Cory McKay's General Links

Travel: Reference

• Google Maps - best map site in my opinion. Includes street view, as well as directions via bike, walking, public transportation and car. More sophisticated satellite images can be displayed with Google Earth.
• Yahoo Maps - more maps.
• Map Quest - more maps.
• Currency Converter - money, money, money.
• Country Calling Codes - helps you call different countries.
• TripIt - a tool for keeping travel itineraries organized.
• Canadian Consular Affairs - information regarding services available to Canadians abroad.
• CDC Traveler's Health - health information regarding different destinations.
• One Bag - useful tips for travelling light.
• CIA World Factbook - a source of facts, maps and demographics, although I get this strange felling that I'm being watched every time that I visit this site.
• Virtual Tourist- information on many different destinations.
• Fodor's - some limited information from the travel books.
• Lonely Planet - some limited information from the travel books.
• Wikitravel - a reasonably good travel wiki.
• Trip Advisor - relatively unbiased reviews by people who have been to wherever you're going (although some reviewers seem to have very strange priorities).
• Travelocity - a travel reservation site that also has many user reviews of hotels.
• IgoUgo - another travel reservation site with many reviews.
• Sit or Squat - for finding bathrooms around the world.

Food and Drink

• Zagat - relatively reliable restaurant reviews.
• Urban Spoon - pretty good site for finding places to eat, especially in cities that you're not too familiar with. Has an especially good smartphone ap.
• Chowhound - has some good restaurant information on its discussion boards. Less organized than most alternatives, and much more foodiesque, which can be a good thing or a bad thing.
• Yelp Restaurants - member reviews of many businesses, including restaurants.
• Gazette Food and Wine - reviews and information on Quebec restaurants.
• RestoMontreal - a searchable database of restaurants around Montreal.
• a la Carte Expresse - a collection of menus for ordering out in Montreal. Takes its pound of flesh.
• SOS Cuisine - excellent source of recipes that is searchable in many ways, including by ingredient. Very good for finding seasonal and affordable food.
• Marche Express - guide to Montreal's public markets.
• Montreal Food Cooperatives - for cheaply buying decent quality locally produced food.
• Equiterre - offers food baskets containing food directly from farmers close to Montreal.
• Food Network - recipes from various cooking shows.
• America's Test Kitchen - recipes, explanations, reviews and comparisons of food, cooking equipment and cooking techniques.
• Recipe Source - a searchable database of on-line recipes.
• Epicurious - more recipes, but with an annoying number of ads.
• Canadian Living - recipes from the magazine.
• All Recipes - more recipes.
• The Cook's Thesaurus - information on different ingredients.
• Shop Chop Eat - a Montreal food blog.
• Richters Herbs - great place to buy seeds and cuttings. Has some vegetables and fruits as well as herbs.
• Green Tea Lovers - information on green tea.
• Camellia Sinesis - an excellent tea shop and tea room in Montreal.
• Coffee Geek - information and news relating to coffee.
• How to Brew Coffee - tutorials on different brewing methods as well as general coffee information.
• Cafe Myriade - probably Montreal's best coffee.
• SAQ - Quebec's main alcohol vendor.
• Drinks Mixer - a guide to making all kinds of drinks.
• The Webtender - another guide to making mixed drinks.
• Alcohol Reviews - drinker reviews of various brands of alcohol.
• Cellar Notes - basic information about wine.
• Wine Spectator - all about wine. A little pretentious, but has some good information.
• Malt Whiskey - personalized reviews of many different kinds of scotch.
• La Distillerie - excellent and unpretentious Montreal cocktail bar. Posts recipes for their drinks of the month.

Montreal

• STM - a guide to Montreal's public transportation system. Includes bus, metro and train schedules. Also has maps and software that finds the best routes between places in or around Montreal.
• Communauto - a great way to get access to a car when you need one.
• Bixi - Montreal bike rental service.
• Ride the City - interactive map of Montreal bike routes that includes automatic routing functionality.
• Ca Roule Montreal - maps of Montreal bike routes.
• La Route Verte - bike routes all across Quebec.
• Ville de Montreal - the city's web site.
• Wikimapia - a visual guide to Montreal's neighbourhoods.
• Montreal Mirror Survival Guide - some good contact information for those new to Montreal.
• Montreal Kiosk - a tourist guide to Montreal.
• Montreal areaConnect - Montreal phone directory.
• Club Montreal Sport and Social - a guide to community sports and other social activities around the island.
• Daswon Continuing Education - interesting courses to take.
• Vanier Continuing Education - more interesting courses.
• YMCA - affordable gyms.
• Senshido - the school that teaches the very practical martial art.
• Cinema Montreal - on-line schedule of movies playing in Montreal.
• TicketPro - lists concerts and other events in Montreal.
• Canadiens - the hockey team.
• Orchestre Symphonique de Montreal - Montreal's best-known symphony orchestra.
• Orchestre Metropolitain de Montreal - another excellent symphony orchestra.
• Opera de Montreal - stages operas in Montreal.
• Musée des beaux-arts de Montreal - excellent temporary exhibits, and a small but good permanent collection.
• SAT - all kinds of interesting musical and artistic exhibitions involving technology.
• Musee des Ondes Emile Berliner - a museum on the history of the audio industry.
• Botanical Gardens - very pretty.
• La Ronde - amusement park.
• Parc national d'Oka - includes a nice beach, cycling routes and hiking routes.
• REALTOR.ca - huge and easily searchable Canadian housing database.
• Montreal Bits - very large condo and rental listings.
• Housing Maps - lists of rental units, properties for sale, sublets, etc. for many cities. Mashup of Google Maps and Craigslist. Geographically mapped. Can include information such as photos.
• comFree - independently listed properties.
• Novo Condo - new condo projects in Montreal.
• Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation - lots of information regarding owning properties in Canada.
• CHF - co-operative housing in Canada.
• Rental Board - information on tenant's(and landlord's) rights.
• Changing Your Address - lets you change your registered address with multiple Quebec government agencies when you move.

Montreal Festivals

• Montreal Festivals - a list of festival dates.
• International Jazz Festival - lots of free outdoor shows, some of which can be amazing, although there isn't much actual jazz. Very good indoor shows too, but can get pricey.
• Pop Montreal - large indie music festival.
• Osheaga - pop/rock/indie festival.
• Nuits d'Afrique - African music festival. Great shows and relatively reasonably priced.
• Festival du Monde Arabe - lots of Middle Eastern stuff in general, not just Arab.
• FestiBlues - an international blues festival.
• International Reggae Festival - pretty much what it sounds like.
• Festival International de Tango de Montreal - dancing and music.
• Piknic Electronik - outdoor weekly DJ and electronic music concerts.
• Igloofest - electronic music for people who don't mind getting cold.
• EDMM - electronic dance music festival.
• MEG - smallish DJ festival.
• Elektra - artsy electronic music festival.
• Mutek - electronic music festival.
• Just For Laughs - comedy festival that includes big and small names in standup comedy, as well as crazy things happening on the street.
• Montreal Completement Cirque - circus festival.
• Fantasia - genre film festival. Everything from artsy movies to ninja movies to crazy anime, with an emphasis on horror.
• World Film Festival - pretty similar to any other major film festival.
• Festival du Nouveau Cinema - another film festival.
• International Fireworks Competition - very pretty.
• Fringe Festival - drama festival. Can be great, can be horrible, it's always an adventure.
• Metropolis Bleu - a literary festival.
• High Lights Festival - fine dining, performances, art, and all kinds of other stuff.
• Le Mondial de la biere - international beer festival, with a focus on Quebec beers..
• Eureka Festival - science festival.
• St. Patrick's Day Parade - streets painted green and Guinness in plastic cups.
• Highland Games - Scottish sports, food and crafts. Hasn't been quite as good in recent years.
• Havana Cultura - Cuban festival.
• Montreal Museum Day - admission is free to all Montreal museums.

Health

• Canada Guides - physical activity guides and the Canada Food Guide.
• U.S. Food Pyramid - very useful on-line food relating to nutrition and exercise.
• Two Foods - provides basic nutritional information about various types of food.
• RAMQ - Quebec's health care ministry.
• Medline Plus - a great health resource. Intended primarily for health professionals.
• Health Finder - extremely useful resource on disease, nutrition, exercise and anything health related.
• AnswerMed - medical information resource.
• Web MD - more medical information.
• Mayo Clinic - yet more medical information.
• Merck Manual - excellent guide to medical drugs. Also includes some information on recreational drugs.
• Society for Human Sexuality - lots of information, including a good safe sex page. Sometimes sounds like it was written by suburbanites in the midst of an epiphany, though.

References

• Wikipedia - not entirely reliable collaboratively edited encyclopedia.
• Citizendium - similar to Wikipedia but more reliable because of "gentle expert oversight."
• How Stuff Works - can be very interesting to browse through.
• So You Wanna - how to do various things.
• eHow - a guide on how to do all kinds of useful things.
• Do It Yourself - information on how to do all kinds of practical things.
• Answers - answers to general reference questions.
• Google Answers - provides a way to find people that you can pay to find it for you.
• Yahoo! Answers - can post questions.
• Internet Archive - video, audio and text resource, includes the Way Back Machine for viewing web content that has disappeared.
• Weather Underground - detailed weather information on Canada and other countries.
• The Weather Network - weather around the world.
• Google Language Tools - does quick and dirty automatic language translations. Good for translating web pages.
• Units Converter - useful when you have to deal with information from one of the two non-metric countries in the world.
• Calculate Me - another units converter.
• Exact Time - when you just need to know exactly what time it is.
• Canada Post - can look up postal codes, find postal outlets and track packages.
• Online Lookups - great for finding addresses and postal information in the U.S.
• Canada 411 - a way to find phone numbers and addresses of people in Canada.
• Oxford English Dictionary - The authoritative English dictionary.
• 1000 Dictionaries - links to good references. Poorly organized.
• Martindale's Desk Reference - good general references.
• Yahoo Reference - general reference tools.
• About.com - links to pages on all kinds of topics. Provides relatively detailed information on each site.
• eserver.org - all kinds of information in electronic form.
• Chico Library - a high school library with links to lots of interesting brief references.
• Fast Facts - links to a huge variety of statistics and reference resources.
• StatsCan - statistics on all things Canadian.
• Investopedia - money, money, money.
• Bylo Selhi - suggestions on mutual fund investing in Canada.
• Scotclans - all kinds of bits and pieces of Scottish trivia. Has the tartans and crests of various clans.

Computers: Hardware

• Tiger Direct - on-line retailer with excellent deals.
• Newegg - another on-line retailer with excellent deals.
• CDW - a Canadian on-line computer vendor.
• Amazon - the ubiquitous on-line retailer. E-bay can also be a good source.
• Best Buy Finder - lets you search on-line Canadian computer store listings.
• McGill Computer Store - McGill University's computer store.
• Microbytes - reasonably priced store for computer hardware. Good for building your own systems.
• CompuSmart - decent overall computer store.
• MDG - computer store where you can get good deals, but uses cheap components. 
• Bureau en Gros - office supplies store that also sells computers.
• Future Shop - big computer store where you can sometimes get good deals, but staff are annoying and warranty support is questionable.
• Dell - on-line computer seller.
• Alienware - a PC maker oriented towards high-performance machines.
• Lithium-Ion Batteries - includes advice on treating lithium-ion batteries properly. Another good summary is available here: Apple Batteries.
• PC Pitstop - performs on-line diagnostics of your system.
• Audit My PC - another diagnostics site with an emphasis on network performance.
• PC Mechanic - lots of information on building and fixing PCs.
• Tweak 3D - useful information for people interested in computer hardware.
• Tom's Hardware - another good resource on computer hardware.
• PC Lube & Tune - an introductory guide to computer hardware.
• My Super PC - a guide to building PCs.
• Silent PC Review - information on how to build quiet PCs.
• Wide Screen Gaming - tips on dealing with problems relating to playing video games on wide screen monitors.
• Windows Update Drivers - official source for hardware drivers.
• DriverFiles - source for official and unofficial drivers of all kinds.

Computers: Internet

• Jiwire - for finding wireless hot spots in many different places.
• Skype - free internet telephony.
• eFax - can send and receive faxes via e-mail.
• Wikidot - hosts custom wikis.
• Blogger - hosts blogs.
• Boing Boing - a "directory of wonderful things." Blogs, podcasts, etc.
• Speakeasy Speed Test - evaluates your internet connection speed.
• W3C - information on web technologies.
• W3 Schools - guides to web technologies. 
• WebMonkey - resources for web development.
• Tips for Building Homepages - links to resources for building web pages.
• HTML Code Tutorial - a general HTML tutorial.
• HTML Jalfrezi - an HTML tutorial .
• Index of HTML Elements - reference guide to HTML references.
• HTML Character  Entities - reference guide to HTML character entities.
• W3C Cascading Stylesheets - a guide to using cascading stylesheets to create web pages. Appendix F provides a useful reference.
• W3C Validation Service - a web page to validate your HTML files.
• W3C CSS Validation Services -  a web page to validate cascading stylesheet files.
• Sygate - does a free scan of your computer to check for security holes. 
• AuditMyPC - another site that checks your computer for security holes. 
• Qualys - yet another site that checks your computer for security holes.

Fine Art

• WebMuseum - a good place to find famous paintings.
• Artchive - another good source of famous artwork.
• AllPosters.com - all kinds of posters, including fine art.
• Artcyclopedia - art history reference. Useful for finding links to particular artworks.
• Sculpture Gallery - images of sculptures.
• Masters of Photography - work of famous photographers.
• Artist Indexes - use to search for famous artwork.
• Google Images - good for finding a particular image that you're looking for.
• ArtSource - links to art and architecture resources. The resugere has useful stock material.
• IndieSpace - work by independent artists and performers.
• Deviant Art - amateur art, often consisting of PhotoShopped images.
• SITO - art of all kinds by amateurs and lesser known artists. It can take a while to find anything decent, but there are pieces here that make the effort more than worthwhile.

Travel: Reservations

• Kayak - excellent travel meta-search engine.
• Priceline - discount travel engine. Allows potentially very large savings by bidding on flights or hotels.
• Wotif - great for finding last-minute accommodations.
• Inside Trip - a reservation meta-search engine that can take a variety of parameters into account.
• Expedia - Canadian travel site that sometimes has particularly good hotel deals.
• Bing Travel - predicts airfare rates in the future.
• Yapta - helps you track airline prices.
• Last Minute Travel - good for finding last minute deals.
• Sell Off Vacations - cheap vacation packages.
• Travel Alerts - suggests travel deals associated with your particular location.
• VarVacations - Quebec travel agency. Includes a variety of useful travel references.
• Cheap Tickets Canada - cheap domestic and international flights involving Canada.
• Cheap Tickets - another discount travel reservation site.
• Voyages Campus - student travel agency. Often has good last minute deals.
• Ticket Pilot - yet another Canadian reservation site.
• Air Ninja - searches discount and regular fares from multiples sources.
• Yahoo Farechase - searches the fares of multiple travel agencies.
• Orbitz - a US travel reservation site.
• Seat Expert - helps you find good airline seats on given flights.
• Seat Guru - another seat finding site.
• Hostels.com - a large hostel directory which also includes some general information on budget traveling.
• Home Holidays - helps people find or post private holiday accomodations.
• Intrepid Travel - a tour agency for trips to places that are a little more adventurous.

Travel: Carriers

• Air Canada - Canada's main airline.
• Porter Airlines- another Canadian airline.
• Westjet - another Canadian airline.
• Air Transat - a discount Canadian airline that has some international flights.
• VIA Rail - Canada's passenger train company.
• Coach Canada - intercity buses in Canada.
• Greyhound - another Canadian intercity bus company.
• Budget Rental - car rental company, usually affordable.
• Discount Rental - another car rental company, good deals but not always reliable.
• Avis - yet another car rental company.
• Thrifty Rental - and yet another car rental company.
• Enterprise Rental - yet one more car rental company.
• Ryanair - discount airline for flights in Europe.
• easyJet - another European discount airline.
• Rail Europe - for finding European railway tickets.
• American Airlines - a US airline.
• Delta Airlines - another US airline.
• Northwestern Airline - yet another US airline.

Fun

• IMDb - information on pretty much any movie. Includes some trailers.
• AllRovi Movie Guide - more movie information.
• TV.com - information on television shows.
• Netflix - good for viewing movies and TV, but limited selection (at least in Canada).
• Hulu - good for viewing TV shows. Not currently available in Canada.
• YouTube - gee, I wonder what this is?
• Go Comics - a decent selection of on-line comic strips, including both mainstream and under-the-radar comics.
• xkcd - a very good geeky comic strip.
• PhD Comics - comic strip about being a grad student.
• C'est la vie - a good on-line comic strip.
• Making Fiends - a great Flash series with links to other series by the same authour.
• Tetes a claques - Quebecois humour.
• The Onion - a hilarious on-line news parody.
• Japander - amusing commercials done by mostly American celebrities for Japanese television.
• eBaum's World - an on-line joke site.
• FAIL Blog - failures.
• Simpsonize Me - see yourself as a Simpsons character.
• Ad Busters - spoof ads.
• Stumble Upon - a great way to find random on-line games, videos, web pages, etc.
• The Fifty Best - lists of things that the reviewers like, inlcluding restaurants, drinks, food, movies, cigar, etc.
• Cigar Smoker's FAQ - detailed information on cigars.
• The Good Drug Guide - relatively unbiased information on recreational drugs (not including alcohol, nicotine or caffeine).
• Erowid - more drug information, but not as well organized.
• Magic Mushrooms Net - information and links relating to magic mushrooms.
• ecstasy.org - information on ecstasy.
• E-Cards- general e-cards, and sending one results in a small donation to the environment.
• Hubble Site - photos from and information relating to the telescope.
• The Hockey News - lots of information on hockey, especially for researching hockey pools.
• Yahoo! Fantasy Hockey - well-designed fantasy hockey service.
• Skeptic's Annotated Bible - interesting quotes from the Christian bible, the Quaran and the Book of Mormon.
• The Kama Sutra - some of the stuff here doesn't fit in too well with modern Western ideas about the appropriate roles of men and women in society, and I don't know about those arsenic-based love potions, but there are some very interesting, very acrobatic ideas here.

Music

• All Music - excellent information on music of all kinds. Includes MP3s excerpts encompassing a huge range of music. Linked to the AllRovi Music Guide.
• The Ultimate Band List - a good place to find information on both commercial and indie bands.
• Groove Shark - huge range or searchable audio streams.
• Last.FM - excellent music recommendation system.
• Pandora - another excellent music recommendation system, but not available in Canada.
• Yahoo Music - artist information, videos, etc.
• MTV - good choice of videos and songs.
• Artist Direct - good site for previewing albums. Also has some limited background information.
• Blinkx - Permits video and audio searches (including by actual content like lyrics, not just metadata like artist or title).
• Music.com - more music videos, with rankings. I wonder how much that domain name cost.
• Billboard - for finding out what those young'uns are listening to these days. Especially those American young'uns.
• Playlist.com - construct your own playlists, or explore those of others.
• Google Music - lets you upload your music to the cloud, among other things. Currently only available in the US.
• Sound Hound - auto-identify audio clips for free, as well as perform searches using voice recognition.
• Shazam - auto-identify audio clips for money.
• iTunes - most popular place for buying music files, but watch out for the DRM.
• Puretracks - a Canadian on-line music seller.
• Archambaultzik - Quebecois on-line music retailer (part of the Archambault chain).
• CD Baby - great place for buying self-published music.
• Rhapsody - subscription-based music service.
• Napster - another subscription-based music service.
• Pollstar - provides concert schedules.
• Song Meanings - lyrics and user interpretations of many different songs.
• Lyric Wiki - many user-contributed lyric transcriptions.
• Lyrics On Demand - lyrics for many songs.
• SHOUTcast - good place for buying music electronics and equipment. Also includes lots of useful information and guides.
• Harmony Central - resources and information for amateur musicians.
• Music Player -publisher of a number of musician's magazines.
• GuitarPlayer - on-line site of the magazine.
• Guitar World - another guitar magazine.
• Ultimate Guitar - a source for guitar tab.
• Live 365 - a well-organized directory of many different internet radio stations.
• SHOUTcast - more links to internet radio stations.
• More music links are available on my academic links page.

Video Games

• Game Spy - lots of video game-related inforamtion and resources.
• IGN - excellent video game resource.
• All Game Guide - information about video games.
• Wikia Gaming - lots of user-contributed information on video games.
• Game Spot - more information about video games.
• Game Zone - yet more information about video games.
• Games Radar - yet more information about video games..
• PC Gamer - excellent resource related to PC games. Also has a service for selling oldish games via download at their web store.
• Entertainment Software Ratings Board - explains the age ratings for different games, and allows searches for different types of content.
• Good Old Games - cheap place to buy old (and often updated) games.
• Steam - very popular seller of games via download. Great deals, but DRM can be annoying.
• Direct2Drive - another seller of games via download.
• Game Tap - a subscription-based game service.
• MiniClip - lots of casual web games.
• DOS Box - an emulator for playing old DOS games.
• Emulation Nation - console emulators for playing old games.
• VDMSound Project - legacy soundcard emulator that is useful for playing old games.

Electronic Texts

• Google Books - for searching published material for text strings.
• Project Gutenberg - many digitized texts.
• Alex - a catalogue of electronic texts.
• Bartleby - more electronic texts.
• Bibliomania - yet more electronic texts.
• Reading Room - academic literature resource. 
• Lulu - a self-publishing site.

News

• CBC - Canada's public news service. Fairly good, although very Ontariocentric.
• BBC - among the less biased news sources.
• The Globe & Mail - claims to be Canada's national newspaper, although it seems to be unaware that the Atlantic provinces exist.
• Union of Concerned Scientists - excellent reports on topical issues from a scientific perspective.
• Democracy Now - an independent news program with a highly Chomskyesque perspective.
• New Internationalist - web site of the magazine for the suburban left.
• Independent Media Centre - collections of independent media articles. 
• Mother Jones - an OK news source, although the rhetoric gets a little thick sometimes.
• CorpWatch - news you might not hear elsewhere about corporations. Annoyingly pat sometimes, but also interesting.
• Science Daily - easy to read but not very in depth scientific news. Great variety. Also includes a small scientific encyclopedia.
• Discover - accessible and well-written scientific articles from the magazine and elsewhere.
• Physics Web - news relating to physics.
• Slashdot - techie news.

Computers: Software

• Process Library - identify unknown process codes.
• Tech Support Guy - can ask IT-related questions for free.
• Experts Exchange - can pay to ask IT experts various questions.
• McGill Software Centre - McGill students and staff can download licenced software.
• Shareware.com - great selection of shareware, but could be better organized.
• Simtel.net - another shareware site.
• Jumbo.com - yet another shareware site.
• PC World Downloads - shareware site of the magazine. 
• GNU for Windows - Windows versions of free GNU software. Ah, the irony.
• Widget Gallery - lots of little software toys.
• Yahoo Widgets - more widgets.
• Windows - updates and downloads from Microsoft. It's not like you're PC isn't already compromised.
• InterfaceLIFT - interface graphics, including desktop wallpaper at various resolutions.
• The Elder Geek - lots of useful tricks and tips for Windows. 
• Windows Secrets - lets you search for Windows tips.
• PC World - on-line magazine. Includes useful comparisons between different products.
• PC Magazine - on-line version of the magazine.
• Astalavista - a site with links to information on software hacks and cracks.
• Millions of Games - lots of free games.
• MAME ROM Links - links to ROMs that let you play old console and arcade games on PCs. These can be rune using the MAME Emulator.
• Game Copy World - cracks to run games without if you don't have the CD handy.
• Easter Eggs - a guide to hidden goodies in various programs.
• Flickr - a site for storing and sharing photos.
• More computer links are available on my academic links page.

Search Engines

• Way Back Machine - a way to search archives of what was present at particular URLs at different moments in the past. Includes video and audio.
• Google - general search engine. Includes links for specialized searches of video, images, maps, etc. Also includes auto-translation functionality.
• Google Preferences - lets you customize Google searches.
• Google Labs - links to new Google services.
• Google Hacks - tricks for getting the most out of Google.
• Google APIs - lets developers make use of Google in their code.
• Yahoo - old search engine seeing a resurgence.
• Alltheweb - a search engine that allows specialized searches of music, audio and images.
• Ask Jeeves - a search engine that allows natural language queries.
• Teoma - another search engine.
• Vivisimo - another search engine.
• Kosmix - allows topic specific searches.
• Rollyo - can create "search rolls" of specific sites.
• Web Rings - can search for web rings on particular topics.
• Open Directory Project - an old, human edited directory of the web.
• SearchEngineWatch.com - information about and reviews of various search engines.

Consumerism

• Craiglist Montreal - for selling or buying from someone in Montreal.
• Swap Things - a resource for finding people who might want to trade items with you.
• Froogle - on-line shopping search engine.
• Get Human - tips and phone numbers for bypassing automated "customer service" systems.
• Better Business Bureau - can use to investigate the practices of different businesses and charities, although a look into where it gets its funding from is unsettling. Also gives information on consumer rights.
• Consumer WebWatch - reports on on-line information and services.
• Rate It All - on-line consumer reviews.
• Consumer Review - detailed buyer reviews of all sorts of items.
• Epinions - more consumer reviews.
• Active Sales Assistant - provides wizards to help you choose between different products. Actually pretty good.
• Shopping - price comparisons and links to Epinions reviews.
• NextTag - allows automatic price comparisons and includes user reviews.
• PriceScan - allows you to compare prices from different vendors.
• PriceGrabber - another comparison shopping site.
• TechTastic - a Canadian site for finding good deals on electronics.
• TechBargains - a good site for searching for deals on electronics.
• Overstock - can find some decent prices on all kinds of stuff.
• Amazon - buy, buy, buy.
• Buy - buy, buy, more buy.
• eBay - buy, buy, buy, sell, sell, sell. The Canadian version is here.
• Chapters Indigo - good selection of books, although you have to be a bit bitter about how they wiped out most of their competition in Canada a few years ago.
• Quality Paperback - only have pretty mainstream books, but good prices.
• Columbia House - CDs and movies. Limited selection.
• Digital Camera Reviews - detailed information on any digital camera you can think of.
• Steve's Digicams - another good resource on digital cameras.