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ATPM 5.10
October 1999

Welcome to the fourth edition of About This Particular Web Site. This will mark the last issue for me as the writer of ATPW. From the next issue on, ATPM newcomer David Spencer will take over the lead. This would be an excellent opportunity to fire off any comments and suggestions to editor@atpm.com ! Please also note that the Web sites mentioned here are not endorsed by ATPM, they are simply suggestions for your own browsing endeavors. On and on we go...

• Feel like you are paying too much for insurance? Try InsWeb. InsWeb gives you (after filling out a 15–20 min survey) comparative quotes for various kinds of insurance, such as auto, term life, health, homeowners, renters and condo insurance.
• Are you or your kids going to college? Then check out CollegeBeans. CollegeBeans gives you access to the “college life” of several universities with parties and other events, as well as relevant links. The “bookworm” allows you to compare text book prices among several online merchants, some are up to 40% cheaper! For parents, this might be an opportunity to actually know what’s going on at your kid’s school!
• This is a really fascinating site: The Hunger Site. We all know the world is not the perfect place we wish it were. But we often find excuses not to make it better. What can we do as individuals? If I make a donation, how can I be sure it really helps the needy? Now there is no more excuse. The Hunger Site lets you make a donation by clicking a single button. The actual money will be provided by a corporate sponsor. All you need to do is press that button and see a neutral page showing the logos of the sponsors. No spam, no surveys, just a few sponsors. You can track the donations to date online. On September 29 alone 152,580 donations were made, for a total of 33,377 pounds of food. You don’t have to go there every day (though you can), but at least do it once in your life.
• While you are in the mood for doing a good deed, here is another (though not as noble) one: IP World Map Project. The idea is basically to create a map of the Internet’s citizens. All you have to do is enter the name of the city that you live in—no email address, no survey, so don’t worry about spam. The data for all users will be put together to yield a map of where the world’s Internet users are located. This map can be used to plan new Internet infrastructures and help localize advertisement of future Web sites. Other than that it’s just plain interesting.
• E-mail has became a mainstream method of communication for many people. But changing ISPs means changing your address, something that can be very troublesome and unpleasant. You have to change all your mailing lists, notify friends etc. Why not have a permanent e-mail address that follows you around the world and that you can check from any computer with Internet access without any e-mail software? So far so good, but which one? There are dozens of free e-mail companies out there. Lamiya’s Freebies lists them all (well, almost). So how about joey@beer.com or ashley@ChickMail.com? Some of them, like MauiMail are run entirely on Macintosh servers. Good luck finding the right one!
• Trying to get somewhere but don’t know how? Yahoo! Maps has the answer. Either enter one address and see it on the map (which you can move around and zoom in and out of) or find driving directions by entering a starting and ending address. A map of the route and detailed directions will automatically be generated. It hasn’t always put me on the fastest route, but at least I have always arrived.
• Do you want to see your home from space? With actual daylight/night representation? Earth View can show it to you. Using actual satellite pictures, it shows you what any place on Earth looks like at the current time of the day.

Copyright © 1999 Daniel Chvatik, dchvatik@atpm.com. When he’s not spending all of his waking hours surfing the Web while claiming to be doing research, Daniel finds time to volunteer as ATPM’s Managing Editor.

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