Websites that changed your World

John

Since the WWW appears to have failed to change the world of Naim Forum members I will at least stop your thread from being too lonely by replying. (are smileys still allowed?)

I stumbled across Pandora and have found it a great place to hear all sorts of new music. Not world changing but at least related to Hi-Fi and music.

Cheers

Jim

Going way back in time to 1995, before the Naim forum started, I was hooked on analogue addicts and in particular the amount of information available about the LP12.

Recently I've come to fully appreciate Wikipedia which is a fantastic source of information and a brilliant concept.
John

An interesting site Jim, sadly it is for US residents only.
John

John
Don't be daft. Just enter any US Zip code you know and you're in. I did!
My 2 are Pandora and Audacity.

Probably quite dull, but online banking has been very handy indeed.

Oh, and 911virgin.com for virtual window-licking

Cheers,

Steve

quote:

911virgin.com

I tried your site as suggested but only wound up with tongue stuck to monitor. It's taken me hald an har to tipe thjis - hewlpp!

I prefer Elreg's take on Wiki which is the truth according to the people. Some of the entries are hilarious and I for one would not assume it to be truth.

I think eBay and Paypal have changed my life, I look every day, if I want something the very first place I look is ebay and if I want to sell something like wise. The ability to pay practically anyone in the world or receive money from them, although pricey is an amazing shrinking of the world, something all these rich banks never achieved.

Wikipedia is IMHO an example of one of the dangers of the Web. Too many people believing it is an authoratative source on anything rather than the scurrilous rumour mill that it actually is.

Maybe it's to obvious but the site that changed the use of the internet for me is Google. Fast, easy to use without annoying commercial activities (well, at least it's not visual at first) and I can find almost anything with it.

quote:

Wikipedia is IMHO an example of one of the dangers of the Web. Too many people believing it is an authoratative source on anything rather than the scurrilous rumour mill that it actually is.

I would strongly disagree with that comment, most of the content is excellent and the service should not be dimissed because of a small amount of controversial or disputable material. The site also provides ample opportunity for disputed information to be flagged as such and corrected which to me seems the most pragmatic approach. The real genius of Wikipedia is that it did not provide a service, but created a framework for people to provide a service. Anyone trying to coordinate an effort to produce a rival encyclopedia could not do it by conventional means as it would never have the depth and range.
John

quote:

most of the content is excellent

how do you know when you admit
a small amount of controversial or disputable material. exists.
You earlier didn't realise that Pandora can be easily subverted, taking it at face value.

Like Musfed I would vote for the Google search engine and I like to add Google Mail, Mozilla Firefox browser and Mozilla Thunderbird mail reader. Together these applications allow me to surf with ease and keep in contact with friends and business partners across the globe with the minimum of trouble. For light browsing sites like metafilter allow me to view parts of the net I would not often visit.

quote:

how do you know when you admit
a small amount of controversial or disputable material.

I know because I can cross reference the content with my own domain knowledge and other sources and where I have done this it has not been found wanting.

quote:

You earlier didn't realise that Pandora can be easily subverted, taking it at face value.

No, I correctly stated that it is legally only available to citizens of the USA.
John

The Dilbert Zone - it reminds me of the frustrations of working in large corporations which I no longer have to do.

I found the Naim forum, met many good friends but spent far too much!

I don't see too much wrong with Wikipedia and I find the way it presents information rather good - nothing is definitive, but that doesn't mean it is not useful. It doesn't try to sell things, which is good.

There are a number of sites that I find useful - lots of computer and networking companies have excellent sites. These have become useful as opposed to full of marketting rubbish. Other companies too (like Naim) put useful product information on the site, especially manuals.

There are still some who regard the Internet as simply a place to put adverts. They give litte useful information and just want to intice you buy something. I'm not refering to a shopping site that I've made a definite decision to visit. I detest all sites with pop-ups, active content and adverts (especially animated graphics) - I block all of these and I don't bother with sites that don't work with Safari.

Allmusic is one of my favourite sites despite the adverts. The Naim Forum, of course, is a favourite as are the sites for HMHB and Shirley Collins as they keep me up to date with my favourite music.

I used to like the Ipswich Town site, but it now tries to sell me things that are nothing at all to do with supporting the Tractor Boys and, as an England manager once said, do I not like that; however the Singingtheblues site is much better and tells me things I'm interested in - without the sales pitch.

Google is OK, but some of the hits seem a bit odd to me - they seem to have a commercial slant rather than being found because they contain what I'm looking for.

My take on wiki is if you want the information there is probably an offical site that has that info, as opposed to some spotty teenager's take from Teffont, if you get what I mean.

I don't know about changed my world, but I'm spending more and more time - both professionally and privately - with this extremely fine OpenOffice suite. Latest beta version here if you haven't already converted:

http://fileforum.betanews.com/detail/OpenOfficeorg_for_Windows/1009574294/1

It has by far the best word processor in the world. And it's free. Those guys rock!!

EW

quote:

Originally posted by Earwicker:
I don't know about changed my world, but I'm spending more and more time - both professionally and privately - with this extremely fine OpenOffice suite. Latest beta version here if you haven't already converted:

http://fileforum.betanews.com/detail/OpenOfficeorg_for_Windows/1009574294/1

It has by far the best word processor in the world. And it's free. Those guys rock!!

EW

Yes I use it too. What do you think of their excel engine tho?

Plain old Google of course for info on life, the Universe and everything.

And I use The All Music Guide site a lot. If you register (it's free) you can get 30 second track samples (as well as all the artiste and discography info) for most albums on there.

John.

quote:

Originally posted by AlexanderVH:

quote:

Originally posted by Earwicker:
I don't know about changed my world, but I'm spending more and more time - both professionally and privately - with this extremely fine OpenOffice suite. Latest beta version here if you haven't already converted:

http://fileforum.betanews.com/detail/OpenOfficeorg_for_Windows/1009574294/1

It has by far the best word processor in the world. And it's free. Those guys rock!!

EW

Yes I use it too. What do you think of their excel engine tho?

You mean the Calc? It's damn good. It equals Excel re total sheet size, and I like the absence of all those horrible little "wizards" and dialogue boxes that pop up and obscure cell contents on Excel. Excel is more user friendly for advanced statistical functions eg linear regression analysis, but never mind.

OO's trump card is Writer and the XML OpenDocument format. It makes Word look creaky and idiosyncratic... which it is!

EW

I use Open Office on the Mac - the version I use is called Neo Office and I much prefer it to Microsoft Office.

Rotf

BTW - you can get genuine Open Office but you need to run it under X.11

quote:

Originally posted by ROTF:
I use Open Office on the Mac - the version I use is called Neo Office and I much prefer it to Microsoft Office.

I hope its popularity will continue to grow. It's a pain having to convert documents to the inferior MS formats for my colleagues who pay through the nose for inferior software. (Well it's easy enough to do, but some formating options, especially styles, aren't well supported by Word's binary format. Microsoft have never quite got their heads around styles/CSS.)

EW

quote:

Originally posted by Earwicker:

You mean the Calc? It's damn good. It equals Excel re total sheet size, and I like the absence of all those horrible little "wizards" and dialogue boxes that pop up and obscure cell contents on Excel. Excel is more user friendly for advanced statistical functions eg linear regression analysis, but never mind.

OO's trump card is Writer and the XML OpenDocument format. It makes Word look creaky and idiosyncratic... which it is!

EW

I have no opinion but at the office they're not too happy about Calc. We use a lot of open source. It certainly simplifies managing the licenses.

quote:

Originally posted by AlexanderVH:
I have no opinion but at the office they're not too happy about Calc.

Really? It's about as good as anything else for most tasks.

quote:

We use a lot of open source. It certainly simplifies managing the licenses.

It does, and they're getting horribly good. Nvu (web development) and Scribus (DTP) are ones to watch. OOo remains star of show for the moment... oh and Thunderbird too I suppose.

EW