Links

News and Politics

Michael Jackson: The Beer Hunter - archive of work by the late author of the The World Guide To Beer

I've stayed at all of these and can personally recommend them:

Ca' dei Fuseri, Venice, Italy - cozy bed & breakfast on a quiet street
Dome Pearl Hostel, Riga, Latvia - cheap rooms and a great location
LITiNTERP Guesthouse, Vilnius, Lithuania - affordable bed & breakfast near Cathedral Square
Loki Backpacker Hostel, Cusco, Peru - has a great view
Magic Bean, Quito, Ecuador - located in the middle of Quito's trendy neighborhood
Nathan's Villa, Krakow, Poland - inexpensive, fun atmosphere, great location
Sawasdee Sukhumvit Inn, Bangkok, Thailand - great value, nice rooms with A/C and television

CIA World Factbook - an impressive collection of data about every nation on Earth
In Your Pocket - European city guides for travelers
MyWorld66 - neat tools for making maps of places you've visited
Thorn Tree Travel Forum - lots of good travel info here
Wikitravel - free worldwide travel wiki
Working Nomad - one man traveling while earning money from the Internet

Google Chrome - a fast, secure web browser
- Go Up - Enables upwards navigation with a button click
- HTTPS Everywhere - Encrypts your communications with many major websites
- Search the Current Site - Adds a button to search the current site
Mozilla Firefox - a fast, feature rich, standards-compliant web browser
- Adblock Plus - Add-on that blocks ads from selected sites
- Better Privacy - Add-on that blocks Flash cookies
- HttpFox - Add-on that monitors and analyzes HTTP traffic
- HTTPS Everywhere - Add-on that encrypts your communications with many major websites
- LinkChecker - Add-on that checks the validity of the links on a page
- Uppity - Add-on that enables upwards navigation with a button click
- Video DownloadHelper - Add-on that downloads and converts web-based videos
- Search Site - Add-on that adds a button to the toolbar to search the current site
Mozilla Thunderbird - this e-mail client is the best free alternative to MS Outlook
- Mozilla Lightning - a calendar client that can run stand-alone or as an add-on to Thunderbird
- Mozilla Thunderbird: Profiles - includes instructions for backing up and restoring your profile in Thunderbird

Audacity - open source sound recorder and editor
CDBurnerXP - freeware CD/DVD/Blu-ray authoring software for Windows
DVD Flick - simple and powerful open source DVD authoring tool
Open Font Library - free fonts for your projects
Partners In Rhyme - royalty-free music and sound effects at reasonable prices
SUPER - free and simple tool for converting multimedia files
VirtualDub - free video capture and processing utility
VirtualDubMod - fork of VirtualDub that includes MPEG-2 support
VLC Media Player - open source media player that plays DVDs and most types of media files

Malwarebytes Anti-Malware - malware detection and removal tool
Microsoft Baseline Security Analyzer - tool to test computers for compliance with Microsoft security recommendations
Microsoft Security Essentials - free anti-virus, anti-spyware, and anti-malware from Microsoft
Spybot - Search & Destroy - another adware and spyware removal tool