essential websites

everyone should add google, wikipedia and snopes to their browser bookmarks, and consult them periodically.

any other good ones I've forgotten?

I learn a lot from straightdope.com.� Not so much a reference but it would do folks good to read all the archives! :)

All Music Guide
Internet Movie Dateabase
ESPN.com
New York Times
Dictionary.com
US Naval Observatory Time
Baseball-reference.com"
Mapquest

I actually tend to use m-w.com instead of dictionary... just because it's usually faster. (both to type and to load)

Both are good though. *nodsnods*

yeah, I've gotten used to using that one, too, but it seems google does definitions now, too (granted, using dictionary.com, but it's still pretty cool to have a single source for searches and definitions.)

TinyUrl.com (and the slightly less useful, but far more amusing HugeUrl.com . heheh)

NOAA weather forcasts

Pollen.com

i use m-w.com *constantly* at work to make sure the syllabic divisions in our pieces are correct.

come on, admit it. you wish you had my job.

a big word to the sites lawrence listed. especially google. google google google. learn to use it, and learn to love it, and you may never ask another stupid question again.

gordon already mentioned imdb, so i'll suggest all music guide, which is the closest i've found to an "internet music database.

and chicagoans should definitely bookmark gapers block.

nycsubway.org

US Naval Observatory Time

I find time.gov much simpler to use, as it does pretty much nothing more than tell you the time in the US time zone you pick. (at least, it's good if you just want to set your watch. :)

I also mentioned AMG, it was my first link.

yeh but I can never remember about the hyphen :-)

I'm sure you're all using Mozilla, so here's my favorite little mozilla trick that allows you to assign an alias to a given website's search. For instance, to look up the word "blah", I type "d blah" into my URL bar and it looks the word up at Dictionary.com. Or "yp chinese" looks for chinese restaurants in my area using Yahoo! Yellow Pages. "map Ann Arbor, MI" gives me a map. Etc.

Ever want to check out fun webpages, but don't have the time/motivation to search yourself? Check out memepool for all your waste of time needs.

sorry, i was too distracted by the gratuitous quotation mark in the baseball reference link. :P

(testimony to support the shameless self-plug):
oh, most definitely...that is such a great and informative site.

I used to love that site, but it's gone downhill in the past few years. No posts from May 21st - the 27th, wow.

Perhaps it's just me, but I think http://www.jandrewworld.com is an essential website!

it's still pretty good, though, when it does get new posts.

I think it's pretty cool, though, that it gained such outside popularity - I remember when it started and pretty much only people at CMU knew about it.

slashdot.org and fark.com for all my news

fatwallet.com, techbargains.com and forums.anandtech.com for hot deals

Dood, I love m-w.com, mostly 'cause it's my last name abbreviation. :oD

Apple Support
Macosxhints
Versiontracker
Dealmac
FHDC
Google

News of the weird
The Straight Dope

www.forgotten-ny.com is a fantastic resource for New York/History/Transit geeks.

I have my Mozilla Firefox browser set so that I just type "dict word" into the address bar, and it pulls up a definiton for that page.

How to do it:
Create a bookmark in Mozilla for:
http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=%s

With the keyword: dict

Example:
dict schadenfreude