The findingDulcinea Blog

Sweet Sites | Don't Know Much About Music?

In the research section of our Web Guide to Music we’ve touted allmusic, an underrated encyclopedic resource of artist biographies and album reviews. If you’re reading a review of an album on Answers.com or in the iTunes Music Store, it often originates at allmusic.

Stream through your favorites in dozens of genres with Lala, a site that lets you both stream and download music. In a companion piece to this blog post on findingDulcinea, “Enjoying Music on the Web—Legally,” we discussed Lala and a few comparable sites. Lala stands out because of its extensive archive of 7 million songs, including classical, country, classic rock, pop, jazz and indie rock. Artist pages on Lala often include bios, as well as links to similar artists and Lala users who streamed or bought the artist.

Essentials of Music is a classical music destination with composer biographies, MP3 samples of their work and articles on major eras in classical music. The site is based on the W. W. Norton book title, “Essential Classics.”

Parents, get your children educated about classical music with Cincinnati Public Radio’s Classics for Kids, a site with radio shows, audio samples, articles on periods and composers, special features and games.

Mainstream and indie music fans alike will appreciate the new Billboard. The site used to be a hard-to-access database of music charts and news. Now it’s a glossy, colorful, multimedia-filled publisher with interactive music charts, news, interviews, concert coverage and more.

If you like Billboard, be sure to check out “5 Must-Book Music Sites,” a must-read for indie music fans that are just getting their feet wet online. It features five top sites in five categories—concert listings, MP3 blog, music magazine, lyric database and video site—as well as five runners-up.

Liz Colville
Senior Writer
Audience Development

Sweet Sites | Finding News in New Places

Part of my daily role at findingDulcinea is to find news stories that are provocative, educational and informative. We take these stories and try to answer other questions readers might have about the topic. For example, North and South Korea appear to have reached a new chapter in their relationship since the death of former South Korean President Kim Dae-jung in August. But what of the countries’ relationship with the U.S.? How have relations fared since the outbreak of the Korean War in 1950?

We choose stories from a variety of sources, and in our own stories, include information from an even wider variety. But how do we find such a diverse collection of headlines? Below are five interesting sites that I recommend to Web newshounds new and seasoned.

Current has expanded from being an online television station of provocative, user-submitted content; it is also a social bookmarking tool. Users post stories from all over the Web, and the selections speak to the users’ inquisitive eye for quality, thought-provoking stories.

DailyMe syndicates news stories from newspapers around the country, and allows you to customize your own start page. This is a nice full-text alternative to an RSS reader. See the whole story, not just the headline, and see stories in only the topics that interest you.

Smithsonian Magazine isn’t about breaking news or sensational stories; it covers big ideas on a range of topics, loosely categorized into sections such as “People & Places” and “History & Archaeology.” Last week, the magazine’s article on micronations prompted us to profile a few eccentric and innovative micronations in a feature called “What is a Micronation?”

Bing News is Microsoft’s answer to Google News. At first glance, there are a lot of similarities, but Bing has a column off to the left that reads your IP address and brings you local news. The design of the site is cleaner and easier to read, there is a special section for news videos and I often see headlines here that I don’t see elsewhere.

The Slatest is Slate Magazine’s top 12 list of news stories from around the Web. It’s frequently updated, stored for archival perusal and includes the top stories from major news sources in a separate box to the left.

Liz Colville
Senior Writer

Sweet Sites | Graphic Gourmet: All You Can "Eat" Online

A screenshot of foodgawker.com

From “Top Chef” to “Julie & Julia,” from the Travel Channel’s “Food Paradise” to New York Magazine’s whopping 82-burger slideshow, delicious food has become the new cultural obsession. But has it also become a treat for our eyes only? Michael Pollan recently fretted so in The New York Times, arguing that proper, wholesome cooking has migrated from the pots and pans of the American kitchen to the Food Network’s primetime lineup.

Don’t tell Pollan, but we’re about to enable America’s food-porn addiction. We researched the tantalizing world of food art, photography and sheer voyeurism on SweetSearch, and turned up the following (sesame) seedy side of the Web. Plenty of sites serve up photographic fodder, but few can beat Photograzing from Serious Eats, foodgawker or the aptly named FoodPornDaily for lush and delectable pictures. Although the latter two sites offer neither more nor less than their URLs promise, the Serious Eats main site features recipes, restaurants and food news from all over the country—in addition to tasty photos, of course. The restaurant-review site Menuism earns honorable mention in the low-hanging but mouthwatering fruit category: It allows users to browse for restaurants by food photos.

As the photographic equivalent of street food or carnival fare, the above sites offer little for a higher-brow palate. Fortunately, there’s a range of food art and food-centric social commentary that caters to the tastes of both voyeur and connoisseur. WebEcoist offers “15 Fascinating Food Artists and Sculptors,” an excellent introduction to food art that features potato chip portraits, elegant butter statues, surreal foodscapes and a “Biscuit City.”

Time Magazine’s feature “What the World Eats” shows 15 families from all over the world with their entire week’s food allowance spread out before them, providing a fascinating look into geographical differences in diet. Similarly, Mark Menjivar’s “You Are What You Eat,” presented by Good Magazine, captures the contents of strangers’ refrigerators, and the simple Tumblr “Hospital Food” collects photos of meals from sickbeds worldwide.

Finally, there are plenty of resources for budding food photographers. Check out Rob Willey’s advice in his Food & Wine Magazine article “Shoot First, Eat Later,” Photojojo’s “The Ten Tastiest Food Photography Tips,” “little nuggets from the front lines of food styling and photography” from the blog “Still Life With” or, for a behind-the-scenes look at a professional in action, watch Cooking Up a Story’s “The Art of Food Photography.”

If you’re still not sated, findingDulcinea offers lots of news and features on food, and don’t miss our Web Guide to Food for recipes, restaurant reviews, special diets and more.

Jill Marcellus
Senior Intern

Sweet Sites | Interviews and Talks with People Who Should Be Celebrities

Everywhere you turn, you see or hear about Jon and Kate, Lindsay Lohan, Lindsay Lohan's spray tan product, Jennifer Garner's cute kids, and Posh & Becks' shopping outings. These people are celebrities, technically speaking, but there are many other people out there, living and deceased, who were celebrities in their time, or should have been. We've uncovered a number of sites that host interviews and talks with notable people from many walks of life. Some of these Web sites might be familiar to you, but some may appear to be diamonds in the rough!

TED is probably the most well-known site for inspiring, amusing and cool talks with innovative thinkers and leaders. Learn about emerging technologies, the fashion world, religion, medicine, and much more from the Web site of the TED Prize and annual TED Conference.

The Mike Wallace Interview is a collection of interviews by Mike Wallace of "60 Minutes" conducted between 1957 and 1960 and hosted by the University of Texas at Austin's Harry Ransom Center. This generous site features interviews with pioneering people like Frank Lloyd Wright, Gloria Swanson, Eleanor Roosevelt and Aldous Huxley.

Charlie Rose has recently revamped the Web site for his PBS show and now includes free and lengthy archived and recent interview segments with actors, sports stars, economists, politicians, authors and much more.

The Paris Review "Interviews" section features an archive of interview excerpts with authors dating back to the 1950s. They are in text-only format, but very worthwhile.

Liz Colville
Senior Writer
Audience Development

If you're really into lectures, see our previous entry, "5 Must-See Lectures."

Sweet Sites | Swim the Web to Find Water Activities This Summer

It's hot outside; why not head to the water? We're continuing with last week's theme as we go in search of sites to help you find pools, beaches and water sports near you.

Swim.com will help you find a pool, public or private, in your area. The site contains entries from around the world and offers detailed information about each pool, including the pool's shape, whether it contains chlorine and if a lifeguard is on duty.

Keep your kids safe in the water by signing them up for swimming lessons. If you've never learned how to swim yourself, it's never too late to start. Swim.com also provides a database of swim instructors, listing name, years of experience, reviews (if any), rate and distance from you.

If you long for sand between your toes and the splashing of waves, Dr. Beach has just the right prescription for you. Dr. Stephen P. Leatherman provides a beach overview by U.S. region, and also issues a yearly list of the nation's best beaches.

Have fun (mostly) above the water with GORP's Paddling page, which offers resources to plan your next canoeing, kayaking or rafting trip, including information about where to go, what you'll need and how to improve your paddling technique.

Amy Goldschlager
Editor

Find your own "eureka!" sites using SweetSearch.

Consult our Travel Guides for sites to help you with more location-specific fun this summer.

Get this blog entry in a weekly newsletter.

Sweet Sites | Use the Web to Find Summertime Fun, Wherever You Are

The temperature's warming up and you've got some free time, but you have absolutely no idea what to do with this glorious opportunity. Here are some sites that can help you with this high-quality problem.

Festivals.com allows you to search for U.S. events by region and type, including fairs, sporting events, crafts expos and motor shows. The site is particularly strong on music events; find out who's playing where in a variety of genres from alternative to zydeco.

Whatsonwhen offers information about intriguing events happening across the globe. Search by keyword or browse by destination or event type to learn more about a wide range of activities that includes both the North American Sand Soccer Championships in Virginia and the Baby-Jumping Colacho Festival in Castrillo de Murcia, Spain.

If your summer simply must involve a screaming tour of a roller coaster or a spin on the Ferris wheel, consult Theme Park Insider for help planning your next trip to the amusement park. The site offers reviews, park safety news and advice, tips to shorten your wait on ride lines, hotel information and more. 

Amy Goldschlager
Editor

Find your own "eureka!" sites using SweetSearch.

Consult our Travel Guides if you're looking for sites to help you with more location-specific trip-planning.

Get "Sweet Sites" in your inbox once a week.

Sweet Sites | Play the Game: Reconnecting with Childhood Games on the Web

Nostalgic for the games you played when you were a kid? Here are three sites that can help you recapture those old memories and potentially share your childhood fun with your own children.

If the happiest moments of your youth involved tossing away all your quarters at the arcade, you might enjoy KLOV (Killer List of Videogames), sponsored by the International Arcade Museum. Search or browse the alphabet for detailed information and images of classics like "Burger Time" and more recent favorites like "Dance Dance Revolution." If you have hundreds of dollars and the floor space to spare, the site also includes whatever eBay listings for the game are available. Those with thinner wallets but deep devotion might be interested in purchasing the game manuals.

If your pulse used to race to the clatter of dice, the fluttering of cards and the march of plastic game pieces, than BoardGameGeek, a database of more than 30,000 board games, is for you. Plug in the name of your favorite board game into the search box for a brief description, images, forums discussing game play and listings for the game on eBay and the site's own marketplace. If you've got information about a particular game that appears to be missing from the site, you can add what you know via an online form.

Maybe you preferred to spend most of your kid downtime outdoors; in that case, visit GamesKidsPlay. The site isn't particularly elegant, but it does have a nice long list of rules for playground games, as well as jump rope and clapping game rhymes. If you're desperate to remember exactly how to play Red Light/Green Light," "Steal the Bacon" or "Spud," this site is an answer to your prayers.

Amy Goldschlager
Editor

Find your own "eureka" sites using SweetSearch.

Consult our Video Games Web Guide for more sites that will connect you with video games new and old.

Sweet Sites | Name That Tune: Nailing Down Music & Lyrics on the Web

It’s a universal experience: there’s a song, or part of a song, that you just can’t get out of your head. Unfortunately, you can’t remember the name of the song or the band who sang it. But fear not: the Internet was invented to solve agonizing conundrums like this. (Okay, maybe the Internet wasn’t specifically designed to help you cope with your earworm problem, but it seems like it might have been.)

Did you first hear the song a few weeks ago as Dr. Gregory House moodily limped/stomped through the hospital or when, for the millionth time, Chuck failed to listen to Sarah and Casey’s instructions to stay in the car and got captured by Fulcrum agents? Then pay a visit to TuneFind, which catalogs the songs used in recent TV shows and new movies. If the song is available on iTunes, the site will direct you there to buy it.

If it’s an older song that’s lodged in your brain, type whatever you remember of the lyrics into Lyrster, a lyrics search engine that indexes more than 350 lyric-hunting sites in English and French. Some of the sites also lead to audio or video clips of the song in question. (I personally was thrilled to find a cheesy video of “Disparue,” a French rock song from 1982 that I encountered during a high-school summer spent in France.)

If you’ve used the two sites above to successfully identify your song, head on over to just hear it, which searches the Web for audio and video of your chosen song. If you’re looking for multiple songs, you can drag each one to the right of the screen and create a playlist.

Just hear it has acquired all the appropriate licenses to ensure that artists receive royalties for their work when you stream their songs; that means you can root out that earworm and feel virtuous at the same time. The site is currently in private beta; you need an invitation to gain membership privileges that allow you to save playlists between visits. However, you can e-mail them and request one.

Amy Goldschlager
Editor

Find your own "eureka!" sites using SweetSearch.

Sweet Sites | Don't Get Fooled Again: Know Fact from Fiction

Know how to tell truth from fiction with help from these three Web sites.
 
Keep your e-mail inbox free of viruses, scams and hoaxes with help from Purportal.com, "debunking bunk since 2001." The site allows you to search various reputable databases and sites that collect information about urban legends, sneaky ways of parting you from your money and various bits of code you just don't want on your computer.  Sources include Snopes, Symantec and Fraud Watch International.
 
Continue on the factual path with Scirus, a search engine for scientific information that indexes journals, scientists' personal pages and coursework. A sister site, SciTopics, offers "research summaries" on a variety of different subjects in the sciences and the humanities, such as chemistry, environmental science and philosophy.
 
Librarians built Infomine, a collection of databases, electronic journals, books and other resources for university-level students and staff. It includes links to both paid and free content, and offers bibliographic information about each site.

Find your own "eureka" sites using SweetSearch.

Amy Goldschlager
Editor

If you like this newsletter, sign up for our weekly dose of travel insights or our weekly education-themed picks here.

Who Wants to Be an Internet Expert?

Back in the olden days, people talked about the list of books they wanted to read but would probably never get to. Although the lists might have been long, they may have been more manageable than we realized. With the Web, we’re getting a seemingly infinite number of articles thrown at us every minute. It’s hard to make a reading list—never mind get through it.

Fortunately, findingDulcinea, your friendly, neighborhood Internet librarian, has a solution: Our daily and weekly e-mail newsletters. Or, as we like to think of them: Expertise in Your Inbox.

* The Daily Dulcinea: A dose of knowledge spotlighting a notable biography or historical event. On Saturday, we'll send you "5 Must-Reads You May Have Missed" during the week.
* Weekly Travel Newsletter: a virtual tour of under-the-radar vacation destinations.
* Weekly Education Newsletter: a curation of Web sites and tools that aim to empower teachers, librarians, parents and students.
* Sweet Sites: a weekly e-mail of Web sites that will aid your research, up your Internet savvy and expand your mind.

Sign up here, now!

Your desire to become an Internet expert is probably reason enough for you to sign up for one or all of these newsletters. But if you need more incentive, we've created a list of reasons:

1. Our "On This Day" and Happy Birthday e-mails are guaranteed to tell you the correct date, every day.
2. There's no point to that new smartphone if no one is e-mailing you, right? We'll e-mail you. We promise.
3. We are more consistent/less demanding than the boy/girl/client/gig you wish was e-mailing you.
4. Getting our travel newsletter is like traveling, except you can bring more than 3 fluid ounces with you when you read it.
5. Our weekly "Sweet Sites" e-mail is not as bad for your teeth as other sweets. Nor will it get your keyboard sticky when you surf the Web.
6. If you lie and say you found one of our Sweet Sites yourself, we'll never find out.
7. Visit our Religion and Spirituality Web Guide to deal with the guilt you'll feel about stealing credit for our awesome work.