Past and Present is hosted by Michigan State University historians Peter Alegi and Peter Limb"
• China History Podcast -
• A Short History of Japan -
• In Our Time - By the BBC: Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the history of ideas - including topics drawn from philosophy, science, history, religion and culture.
• 12 Byzantine Rulers - This history lecture podcast covers the little known Byzantine Empire through the study of twelve of its greatest rulers. Mr. Brownworth, author of Lost to the West: The Forgotten Byzantine Empire That Rescued Western Civilization, taught History at The Stony Brook School on Long Island, New York.
• Digital Ocean - cheap VPS with good hardware and track record.
• Does Follow - Simple site to see if a Twitter user follows another user with the url format: doesfollow.com/username/username2
• A History of the World in 100 Objects - BBC podcast based on objects from the British Museum.
• Team Viewer -
  1. Remote control any computer (including Mac) over the internet within seconds. Use it to help your parents (or someone else) with computer problems.
  2. or use TeamViewer for online meetings

Curious Cat guides you to the best online sites. The sites we list are excellent but our directory is not meant to be comprehensive.

We individually select resources and create topical guides to help you find exceptional resources. Often search engines do a great job, but, at times it is difficult to find the best resources in the huge quantity of results they provide. This is our attempt to help find those excellent resource quickly for a small set of topics.

Suggest an addition to Curious Cat Cool Online Connections. Sites must offer a superior experience. We look first for great content and ease of use and then a cool look and feel. So unique sites, with great content, that are easy to use, but lack great looks can make it. However sites without great, easy to navigate, content will not be listed.