Everybody's Gone Surfin': 8 Fun Sites

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I've got a lot of Internet-savvy friends and acquaintances, so I receive URLs with email messages that proclaim things like:

• You HAVE to see this...
• THIS SITE ROCKS...
• You are going to love this...
• Wanna see something really dumb?

And so on...

And every so often I stumble across a killer site all by myself. So this week I will share 8 Web pages/sites I think are worth looking at. I apologize if you've seen them before and hope you find some that you haven't seen before (and will want to send to your friends in email messages).

Now, without further ado, here are the 8 pages/sites (in no particular order):

Chris Bliss: Amazing Beatles Juggling Finale
It's just what the title says-a QuickTime movie of comedian/juggler Chris Bliss juggling in time with the closing tracks of the Beatles' Abbey Road: Golden Slumbers, Carry That Weight, and The End. Simply put, it's amazing. I do a bit of juggling myself and it blew me away. But even if you've never tried to juggle, the movie is a tour de force and Bliss is simply amazing.

Mac-Mini-in-a-Toyota-Prius
Believe it or not, this guy installed a Mac Mini in his Toyota Prius, complete with a dash mounted touchscreen, no less. I'm not sure why he did it, but that's what he did. If you've got a geeky bone in your body, you'll love it.

Pandora
Wouldn't it be great if you could listen to a radio station that played new music you're almost certain to enjoy? Well you can, with Pandora. Created by the Music Genome Project, Pandora is uncanny in its ability to expose you to new music that you'll probably like. Just tell Pandora some artists or songs you like and it will create a custom radio station that plays songs you'll probably like, based on its analysis of nearly 400 song attributes. While the song is playing you can tell Pandora that you like it or dislike it; Pandora then uses that info to find songs you're likely to like. Oh, and did I mention that it's free? This is cool stuff-don't miss it.

The Strawberry Pop-Tart Blow-Torch Experiment
Last updated in August 1994, this page has been one of my favorites since then and has been touted in several of my books. It attempts, quite successfully I might add, to prove that Strawberry Pop Tarts may be a cheap and inexpensive source of incendiary devices. If you've ever wondered what a toaster full of Pop Tarts looks like with flames shooting over a foot and a half, give this page a try.

The Extreme Diet Coke & Mentos Experiments
In the same vein as the Pop-Tart page, this one proves that a bottle of Diet Coke will erupt like a geyser when you drop Mentos into it. The finale, which features 200 liters of Diet Coke and over 500 Mentos, is not to be believed.

Snopes.com and About Urban Legends and Folklore
By about the 50th time someone sent me the “Cash from Microsoft” story, or the one about waking up in an ice-filled bathtub because organ thieves have harvested your kidneys, I set out to do something about it. What I did was find two searchable sites that debunk urban legends such as these. Now, if someone (are you listening, Mom?) sends me a hoax email such as these, I visit one of these sites and fire the URL that debunks that particular hoax back to them with a note explaining how stupid they must be to have believed such total hogwash. It's way more fun than just deleting their email.

Loose Change: 2nd Edition
I tend to dismiss conspiracy theorists as paranoid wackos, but after watching this free full-length documentary, which runs 1 hour 47 minutes. It takes the position that terrorists were not responsible for the carnage at the World Trade Center and Pentagon on 9/11. But if you want to find out who the movie feels was responsible you'll have to visit the site and click the “Click here to watch Loose Change - 2nd Edition” link, which is about 7 lines from the top of the page. Whether you agree, disagree, or have no opinion either way, it's spellbinding. If you have the time, check it out.

There you have it. Feel free to drop me a line at the address below if you know of a page/site that you would have included on this list. As soon as I have 9 or 10 new ones we can do this again.

And that's all he wrote...

Bob "Dr. Mac" LeVitus has been a Macintosh user for a long, long time and has written 49 computer books including Mac OS X Tiger For Dummies and GarageBand for Dummies. He also offers expert technical help and training to Mac users, in real time and at reasonable prices, via telephone, e-mail, and/or unique Internet-enabled remote control software. For more information on Bob and his services, visit www.boblevitus.com.

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