1. Infoaxe - Never bookmark a page again
2. Dead or Alive - Aren't you tired of asking?
3. Charity Navigator - Where is your money going?
4. Lost Your Product Key? - A quick trick for finding it
5. ePodunk - Name it and it's probably here
6. Videojug - How the Brits do how-to
7. Dogster - For the love of dogs
8. Plenty of Fish - When you don't want to pay for a date
9. Converters and Calculators - For the mathlexic (like me)
10. Please share your own free tools and favorite websites

http://www.infoaxe.com/

It takes me a while to figure out Internet names. I was pronouncing this with an emphasis on FO instead of on IN. Then I realized it was INFO-Axe and it is, indeed, a good name.

No-hassle bookmarking. Infoaxe cuts through the inconvenience of bookmarking pages. If you are a writer, researcher or otherwise in need of a great deal of material from many sources, you will know how annoying the typical bookmarking set-up is. It's not difficult to click a bookmark to save it. But it's like building the Great Wall of China to get a wagonload of bookmarks organized into a sensible and easily accessible order.

No-brainer searching. Infoaxe takes away the worry. It bookmarks every page you visit and then lets you search those bookmarks just as Google Desktop lets you search your computer. The results are instantaneous and they pop up in a window alongside any Google search you do. The download is fast and, as long as you keep the "Record is On" button engaged in the Infoaxe toolbar, all visited pages will be recorded.

Time Travel With Pivot (excerpted from http://www.infoaxe.com/faq.html). "We think it's more natural to remember events than dates, and pivot lets you pivot around events in your Web Memory. Say you wanted to look at all the websites you found when you were researching grad schools. You might have searched a series of grad schools, tips for writing grad school essays, and recommendations from grad students about the schools they attend. Infoaxe lets you pivot around a Web page in your Web Memory. It's a bit like time traveling."

For more information, go to http://www.infoaxe.com to watch a demo video and read co-founder Jonathan Siddharth's blog at http://searching-for-ai.blogspot.com/2008/11/infoaxe-search-engine-for-your-web.html.

Independent review from http://www.killerstartups.com/Search/infoaxe-com-a-search-engine-for-your-web-memory). Excerpt: Why Infoaxe might be a killer startup: It may stand as the future of information access on the web.
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Bonus tip: Infoaxe is actively recruiting and accepting resumes. In their words, "If you have a strong background in Web Programming, Large Scale Systems Engineering, and you breathe Software Engineering best practices, please do send us your resume at jobs@infoaxe.com for the chance to join an early stage startup about to revolutionize Search and Information access on the Web." For more detailed information on who they want to interview (for FT positions only ), visit http://www.infoaxe.com/infoaxehiring.html.
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http://www.deadoraliveinfo.com/

One of my guilty pleasures is a site that instantly tells me who's still with us and who's orbiting Cassiopeia. Here I can track nearly 8000 famous people by way of the not-so-subtle key of a smiling skull for those who've passed and a smiley face for those happily still amongst us. It's always strange to find that those I thought were dead aren't and those I was sure were alive - well, aren't either.

Short Bios. If you click on a name, you get a short bio of the person and what he or she is most famous for. Here is an example:

C.S. Forester

He died 43 years ago today, at the age of 66.

Field: Literature
Info: British author, "The African Queen", "Captain Horatio Hornblower"
Date of Birth: 08/27/1899
Date of Death: 04/02/1966
Age at Death: 66

Practical searches. You can see a list of anyone of note gone to their reward in the last six months; people (dead or alive) who made it to 100; living folks over 85 (did you know that Mike Wallace and Andy Rooney are both 90?); and those who died before reaching 30 (Hank Williams and River Phoenix, to name but two).

Categories. You can search contents by field (such as entertainment, politics, sports, music, theatre, and literature), gender, and cause of death. In that last category, there is only one famous person listed under Anorexia, and most of us of a certain age will know who that is without looking. But can you name a ballet great who died of Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (commonly called Mad Cow Disease)?

Counting the days until I've outlived Andy Warhol. You can find out whom you have outlived and by how long, As of today, I've surpassed the length of Humphrey Bogart's life by 257 days. (Glad I quit smoking.)

Birthday twins. Want to know who shares your birthday or whose birthday it is this very day? No problem. I wished two of my favorite actors, Dabbs Greer and Jack Webb, a happy birthday and said a prayer for Pope John Paul, who died on this day.

Quizzes. There are even quizzes where you can put sets of famous people in order by their birth or death dates, guess their ages at the time of their passing, and more.

Encounters of the Celebrity Kind. A section of visitor stories about meeting famous people is fun to skim through and you're encouraged to add your own memories of close encounters. (I'll tell you my Timothy Dalton story later.)
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Bonus tip: My second guilty pleasure, paired nicely with the 'dead' part of Dead or Alive, is Find A Grave, http://www.findagrave.com/, where you can read long biographies of famous folk and see a photo of their last resting place, whether grave or niche. You can even leave messages and digital flowers at the (cyber) gravesites of those you remember fondly.

Cautionary note: There are several ads on the Find A Grave website that masquerade as site search engines. Ignore them and instead look for the words 'Famous Grave Search' in the left-hand column under the large Find A Grave home page heading. As with Dead or Alive, there are links to categorized searches and other interesting things you can do while on the site.
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http://www.charitynavigator.org/

Most of us are being exceptionally careful with our money these days but we also know the importance of giving during a time that has become perilous for many. We don't want to donate our precious resources to charities who will use them unwisely. Nor do we want to get scammed by some completely illegitimate group.

Charity Navigator (CN) can save us from that. Under their slogan 'Find a Charity You Can Trust,' CN evaluates and rates charities with at least four years' worth of searchable records and then rates them based upon how well your money goes where you intend it to.

"CN has the numbers. Founded in 2001, Charity Navigator has become the nation's largest and most-utilized evaluator of charities. In our quest to help donors, our team of professional analysts has examined tens of thousands of non-profit financial documents. As a result, we know as much about the true fiscal operations of charities as anyone. We've used this knowledge to develop an unbiased, objective, numbers-based rating system to assess the financial health of over 5,000 of America's best-known charities." From http://www.charitynavigator.org/index.cfm?bay=content.view&cpid=628:

Just a small sampling of all the things you can learn and do at Charity Navigator:

Compare charities you contemplate supporting and read about: The 6 Questions to Ask Before Donating; Top 10 Best Practices of Savvy Donors; Tips for Older Donors; Guide to Volunteering; Evaluating Charities Not Currently Rated by Charity Navigator; Milestones in Philanthropy 1643-2008, and much more.
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Bonus tip: Buy a Good Card, receive a tax deduction, and then give the Good Card to a relative, friend, client or coworker for any occasion.

Charity Navigator is pleased to offer the Good Card, a gift card for charity where the recipient gets to donate to their charity of choice. Your friends, family, and colleagues all have their favorite charities and by purchasing a Good Card you can give them the perfect gift to celebrate the holidays, birthdays, graduations and other momentous occasions.

How it Works: Charity Navigator is offering Good Cards through a partnership with Network for Good. For a detailed explanation of the terms and conditions, please visit Network for Good.

Have more questions? Additional information about purchasing and redeeming Good Cards is available on our FAQ page.
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http://www.download.com/ProduKey/3000-2094_4-10457063.html

Let's hope you're not like me but if you are, you inevitably lose the product key to some of your important software. I always mean to write it on the disk with an indelible marker the moment I open the software package, but sometimes I forget. I was desperate a couple of weeks ago when I needed to reload my Office 2007 disk. Thank goodness, my computer programmer brother came to the rescue. He sent me the link above, where you download a small file and then click on it. It will find all product numbers for any Microsoft software loaded on your computer.

Please note that this is not what is called a "crack." It isn't a way to break into pirated software. It's for those of us who buy the software legitimately and then, rather carelessly in my case, forget to keep track of that absolutely vital product key number.
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Bonus tip: The bonus here is that you'll be back on track in a jiffy, using your software without a care. This time, though, do remember to write the key on the disk as an added safeguard.
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http://www.epodunk.com/

I remember being dumbfounded to find that my new neighbors, a well-educated couple with three children, didn't know that they'd moved to the largest agricultural valley in the world or that 100 degree temperatures are common throughout the summer. I was equally flummoxed when a friend who immigrated here from England told me that she'd left all (yes, all!) her warm clothes behind. She said she figured it was California so she wouldn't be needing them. She had no idea that it can and does fall below freezing in the winter and, even at warmer times of the year, trips to the forest or the northern coast (San Francisco, etc.) can be bone-chilling.

It is beyond my ken that someone would fail to research a place where they either chose or were required to take up residency.

I hurry to ePodunk whenever I want to know a lot about a certain place. When I learned my niece might be joining a ballet troupe in Alabama, for instance, I immediately looked up the city to find out all about it. I do the same when I'm reading a book about a place not well known to me, which helps me comprehend the setting better.

If (unlike my friend and my neighbors), you too are a nut for facts, you'll adore this site. Want to find the names of all the newspapers in Arkansas? Planning a tour of Wyoming's cemeteries? Needing to do historical research that requires knowing where the libraries in Maine are located? It's all at your fingertips.

You can quickly learn which cities boast the largest German populations, the lowest crime, a higher percentage of gays and lesbians, more men than women (or vice versa), the highest income and much more. Once you've picked a place to explore, Quick Links, on the left side of the page, gives you a long list of additional possibilities including data about religion, weather, historical societies, obituaries, and on and on.

From the information you pick up at ePodunk, you might even decide to live in or visit a place because Lon Chaney was born there or to participate in their annual Hummingbird Festival. (If so, you can achieve both by heading straight for Colorado Springs).
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Bonus tip: There is now an ePodunk Ireland, ePodunk UK, and ePodunk Canada, allowing you to find many more places to live, visit, or research for family genealogical and other reasons.

One proviso: ePodunk was sold in 2007. Nothing much has changed but, on the other hand, nothing much has changed. It's a bit hard to tell whether the site is being kept up as well as it once was. Nevertheless, there is still a great deal of useful information to be had here.
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http://www.videojug.com/

I love VideoJug. I hope that HubPages will soon recognize their video links and embedding codes but, until then, I urge you to get over to VideoJug.com for all kinds of self-help show-and-tell.

Need to darn a sock? I did and within a few minutes had not only learned how but darned the sock, too (http://www.videojug.com/film/how-to-darn-a-sock-2).

The soothing accents of the British DIYs (do-it-yourselfers) makes following their directions simple and stress-free.

There are hundreds of recipe how-tos for British dishes such as pork pies and curries (delicious!). Try these two:
http://www.videojug.com/film/how-to-make-melton-mowbray-pork-pie
http://www.videojug.com/film/how-to-cook-a-chicken-curry-in-ten-minutes

Drinks, as well: Here's one you'll need if James Bond should arrive at your door:
http://www.videojug.com/film/how-to-make-a-vodka-martini-cocktail

I probably will never bother to learn what they're teaching, but videos like the ones below mesmerize me:
http://www.videojug.com/film/how-to-moon-walk
http://www.videojug.com/film/how-to-throw-a-card-through-a-window
http://www.videojug.com/film/how-to-apply-the-fairy-make-up-look
http://www.videojug.com/film/how-to-fold-a-t-shirt-in-2-seconds

Video Jug offers seven categories containing many subcategories:

• Food and Drink
• Love and Dating
• Beauty and Style
• Health and Wellbeing
• Technology and Cars
• Lifestyle and Home, and
• a category called More that encompasses: Creative and Culture, Family & Education, Made by You, Money & Careers, Sports and Outdoors.

The subject matter within individual areas is wide and deep and you'll find everything imaginable (and quite a few unimaginable ones as well). Whenever you need to accomplish something around the house like making a cake, threading a needle, changing your oil filter, tying a Windsor knot or even drawing a nose, VideoJug should be your first go-to site.

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Bonus tip: If you want to see naked girls or read up on, shall we say, more intimate topics, remember that this is a British website and not as prudish as mainstream America about such things. Now, don't get too excited or bothered: In writing this article, I didn't come across anything here that could remotely be called porn. Even videos with enticing names are often brutally dull discussions by sex therapists or cartoons that eliminate most of the prurient possibilities. If you are ultra sensitive to things of this nature, don't click on these videos that I watched and found fun:
http://www.videojug.com/film/a-girls-guide-to-looking-good-naked, http://www.videojug.com/film/how-to-kiss-creatively-2,
http://www.videojug.com/film/how-to-deal-with-odd-sexual-requests

http://www.dogster.com/

Dogster is for every dog-loving fool on the planet.

I proudly count myself among that group.

There is very little not to love here. It's free; you can add your pets' photos; tell their stories; create memorial websites for those who have preceded you to heaven; meet other completely besotted dog folk; look at thousands of darling dogs of all ages, sizes, pedigrees, and talents; find rescue dogs of every type to adopt; and see how many dogs there are named Max,Teddy, and Rosa Barks.

That barely scratches the surface. Some dogs write hilariously funny diaries. Others wear their most beautiful finery. Still others show off their ingenious talents. Updated stories on dog food recalls, veterinarian insurance, how to remove ticks, the http://www.togethertag.com/, and much more that is helpful to you (and could be life-saving to your dog) is here on this amazing site.

Barring anything else, how about setting your writing skills a challenge by concocting the perfect caption for the photograph below. You have until April 27 to enter this month's Photo Caption Contest at: http://dogblog.dogster.com/2009/04/21/photo-caption-contest-what-are-you-lookin-at/
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Bonus tip: Catster! Feline fun for all at www.catster.com.
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Plenty of Fish (POF) is a free dating service. Free is a very welcoming word in this economy. People reach out for each other at such times in hopes of finding a friend to commisserate or share an activity like dancing or walking through a park. Anything to keep the worrying at bay, even for a little while.

I had my first internet-connected date this past weekend. The guy is smart, kind, and funny. Not a bad start! I had a good time. We've already decided to meet occasionally for a meal or an inexpensive event. That's something nice to look forward to.

I doubt that either of us feels we've met the love of our lives but right now - for now - nice can be very comforting.

POF has some options I like. You can check boxes to ensure that you are spared first contacts with those who've been trolling for 'intimate encounters' (read: sex only) or 'other relationships' (code for 'I'm married but want to fool around"). You can also eliminate self-identified smokers or drug users. Now if they'd only add a "No Harleys" button and remove men with user names like "Chained to Jesus" or "Fantasy Man," I'd really be satisfied.

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Bonus tip: For a truly hilarious take on internet dating using this same service, be sure to see 1964Human's three-hub saga starting here: http://hubpages.com/hub/Filling-out-a-dating-profile.

You don't have to know me long before you'll find that I'm not very good at math. It's not terribly surprising that I love ways to convert measurements, currency, percentages and the like without having to think too hard. (Thinking hard about math only makes me more confused, which drove my poor dear dad, a math teacher, crazy.)

Here are a few I find especially helpful:

Cooking Converters
http://library.ndsu.edu/grhc/recipes/conversion.html
http://www.globalgourmet.com/food/resources/index.html

International Currency Converter
http://www.xe.com/ucc/

Percentages
http://www.blackdog.net/games/math/percent.html

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Bonus tip:

Can't figure out when that movie was made or which king came before which? Use this: Roman Numerals Conversion.
http://www.onlineconversion.com/roman_numerals_advanced.htm

A neighbor's brother knows what day you were born simply by asking your birthdate. If you are not lucky enough to have a friend with this ability, go to DayBorn.
http://www.onlineconversion.com/dayborn.htm
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