Information Galore

Updated on 01-Feb-2007
www.nndb.com
If you want to know more about people in the global hall of fame, this is the place to go. The site lists the vital stats of famous people living and dead. What you see here goes beyond the usual stuff like date of birth, birthplace, religion, occupation, etc.; you also get info on sexual orientation, boy/girlfriends, and things like that. For example, a search for “Kate Moss” leads to a long write-up of her past and present deeds.

Previous boyfriends-Johnny Depp, Jefferson Hack, Daniel Craig, and Pete Doherty, along with the time period of the relationship and the professions of the boyfriends in question are available! Other things that can you can find out are the companies she endorsed and negative things about the person. For Kate Moss: alcoholism, smoking, and cocaine.
The site claims to have more than 20,000 profiles, which can be searched by last name, book titles, movie titles, and more. A section called “Dr. Sputnik’s Society Pages” is a gossip column about famous personalities the world over.

www.webmath.com
If you’re stuck with a maths problem, webmath.com gives you a new lease of life. It solves problems for you while also teaching you the steps involved. The site is uncluttered, with a tabbed panel for easy navigation. For example, the home page allows you jump to quick help in calculus-derivatives, integrals, the quotient rule, and on and on. Unit conversions, complex numbers, data analysis, decimals, fractions, graphs, trigonometry, and many more quick-help links figure here.

Say you have a simple problem: you want to find the length of the hypotenuse of a right triangle with sides measuring 5 and 8.

Adding a “? ” in the text box for which you are trying to find the answer gives a detailed explanation of the steps involved, along with the solution, and if relevant, with the diagram too.

A tab called “Math for Everyone” is useful for maths problems that crop up often. For example, if the temperature is 18 degrees and the wind is blowing at 5 kmph, what will be the wind chill? As other examples, there’s also “Unit Conversion” for conversions of length, mass, area, and volume, and “Personal Finance” to calculate interests and loan costs.

Then there is the section on algebra, where you can do things like simplifying expressions, addition and subtraction of expressions, and more. Solve simultaneous equations, quadratic equations, and deal with complex numbers!

Mathworld.wolfram.com, which we talked about some months ago, is more for the advanced maths buff. This site is for us common folk.


askville.amazon.com

Askville is something like Yahoo! Answers. It is a site where knowledge can be discussed and shared. You can ask any kind of question you want, such as “Can you buy light bulbs that never burn out?” A person in the community who shares the same interests and has knowledge on the topic can reply to the question. There can be up to five answers.

How is Askville different from Yahoo! Answers? Well, you’re awarded “experience points” based on how good your answers are. You gain or lose points depending on the quality of your answers. Voting on the quality of your answer happens after the question has been closed-seven days from the day of posting. The “Best Answer” earns 15 points, A “Great Answer” gets 10, a Wrong gets -5, and so on.

As you gain experience points, you move up levels; you earn “coin payouts” according to the level you’re in. These can be redeemed at Amazon.com! If you’ve earned 305 experience points, for example, you stand at level 2, which entitles you 5 coin payouts.

A good deterrent system in place to prevent chats happening, and a terrific incentive to really share your knowledge!                

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