Best of Web

[last updated 11/2011]
This is a highly biased guide of websites that I think are the best for accomplishing different tasks. All the websites and their content are free unless there is a [$] next to the listing. I have only listed websites that have been around for a while (at least in Internet years), but keep in mind that the Web is a fast-changing place and yesterday's champions can be tomorrow's have-beens. There are three sections: for beginners, for everyone, for advanced users.

KEEPING UP WITH THE NEWS

The easiest way to keep with all your online news sources, including my blogs, is to use an aggregator, such as Google Reader. If you don't know about aggregators, you can watch a 1-minute intro to Google Reader here, and then How to Subscribe to a News Feed with Google Reader a detailed 12-minute video tutorial on using Google Reader here, or a multi-part video here.


FOR BEGINNERS

TutorialsThese sites have great tutorials, especially for an adult just starting out with all this technology.
BBC Webwise - BBC's beginner's guide to the Internet
LearnFree - short (1-3 minute) video tutorials explaining just about everything about using the computer and Internet
Teach Parents Tech - 60-second videos explaining how to accomplish small tasks; for example, how to copy-and-paste, how to make text bigger, how to use bookmarks.
NewsGoogle News - aggregation of news articles from hundreds (thousands?) of newspapers and blogs
Medical and HealthThe amount of misinformation on medical- and health-related issues on the Web is unfathomable. These links are the reliable sources.
National Institute of Health (NIH)   WebMD
Mayo Clinic     Drugs.com      Medicare
Senior Citizen ResourcesAARP
USA Government Senior Citizens' Resources
Senior Adults Guide to the Web - a good (one person's) guide to resources on the Web
AARP's page on scams
AccessibilityBBC's Accessibility Guide - "This site explains the many ways you can change your browser, computer, keyboard and mouse settings to make the web more accessible to you." -- this is THE resource to use; it's got everything.
7 Steps to Make Computers Accessible for the Elderly - guide to adjusting various Windows computer settings.


NOT JUST FOR BEGINNERS

Web SearchGoogle - use it for everything, including weather, mapping an address, people search, etc
Baidu - Chinese language search
Bing - Microsoft's bid at challenging Google search
EncyclopediaWikipedia
MapsGoogle Maps
Mapquest
DictionaryFree Online Dictionary - multilingual dictionary, thesaurus
Word Reference - translator for Spanish, French, English, Italian, German, Russian
Netlingo - dictionary of Internet and Texting lingo
People SearchFirst, try Google. If you do not find what you need, try  Zaba Search   or  Pipl
Hoaxes and MythsMuch of what shows up in forwarded emails is untrue. Search these sites for the subject (or title) of the email before forwarding anything on:
Snopes    Scambusters
Images/PicturesGoogle Image search
World's famous photos
Your Photos Picasa - software to install on your computer to organize and edit your photos
Picasa Web Albums - website to to share your photos with others; integrated well with Picasa software; must have a Gmail account
Flickr - website to share your photos with others; must have a Yahoo! mail account
Minus - the simplest photo sharing site; great for quick sharing, but long term storage is uncertain
Shutterfly  Snapfish  Winkflash - some (of many) good sites to print your photos.
MusicPandora 
Jango
VideosYouTube - videos put up by users
Flixxy - "best of" videos from the Web
Movies and TVNetflix [$] (paid service for movies)
Hulu - watch TV shows online
Clicker - aggregates TV shows from many websites
Internet Movie Database - all movie-related info
Rotten Tomatoes - movie reviews
Consumer and ShoppingConsumer Search - reviews of consumer products
Amazon - Web supermall
Buy.com - another Web supermall
Ebay - Person-to-person auction supermall
Google Product Search or Nextag- aggregates prices from stores on the Web (for price-shopping)
Dealnews or FatWallet - aggregates deals
Eyeglass - online eyeglasses retailer reviews
Better Business Bureau
Financial Google Finance or MarketWatch or CNN/Money  - financial data, news, discussions IRS - if you pay your taxes, you know what this is
Bankrate - bank rates and ratings
Social Security Administration
PayPal - online payment service
RecipesAllrecipes - gazillion recipes with user reviews
Myrecipes - gazillion recipes with user reviews
Vahrehvah - Indian food
TravelKayak - aggregates air/hotel/car deals from major travel providers
Trip Advisor - reviews from travellers
Social NetworkingFacebook - hundreds of millions users; most likely to have everyone you have ever known as a member
Google+ - the new kid on the block and quickly becoming the favorite among the techies
LinkedIn - "the" network for professional contacts
Real EstateRealtor.com - all realtor-listed properties
Zillow - prices and estimates of property values
Useful or Fun InformationTED talks - amazing short talks by world's top brains
StateMaster - all statistics on US States
NationMaster - all statistics on nations
Academic Earth - video lectures from the academia
Microsoft Office replacementGoogle Docs - Google's bid at making Microsoft Office software superfluous (Word, Powerpoint, Excel). Not as powerful as Microsoft Office, but likely sufficient for 90+% of any user's needs



FOR ADVANCED USERS:

Online apps Gizmos Best Free Online Applications and Services  - best place to find great web apps; organized by categories.
Where to find good software for your computer Top 10 Places to Discover Good Software - good starting place for overview of where to look.
Gizmos Freeware Reviews - hands-down best place for free software-related information, and it includes many useful tutorials; organized by categories.
CNET's software downloads - the biggest software download site (with some reviews); contains both free software (freeware) and for-pay software (shareware/commercial); has good software, junk, and everything in-between.
Building a website the easy way Google Sites, WeeblyMoonfruitWebs  - all these enable you create a website in minutes.
Wix - if you want to be fancy and use Flash (but keep in mind, Flash websites can not be seen on many mobile devices). 
Building a website from scratch This section only applies if you want to develop your own website from scratch and you want complete control over templates, functionality, etc. This is not for the faint of heart.
How to build and host a website for free - excellent tutorial, even if you want a paid host.
Web hosting - review of inexpensive web hosts.