Site Seeing
Feel free to browse
By JULES ALLEN
Published April 18, 2005
Free the word
There's still a pretty strong market for books, even relatively expensive tech books, which generally have the same shelf life as bananas. This site is packed with oodles of honest-to-goodness print books in downloadable or screen readable form. If you're thinking about becoming a programmer, be sure to squint at the Python section.
Super flyOh, how I hate not to plan my travel. I often end up in row 108 and stuck in the middle seat, that mother of all flying horrors. I've learned the plane layouts on the airline I fly the most, but it's still hit or miss on getting a good seat, especially if I fly with another carrier. Ah, but this site is my new best friend. It's full of plane layouts for all of the world's popular airlines. Just bookmark this and make sure you have it open in another browser window when booking a ticket. It's indispensable.
New world viewand
Google's mapping feature by itself is pretty nifty, especially the recently added satellite view. But what's extra nifty about this service is that it's unofficially hackable. Smart people are using it to create their own marriage of data plus geography. Take, for instance, the first link. It grabs real estate and rental listings from the useful Craig's List and gives them geographic context. Pure genius. The second link is all about highlighting interesting aerial views of different parts of the United States. Both are highly entertaining.
Boiling pointIndy types love to rage against Starbucks. I can't make up my mind if they're just raging against anything and everything with more than two locations or if there are some actual gripes to be aired. I'm certainly more than happy to jump-start my day with fresh, strong coffee from any source. This site contains both: independent coffeehouses as well as outlets from the company formerly known as Pequod.
Free FTPSometimes you're at a machine that doesn't have a File Transfer Protocol client or you're behind a firewall that allows only outbound Web-based traffic. What's a geek to do should FTP access be required? Perhaps this service is one to remember. It's a browser-based, full-featured FTP client. My only concern is there's no published privacy policy other than the "we'll do no evil" paragraph on the home page.