Amazing world of the web

I'm constantly surprised and delighted with the cornucopia of resources that there is on the internet. Anything you want to know, track, find is there if you just search a little creatively. I thought I'd give a little list of the sites that I have found in the last little while, or knew about already, but may not have mentioned before.

I have a client that I maintain a charity website for. She was asking how she could put up one of those charity thermometers that you often see, that tracks donations for a specific fundraising event (such as a walk-a-thon). I knew what she meant, as I remember our local theatre had one outside the building. But a web based one? I googled "Fundraising Thermometers" and the first site (apart from the paid ones) was a site called Fundraising Insight and for free was a service where you put in information such as your target amount, and the amount you have raised so far, and it allows you to display a thermometer on your site! You just update the information from time to time and it automatically updates the level that you have collected. I've seen sites that allow you to track things before. There is a site called Ticker Factory. On this site you can track things like weight loss, count downs to holidays, due date of a baby, savings. And they have all these little images that you can use as your bar, and others to use as the place you are at now.

I have a few clients that find that an event calendar is a useful thing to have on their site. They usually don't want to pay anything extra for this, and I found a site called Spongecell Promote. It used to be called just Spongecell, but they seem to have improved their site and the calendars. You can use it for free, and imbed it into your site. And you access the calendar by signing into their website, so once you (or your web designer) have embedded it, anyone in your organisation can keep it up to date. There is a paid version that has more options, and it has functions that allow you to invite people on a mailing list.

For those of you who have lost faith in the now very commercial world of Ebay, there is kijiji.ca (for Canadians, of course) Here you can still advertise your business, but it's a great way to advertise your discarded goods for sale (or trade) in your own local area.

For the artist among you, and in these scary financial times, there is the site Etsy This is a US shop and sells in US Dollars, but for us Canadians selling, that only helps us, as the biggest market is in the States. It is for only home made items, no imported garbage is allowed. A lot of fun, quality art on this site.

Of course for those among you that are always wondering what the name of that actor was on the show you just watched, there is the Internet Movie Database (IMDB). And it's a bit of a misnomer, because it has information about TV shows as well as movies. If you like music and are happy just to listen for free, and not to download it, you can go to Songza type in the name of an artist, and a list of songs will come up. It used to be a pretty simple site, but they've tarted it up now and often there are linked YouTube videos that you can watch while you are listening.

And a bit on just searching. Don't be shy with your search engine. I often find things by typing in searches in the form of a question, like "how do you create rounded corners in Photoshop". Or just the line of a song that I can remember "I'm just a jealous guy". I very rarely fail at finding what I was looking for.

Songza

This isn't particularly new, but with all the news of Canada catching up with copyright laws of other countries, the downloading of music etc is coming to an end, or will do eventually. There is a neat site called songza that you can use to hear new music and listen to music that you already know, but perhaps haven't heard for a while. You can't download it, but it is a great way to find an old favourite that you haven't heard before. They then give you the opportunity of finding a place you can purchase it, should you wish to.

I found a song I haven't heard for years called Toast. If you type in Toast and Paul Young it comes up. It's by a band he was in called Streetband. It's just a bit of British whimsy, but it's the only place to hear it.