Greatest sites on the Internet

The title of this page is one of the most inaccurate statements in the world. This is because my view of the World Wide Web might not be your view of the World Wide Web. Nevertheless, there's a selected number of websites that have really impressed me with their overall feel, functionality and usefulness, the uniqueness of design and the quality of the contents.

The websites are divided by their categories, as I see them. All of the categories and websites links can be found on this page. For easier navigation, use the category links to jump between them.

I will try to keep in pace with my tight daily schedule and add one new website every few weeks. You will have a sampling of several websites to start with, though. If you have websites that you feel like might be worthy of inclusion, don't hesitate to Contact me.

Enjoy!

NationStates is a web-based nation-building simulation game. You begin playing by building a nation. The nation template asks a number of questions, upon which the principles of your fledgling state are based. You are allowed to choose the type of government you want, going from Liberal to Psychotic. You can also select the flag for your country, the national animal and the motto. After these, you are asked a few character questions, which will define the spirit of your country. And then, you begin to play.

The "play" consist of daily challenges, brought before your parliament. As the ruler, you need to decide what stance your government will take. The questions may be benign or even silly, asking for more rights for penguin vegetarians, but they can also concern serious matters of war, foreign policy, censorship, and much more. The way you handle these questions will reflect on all aspects of society of your country.

You can also apply for membership in the United Nations, ally with other countries and participate in the game forum. While NationStates is not the typical game, it is unique and interesting and will sweep you, even though you may spend only a few minutes pondering your daily issues.

This may sound like a boring choice, but think about it. Many people spend hours of their life typing all kinds of documents. Quite often, many of us, even native English speakers, will reach for a dictionary to see if their choice of wording and phrasing is appropriate - or perhaps look up an alternative meaning for a word, to make their sentence sound posh - or even check if they made some horrible spelling mistake somewhere.

Dictionary.com is an excellent source of all this information, delivered in a simple and precise fashion. The site is effective and non-obtrusive. Furthermore, this online dictionary also offers a Thesaurus and encyclopedia entries, which makes it a very useful interactive tool for both improving your documents and learning new things ... in English.

Who said the Communism has lost? It's alive and kicking. But not in its original incarnation, though. Communism has been made true by the Open Source Community. SourceForge is the web's greatest development and download repository of open-source software. This is one place where money and greed are not the champions; rather, cooperation, transparency of information and just cause are.

SourceForge offers a huge choice of excellent, FREE software in virtually every field of computing. If you ever have a need for a certain application, your wisest choice would be to check out SourceForge first before heading off elsewhere and bleeding off your hard-earned money. Sometimes, quite often actually, small and out-of-spotlight little programs that you can find on SourceForge will prove worthier than the big, mainstream stereotype-ware we have been brainwashed to use. Great projects like a variety of Linux distributions, Mozilla, Open Office, and many others are the offspring of the Open Source Community.

tuxmachines.org is an excellent place to get your news about the open-source world. The site features rich content, submitted both by its staff and people all over the world, resulting in a mixed bag of blog entries, how-tos, detailed tutorials, news entries, and other bits and pieces of information. Most importantly, tuxmachines grants you a virtually unlimited access to the hearts, minds and technical skills of thousands of people across the world. It is definitely only of the more well-balanced and efficient intellectual repositories I have come across. Do not be fooled by the simple design; each link hides a world of goodies.

For anyone looking for a pleasant, well-founded, high-quality trip into the world of computing, tuxmachines.org is the place.

W3Schools is one of the most comprehensive and user-friendly sources for learning web design. The site is well structures by topics, including HTML, XML, Browser scripting, Server scripting, Multimedia, and others. All of the categories are sorted in chapters, accompanied with rich tutorials, beginning with basic concepts and simple example, slowing evolving and becoming more complex, allowing novices and veterans alike to find the required material. I must confess that I have acquired a fair deal of my web design knowledge from the W3Schools.

Unlike many online tutorials trying to teach you web design, W3Schools aim at doing it right. Proper use of code and compliance with international standards is no less important than good layout and quality design. You will be surprised at the sheer number of sites that do NOT conform with W3C standards.

Whether you merely wish to refresh your knowledge or start from the scratch, W3Schools is probably the best place to start building websites.

Cafe Rene is the first place you should go to if you have any questions or doubts regarding 'Allo 'Allo!

'Allo 'Allo! is one of the great classic British comedies, which, like most others, came to life following the Monty Python revolution in the early 70s. Alongside Fawlty Towers, Only Fools and Horses, Black Adder, Yes Minister, and many others, 'Allo! 'Allo! dominated the humor scene of the 80s and still remains one of the wittiest and funniest pieces ever made. It tells the story of a cowardly French café owner, René Artois, who leads a very brave life. He cheats on his wife with both of his waitresses, promising both to marry them after the war - but he stays with his wife Edith because she owns the café. To make things even more complicated, René is fancied by the German lieutenant Gruber. He collaborates with the Germans, in trying to steal ancient paintings while simultaneously helping the French resistance rescue downed British pilots. And this is only the tip of the iceberg.

'Allo 'Allo! tells the war story in a very different light from what one might expect. The Germans are more interested in drinking and getting rich than actually fighting. The de Gaulle resistance hate the Communists more than the Germans. And the British are charmingly dumb. Don't forget the sex innuendo on almost every occasion.

The sit-com ran 9 series, with 82 episodes, plus numerous Christmas specials. Everything you might want to know about 'Allo 'Allo! can be read on Cafe Rene. It might not be the prettiest or the most up-to-date site, but it is definitely fun and well-written.

This is truly one of the finer websites ever made, definitely not because of its crappy design but because of its excellent, masterpiece contents. The site is all about the personal, egocentric, egomaniacal, narcissistic super-obsession of one guy's love with himself, Mark Maddox. However, every single work on his website is written with utter brilliance. It's raw, funny and extremely cunning. It's no small wonder it's one of the more popular websites out there. Be warned though, it's not for the feeble-hearted, overly-cultivated, extra-refined, weak, or enlightened souls.

Maddox thinks he's a pirate, although I cannot image what Utah has to do with pirates, unless they have found a way to sail a boat across the Salt Lake. He's recently written a book, called The Alphabet of Manliness, which has instantly become popular and ranks very high in book sales. So there you go, Maddox, you got a free spitshine from me, even though you never answered my emails. Sniff.

Undoubtedly, this is one of the funniest British comedies of all times. It's about Del Boy and Rodney Trotter brothers, played by David Jason and Nicholas Lyndhurst, a pair of small-time, small-money crooks / peddlers living with their grandfather, and later, their uncle in a council flat in Peckham. The sit-com revolves about their fishy business endeavors as they try to get rich from one episode to another, usually inspired by Del's crazy ideas, but never quite succeeding.

The first series met with mediocre enthusiasm from the audience; nevertheless Only Fools and Horses quickly became one of the most influential TV show on British television, resulting in seven series and numerous Christmas features and becoming a social and cultural icon. The reason for this is that it had elements of everyday life that just about anyone could relate to. Apart from phenomenal, typically dark British humor, Only Fools and Horses mixes emotions and situations so well that it's become a timeless, priceless piece of art.

CastleCops is more than just a collection of forum rooms. It is an in-depth security central offering a variety of computer related services to a broad range of users, in several languages. However, I would like to focus on the forums. The forum offers a wealth of information so extensive that new users might find the navigation a bit daunting. CastleCops hosts a number of forums specially dedicated to specific products, like WinPatrol, Proximitron, Returnil and others, but it also deals in general subjects. Most of the topics are focused on the Windows operating system, but Linux users also have a place to share their ideas. Another upside of the CastleCops forums is the malware cleanup section, where unfortunate (Windows) users can ask for help, as well as the malware reporting and prevention forum. It's a good place to learn about computers and security.

Wilders Security Forums is probably one of the more versatile security forums on the net. It is rather quite balanced. On one hand, it offers quite a lot of useful information in a number of forum rooms; on the other, it does that without overwhelming and confusing clutter. The forum is clean, intuitive and easily navigable. Some of the sub-forum rooms on the site are official support forums for a number of leading computer security products, like Acronis, Eset, ewido, and more. Other rooms are dedicated to general security topics like firewalls, anti-virus software, privacy issues, and other. Wilders Security Forums has a great staff and a vibrant community that will offer help and advice to any newcomer. For a typical computer user - most of us really - it is probably the best overall security-conscious informative and support site on the web.

Exit Mundi is a very interesting site. The site is all about all possible ways to destroy Planet Earth. Sounds sinister, but it's actually written in a light, funny style that makes the threat of a Gamma Ray Bursts apocalypse and similar calamities sound rather melancholic. The scenarios are divided into groups, like space threats, technological threats, religion-related events etc. Each catastrophe is described with a good proportion of science, facts and humor and is accompanied with lots of nice images. If you like aliens, robots, huge explosions, doomsday thingies, and whatnot, you can surely enjoy yourself reading this website. The material on the site is written by Maarten Keulemans, a science and technology journalist from Holland (Netherlands).

One of the reasons we have websites and read all manner of stuff on the Internet is our curiosity. Just like energy and entropy are opposed, so are the laziness and curiosity, the two prevalent characteristics of the human nature. Without curiosity, we would still probably be living in caves. But as it is, we have CFC-free air conditioning, vaccination, online petitions, and lots of sites telling us how things work. One of the best such sites is definitely HowStuffWorks. There's very little you won't find on this remarkable site, dissected into tiny details, with simple explanations and lots of images. It's a great start on almost any subject, technical or humane.

MathWorld is a very extensive online source of mathematics. It was made by Wolfram Research, the creators of Mathematica scientific program. The site contains lectures, citations from books, thousands of terms and examples, 3D applets for interactive geometry, and more. The layout is simple, clean and intuitive. This site might not appeal to someone who think of mathematics as forced labor, but it can be of great use for people with scientific background or inclinations.

Warning: this page will work properly ONLY in Mozilla Firefox or similar Gecko-based browsers.

This page has no special purpose, except one thing - it's absolutely huge. How huge, you ask. Well, I don't want to spoil you the experience of trying it for yourself, but if you used the arrow keys to scroll, it would take you 500,000 years from one end of the web page to another. Yes, I'm not joking. 500,000 friggin' years! The page is HUGE!

If for some reason, you have trouble getting started, here's the link to the site's How BIG is this page?. If you click on the scroll bars and move around, you will never be able to find that How BIG is this page again. I'll give you a little hint, the link to get back to the start position can be found in the right bottom corner of this webpage.