Jeremy G.

Yale Law School has put online an impressive archive of historical documents. If I had the time, I'd love to go through them all, but I have discovered one document I particularly love -- a letter from Thomas Jefferson to his young nephew:
http://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/let31.asp

The letter is fantastic (to me) because Jefferson seems to have tremendous affection toward the boy, but doesn't quite know how to show it. Jefferson's brilliance come across clearly in the letter but there is also an awkward didacticism, as he instructs the boy on how he ought to comport himself and what he ought to learn in what order. Jefferson also says amazing things like, "Games played with the ball, and others of that nature, are too violent for the body, and stamp no character on the mind. Let your gun therefore be the constant companion of your walks."

Of particular use to me personally, Jefferson lists off precisely what the boy should read to be educated. I, having grown up in the underfunded California public school system, had nothing in the way of a classical education and have therefore set out to read the books Jefferson recommends in order. My friends [rightly] laugh at me, but I am delighted to report Oliver Goldsmith's Complete Grecian History was excellent (and only 99 cents on the Kindle!): http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B002LISR2M/ref=kinw_myk_ro_title
I hope you enjoy the letter and the website as much as I do.

If only I had time to see them all. The UN has designated 911 world heritage sites for their historical and cultural significance (for a full list of criteria: http://whc.unesco.org/en/criteria). Some sites are well-known like the Pyramids of Giza; but some are much more obscure like the petroglyphs of Tamgaly http://whc.unesco.org/en/list/1145 and the Putorana Plateau http://whc.unesco.org/en/list/1234

The website has a wealth of information and photos on each location. I could spend days with their interactive map, just looking: http://whc.unesco.org/en/254

You might have read about Salman Khan in the news. The former hedge fund manager put a few math videos online to help tutor his little cousins. The videos were a hit amongst not just his cousins but thousands of others on YouTube. Since then, Khan has launched KhanAcademy.org and uploaded more than 2100 videos across a variety of subjects. The success of the site has attracted big attention from the likes of Bill Gates who has helped fund the academy.

Personally, if I had had a resource like this when I was a kid, I would have been in heaven. I loved learning on my own and hated learning in school. One of the most interesting ideas to come out of the Khan Academy is that some kids might be able to spend their "homework time" in the evenings watching videos on KhanAcademy.org and then during "school time" kids could do their homework and get help from teachers. This most certainly would work for autodidactic child, but potentially it could work for everyone as it could free up school time for more personal attention and less lecturing.

Bill Gates on Khan:
http://money.cnn.com/2010/08/23/technology/sal_khan_academy.fortune/index.htm

Khan speaking at TED: http://www.ted.com/talks/salman_khan_let_s_use_video_to_reinvent_education.html

I'm a fan of the idea, and I hope it works. Oh, and check out some of the lectures. They're good. Http :// www.khanacademy. Org/video/linear-algebra---eigenvectors-and-eigenspaces-for-a-3x3-matrix? Playlist=Linear%20Algebra

I feel lucky to live in a city with excellent museums. San Francisco is not New York, London or Paris, but the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art isn't bad and their website isn't bad either. A lot of pieces were donated by the Fisher Family (founders of the Gap) and range from Miro to Kahlo to Picasso to Cornell to Calder to Rauschenberg.

You can see the collection here:
http://www.sfmoma.org/projects/artscope/

The have an sfmoma blog:
http://blog.sfmoma.org/

And one of my favorite paintings in the museum--a Rothko -- not quite the same online as in person, but...:
http://www.sfmoma.org/projects/artscope/index.html#r=878&artwork=*******&zoom=9

One of the great international science associations, the Royal Society has a not-too-bad website. They have some unique science news http://royalsociety.org/news/ and also a list of public events if you happen to live in the UK http://royalsociety.org/Events-Diary/ and for the rest of us, videos that can be watched online http://royalsociety.org/royalsociety.tv/

My aunt recently sent out one of those emails warning that US cell phone numbers are becoming public soon. This might be just a rumor (verification, anyone?) but it never hurts to visit donotcall.gov -- the US government's do not call registry -- to block spammers from calling your phone. After you've been registered for a month, you can also use the site to complain about unwanted calls: https://complaints.donotcall.gov/complaint/complaintcheck.aspx?panel=2

Not sure if there is an equivalent resource for other countries, but I think it's a great service for Americans.

The Pew Internet and American Life Project is one of 7 non-profit, non-partisan research organizations started by the Pew Charitable Trusts. It provides free, public information on how people use the internet. I find the work they do personally interesting as it helps me understand how people use technology (like their work on the digital divide: http://www.pewinternet.org/topics/Digital-Divide.aspx), but they've also produced some great research that we've used to make graphics here at SiteJabber like these:

http://www.sitejabber.com/blog/2011/01/19/how-does-age-affect-web-use/
http://www.sitejabber.com/blog/2010/10/11/more-people-are-researching-products-online-before-they-buy/

So, thank you, Pew. Please keep up the great work.

Bugzilla is a great free bug tracking tool for website developers. It was originally an open source project tied to both Netscape and Mozilla: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bugzilla

I know SiteJabber has a few bugs on occasion, but there would even more without Bugzilla.

This site has some really useful nutrition information. For example, I was interested in reading about cod and sure enough whfoods had a lot of good information http://www.whfoods.com/genpage.php?tname=foodspice&dbid=133

They also have a "world's healthiest foods" section. I don't know how accurate it is, but I enjoyed reading it and it seems reasonably researched: http://www.whfoods.com/foodstoc.php

Very nice user experience design resource. Good for UX and visual designers and web developers looking to stay on top of the latest design trends. But also accessible for beginners and anyone interested in the way websites and other digital media products are made.

Great site for free audiobooks -- it's a fantastic not-for-profit effort that is well worth supporting.

Making writing clearer and simpler is a worthy cause. Think of all the wasted hours, frustration, and mistakes that result around the world from people trying to decipher poorly written instructions, contracts, and emails. We could all get better.

I'm a sucker for good book recommendations. I'm always looking for them. The trouble is, I don't have a lot of time to read, and there aren't many books I actually like. Five Books offers a remedy of sorts--it tries to find clever people and asks them to recommend books about a subject on which they are meant to be expert.

For example, here's Jeremy Greenstock on diplomacy: http://fivebooks.com/interviews/jeremy-greenstock-on-diplomacy

My critique is that the execution thus far is only so-so. They don't have the best people in most subjects (who wants book recommendations from B+ writers or politicians!) and often they don't seem to ask the right questions. For example, economist Tyler Cowen is not asked about his top 5 books on understanding macroeconomics, but rather he is asked for his top 5 books on "information" which seems a bit vague and not to be his real area of expertise.

Overall, neat idea, some good content, but I hope they get better. I need more books to read.

Site run by the Washington Post which attempts to profile all the important people who run our government here in the US. What's great is the site tries to give you more than just bios (as Wikipedia might), it tells you *why* the person is important, who the person is connected to (other important figures), the issues the person tackles, and any political donations the person has made.

At first look, I thought the quality of the content on this site was better than it is. Some profiles are excellently written, for example Stuart Levey's: http://www.whorunsgov.com/Profiles/Stuart_A._Levey

But others are very poor (as of 10/9/10) like Meg Witman's (credit to Chris O.): http://www.whorunsgov.com/Profiles/Meg_Whitman

If the paid editors of this site did a bit better job this would be a great site.

For Californians, this is the site where you can register to vote. I know it's easy to forget to register, or think it's too much trouble to vote, but I think we're all made better off when we vote. Not only do our votes count, but it encourages us to stay up on civic issues (how's our society doing, who's running things, and how can we help?) and it puts pressure on other people to vote too (my friends are all voting, I should probably vote too).

This site is super-easy to use. It takes about 5 minutes to fill out the voter registration form, and you can always vote absentee if you don't feel like going anywhere.

Ticket Master works fine, but to me, it appears Ticket Master charges fees well beyond they value they provide. This seems to point to some market imperfection which allows these profit margins to persist. Personally, I am happy for a band to get my money if I pay to see a show, and I understand that a venue should be compensated as well. But it seems a little odd that an online ticket reseller charges as much as 30% in fees: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ticketmaster#Service_fees

I'd love to see a competitor disrupt Ticket Master's market, but it seems for the time being their exclusive contracts with large live venues will keep their pricing power intact. http://www.nytimes.com/1995/06/15/arts/pearl-jam-bows-to-ticketmaster.html

We subscribed to LinkedIn's "premium" services for businesses, and I have to say it's a bit of a racket--their billing is recurring and it is very very difficult to cancel. We could not figure out how to cancel OR contact customer service on my own. Eventually we had to Google "how to downgrade my linkedin account" and then follow a convoluted set of steps to send an email message to request a downgrade. If they don't respond to the request quickly I'll be lowering my rating to below a "Meh." Bad showing LinkedIn. You clearly care more about taking my money than the service you're providing. You've just lost a fan.

It's hard for me to explain why I use wunderground.com to check the weather. I *think* it has less ad spam than weather.com, but it might just be because the name "Weather Underground" is an interesting name for a weather site (despite its association with the 1960 radical left group: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weather_Underground_(organization) which got its name from lyrics to Bob Dylan's Subterranean Homesick Blues: "You don't need a weather man to know which way the wind blows.").

Oh, and I like to use the hourly forecast, not that anyone cares.

I admit it--I at one point in my life had a subscription to Vanity Fair. Sure the magazine is often filled with silly gossip about wealthy people (see: Behind the Hamptons Hedges) and about a million pages of ads. But, I contend, it still has excellent authors writing about interesting topics, which makes it worth reading.

For example, there are many thoughtful articles by Sebastian Junger: http://www.vanityfair.com/contributors/sebastian-junger

And recently by Christopher Hitchens:
http://www.vanityfair.com/culture/features/2010/09/hitchens-*******
http://www.vanityfair.com/culture/features/2010/06/hitchens-*******

It used to be that VanityFair.com did not let you see much, but that has all changed and you can view a lot of the content for free. I realize it's not always art, but I do enjoy a little Vanity Fair in my life.

I signed up for Mozy to back up my computer which has been crashing. The service has been abysmal for 6 reasons:

1) Cost of Mozy Pro and Mozy Home were not clearly stated on sign up
2) Mozy client did not easily let me select which files I wanted uploaded
3) I could not log into Mozy in Safe Mode (which I am now writing this review in because my computer has been crashing) OR run the Mozy client.
4) I could not contact their technical support because I cannot log in (their support line is just a recording)
5) I emailed Mozy on the support email provided to me, only to get an auto-response saying that email address is no longer accepting support questions.
6) Even the the Mozy sales office is closed (it's 5:05pm I guess?)

If you need to back up your computer, get an external hard-drive or use another online backup service. I would not use this one.

UPDATE: once I was able to log into my Mozy account I requested a cancellation and a refund and received both promptly so changes my rating from a S#@! To a Meh.