Siftthru.com: The Search Engine of The Other World - Africa
This search engine focuses on Africa, with links and information on all countries from Algeria to Zimbabwe. In addition to keyword search, visitors can look through the African Art Market; Cooks's Corner recipes; AskMaMafrica question and answer forum; global news; and NigerianConnect for Nigerians living abroad. http://www.siftthru.com

Britannica.com
The Britannica website is a free online encyclopedia and more. The searchable encyclopedia has Britannica's text on each topic, enhanced by book and WWW references. There are also links to news, sports, stocks, weather, and wireless downloads. In addition there are articles on the arts, books, business, entertainment, politics, religion, science, and more. http://www.britannica.com/

The Jargon File
This is a fascinating web page all about computer hackers' jargon. The line between hackish slang and techspeak, the formal technical vocabulary of programming, electronics, and computer science is fuzzy, and shifts over time. A lot of techspeak originated as jargon, and a lot of jargon arises from overgeneralization of techspeak terms. The Jargon File explains hacker speaking and writing style, and how the hackers' logic and syntax arises from the mental habits created by programming. Hackers' humor, inventiveness and love of wordplay is evident throughout the jargon expressions. This web page includes an alphabetical lexicon and pronunciation guide to such words as foo,baz, quux, corge, grault, garply, waldo, fred, plugh, xyzzy, thud, kluge, cruft, and mu. The probable origins of hacker terms makes interesting reading in itself as it includes much discussion of hacker history, and stories of the early programmers. There are also tales from hacker folklore, some of them resembling Zen stories; a portrait of J. Random Hacker, and a bibliography of non-technical works which have either influenced or described the hacker culture.

anyTitle.com
Looking for a hard-to-find movie or music album, or a rare book? This focused meta-search service looks for your title in major sites like Amazon.com and CDnow, indie resources like GEMM and City Hall Records, digital download sites like MP3.com and IUMA, and auction sites like Ebay. If you're looking for a title that's out of print, anyTitle.com will help you find out if anyone is auctioning off a copy somewhere. In case you can't find what you're looking for through the search engines, the site provides other services: for example, a music want list that goes out to specialty music shops, and a music assistant service that searches for you. You can look for new, used, and out-of-print titles in CDs, LPs, cassettes, MP3s, DVDs, books, or movies. Beyond shopping, there are news listings, "Rotten Tomatoes" movie reviews, online book resources, and the "Musician's Assistance" site. http://www.anyTitle.com

MagPortal.com
This service helps people find free online magazine articles on a wide range of topics from many different publishers. Users can browse listings of individual articles by topic, or use a search engine. Articles cover the categories of business, computers, education, entertainment, family, health, politics, sports, and more. When you find an interesting article, you can click an icon to get a list of similar articles or mark the article for future reference. New articles are listed each business day. http://MagPortal.com

YourDictionary.com
This website indexes online dictionaries, thesauruses, and and other language resources. Here you can find free online dictionaries, downloadable and subscription dictionaries, glossaries, and other linguistics references. Here you can find dictionaries for every language from Afrikaans to Xhosa, even languages like Klingon and Pidgin. There are multilingual dictionaries and many specialty English dictionaries. There is a quick word look-up (in English) based on Merriam-Webster, plus links to online grammars; language identifiers and guessers; and linguistic sites. http://www.yourdictionary.com/

Earth Calendar
This website has a calendar listing the various festivals and holidays taking place on each date at different places around the world. You can search by country, religion, or date for significant occasions throughout the year. http://www.earthcalendar.net

World Time Zone
Here you can get the current local time for every country in the world, with adjustments for daylight savings time where it is used. It's a quick convenient way to make sure it's not 3 AM when you call a friend in another country, or that you don't miss an important business call because it's not daylight savings time on the other end.
http://www.isbister.com/worldtime

The Unbound Bible
This site from Biola University has a collection of Bibles, including seven versions in English, four ancient Bibles, Greek and Hebrew versions, and translations in fifteen other languages. All the Bibles are searchable and can be viewed in a parallel view. If you need a Hebrew font, you can download it here. Other resources for research are Matthew Henry's Commentary, a Bible dictionary, and a topical search. You can join the mailing list to receive a daily verse by email, or join a group that reads through the Bible over the course of a year.
http://unbound.biola.edu

The English Browser
This is a reference site with many general research, English language, and writers' resources listed. Find links to dictionaries, thesauruses, encyclopedias, library research guides, scholarly references, style and grammar guides, directories, atlases, calendars, literary resources, online books, universities, bilingual education resources, and standard tests here. You can also browse through book and film reviews, magazine and newspaper racks, and worldwide news, columnists, comics, and editorial cartoons.

Encyclopedia.com
This website provides a much-needed Internet service: a free online encyclopedia. The site contains more than 17,000 brief articles from The Concise Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia. These articles can be searched alphabetically or by keyword. For more thorough research, users can consult the cross-references to related websites and books, or view articles and pictures from The Electric Library (a paid research service). Encyclopedia.com was created by Infonautics Corporation to give Internet users a simple, one-stop site where they can begin their research and answer basic questions.
http://www.encyclopedia.com

SurfChina.com
Chinese New Year, Feb. 16, 1999, begins the Year of the Rabbit. This search engine is for anyone looking for information about China. The database contains thousands of websites, organized into over 300 categories. Here you can find websites of Chinese companies, government and embassy sites, Chinese culture sites, travel information, employment opportunities, Chinese newspapers and magazines, statistics, sports, personal web pages, online shopping, a Chinese chat room, and much more.
http://www.surfchina.com

My Virtual Reference Desk
My Virtual Reference Desk is a useful and well-organized catalog of many of the resources on the Internet. The database is presented with three levels: quick, studied and deep. For quick facts, visit the Quick Reference / Research and My Facts pages. For a more studied approach, there are US and world newspapers, 260 search engines, Internet help, and a section on writing web documents. For in-depth exploration of a subject, visit My Virtual Encyclopedia with forty volumes of indexed subjects. There is a Homework Helper section with study resources for kindergarten through college, and an "Ask the Experts" section. More features include a daily almanac, weather, sports, comics, maps, shopping help, stock quotes, People Search, Yellow Pages, freebies, fun and diversion, and over 230 freeware and shareware sites. http://www.refdesk.com/

Study WEB
Study WEB, the Meta-Encyclopedia for Student Research, is a service created by American Computer Resources, Inc., to provide fast and easy access to a wide variety of research information on the Internet. This free index links, categorizes and reviews over 15,000 high-quality educational and reference websites. Anyone doing research will find this site a useful source of information. Teachers will appreciate this site for lesson plans and curriculum ideas. Of special interest are the many resources for writers.
http://www.studyweb.com

Otzie's One-Stop Internet Shop
This website, intended as a launch site for exploring the Internet, is well worth visiting for its collection of many useful links. Find WWW tutorials, HTML help, a comprehensive list of antivirus programs, software downloads, search engines, Windows95 links, and other computing resources. In addition to computer and Internet-related links, the site has links to news, science, health, general reference, and government sites. On the lighter side, there are ezines, travel tips, and family websites.
http://www.execpc.com/~kenotz

CyberAtlas
Estimates are that 35 million adults now use the Internet. About 73 percent of Web users are from the United States, but Internet traffic outside the United States is now growing at twice the U.S. rate. The global Internet market is expected to soar to $23 billion by the year 2000. Who is using the Net? CyberAtlas publishes reports of surveys and polls on the social and professional characteristics of Internet users, what computers are used, how many hours a week are spent online, and usage by geographic location. There are also statistics on Internet hosts and domains, leading advertisers, most visited websites, Web advertising revenue, and viewer responses to advertising. This website offers a wealth of information for marketing research, academic research, or general interest. There are also news articles, e-commerce market segment forecasts, reports on conferences and exhibitions, information on advertising design, and links to many web resources.
http://www.cyberatlas.com

Network Professionals Resource Center
This website, provided by Internetworking Services, focuses on information for network professionals, but has many links with general information on the Internet. A feature of the site called the Info-Links library offers hundreds of links to sites covering virtually all aspects of networking and telecommunications, catalogued to help find important information fast. A library of Frequently Asked Questions covers computers, telecommunications and networking. Some of the subjects that can be researched here are standards bodies, asynchronous transfer mode (ATM), general telecommunications, integrated services digital network (ISDN), Internet technical reports and statistics, computing resources, online publications, multimedia technologies, technical book publishers, and general reference tools. The resources for network professionals include network management, Novell resources and documentation, telecom and networking vendors, education and career development, and answers to problems. The site will eventually be multilingual, and parts of it are already available in more than one language.
http://www.inetassist.com

Vocabulary.com
At Vocabulary University, learning English vocabulary is a life-long adventure. This educational site offers word puzzle contests to help you increase your vocabulary; prepare for GED, SAT, and other scholastic examinations; or supplement home schooling and ESL programs. The puzzles are designed for three academic levels: high elementary, junior high/middle school, and high school/college prep. After successfully completing 12 sessions (learning 144 words), participants receive a diploma. Players can also compete in puzzle contests to win gift certificates. If you enjoy the free monthly puzzles and want more, you can try puzzles from the archives, or buy your own book of puzzles from the gift shop.
http://www.vocabulary.com

The Info Service
The Info Service is a vast Internet reference site with over 13,000 links spanning 246 pages. Available here are a variety of search engines, FTP and Gopher sites. For useful general information there are telephone and address directories, package tracking, date and time information, news and weather, business and finance links, dictionaries and encyclopedias, map resources and almanacs. The many computing references include computer virus information, software downloads, FAQs, IRC, Usenet, and World Wide Web help. There are children's sites, and educational sites on ecology, science, history, art, and books. For entertainment, try the links for games, music, magazines, live radio or camera sites, hobbies, TV and films, sports, humor, pets, travel, and recreation. There are also sites about everything else under the sun including health, social services, food, automobiles, homes, freebies, lottery results, and UFOs.
http://info-s.com

webCATS: Library Catalogues on the WWW
This resource will link you to all library online public-access catalogues which have World Wide Web interfaces. There is a geographical index, a vendor index, and a library-type Index. Library types are: armed forces, college and university, consortia, government, junior college, K-12 schools, law, medical, public, religious, special, and unknown. You can Search via HYTELNET, ZWeb, or CARLweb database search interface.
http://library.usask.ca/hywebcat/

Encyclopedia Mythica
This website offers a free encyclopedia on mythology, folklore, mysticism, and more. It contains over 1,800 definitions of gods and goddesses, supernatural beings, legendary creatures, and monsters from all over the world. Some of the topics here are: legendary animals such as unicorns and dragons; objects like Excalibur and Mjollnir; gods and goddesses from many religions, including Greek, Japanese, and Etruscan; imaginative places such as Atlantis, Avalon, and Thule; supernatural creatures such as gnomes, leprechauns, and fairies; and festivals of various mythologies. You can browse the encyclopedia, refer to the bibliography for further information, or search for a specific subject. Mythologies currently represented include Chinese, Etruscan, Greek, Japanese, Latvian, Mayan, Native American, Norse, Persian, Roman, and Haitian; but the work is in progress and more articles are added each week.
http://www.pantheon.org/myth/

The Acronym Finder
Having trouble with the proliferation of technological acronyms? (An acronym is a word formed from the first letters of a collection of words. Example: Alphabetic Collocation Reducing Or Numbing Your Memory = ACRONYM). The Acronym Finder (AF) is a searchable database of over 182,000 acronyms and their meanings. It covers common acronyms and computer, government, telecommunications, Department of Defense (DoD), and military acronyms. You can find out what an acronym stands for here, or search for a word such as "computer" and find all acronyms which contain the word.
http://www.AcronymFinder.com/

CalendarLand
This website has everything you could ever need to know about calendars, cultural and religious holidays all over the world, and systems of time reckoning. There are celestial calendars; Chinese, Japanese, Aztec, Mayan, Catholic, Persian, Jewish, and Gregorian calendars; online calendar indexes; calendars with art and photography; calendars with celebrations and holidays from the planet's many lands, including Native American festivals; and millennium information, which includes a FAQ on the Year 2000 computer systems problem. Find famous birthdays, a "This Day in History" calendar, past music hits, or literary and movie history. Through this web page you can link to CALNDR-L, an email forum for the discussion of the social, historical and philosophical dimensions of calendars and time reckoning. And there are web pages of people devoted to the subject of calendar reform -- the study of historical changes in the calendar, and whether we need changes for the calendar of the future. Find traditional calendars; interactive and WWW calendars; and how to do some calendar calculations like determining leap years. Ingenious calendar software can be found here, including a java calendar applet; a program which calculates moon position, moonrise, moonset, and predicts lunar visibility; the emacs calendar/diary; a program which converts modern dates to the Mayan calendar and gives astrological interpretations; and the IslamicTimer which determines prayer time schedules and the direction of the Qiblah. Other links: the Old Farmer's Almanac; phases of the Moon; weather guides; calendars with daily inspirational quotes; the Date and Time Gateway for cities throughout the world; and the "Doomsday" Algorithm for the day of the week. Alone for the holidays? Visit this page and find out how to join a CyberParty with others on the Web.

Scoop Cybersleuth's Internet Guide
Welcome to the home of Scoop Cybersleuth, the Internet's ace reporter. He'll help you find some great sites on the Internet, both the newsworthy and the places he hangs out after hours. Cybersleuth presents the top news items in Files and Sites in the News. Find Things on the Internet is a directory of Internet search programs; U.S. government and politics; state and local government; reference and demographics; medical and pharmaceutical; business, commerce and online technology; law and crime information; online newspapers and magazines; entertainment and fun; environmental information (and weather forecasts); sports information; journalism tools; tourism and world information; education and children; and miscellaneous links.
http://www.evansville.net/courier/scoop/

B.J. Pinchbeck's Homework Helper
"My name is B.J. Pinchbeck and I am 9 years old. I use the Internet to help me with my homework. My dad and I have a site that you may be interested in." This site has links to 245 well-selected reference sites on the Internet, including dictionaries, encyclopedias, newspapers, libraries, and more. Subject areas are social studies, English, history, foreign languages, search engines, news and current events, math and science, playtime, music, and other references. These are very valuable links and could be useful to anyone doing research or exploring the Internet for fun.
http://tristate.pgh.net/~pinch13

Books AtoZ
Books AtoZ is a site for everyone in the book trade. It has information about book publishers, production services, designers, music publishers, multimedia publishers, grants for the publishing industry, publishing organizations, bookstores and searchers, self publishing, academic and government sites, groups and organizations, investment opportunities, and much more. The introduction says, "we just love books and want to make their production easier and less expensive." This site will be helpful to anyone who wants to produce, distribute or find books. It lists a large number of research sites, including libraries and collections on and off the Web, library catalogs, directories and referrals, historical sites, university sites, archives, exhibits and ancient documents, literary research tools, and museums. There are also links for jobs, public education programs, and how to make a home page. Books AtoZ is available in French and will soon be available in German.
http://www.booksatoz.com

Webreference.com
Everyone from beginning surfers to webmasters will find webreference.com a great way to learn about the Internet and the art of website creation. Some of the general Web resources include browsers, conferences, FAQs, glossaries, history, legal issues, magazines, searching, software, and tutorials. For webmasters, there are resources for audio, collections, file formats, graphics, guides, imagemaps, interactivity, programming, security, SGML, Unix, URXs, usage tools, and VRML. Find articles on such topics as how to make an animated GIF, browser-optimized content delivery, and what makes a great web site. There are reviews and tips on software and hardware, and an award for the Web Wizard of the Month.
http://webreference.com/

Free On-line Dictionary of Computing
One headache for new Internet users is learning all the terminology, buzzwords and acronyms of the online community. For questions like "What does RTFM stand for?" and "Where can I find out about ISDN?", try the Free On-line Dictionary of Computing, where you can use a search engine to find acronyms, jargon, programming languages, tools, architecture, operating systems, networking, theory, conventions, standards, mathematics, telecomms, electronics, institutions, companies, projects, products, history - everything to do with computing. This web page provides a one-stop source of information about computing terms and includes cross-references to other resources on the Internet, as well as to paper publications. The dictionary now contains 8,611 definitions totalling 3.5 megabytes. Entries are cross-referenced to each other. All searches are logged, and visitors are encouraged to contribute definitions of missing terms. New terms are added almost every day. Subject areas covered include algorithms, artificial intelligence, Boolean algebra, compilers, cryptography, data processing, email, filename extensions, grammar, humour, hypertext, integrated circuits, jargon, logic, messaging, neural network, operating systems, probability, protocol, robotics, security, simulation, testing, virtual reality, and many more.
http://wombat.doc.ic.ac.uk/

The Internet Public Library
The Internet Public Library is a great place to find material or ask reference questions (live or email). The Reading Room has catalogs of online books, magazines, journals and newspapers, and links to book discussion groups. The library's Classroom provides education about computers and the Internet. The Exhibit Room currently has sections on Egyptian artifacts, Trains Across America, and African American History, The Youth section has reading and activities for children. The Teen area has listings of movies and other entertainment, as well as discussions of issues that concern teens. The library sponsors a MOO (Multi-User Object Oriented environment) with explanations for beginners on how to use it. The purpose of the MOO is to provide "a place where a library community can form, where people can get together and interact in real time. . . . interaction with other visitors and objects (desks, chairs, cat etc.) creates a mood conducive to virtual community." The IPL also offers services for librarians, and plans to add title and author searching soon.

OneLook
Looking for a word? Any word at all? Try OneLook www.onelook.com/, a gathering place for dictionaries of almost every conceivable stripe. French acronyms? Got 'em. Homonyms? By the hundreds. Roget's Thesaurus? Check. That's not to mention slang and dialect dictionaries, special-subject dictionaries, and industry jargon dictionaries. When we peeked in, OneLook had 3,452,729 words in 742 indexed online dictionaries.

The Solar System
The Solar System (http://www.the-solar-system.net) contains more than 50 web pages with more than 200 pictures of not only planets, but also asteroids, comets, the sun, the moon and all that other stuff up in the sky. Each page has facts, figures, and quizzes, along with information about famous astronomers throughout history. The site is ostensibly for kids, but a quick browse might show grown-ups how their astronomy knowledge is lacking, too.