Aid Workers Network

Aid Workers Network is a portal through which one can communicate with aid workers in a variety of ways.  There's an active forum and blog index--both allow the international aid community to exchange ideas, information, even job openings.  The site also features an extensive library of articles dubbed "Advice Pages" that include user-generated tips on topics including the distribution standards of non-food items during crisis and international telecommunications.  The site is run by a non-profit of the same name that's based in the United Kingdom.

UN Dispatch

In trying to appease my interest in international relations, I try to follow news out of the United Nations as much as possible.  But instead of reading vague wire stories and boring reports, I keep up with the UN by following UN Dispatch, a blog funded by the UN Foundation.  UND writers offer their thoughts on UN-related news/actions and, in doing so, provide me with a place to get both UN news and UN commentary.  The blog features a powerful search engine, archives dating back to 2005, regular features, and a long list of tags to use to sort the archive's stories.  Some recent highlights:  the antics of Evo Morales, Ban's visit to Washington, and more arguing over the ICC.

DMBTabs

DMBTabs is a place to find guitar tabs (and sometimes videos!) for virtually every single song by Dave Matthews or the Dave Matthews Band (including covers and rare live songs). The drop-down box on the home page allows you to select a specific tab by song title, while the album images allow you to select a song by album (using a mouseover drop-down menu). The site also features an active message board and a gear list. The site's content is created and revised by the site's users, who seem to be obsessively knowledgeable and very protective of their submissions. I'm not very good at playing the guitar, but the site has helped me learn to play a few songs. Overall, it's easy to use and usually pretty helpful.

Arts & Letters Daily

Arts & Letters Daily is a news and commentary aggregator owned by The Chronicle of Higher Education.  ALD's editors trawl the Internet for links related to the ALD theme, which is pretty broad.  The masthead describes the site's breadth: "philosophy, aesthetics, literature, language, ideas, criticism, culture, history, music, art, trends, breakthroughs, disputes, gossip."  It's pretty wide, and it's right up my alley (and very similar that of 3QuarksDaily).  I love this stuff, and I spend an inappropriate amount of time reading a lot of it. 

Which is why I'm up this late cramming out Assemblage posts.

Bespin

Mozilla's Bespin is an interface through which web developers can work together on the same project from different machines in different locations. It supports HTML, Java, and CSS, and it stores the code for each group's project in the cloud, allowing any of the group's registered users to access and edit the code using any web browser, on any computer, from any location. At least, that's the goal; the Bespin project is still in development (likely a collaborative development, at that).

MLB Trade Rumors

MLB Trade Rumors is a blog whose editor collects all of the day's Major League Baseball news and rumors related to player transactions.  This includes trades, but also includes free-agent signings, new contracts, and Player's Association (the players' union) activity.  Every post is backed-up by a link to the source of the story--usually a sports news conglomerate like ESPN or a young but vigorous sports blog like The Big Lead.  

MLB Trade Rumors rarely breaks news, but it is perfect for some end-of-the-day catching-up, especially during hectic times like the days leading up to the trade deadline and the days after the beginning of free agency.  The headlines of each post are so clear and descriptive that I can browse the news quickly, reading only the posts that interest me.  

Lightstalkers

Lightstalkers is an online community for photojournalists around the world.  The main section of the site is the discussion board, on which registered photogs discuss seemingly any PJ-related topic under the sun.  The board is a clearinghouse for job opportunities, gear talk, industry news, new photography, and much more (I remember some older posts: a freelance photog inquiring about the best place to purchase body armor in Baghdad, another freelancer asking how to get tens of thousands of dollars worth of equipment through airport security, and an art show organizer advertising a call for work).  The site also features a prominent alert system (for breaking news and opportunities), a twitter-esque photographer-tracker called On the Move (for which all users can broadcast their current location), and an upcoming events board.  The greatest asset of the site, though, is the users.  They are energetic, knowledgeable, and--even in the ultra-competitive world of photojournalism--more than happy to help.

Down for everyone?

This simple website has one purpose: to tell you if a website is really down, or if the problem is just you and your network/computer/incompetence.  I use the site frequently, having too many moments of incompetence to even list.  

Fortunately, the clean interface is easy to use--I simply type in the troublesome URL and press "or just me?"  If the URL is really broken, the site gets excited, showing the message: "It's not just you! [URL] looks down from here!"  But if the URL is truly broken, the site reads "It's just you."

Yea, I get that a lot.

Muzzle of Bees

Muzzle of Bees is a music blog that does more than promote the indy music scene.  The writing is smart and free of typical music-elitist arrogance, the regular segments are interesting and creative, and the extensive blogroll on the left has helped me to find even more great bands than the blog itself.  

The writer focuses mostly on the music scene in the Chicago-Milwaukee-Madison area, and the music tends to be of the folk variety, though he is always careful to write and demonstrate that he'll write about (and listen to) any kind of music, as long as it's good.  I'm lucky--he and I seem to have very similar tastes.  MoB is like my personal DJ...it knows exactly what I like, even in introducing me to something I've never heard before.  Some recent highlights: one of my favorite new guys, Bon Iver, releases a new EP (and a fantastic single, Blood Bank), an interview with an old favorite, Jason Anderson, and the best albums of 2008 (check out #15, Girl Talk, for something different/awesome).

Getty Images

The Getty Images daylife photoblog is the image house's public image wire (I imagine the private wire is much better, but also quite costly).  I click it a few times a day, for two reasons.  First, the nonstop flow of fresh images from around the world is helpful in trying to understand the news of the day because the pictures and their small captions allow for quick and intuitive consumption of the news.  Second, I love photography.  International photojournalist is my dream job; York Daily Record photog, not so much.

FP Passport

In endeavoring to further expand upon the number of different topics that can totally consume my thinking for days on end, I subscribed to FP Passport about six months ago.  The blog is published by the editors of Foreign Policy Magazine, a bi-monthly publication that proclaims itself to be "the premier, award-winning magazine of global politics, economics, and ideas."  FPM's stated mission is "to explain how the world works—in particular, how the process of globalization is reshaping nations, institutions, cultures, and, more fundamentally, our daily lives."

The FP Passport, then, is a part of the FP website, which itself is more than just an online archive of print articles.  While the full website features unprinted long-form articles and academic papers, the FP Passport blog acts as a clearinghouse for all things foreign policy, an eclectic mix the editors describe as "our arguments hashed out at the coffee machine, insights on the news, story tips buried on our desks, things we hear from our friends abroad, and interesting links that circulated through our inboxes."  Some recent highlights:  breaking news, insider information, gossip, and, one of my favorite segments, What We're Reading, which, of course, leads me to spending even more time reading about foreign policy.  Also of note: my contribution to FP.  Note the attribution in the nut graph (back story here).  And yes, I actually do monitor the Getty image wire, because I am a huge nerd.

3quarksdaily

3quarksdaily is a blog, similar to Boing Boing and Fark, in which an editor (or a group of editors) trawls the Internet for interesting links, articles, etc. 3QD is different, though, in that its content is rather high-minded and interdisciplinary. As its masthead proclaims, the blog features articles related to science, arts, literature, politics, gossip, and philosophy. In my experience, the articles that the editors feature are usually complex and detailed--this is certainly not a place for mainstream media consumers. Some recent highlights (which were hard to select because I love most of what 3QD publishes): We Cannot Live By Skepticism Alone, Philosophy's Great Experiment, Is Time An Illusion?, and Her Morning Elegance by Oren Lavie. Goooood stuff.

3QD is my favorite blog, but I do have one complaint. Often, the titles the editors choose for their posts are not clear and/or descriptive, so I am forced to read much of the entry just to see what the related article is about. I already have enough trouble with RSS addiction; Now that 3QD's ambiguous headlines have joined my flow of articles, I've had to cut out some other--less amazing--subscriptions.

spite.com

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