For an information-holic who eagerly lost himself in almanacs and the World Book Encyclopedia before the age of 10, I came to the Web relatively late. But when I fell, it was like an acre-full of California redwoods being simultaneously chain-sawed.
A few favorite sites:
www.bucknell.edu/~rbeard/diction.html A word-lover’s guilty feast, this gateway to all things linguistic includes specialized dictionaries in the arts and humanities, trades and professions (including the Sam Adams’ beer dictionary) and religions. It contains dictionaries for more than a dozen languages and specialized guides to various forms of slang and dialect. Caution: Don’t venture here unless you have some time.
www.ceoexpress.com First organized by a CEO, this is a gateway to all sorts of news, stats, shopping, weather and other information that a busy CEO might want at his or her fingertips for lightning-quick access. For the harried person who has just scattered moments to check the Web before dashing onto a plane or into a meeting, you’d be hard-pressed to find a better, more broadly inclusive site
www.pw.com/vc This is a guide to Price Waterhouse’s authoritative National Venture Capital Survey, a quarterly compilation of major venture-capital activity taking place across the country. It’s organized both by industry categories and geography. Provides links to sites operated by the National Venture Capital Association and its affiliate, American Entrepreneurs for Economic Growth. All in all, a good snapshot overview of VC trends.
www.realchange.org For those so inclined, this is a brilliantly wicked contrarian take on American politics. Like my favorite political magazines—which are neither conventionally conservative nor liberal, but take well-aimed shots at everyone—this site is just as likely to skewer George Bush for his pallid country-club Republicanism as it is to blast liberal icon Ralph Nader’s holier-than-thouness.
