This place doesn't seem to have any index of our favourite places on the web, and given how a lot of us seem to share common interests beyond just PCs that seems a bit daft. So I'm nominating myself to be the curator of such an index, which I will maintain within this original post. What I'm looking for is sites that are out-and-out quality sources of information and/or entertainment, not the sort of sites where you have to filter through a load of dross & spam etc. to find the good bits. Sites on any subject are welcome (so long as forum rules are abided by). But please, no blogs or forums. Please try to appreciate that I intend for this to be genuinely top-quality sites only. There's obviously a large slice of subjectivity involved and the final decision will be mine (unless there's a better idea proposed), but if you can provide a particularly convincing recommendation then I will of course seriously consider it, even if I don't personally rate it. Likewise, if I select a site that you don't rate then let me know why. I'll leave it at that for now and see how this flies. Get recommending! I'll kick things off for now (should be working) with just a few I wish I had more time to make use of: Codeacademy.com - Teach yourself to code. Again, not had the time to benefit from it personally, but seems to be genuinely worthwhile. Coursera Free, structured, courses provided by established educational institutions. Leading the way in reducing the cost of and increasing the access to top class education. Not tried it yet but I have enrolled on a course... Ctrlpaint.com - Teach yourself to digital paint. For free. I've only just come across it and not had the time to get watch more than 1 or 2 sessions, but looks like a great source to me. Duolingo.com - Free language learning. Not sure of all the languages available but I know French, German, Italian, Portuguese and Spanish are there, and my experience of the French material has been very positive. How Does A Car Work? Jaybles has won me over. An impressive one-man guide to how cars work. TED Top quality presentations, better than channel-hopping on the tele for a night. Wikipedia - A given, I hope. Yes, it's not foolproof, but it's a genuine mine of interesting/useful information and an icon of the internet.
Off the top of my head I can think of these. University of Reddit - http://ureddit.com Khan Academy - https://www.khanacademy.org/ A bit different but it is such a phenomenal source of Linux information in general. Arch Linux Wiki - https://wiki.archlinux.org/ With regards to programming I'll add Stack Overflow and /r/LearnProgramming for feedback. Reddit Learn Programming - http://www.reddit.com/r/learnprogramming Stack Overflow - http://stackoverflow.com/ (Yes I'm a redditor but there are some good subreddits on there that aren't cats or porn.) Useful to link to people who haven't built a PC before. PC it Yourself - http://www.pcityourself.com/ A set of videos for people who know bugger all about cars. How Does a Car Work? - http://www.howdoesacarwork.com/ The best wallpaper site on Earth. Wallbase.cc - http://wallbase.cc Make Stuff - Some really interesting projects. Instructables - http://www.instructables.com/ Oh and the best site on the internet. http://bit-tech.net
Here's a few that I couple which you may like to check out: Board Game Geek - The essential site for reviews, ratings and suggestioon for the advanced board game enthusiast. Twisted Sifter - Typical internet photography site featuring varying styles and subjects. There's thousands of sites like this on the internet but this seems particularly well done and the articles are always impressive. Heavens Above - Probably the best site for accurate and detailed skywatching information (even down to the exact position of every single Iridium satellite). Absolutely essential for the avid stargazer. UK Weather Forecast - Accurate and up to date weather radar and the like. The radar updates every 15 minutes so you really can make up your own mind and plan for weather
Ok, initial feedback on posts 2 & 3. I don't think any of the suggestions so far make the grade. The closest one to doing so was PC it yourself because it looked clear, beginner-friendly and genuinely useful. However, it's out-of-date, referring to WinXP/Vista in its operating systems guide. This shows that it's an amateur operation and doesn't currently stand the test of time. Ureddit looks to have some good stuff, but it's too sprawling, lacking clear structure and the UI is not particularly beginner-friendly in my book. Khanacademy has promise but from what I've seen of it the material isn't of a high enough quality to entice me and the range of material available is not comprehensive enough for the site to be relied upon as a one-stop-shop that it's trying to be. Give it time and maybe... Archlinux wiki and Heavens Above are too specialist, lacking enough to interest/guide those who come to the site knowing nothing. UK weather forecast - looks useful, but too many ads and too limited in scope. Boardgamegeek - this was a 'maybe' but it's not really much more than a forum. Generally speaking I think forums are out. Twisted Sifter - some eye-catching stuff, but it's just a blog really. Thanks for the suggestions though - keep 'em coming. Edit: Jaybles keeps editing and I can't keep up... How does a car work is a 'maybe'. I note it doesn't seem to have anything on electrics and the in-car experience, but this is definitely more the sort of thing I was thinking of. Will need to check it more thoroughly later. Instructables is another maybe. It's a great site, but it's one of those where you end up sifting through loads of stuff and never actually get anywhere or find anything compelling enough. Bit-tech Don't think so. As an archive for old tech it has uses but I think the general opinion of forumites is that it's not what it once was. Wallbase.cc Wallpapers? No.
Considering nearly every article on the Cracked homepage is presented as a list (i.e. "The six most hilarious...", "The 22 must-have..." I'm not going any further with it. That's not in-keeping with my definition of quality. The Anandtech Bench stuff is of such limited use, despite however useful the information provided may be to those seeking it. And it's not a site, just a small part of one. But the main point is that it's just not worth telling the world about. It belongs in a similar type of index in the Hardware forum. Don't want to put people off suggesting, but I am fussy. I have some standards, whatever most people may think of me...
I'm going to volunteer Jalopnik. Hands down the best car blog on the internet. I challenge you to prove me wrong.
To disqualify a very quality website because of it's "blog" format is a little unfair if I do say so myself. Jalopnik contains quality written peices of journalism related to all things automotive. Which seems to be a topic quite popular around these forums. Don't know if you even gave the website a good look through... But, your thread and your rules(enjoy). Even if I don't agree.
Re: How does a car work. The guy who makes the videos is still working on it. It's a one man operation but his videos explain things so clearly. He has a list somewhere regarding future videos. And a +1 to TedTalks.
Thank you, we have some winners! Coursera is by no means perfect, like Khanacademy it's range of content, compared to what it hopes to be, is limited, but where for me it beats Khanacademy is that the courses are provided by the major and established educational institutions so have current credibility. I don't know much about Khanacademy but browsing through their content I don't get that same reassurance. TED is one I'm not particularly a fan of but I think deserves to go in because it's a quality site with quality contributors.
Khan academy is very high quality just its content at its hardest is first year undergraduate and the bulk is secondary level. You don't really need big institution to create that kind of content.
Yeh, that was the gist I was beginning to get from it. As a resource for teachers and pupils it's got great potential, but I'm not convinced by it yet.
Well, Cracked won the 2012 Webby Award for best comedy site, has over 300k page views per month, 7.3m UMUs, and is the most visited humour site in the world, so I guess you must have extremely high standards when you are looking for 'quality sources of entertainment' Also, a blanket ban on blogs or 'journalism'?
