Cool and Useful Websites.

BirdFeeder - Open, decentralized micropublishing. Think Twitter.

Blurb - Make your own book.

Call the Future calls the specified number with the given return name.Please understand that this is a demo only and the limit is often maxed out. If so, please try later.

Citebite - Paste a chunk of text and the URL of the page containing the text and in return get a link that opens directly to your selection and highlights it.

Currency Converter

CurveCP: Usable security for the Internet

Deterministic Password Generator  - This javascript program runs in your browser and uses the Skein-512 secure hash to deterministically generate passwords based on a single master password. This page DOES NOT send your master password or derived passwords to any server or store them. Different secure passwords are generated for each site so only the master password need be remembered. Site specific passwords can be regenerated at any time from anywhere in the world. The generated passwords can be saved locally by your browser for your convenience (or not).

Dirty Share - PureJavascript Peer to Peer Filesharing. 

File Destructor - Basically provides an excuse if you can't meet your deadline.

FileTea - Low friction, one-click anonymous file sharing. FileTea allows instantaneous file sharing using only a browser and standard HTTP. Users just drag-n-drop their files into a webpage and an URL is generated for each one. These URLs are then sent to recipients or just published somewhere, and allow direct download of the corresponding file.

Fluid - Turn Your Favorite Web Apps into Real Mac Apps.

Freecode: Open Transactions   is a solid, easy-to-use, financial crypto and digital cash library, including an API, server, and test client. It features anonymous numbered accounts, untraceable digital cash, triple-signed receipts, basket currencies, and signed XML contracts. It also supports cheques, invoices, payment plans, markets with trades, and other instruments. It uses OpenSSL and Lucre blinded tokens.

Friendika - Interconnects social websites, and is also the most technically advanced and feature-rich decentralised Facebook alternative currently available for the indie web.

Gazhoo - Upload and sell documents

GoodReader - pdf reader for iPad

Hackety Hack - teaches you the absolute basics of programming from the ground up. No previous programming experience is needed!

Lulu - Personal book publishing

Map-O-Net  - shows where you lie in the structure of IP addresses.

Readdle - PDF converter for the iPad.

RoboHash - Generate unique images from any text.  It's an easy web service that makes it easy to provide unique, robot/alien/monster images for any text. Put in any text, such as IP address, email, filename, userid, or whatever else you like, and get back an image.

Vector Magic Automatically convert bitmap images like JPEGs, GIFs and PNGs to the crisp, clean, scalable vector art of EPS, SVG, and PDF with the world's best auto-tracing software.

WebSDR - Software Defined Radio Online. Internet and radio.

Related Links:

Darknet Rising: A Private, Secure and Anonymous Meshnet Is Emerging

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Follow-the-Money and Be-on-the Alert Links

ProPublica should be a must-read for every American. It is an independent, non-profit newsroom that really and truly produces investigative journalism in the public interest. Their work focuses exclusively on truly important stories, stories with “moral force.” They do this by producing journalism that shines a light on exploitation of the weak by the strong and on the failures of those with power to vindicate the trust placed in them.

Investigative journalism is at risk. Many news organizations have increasingly come to see it as a luxury. Today’s investigative reporters lack resources: Time and budget constraints are curbing the ability of journalists not specifically designated “investigative” to do this kind of reporting in addition to their regular beats. This is therefore a moment when new models are necessary to carry forward some of the great work of journalism in the public interest that is such an integral part of self-government, and thus an important bulwark of our democracy.

The business crisis in publishing and — not unrelated — the revolution in publishing technology are having a number of wide-ranging effects. Among these are that the creation of original journalism in the public interest, and particularly the form that has come to be known as “investigative reporting,” is being squeezed down, and in some cases out.

Here is an investigation everyone should read:

In the Loop: Pay Day Lenders Extensive, Expensive Ties to Washington Power Players. Charging interest rates as high as 400% to mostly the working-class, Pay-day lenders' "connections in the capital make clear that the industry has quietly -- and in a remarkably short time -- enmeshed itself into a network of Washington influence-peddlers skilled at putting a favorable sheen on a host of corporate causes."

Links to monitor:

Bailout Watch - is a collaborative effort to research, investigate, and analyze the federal government's bailout activities and publish resources and data for policymakers, the media, and interested citizens. Bailout Watch draws upon the expertise and resources of the partner organizations to identify specific data that should be disclosed (and made available in an online, indexed, searchable format), research and investigate government decision-making processes related to the bailout, and provide analysis and commentary about the effectiveness of different bailout programs.

Change Tracker - ProPublica has set up a page, with a feed, that monitors any changes to whitehouse.gov, recovery.gov, and financialstability.gov. Whenever there’s a change to any page on these sites, it’s noted in the feed. You can then view the old and new versions of the page side by side, with the changes highlighted.

Eye on Bailout Money

* A complete list of where the money's going, from AIG to the smallest community bank
* A map that charts all the bailed-out companies
* A timeline of major bailout events
* A running total of how much of the TARP bailout money has been committed
* Graphical breakdowns and plain language descriptions of the Treasury Department's bailout programs without confusing government acronyms
* A list of the banks that have returned the bailout money
* A snapshot of how mortgage servicers are performing in the foreclosure prevention program.
* The latest on the bailout from our blog and our links to the best bailout reporting

The Missing Memos ProPublica memo depository of the missing memos regarding legalities involving detainees, rendition, eavesdropping, using the military within the US, and free speech.

Open the Government is concerned that our government keeps from the American public information that we need to make our families safe, secure our country and strengthen democracy, a broad-based set of organizations formed OpenTheGovernment.org.

Side by Side Health Care Bills compare the Senate version of the health care reform bill with what it will look like with the House's changes.

Subsidyscope’s Financial Bailout Project. pulls together data on the financial institutions that are receiving benefits from the various federal programs so users can understand how and where taxpayer dollars are being spent.

It happened once:

“Army Surveillance of Civilians” (1972) - A Documentary Analysis” by the Subcommittee on Constitutional Rights, Committee on the Judiciary, United States Senate

“The following report by the Subcommittee staff analyzes certain computer print-outs and publications generated in the course of the Army’s domestic intelligence program.”

“The overwhelming majority of the reports pertain to the peaceful activites of nonviolent citizens lawfully exercising their constitutional rights of speech, press, religion, association, and petition.”

“These files confirm what we learned first from former intelligence agents – that Army intelligence, in the name of preparedness and security, had developed a massive system for monitoring virtually all political protest in the United States. In doing so, it was not content with observing at arms length; Army agents repeatedly infiltrated civilian groups. Moreover, the information they reported was not confined to acts or plans for violence, but included much private information about peoples’ finances, psychiatric records, and sex lives.”

“The size of these and other data banks confirms that the Army’s domestic intelligence operations did not begin with the Newark and Detroit riots of 1967. The events of that summer only expanded activities which had been going on, in varying degrees of intensity, since 1940, and which has its roots as far back as World War I.”

Maplight illuminating maps of all types

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Interesting Links to the 21st Century

2009 H1N1 Flu (Swine Flu) - CDC's latest info regarding H1N1. Last week, influenza ctivity, now widespread in 46 states ( FluView), continued to increase in the US as reported in. Flu-related hospitalizations and deaths continue to increase nation-wide and are above what is expected for this time of year.

ACE - a database of song titles licensed by ASCAP in the US. For each title, you can find the names of the songwriters, contact persons, and addresses and, in most cases, phone numbers of publishers to contact if you want to use the work.

Center For Economic Research and Forecasting - Forecasts are not always the most pleasant news, but to be successful, you need to follow the facts and not your feelings.


Center For Plain Language - Plain Language is a Civil Right. Plain language is more than just short words and short sentences ...When you create material in plain language, you consider the audience...the readers.


The Electoral Map - The intersection of politics and geography. A blog where maps tell the story behind the votes — the culture, economics, demographics, history, sports and the stories that influence the map.


New America Foundation - This site emphasizes work that is responsive to the changing conditions and problems of 21st C info- age economy...transforming innovation and wealth creation in an era of shortened job tenures, longer life spans, mobile capital, financial imbalances and rising inequality.


Networking-the info.net -- Social networking information.


New Geography - "Where we live and how to make it better". In addition to the subjects: Economics; Demographics; Politics; Urban Issues; Suburbs; Housing; this site features sections on: Best Cities 2009; Obama's America; Financial Crisis; New Deal 75th Anniversary Series.


Politico - In addition to all the latest political news and headlines, this site includes "a living diary of the Obama Presidency".

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Iran: Faces of the Dead and Detained

Help put a face to each of those hundreds - possibly thousands - killed or arrested since the Iranian election.

Other links that might help people understand better or support the Iranian people in their protests for democracy:

Why we protest - IRAN : Topics such as Keeping Your Anonymity In Iran; News and Current Events; Protest Advice; Activism resources; Help Iran Online; Translation: English to Farsi and Farsi to English; ETC...

Livestation : Free English versions of Al Jazeera, PressTV (Iran's state-controlled station), Russia Today, CCTV-9 (China), France 24...

Iran in crisis.

The fall-out from the Iranian presidential elections has reverberated around the world.

The BBC's World Affairs Editor, John Simpson, was in Tehran as the protests against the outcome of the vote reached their climax. John's been reporting on Iran since the Islamic revolution of 1979 and, in a change to the advertised schedule, he reflects on what he saw during the two weeks he was there.

In this special edition of Assignment, he reveals exclusive new material that exposes how the protests, and the police reprisals that followed, are intricately linked to the rivalry inside the clique of clerics who created the Islamic state.

Iranian Web Spying Aided by Western Technology:

The Iranian regime has developed, with the assistance of European telecommunications companies, one of the world's most sophisticated mechanisms for controlling and censoring the Internet, allowing it to examine the content of individual online communications on a massive scale (deep packet inspection).

Nokia Siemens Networks has stated that they sold the Monitoring Center to Iran but denies selling the Intelligence Platform. Here are the two Nokia Siemens products:

The Intelligence Platform
The Intelligence monitoring center

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Remembering "9/11" Past and Present Here and Around the World

Six years have passed since the most devastating terrorist attack in the history of the United States of America. Personally, I can't think of anything else that has impacted me more than that day, when it appeared the world had stopped revolving.

On a personal level, there is no doubt that my world stopped for a second as it did for most Americans, but the further we get from that day, the easier it is to gain perspective, while at the same time celebrating the lives of those that were taken from us on that brutal day. 3,000 deaths over the course of a couple hours is an event of enormous scale in US history, but of infinitesimal scale in world history and at present.

Just as we mourn one death amongst our family and/or friends profoundly, we mourn the victims of 9/11 in much the same way. But as the intensity of our grief starts to dissipate we must also reflect on the people around the world that are currently experiencing pain and suffering on the scale of 9/11 every day, especially those who we may be partially responsible for, whether through our outright support or complete ignorance of the situation causing so much death and destruction around the world.

Having said that, I still believe the good America does globally far outweigh any evil we may happen to contribute.

Some 9/11 Memorial sites:

September 11th Web Archive

September 11th Television Archive

September 11th Digital Archive

NPR Special Coverage of 9/11

9/11 Calls: Audio and Transcripts

Sonic Memorial

Special Collections (Federal Resources for Educational Excellence)

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