What're the canonical web sites?

In My Humble Opinion
1

And by canonical, I mean web sites that are truly useful and definitive sources of information. For example, if you need to find out what actor was in what movie, you can go to the Internet Movie Database, type in the name of an actor or a movie and find out. The CD Database presumably does the same thing for music. The online Merriam-Webster dictionary is good enough, even if it isn’t the OED.

And of course Google is arguably the greatest search engine ever, and if there’s a piece of information you can’t find there, you can always ask it here on the boards.

So tell me, Dopers, what web sites do you visit when you need to find out something?

2

Well, when I need biographical info on a band I might be interviewing in the near future, I hit the Ultimate Band List. It can be found at http://www.ubl.com

IMDB is a given, but another great search engine is Metacrawler, at http://www.metacrawler.com. If I have to do research on a topic or a competitive analysis for a client, and don’t feel like wading through tonnes of crap there, I’ll just go to Yahoo and use the directory search there… their search engine sux hard, but if you have a general idea of what category to look in, you’ll find all sorts of useful info.

3

The definitive site for data file formats (tiff, jpeg, gif, etc)
http://www.wotsit.org/search.asp?s=graphics

Any other computer advice, Ziff Davis network boards
http://www.zdnet.com/community/

4

Definitely MacFixit. If they don’t have an answer for what ails your Mac, they’ll link you to some other site that does.

5

The Jargon File:
http://www.tuxedo.org/~esr/jargon/index.html

Useful for computer terms. Someone directed me to the Jargon File once when I asked about Godwin’s Law. It’s a great resource.

Snopes:

The definitive source for all urban legends. Almost every time I’ve received an urban legend via email, I’ve been able to go to Snopes and find either the verification or debunking.

6

The Exploding Dictionary is better.
For information about languages (foreign and English) yourdictionary.com (translation dictionaries, rhyming dictionaries, thesauruses, etc.)
For general knowledge, Encyclopedia Britannica (free registration required)

7

Alphagene’s post in the Moderator’s Notes: On General Questions thread a while back had a great list of web sites like that. I used quite a few of them and have started using quite a few in that post that I didn’t know about. I’d repost them here but there are quite a few, so I’ve just linked back to his post.

8

The All Music Guide http://www.allmusic.com/ includes complete discographies, often with album/CD track listings and insightful commentary.

Working on a sure-fire Hollywood manuscript? You couldn’t find a better on-line course in how to do it all, from plotting to marketing, than this site written by a couple of industry pros http://www.wordplayer.com/

Roget’s Thesaurus is available at
http://www.soi.city.ac.uk/text/rogetplain/thesaurus.html

Need to brush up on your Constitution before arguing that Supreme Court brief?
http://www.house.gov/Constitution/Constitution.html

Los Alamos National Laboratory has a handy periodic table here. Click on an element and get a rundown on everything from Hydrogen to the as-yet-unnamed Element 118
http://pearl1.lanl.gov/periodic/

And the 1901 version of Bartlett’s is online at
http://www.bartleby.com/100/ which helps with those classic quotations

A great links page for everything to do with comics: newspaper series, magazine stand variety, undergrounds, alternatives, graphic novels, online comics, etc. is
http://aaa.wraithspace.com/

The Science Fiction Resource Guide is also a handy place to check websites around the field http://sflovers.rutgers.edu//SFRG/

9

Whatis.com

If anyone ever spouts out IT abbreviations you’re not familiar with, you can see what it means here.

10

TV listings complete and with full details on the main grid, not having to push a link for each program:

http://tvlistings.zap2it.com

11

Admittedly specialized interests, but:

Uchronia is a definitive source for information on the genre of alternate history literature.

The Chess Variant Pages is a definitive source on the many different variants of the game.

And for a really esoteric interest, The Case Files of the Fake Detective is clearly the definitive source for debunking fake celebrity nude pictures.

12

FindLaw is great for legal questions. I actually downloaded their toobar, so I can search US Supreme Court opinions or US Code from anywhere.

Free-Market.net is great for finding a Libertarian perspective on anything, which I like.

Flags of the World is the definitive resource for vexillological issues.

The WWWJDIC is great for translating to/from Japanese kanji, while The Chinese Character Dictionary isn’t as good, but oriented more towards Chinese.

NYCSubway.org has everything one could want to know about the New York City subway system.

I suppose this could become quite the worthwhile thread to save somewhere.

13

http://www.gamefaqs.com is fantastic for guides/info. to your favorite Video Games, all platforms. Old and New.

Wanna know the filth content of movies without a religous angle? Check out http://www.screenit.com They also do music.

Here is a truly canonical web site. Coming Attractions- Breaking news on future movies since 1995.
http://www.corona.bc.ca/films/mainFramed.html

Probably the best online Bible search is Blue Letter Bible at http://www.blueletterbible.org/ You can access every verse and passage in the original Greek, Aramaic, or Hebrew it was written in. It’s an amazing feature. Also has several translations.

I highly recommend these sites and have them all bookmarked themselves.

14

It’s good to here somebody say that, as that’s largely the reason I brought it up (along with curiousity and laziness). :slight_smile:

I also want to throw in MapQuest as I’d spend several hours a weekend lost without it. I here MapBlast isn’t too shabby either.

Say, does anybody have an opinion on how WebMD is as a medical resource? It’d be good to have one of those too.

15

Bibliophage, what exactly is the difference between www.eb.com and www.britannica.com?

16

My favorite canonical site is Fred Espenak’s Eclipse Home Page. Need to know the time, location, and duration of the next solar or lunar eclipse? Got it. Looking for eclipses of historic interest? Got 'em. Looking for all a Seven Thousand Year Catalog of Very Long Solar Eclipses? It’s there too.

17

Dang. Let’s try that link again, shall we?
http://sunearth.gsfc.nasa.gov/eclipse

18

The difference between brittanica.com and eb.com:
http://www.eb.com/diff.html

(in answer to the question, not a canonical webpage itself).

19

Wow! Thanks everyone for all these useful postings. Here are some good Native American (American Indian) sites:

http://www.hanksville.org/NAresources/
Index of Native American Resources on the Internet.

http://www.nativeweb.org/NativeTech/
Native Tech. A wealth of information on the technology of Native American crafts.

http://www.nativeweb.org/
Native Web. An electronic database project providing information on Native cultural groups, law and literature, languages, education, and publications.

http://www.ncai.org/
The National Congress of American Indians. Along with much other useful stuff, this site lists the addresses of all of the U.S. tribal governments, and has links to official tribal Sites. (Click on “Tribal Directory”.)

The Native American Rights Fund. A good source of information about current legal issues.

http://www.indianz.com/
Indianz.Com. Their mission: to provide quality news, information, and entertainment, from a Native American perspective.

http://www.mcn.net/~wleman/langlinks.htm
Native American Language Links. An amazing wealth of links.

http://www.oyate.org/main.html
Oyate is a Native organization working to see that Native American lives and histories are portrayed honestly. The Site includes reviews of materials for children about Native Americans.

http://saiic.nativeweb.org/
The South and Meso American Indian Rights Center (SAIIC) exists to ensure that the struggles of Latin America’s Indigenous peoples for self-determination and respect are heard in the US and internationally, and to support Indigenous peoples’ organizing.

http://abyayala.nativeweb.org/
Abya Yala Net is a project of the South and Meso American Indian Rights Center (SAIIC) in colaboration with NativeWeb. This site presents information on Indigenous peoples in Mexico, Central, and South America.

http://www.moles.org/uwa/index.html
U’wa: People of the Andean Cloud Forest. Information on U’wa culture, traditions, beliefs, and current situation, from the U’wa Defense Working Group.

http://members.nbci.com/cariblink/index.html
Caribbean Amerindian Centrelink. An international editorial team presents comprehensive coverage of native Caribbean communities and educational resources.

http://indy4.fdl.cc.mn.us/~isk/maya/maya.html
Maya Civilization.

http://www.en.com/users/cygnus/mayastro.htm
Maya Astronomy.

http://www.azteccalendar.com/
The Aztec Calendar. Also has information on Aztec cosmology and religion.

20

Thanks, waterj2. (And of course a big “d’oh!” to myself for not having stumbled across that little bit of information on my own.)

Personally, I just use Britannica.com; I’ve never looked in to the registered site. Someone mentioned one of the Bartleby.com sites; I’d add the American Heritage Dictionary and also the Columbia Encyclopedia (which occasionally has little tidbits the Britannica doesn’t) on that site. There’s also a useful 1913 Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary maintained by the University of Chicago. The CIA’s World Factbook is useful, plus it’s just cool to look stuff up on the CIA’s website. I’m fond of the Bible Gateway and the 1917 Catholic Encyclopedia for information on religious matters. Cornell University has the whole United States Code available. I use Infospace for its reverse telephone directory. The Federation of American Sciences is an invaluable if somewhat scary source for all your weapons of mass destruction needs. And of course Talk.Origins is essential for debating creationists.