 Last
week, we discussed just a few of the Internet’s hidden gems, some of
which are surprisingly useful. This week too, we bring you some very
useful, but not-so-well known sites on the Net. Check them out.
 Time:
Surfing will make you lose track of time, but you don’t want to miss
that call to your cousin in Sydney, do you? So keep of track of time in
cities around the world with www.timeanddate.com. It’s your guide to
time zones from Addis Ababa to Zurich. You can configure a personal
world clock and also convert time - if it is 3 p.m. in Colombo, what’s
the time in Sydney?
Conversion: Converting time is one thing, but we have to convert so
many other measurements in everyday life. Browsing through an American
cookbook or website, you will come across figures such as 400 Fahrenheit
which we are not familiar with. Just go to www.onlineconversion.com to
get in Celsius.
Metric to imperial, clothing sizes and even astronomical
measurements, you name it, they will convert it. Now you know where to
turn to when a friend says he traveled to 800 miles to see an old tree.
The answer, by the way, is 1287.4 Km.
Distances: Your friend probably has gone abroad to see that tree, as
Sri Lanka is a rather small island. But what if you do want to find the
distance between, say, Galle and Hatton? Just hand the task over to
distancecalculator.globefeed.com.
The answer given by the site is 102.96 Km as the crow flies (straight
line distance) and 128 Km (road distance). It will also indicate the two
cities on a Google Map. It will calculate city distances in virtually
any county, distances between world cities and find the nearest
airports. Voila!
Languages: Did I just say ‘there you are’ in French? Thanks to the
Internet, learning a new language has never been easier. Perhaps the
best place to start is the BBC Languages website, where you can learn an
incredible 36 languages, in addition to English, without ever having to
pay a cent. Just point your browser to www.bbc.co.uk/languages.
 BBC
language lessons are fully interactive with audio, video, subtitles and
transcripts. Whether you want say Bonjour in French or Buenos Dias in
Spanish, look no further.
There are also subscription based sites such Yabla and
myhappyplanet.com and livemocha.com, where you can chat online to native
speakers to learn a language. They also have online courses and tests
which are ‘scored’ by native speakers.
Translation: But what if you want to translate a word, phrase or even
a whole webpage in a hurry? Turn to babelfish.yahoo.com or
translate.google.com which do an admirable job. So if you have to
translate a Spanish phrase to Portuguese, these are the places to look.
Dictionary: But sometimes you just want to look up a word in the
dictionary.
Forget paper dictionaries, the world’s major dictionaries are now
online.
Take your pick from Cambridge (Dictionary.cambridge.org), Oxford (
www.askoxford.com), Collins (www.collinslanguage.com), Merriam-Webster (
www.meriam-webster.com) and for French (www.larousse.fr).
Currency conversion: Sometimes when you browse these dictionaries,
you might want to buy an actual paper dictionary instead of always going
online to check a word or two. But exactly how much is 20 euros in
Rupees? www.xe.com/ucc/full is just what the doctor ordered for this
headache. It can convert any currency in the world to any other
currency, so you will always know what that books costs to bring down.
 Food:
Browsing, while by no means in an athletic activity, can zap your
resources and make you hungry. The Net is there to help you rustle up
some marvelous food in next to no time. Bookmark www.bbcgoodfood.com,
www.allrecipes.com and www.epicurious.com for great recipes, meal ideas,
menu planning and more. All of them feature a menu binder where you can
store favourite recipes, you can jot down notes on the fly and comment
on the recipes. Search the Net and you will find enough food sites to
whet your appetite.
Health: Eating too much can land you in trouble, so best to avoid
fatty and sugary foods as per conventional wisdom. But you can access a
whole lot of health information on the Net and control your dietary
habits.
According to most experts, the best medical site out there in
cyberspace is www.webmd.com, which has a wealth of info on physical and
mental disorders, healthy living, drugs and healing methods, nutrition,
pregnancy and childbirth and quitting smoking.
There is also a symptom checker, which will try to guess the disease
that you have. Remember, do not depend 100 per cent websites for
diagnosis and consult a doctor if it is of a serious nature. We will
bring your more Web treasures in the future.
- Pramod
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