Webstuff

WEB STUFF

Well, here we are on the Internet and we have a section with Web Stuff. Why?

The Internet is a relatively new phenomenon. What we have seen so far, will probably prove to be a very limited piece of the total usage and impact of it ten years from now.

Looking back, inventions like the telephone and radio seemed pretty significant. The first one allowed people who were not in the same room to talk to each other, and the second was a method to allow masses of people around the world to listen to a message coming from one far-away place.

Not bad, but the Internet is both person-to-person and mass communication, and it is interactive. It also puts most of the words and pictures written on paper within reach of ordinary people all over the world.

So, if anyone has access to practically everything, why do I bother to make web pages, describing what is available on other web pages? To find what we are looking for, we must search for it. What I will try to show here are sites which I have found to be interesting, and you may not have stumbled across them, or thought of looking for them. It may also be that you don’t find them interesting....but no harm done.

Searching - mostly by Google - is a basic function of the Internet. Just for the heck of it, and it took me back close to my own roots,
I searched for ‘Uttran’ which is the name of the village where I spent years 2 - 40 of my life. The next ‘village’ was Raleigh, NC on the other side of the big pond.

Here is one thing I found under Uttran:

Just in case the Swedish language seems like Greek to you, let me explain that this is the old schoolhouse in Uttran, built in the 1920‘s. Just imagine that sometime in August 1938 (?) yours truly made his debut as a student in that buiding.

I remember that one year there were 13 kids in the whole school, covering grades 1 - 6. The teacher Miss Berna Mattsson handled it all. I spent grades 1 - 4 there, then continued to High school in the town of Södertälje (the most famous product of that town was tennis great Björn Borg, who came around a few years later).

To get to that town, about 10 miles away, you had to take the commuter train. Mornings and afternoons the train had quite a few school kids as passengers. A girl who got on the train one stop before mine was Brita Billinger who went to a girl’s school in the same town. A few years later, December 26, 1953 to be exact, Brita changed her last name to Petterson, and she has been stuck with that name ever since.

I was pretty surprised to see the next picture in my continued search for ‘Uttran’. It is the house where my parents had their grocery store. The second floor is where my parents and I lived.

Both Brita and I worked in the store during vacations from our schools.

This picture was probably taken on a winter’s day around 1950.

LET US MOVE TO WHAT IS REALLY ‘THE SWISS ARMY KNIFE OF REFERENCES’.

At this web site (just click on the logo, above, to get there) you will find links to any dictionary or information reference you can think of. I often keep the REFDESK web site in the background when I am writing. Whenever I need to check out some words or other information, I have the proper reference at my finger tips - make that “at my right index finger.”

Just to give you an idea of what’s available, here are the items from the Site Map of REFDESK:

Refdesk's Home Page
Mission Statement
Privacy Policy
Top 15 Refdesk Pages
Editor's Picks
Ref Site-of-the-Day Archives
Desktop Resources
Area Code
Atomic Time
Bartlett's Quotations
Britannica Encyclopedia
Calculators
Calendar
Currency Converter
Essential Reference Tools
Journalist's Tools
Maps/Driving Directions
Old Farmer's Almanac
Roget's Thesaurus
Webster's Dict./Thes.
World Fact Book
Zip Code
Features
Astronomy Pix of the Day
Best of the Net
Business
Crossword of the Day
Crosswords on the Net
Daily Comics
Daily Editorial Cartoons
Editorials & Opinions
History of the Day
Horoscopes
Internet News
Internet Usage Snapshot
Lottery Results
Magazines
News Wires
Newspapers
Quote of the Day
Ref Shelves on the Net
Sports
Search Engines
Streaming Media
Tax Preparation Guides
Daily Almanac
Download Page
Fast Facts
First Things First
Free Stuff
Fun Stuff
Homework Helper

Humor
Indispensable Sites
International
Internet Help
Internet Resources
Kid's Stuff
Linux Resources
Magazines
Men's Issues
Mental Health
Military
Movies
Music
Net Usage Snapshot
Newspapers - USA & World
Personal Finances
Pets & Animals
Philosophy & Religion
Photography
Politics
Quick Reference & Research
Random & Useless
Reference Shelves on the Net
Relationships
Search Engines
Seniors
Science
Shopping
Software
Space & Astronomy
Sports
Television & Radio
Travel
Weather
Windows Resources
Women's Issues

Let me introduce you to the encyclopedia of The Internet Age.

Here (click on the logo) you find explanations of everything you can think of. And you don’t find just a few lines of text, explaining your search word. You may find a whole lot of pages with pictures, text, animations, historic references, etc.

This amazing information resource was originally the brain child (pun intended) of Michael Brain from Raleigh, NC.

Here is the current situation:

History

In 1998, former North Carolina State professor Marshall Brain started the site as a hobby. In 1999, Brain began raising venture capital and formed a corporation, HowStuffWorks Inc.

During the summer of 2000, the site went through a major redesign.

In March of 2002, HowStuffWorks was sold [1] to The Convex Group [2] and the headquarters moved from Cary, North Carolina to Atlanta, Georgia. The Convex Group is an Atlanta based investment and media company founded by Jeff Arnold, founder and former CEO of WebMD.

On August 15, 2003, the popular HowStuffWorks Forums shut down [3]. The community has since survived in an unaffiliated website at http://forums.howwhatwhy.com

Stuffo (which is dedicated to video games and movies) became www.stuffo.com instead of a section of HowStuffWorks in July of 2005. Stuffo is still owned by HowStuffWorks, although it appears that they have stopped updating it.

In December 2005, HowStuffWorks announced a partnership with Publications International (PIL), a book publisher known largely for reference books, car books, review books, cook books and children's books. HowStuffWorks announced it would take over PIL's ConsumerGuide and Mobil Travel Guide review Web sites and draw on PIL's library of 10,000 nonfiction books to create new articles for HowStuffWorks.com.

YOU OWE IT TO YOURSELF TO CHECK OUT ‘HOW STUFF WORKS’!!

CLICK HERE FOR ‘WEB SHOPPING’