| News That Matters
Brought to you by PlanPutnam.Org Good Thursday Morning,
There is no good news out there. None. And, so while I'm still waiting to secure a new set of wheels (again, thanks to all who have helped out) I'm not even going to try to find good news, or even interesting news. Instead, I'm going to give you all a list of happy diversions, all office safe, to occupy your mind and pass the time. You will learn something.
Remember, tomorrow brings our Things To Do Edition so if you or your organization has an event planned for this weekend or next week, get them to me by early this evening.
- enature.com
- Encyclopedia of Life
- Auditorium
- Google Earth
- Astronomy Picture of the Day
- StumbleUpon
- Joost
- Bartleby
- I Am Bored
- Instructables
- Appropedia
- The Internet Archive
enature.com
 eNature.com is the web's premier destination for information about the wild animals and plants of the United States. Over past years, eNature has consistently been one of the Internet' most-visited sites for nature and wildlife information and has won numerous awards and accolades.
The site's core content of wildlife information about almost 6,000 individual species is the same data set used to create the printed Audubon Field Guides. All the data has been carefully reviewed and vetted by leading biologists, zoologists and other natural history specialists. Encyclopedia of Life
 The Encyclopedia of Life (EOL) is an ambitious, even audacious project to organize and make available via the Internet virtually all information about life present on Earth. At its heart lies a series of Web sites—one for each of the approximately 1.8 million known species—that provide the entry points to this vast array of knowledge. The entry-point for each site is a species page suitable for the general public, but with several linked pages aimed at more specialized users. The sites sparkle with text and images that are enticing to everyone, as well as providing deep links to specific data.
The EOL dynamically synthesizes biodiversity knowledge about all known species, including their taxonomy, geographic distribution, collections, genetics, evolutionary history, morphology, behavior, ecological relationships, and importance for human well being, and distribute this information through the Internet. It serves as a primary resource for a wide audience that includes scientists, natural resource managers, conservationists, teachers, and students around the world. We believe that the EOL's encompassing scope and innovation will have a major global impact in facilitating biodiversity research, conservation, and education. Auditorium
 Auditorium is about the process of discovery and play. There are no right or wrong answers; there are many ways to solve every puzzle. To get started, fill up the first audio container. We hope you enjoy the demo of Auditorium.
The general idea: Auditorium is really all about the experience, both visually and aurally. Take a deep breath, relax, and start playing. If you really feel you need extra information on the way something works, you'll find it here. The Primary Goal of Auditorium is to guide your Flow into the various Audio Containers presented before you. As you fill these Containers, light transforms into sound. Given enough light, the containers will begin to sing together in a symphony, providing the ultimate Harmony of Flow. But be advised — while some containers merely require the presence of Flow, some containers will require a specific color or colors. Containers that require more than one color can be identified by the number of vertical bars and each bars color.
Google Earth  Google Earth lets you fly anywhere on Earth to view satellite imagery, maps, terrain, 3D buildings and even explore galaxies in the Sky. You can explore rich geographical content, save your toured places and share with others.
Astronomy Picture of the Day  Astronomy Picture of the Day (APOD) is originated, written, coordinated, and edited since 1995 by Robert Nemiroff and Jerry Bonnell. The APOD archive contains the largest collection of annotated astronomical images on the internet.
In real life, Bob and Jerry are two professional astronomers who spend most of their time researching the universe. Bob is a professor at Michigan Technological University in Houghton, Michigan, USA, while Jerry is a scientist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland USA. Jerry is a married, mild and lazy guy, while Robert is much the same but recently divorced. Each might appear relatively normal to an unsuspecting guest. Together, they have found new and unusual ways of annoying people such as staging astronomical debates. Most people are surprised to learn that they have developed the perfect random number generator.
StumbleUpon  StumbleUpon helps you discover and share great websites. As you click  Stumble!, we deliver high-quality pages matched to your personal preferences. These pages have been explicitly recommended by your friends or one of 6,822,448 other websurfers with interests similar to you. Rating these sites you like ( ) automatically shares them with like-minded people – and helps you discover great sites your friends recommend.
How Does it Work? StumbleUpon uses  /  ratings to form collaborative opinions on website quality. When you stumble, you will only see pages which friends and like-minded stumblers ( ) have recommended. This helps you discover great content you probably wouldn't find using a search engine. Joost  What's Joost? It's a way to watch videos – music, TV, movies and more – over the Internet. We could just call it a website ... with videos ... but that's not the whole story.
We're giving you new ways to find what you'd like to watch. You can search in "traditional" ways – by title or category – or you can find suggestions from other people on Joost. They may be your friends, or they may just be people who have something in common with you – but either way, they can direct you to great things to watch. Bartleby  The Concluding line of Herman Melville’s classic American short story "Bartleby, the Scrivener" reads
Ah Bartleby, Ah Humanity!
And so, Bartleby.com—after the humble character of its namesake scrivener, or copyist—publishes the classics of literature, nonfiction, and reference free of charge for the home, classroom, and desktop of each and every Internet participant.
Bartleby.com began as a personal research experiment in 1993 and within one year published the first classic book on the Web (Whitman’s Leaves of Grass).
Since its incorporation in 1999 and the release of preeminent contemporary reference works, Bartleby.com becomes the most comprehensive reference publisher on the web, meeting the needs of students, educators, and the intellectually curious.
I Am Bored I Am Bored is founded on the theory that people will get so incredibilly bored as to type things like "I'm Bored" into their search engines just to see what happens.
This is a list of sites we think will help to cure your boredom. New content is added all the time, so check back often.
Instructables Instructables is a website that, well... Simply, How to make or do most anything. Really. Rework the plumbing in your RV? Deep fry bananas? Build a rocket? It's here.
 Appropedia
Appropedia is the site for collaborative solutions in sustainability, poverty reduction and international development. Appropedia helps us sustain our world. Learn more at our Mission page. The material here is free for your use. So far contributors have made 61,575 edits and uploaded 6,694 files. Search or browse our categories or all 14,485 pages. Appropedia has been described as an "appropriate technology wiki," but it is much broader than that - it is a green wiki, and a wiki for all matters of international development and aid. But most importantly, Appropedia is a open site for stakeholders to come together to find, create and improve scalable and adaptable solutions. The Internet Archive About the Archive: If it's been on the Internet, it's in the Archive.
 Libraries exist to preserve society's cultural artifacts and to provide access to them. If libraries are to continue to foster education and scholarship in this era of digital technology, it's essential for them to extend those functions into the digital world.
Many early movies were recycled to recover the silver in the film. The Library of Alexandria - an ancient center of learning containing a copy of every book in the world - was eventually burned to the ground. Even now, at the turn of the 21st century, no comprehensive archives of television or radio programs exist.
But without cultural artifacts, civilization has no memory and no mechanism to learn from its successes and failures. And paradoxically, with the explosion of the Internet, we live in what Danny Hillis has referred to as our "digital dark age."
The Internet Archive is working to prevent the Internet - a new medium with major historical significance - and other "born-digital" materials from disappearing into the past. Collaborating with institutions including the Library of Congress and the Smithsonian, we are working to preserve a record for generations to come.
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