An Investigative/Online State of Mind



Places You Should Go

to Find News Fast

Al Tompkins/Poynter tompkins@) 727-821-9494

See Al’s Book “Aim for the Heart”

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Get Story Ideas From Al by E-Mail at 7am M-F

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Index

Things Google Will Do Sports

Find People/Places Tracking Blogs

Search State Public Record Databases Tracking News Coverage

Investigating Politicians RSS Feeds

Health Resources Calculators

Aviation, Trucking, Rail, Ship Information Economics

Airplane Crash Resources and Pictures Hurricanes and Earthquakes

The Internet Archive Weather and Natural Disasters

Military Resources Crime and Courts

Useful and Fun Sites For-Pay Sites

Translation Tools Investigate Charities

Who Owns That Website? Junk Science and Hoax Busting

Census and Local Data

Things You Can do With

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Run Google and Yahoo at the same time

Here is another version that shows what Yahoo and Google agree on and what each finds that the other misses.

a new search engine that returns answers in clusters

[pic] brand new search engine site. This one lets you sort news results by state, county, by time or date published. It is a GREAT tool for journalists.

Yahoo also has a new news search system-will search for recent news stories on any word or phrase you select.

[pic]Searches MSN, Google and Yahoo and allows you to “weight” the search to favor one engine over the other.

[pic] Citizen posted video on every imaginable subject

[pic] Search for podcasts, online video, TV news clips and other video bits from more than two dozen sources, including ABC News, BBC News, Fox News, ESPN and C-Span.

[pic]The Free Version of Lexis/Nexis

Google news- little known but very cool, spiders post automatically without humans being involved in story selection

Google News also has a Spanish edition of Google News. It also has many other languages and country specific news crawlers. Just look for the small dialogue box near the top of the page.

I need a picture of somebody or something

or try this one based on Lycos (Mamma also searches audio and video files)

NEW Google maps be sure you include a test drive of the local feature.

[pic] This is the new 4.0 version released June 12, 2006 must download program first click here to find out when the images were taken of most US cities

Amazon A9 photo maps currently include 35 million photos of city streets available. The photos enable users to explore virtually streets and places in major US cities.

[pic]This is a brand new product. It is a modeling program that enables you to explore the world in 3D. With just a few simple tools, you can create 3D models of houses, sheds, decks, home additions, woodworking projects - even space ships. And once you've built your models, you can place them in Google Earth, post them to the 3D Warehouse, or print hard copies. Quick demo page

[pic] Brand new-it is the easiest way to make a customized Google Map

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Google’s book index

NEW Google Search history

New Google video-search for video and submit video

New "Google Suggest"-the search engine tries to anticipate what you are looking for

New -Google Scholar-searches scholarly papers abstracts, technical reports from many academic publishers, scholarly societies and colleges.

[pic]Uncle Sam looks just at government sites

[pic] a government news site

Google Hacks (list by )

• CheapGas “Getting best prices in your city. It is comprised of 170 gas price information web sites that help consumers find low gasoline prices. Powered by GasBuddy.”

• Geobloggers “Geobloggers is a site that’s built upon two great technologys. Google Maps takes care of the mapping side and Flickr takes care of the image hosting, scaling, and so on. geobloggers mushes those two together.”

• Google-Yahoo Traffic-Weather Map Combined with Yahoo Traffic Feed with Google Map to show traffic condition.

• Weather Bonk “Weather maps lets you view real time weather information on a google map. This can provide some very interesting information, particularly in areas with microclimates, such as San Francisco. For example, summer in San Francisco can be particularly cold and foggy, and this map can help you to find a sunnier area of the city to visit. Clicking on the web cams give you a visual observation from a given location. Looking at wind direction can help you locate approaching weather fronts.”

• Global Coordinate “The idea behind is to take a number of common but different web applications and put them together. You will find here an atlas, weblogs, photo-blogs, travel guides, weather reports, news sources, etc. The objective is to let users find the synergies between these concepts.”

• Cell Phone Reception and Tower Search “Consumers can search for the best carrier in their area. And with our graphical tower location search, users can pinpoint nearby tower locations. Even to the exact rooftop with satellite imagery and the help of Google Maps!”

• Housing Maps Powered by Craigslist. This Google Maps visualize where to buy houses, rent rooms around US

• Tagzania “Tagzania is about tags and places. If you register and log in, you can add places, points, to create and document your maps. When you add a point, you may tag it with keywords. That way, Tagzania is not only a place to build and keep your own maps, shared territories are created as well.”

• ChicagoCrime “This is a non-profit, freely browsable database of crimes reported in Chicago. It is not affiliated with the Chicago Police Department or with Google Maps. It is not an official source of crime information for the city of Chicago. Rather, it is an alternative view of public record that is available elsewhere. At any given point, this site contains crime-report information spanning a 90-day period. After 90 days, the crime data is removed.”

• Find a sex offender in any zipcode-Family Watchdog

• Track visitors to your website using Google Maps “Lets you track the visitors to your website using Google Maps.”

• Earthquakes in the last week “Earthquakes of magnitude 2.5 or greater in the last 7 days. Click on the menu bar to choose a new map view or create your own view by clicking to re-center the map and then zooming in to get a closer look. Click ‘link to this page’ and then bookmark the new url so you can return to your new custom view.”

• Whereis “Geolocate where the server is on Google Maps from an URL.”

• : Where do you want to eat?

“ aims to be the central point for hungry people and restaurants to congregate. Our first release is the restaurant browser system, which is only a small piece of what is on the roadmap.”

• “Never forget the location of that awesome place again. Bookmark it on !”

• MapBuilder “MapBuilder lets you build your own map with number of location and generate GoogleMap source code for this map. So you will be able to paste it directly into your web page and use it with your API key requested at Google . After creating your own map you will be able to save all locations with related information for future use. It means that you’ll be able to make some improvements for your map later.”

• Google Maps on your Website A how-to guide on putting a interactive map on your site

• Integrating Google Maps into Your Web Applications Tutorial on how to integrate Google Maps.

• Google Maps Mania “An unofficial Google Maps blog tracking the websites, ideas and tools being influenced by Google Maps.”

• Google Maps on Wikipedia Good set of information on Google Maps by Wikipedia

• Google Maps Group

• Google Sightseeing A blog introduces some interesting place to look at by using Google Maps’ screenshots

Cached Links View a snapshot of each page as it looked when Google indexed it-great for finding sites that no longer exist.

Calculator Use Google to do math expressions.

Definitions Use Google to get glossary definitions gathered from various online sources.

The site then runs daily Google searches for you and e-mails you the results. The first e-mail includes up to 50 results from Google, many of which you've probably seen before. But after that, the e-mails only include new results that have not appeared before. That's the truly useful part.

Froogle To find a product for sale online, use Froogle - Google's product search service.

Google Talk Ever wondered what Google would say if it could talk? Enter three or four words and Google will finish your thoughts by searching for what comes next after these words.

Google Date Google Date lets you enter a date and then searches using Google for what happened on that date and shows three results. Since Google isn't very good at sorting documents for relevance when it comes to dates, it usually doesn't give you a list of big events, but of the things happening in the lives of random people.

Google History Use Google to find out in what year something happened. This works for events between 1800 and now.

Local Search New! Search for local businesses and services in the U.S. and Canada.

News Headlines Enhances your search results with the latest related news stories.

Google Questions Ask a question and Google tries to figure out the answer you are looking for. Such as “Who was Abe Lincoln?”

Search By Number Use Google to access package tracking information, US patents, and a variety of online databases.

Similar Pages Display pages that are related to a particular result.

Site Search Restrict your search to a specific site.

Spell Checker Offers alternative spelling for queries.

Stock Quotes Use Google to get stock and mutual fund information.

Street Maps Use Google to find U.S. street maps.

Travel Information Check the status of an airline flight in the U.S. or view airport delays and weather conditions.

WebPage Translation  Provides English speakers access to a variety of non-English web pages.

Who Links To You? Find all the pages that point to a specific URL.

Deep Coverage of topical News from Yahoo Full Coverage

Absolutely everything (almost) you would want to know about professional sports from attendance history to revenue to historic ticket prices to player salaries by sport.

Tools to Find Stuff/People/Places

[pic]I need to find a website that has been offline for years-or how can I find out what a website looked like on a certain date? This site has logged 10-billion pages (yes, you read it right-Billion) going back to 1996. It is the only site of its kind.

[pic] Find the Hidden subdirectories of any url

[pic]Find video or audio from movies, TV, radio and internet

Easy to find state and national links to over 28,000 searchable public records databases Use this site to look up licenses for doctors, lawyers, dentists, lawn care companies, Psychologists you name it. This is a gold mine!

State and Local Government Website Index (): Perhaps the most comprehensive online directory to government websites, this index provides the user with links to every department website imaginable for each level of government. The user is brought one step closer to the public records sought by being connected with the appropriate government agency, from statewide offices to the smallest branch of a city or township.

Public Records Online Search state-by-state criminal records, real estate information and more.

What Licenses do States require of any given profession or occupation? Enter by profession or by state

Property Tax records for any county in the United States. See who owns what property and how much tax they paid. You can also learn about renovations, additions and basic mortgage lien information on any property.

[pic]Look up the estimated value of any property

[pic]Search records for every public school in every state in America.

[pic] Find backgrounds on millions of individuals-free :

New[pic] By far the most complete free phone, address and people search tool because it uses many engines at once. Requires a free download.

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NEW Another people finding software. The basic search is free, deeper searches cost $20-$100

Annual Reports for Investors (): Annual reports are accessible in their original formats. The user can search by company name, ticker symbol, industry, or sector. There is also an alphabetical index of all companies providing reports. All reports are free, and no registration is required.

BRB Publications Free Resource Center (): More than just a directory to free public records searching, the Free Resource Center also provides links to articles to assist users in public record searches. In addition, the "Public Record Newsroom" lists current items in the news relating to public records of all types.

Construction Weblinks: Public Records (): This is a directory of mostly free websites to help the user learn different types of information about specific companies in the United States. Websites are arranged alphabetically and include bankruptcy data, earnings reports, pending litigation, and license suspensions.

Pretrieve (): This resource serves as a gateway to services on hundreds of websites that provide public records free of charge. Searches can be conducted by personal name, business name, address, or telephone number. For businesses, it provides financial, legal, trade-related, and research records, many as scanned images of originals. The user can view property records and even satellite imagery of both business and residential properties.

Public Records Finder (): Both business and personal public records are indexed in this comprehensive database. Nationwide searching is available, broken down by categories including business records, corporate tax forms, legal research resources, and professional licensing information.

Find a person in the US or Canada. My favorite is

Let’s say you want to know more about this person but don’t want to call them yet—maybe you could call a neighbor. Under the “look up addresses” box, enter in the person’s street without his/her house number and you will get all addresses and phone numbers on the street. Choose the ones nearest your target. also try: and try

You have a phone number-who does it belong to?

Find a person or business’ phone number

Find the number for a pay phone somewhere in the world

[pic]Search SEC and business filings using the new Hoovers site:

National Association of Secretaries of State: Corporate Backgrounders good for researching businesses

Find a business near this address-great for breaking news:

Find a toll free number for a person or business

Zip Code lookup and address information

WhoWhere

Internet Address Finder - E-mail Directory

Area code listing, by number

Is that person dead? A place to look. They also list names of people who have been reported to be dead, but are ALIVE

Look up death records by social security records

Biographies of famous people. This dictionary covers more than 28,000 notable men and women who have shaped our world from ancient times to the present day.

thumbnail IDs of long-ago politicians

Find a person in state, local or federal government office

Officials in every county government in every county in the United States

[pic]Charity Check-you need to know where all the money is going-every charity that takes in $25K has to file an I-990 form. They are the mother lode of information and they are open for your inspection. Go to your local charitable solicitations board, your secretary of state or, now, online to see these forms. A great new site has almost a million of these forms on file. They are constantly being updated and soon will include millions of I-990 forms. (Hint-when looking for a specific charity, put the name in quotes.)

Charity Navigator rates charities and non-profits.

[pic]The Better Business Bureau also has a rating service for charities called

Foundation Giving by state and year –a list from The Foundation Center

Network for Good -- which is powered by the Guidestar database includes financial snapshots

The American Institute of Philanthropy is a "Charity Watchdog" that offers a rating guide to roughly 500 charitable organizations to its donors. However, a list of the top-rated charities is available for free online.

The IRS provides a page of links to information about state agencies that regulate charities and other non-profits. For example, the Florida Division of Consumer Services offers a database that contains "financial summaries of charitable organizations which are registered with the State of Florida."

For tax information, IRS Publication 526 covers charitable contributions.

Lists of every known Association in America

[pic] Who Owns that Website? Search the ownership of any website in the world. Try this site called .

• Also, try

Also try if all you have is an ISP number, can trace backward to identify the user. Very useful in decoding who is posting to a listserv or bulletin board.

• VisualRoute Tracker- this is a for pay service that will backtrack who owns a website and who owns a serve hosting it. For serious investigative projects like tracking child porn or fraud.

is a service that enables you to automatically collect new information from your favorite pages on the Internet. You select which pages to monitor, and WatchThatPage will find which pages have changed, and collect all the new content for you. The new information is presented to you in an email and/or a personal web page.

Unravel IP addresses, host or name servers to figure out who is writing or hosting what. This is a one-stop shopping center.

Who Exports What to Where (state by state) TradeStats allows you to see what each state exports and to whom they ship the stuff. Pick your state, pick a product and click the start button. [pic]The site is presented by the Office of Trade and Industry Information (OTII), Manufacturing and Services, International Trade Administration, U.S. Department of Commerce.

[pic] the world in statistics

[pic]Product Safety Recall site by the Consumer Product Safety Commission. Alerts are listed as soon as they are announced by the federal government. . Includes downloadable video and interviews.  

Social Security Death Records

New Easy to use Census site:

Find out the basics about any city or town

vital facts- quick click for basic facts on any city, state or county

[pic]FactFinder is the Census’ site that helps you get microspecific data, even map it. It is very easy to use.

It is a free site that monitors Security and Exchange Commission filings. The site will even send you an email when the company you are tracking files something new. Fantastic.

[pic]Read the EPA drinking water inspections in every water district in America.

Who is release toxic stuff in your community? EPA has an easy to use tracking site. You can watch toxins, water, air pollution, land (dumping) and more. Just plug in a zip code, city, or state.

Online Polls-from political to topical polls, this site finds them and posts them daily

Tracking News Fast

-a great journalism site. is a fast and easy to load site that summarizes the leading headlines for hundreds of newspapers and online news sites around the world.

[pic]Create your own news page with MyYahoo and RSS feeds. You can select from more than 150,000 websites and then arrange them on your page. The RSS feeds are constantly updated. If you do not want to use MyYahoo, consider an RSS directories/display tools such as onfolio 2.0 or Feedster. Feedster indexes over 1 million syndicated sources and adds approximately 5,000 new feeds daily. This includes over 50,000 professionally published sources such as the New York Times, BBC, CNET, IDG, and Wired. Feedster also also continually monitors the leading weblog change notification sites such as blo.gs, and others to make certain that the information from the blogosphere is as timely as possible. 

[pic]A fantastic tool for watching local news coverage:

Topix spiders yours and more than 3,000 other local news sites. Its users can enter one of your local ZIP codes and see a page showing all local news from you and your competitors.

SpeakWire-Listen to a Newspaper’s RSS podcast

a daily collection of headlines from around the world, many of them from Arabic speaking countries, often very critical of the US.

European news portal Newsnow-which searches nearly 10,000 news sites every 5 minutes. Here is a collection of international news sites including tons of live streaming sites from around the world.

Get a jumpstart on University studies and releases

Encyclopaedia Britannica more than 70 newspapers and a directory of Web links, evaluated by Britannica editors.

Links to every known local newspaper in the United States

[pic]Highbeam free research

Top 99 Newspaper websites online-ranked by traffic

Newspaper front pages from around the world-updated daily



Links to Most Popular magazines online

Very fast loading list of most major papers in US and Worldwide-use this when you are in a hurry

Newspaper archives from Special Library Association. Search newspapers by state. Some of the archives are subscriptions, some are free.

Spiders and skims from alternative papers

Collections of alt weeklies nationwide

Links to Business newspapers in the United States

Links to International Newspapers indexed by country

Links to religious newspapers worldwide

Native American News websites

Native Times

Native American health issues site Yahoo Native News Index Indian Country Today

A huge collection of special interest online journals



Middle East News aljazeera in English -

Afghan Daily Al-Ahram Weekly Ha’aretz

Indian Express The Iranian Jane’s Defense Stars & Stripes Times of India

Blog Tracking

What are Blogs linking to? Scans more than 100 blogs a minute and constantly updates.

Tons of blogs: Browse by Topic Browse by Location

Blogs sorted by state

Investigating Politicians

[pic]Who is influencing my Congressman? run by the federal election commission. You can search individual contributors, individual candidates or races. site-crunches Federal Election commission figures to show you who is giving and receiving what from whom. Put in your zip code and find out who is donating to the presidential campaign.

State contributions-state races-

[pic] State Lawmaker’s Personal Financial Disclosures Online The Center for Public Integrity has collected and posted the new personal disclosures for state legislators in America.

The center has a page that allows you to search by name, zip code, or you can put in a name of a company or organization and see which lawmakers are linked to that name. It would be especially interesting if, for example, a company landed a big contract and you wanted to know who has ties to them. You can also search by industry to see which lawmakers have interests in what business.

527’s-the silent Power in Elections. See who is really paying for the campaigns that spend hundreds of millions of dollars in races.

[pic]Get Local on contributions - Here is one of the most useful databases I have seen for drilling down to big players in cities. Click on states, then cities and you will see a list of the largest givers.

Who is giving what to whom in power—Politicalmoneyline-even has a search engine to investigate donors by name. Enter a zip code and you can find out who in that zip code donated to federal elections. This site is the site that monitors every move at the Federal Election Commission.

Fundrace 2004 Neighbor Search-easy to use and fun –includes a mapping program by city.

[pic]vote- -a nonprofit/non-partisan group- details how congressmen vote on bills and issues. Now they are tracking platform positions taken by candidates on state and federal levels. You can also track legislation-extremely useful site.

[pic] helps to fact check candidates, parties and election ads nationwide.

GovTrack follows your elected federal officials, tracks legislation and is RSS ready to update you on whatever you want.

Includes issue positions of Presidential candidates, state information on voter registration and upcoming elections, and links to Congressional races by state, with background information available on Congressional voting records.



Electionline includes a reference guide to laws and regulations, and state and local election administration, as well as commentary on best practices and areas for electoral reform.



Green Papers Facts, figures, tidbits and commentary on the U.S. election campaigns



Politics1 Links to all aspects of elections

Polls Online-public opinion and surveys from Gallup, news organizations and Pew

[pic]PollingReport-tracks all sorts of new polls constantly

Translation Tools

[pic]Translate almost any language into almost any other language. If you are trying to read a Spanish language page in English, for example, try this: also and this site is a “real time translator” meaning you could have a conversation with a person who is speaking another language



[pic]Polly Glotto- type in a word or a phrase and Polly will translate and even say your phrase in any of 13 languages.

Google also has a very nice translation tool

Hotspot List find a public wireless (WiFi) hotspot by logging in and entering city, street, zip



Health News Sites

[pic]CDC’s WONDER page. This is an interesting page chocked full of story entry points-I find ideas here all the time.

Easily compare state health statistics-Kaiser collection let’s you know how any state ranks on infant mortality, percentage of insurance or uninsured population or percentage of population infected with HIV, just for example. This is a wonderful and easy to use database.

State Health Facts- on one website (by Kaiser) you can find out about health coverage and costs for every state, state by state listings for AIDS, Medicare, income, and more.

Kids Count-state by state data on the health and well-being of children. includes ranks.

Mega health and medical site from the government

Nutrition stats for fast foods, recipes and such

A Smallpox primer

Redflagsweekly- a very aggressive site run by a former ABC News Health writer the site often takes on conventional wisdom and what it calls “press release journalism.”

Health Facts-state by state including % uninsured, HIV-AIDS and more

Healthwatch-topical health stories of the day

Medscape-you choose the areas you want to search

Intelihealth-from Harvard ,*|

Journal of the American Medical Association

Dozens of Environment related websites

Kids Health issues -updated daily- excellent and easy to use:

[pic]Who is dying from what-The CDC's Morbidity and Mortality weekly report-

Find any physician in the United States from AMA.

Calculators

The coolest calculator/converter site I know of, converts everything from grams to ounces, you name it.

Cost of Living Calculator Uses the Consumer Price Index and is useful in comparing budgets, income, spending from one year to another.

How much did something cost years ago- a great primer

Online Conversion – tons of other calculators

everything from distance to weights and measurements wind chill.

Try this site for calculating percentages- (what is _% of __.)



Math calculators for journalists

Automatically converts numbers to Roman Numerals

How old is somebody in dog years?

Distance as the crow flies-worldwide calculator

Driving distance between two cities calculator: or

Investigating Aviation, Trains, Truck and Bus Crashes, Cruise Ships

[pic] All federal statistics on deaths, injuries, accidents for rail, ships, planes, bikes, pedestrians, pipeline, trucking and highways

[pic]A plane crashed in my area-I need information-quick-go to it helps to identify problems with airlines and with individual planes. This powerful site will give you pilot backgrounds, aircraft safety records, specific maintenance records of planes (if you have a tail number) and tons of other details. Get familiar with this one-you will use it. is a helpful site too.

Fantastic resource for covering crashes they often even have a schematic drawing of the crash site and quickly track the safety records of that kind of airliner.

[pic]The NTSB site

Database Query - interactive search capability for the NTSB database, updated daily; see the general instructions before using the form for the first time.

Monthly lists - accidents sorted by date, updated daily.

Completed investigations - periodically updated list of cases scheduled for release of probable cause.

Downloadable datasets - one complete dataset for each year beginning from 1982, updated monthly in Microsoft Access 95 MDB format; this FTP site also provides weekly "change" updates and complete documentation.

GILS record - complete description of the accident database, including definition of "accident" and "incident".

FAA incident database - complete information about incidents, including those not investigated by NTSB, is provided by the Federal Aviation Administration.

NTSB Accident Reports

NTSB Annual Review of Aircraft Accident Data

NTSB Aviation Accident Database

NTSB Most Recent Accidents /Older Accidents/Studies | Statistical

[pic]Get pictures of thousands of commercial airplanes listed by N number:

Other aviation photo sites to check include; , PlaneSpotting Network,

The Federal Register-this is the official US Government notification site where all advisories, alerts, notices and so on are listed daily. Type in the name of the aircraft, for example, to see airworthiness advisories or mechanical advisories

Look up international registrations (Australia, UK, South Africa, Italy, Ireland, Japan and so on) $pass*48271342!_h-_landings/pages/search/reg-world.html

Look up Crash information by aircraft, registration number or date of event or crash

Real Time Flight Tracking - see where an airplane is during flight. A remarkable mapping system that is great when you have to meet someone at an airport.



Every commercial airport in the United States by city

Airports of the world by city

[pic]Investigate Train Crashes. You can try the National Transportation Safety Board but it can take many months and up to years to get real investigation information. The National Railroad Administration sometimes provides information faster and has 9 regional offices that do inspections, so it might be a better route to take after a crash

They have an online site which is new, that allows you to look up crashes by date

NTSB’s Train Accident Investigation site

NTSB Railroad   Accidents | Studies

NTSB Pipeline   Accidents | Studies

NTSB Hazardous Materials Accidents | Studies

[pic]Investigate the inspection background and crash history of a commercial trucking or bus line. Dot safety ratings list

You will need the federal DOT number of the vehicle involved. It will look something like this: USDOT-246045 .You will usually find the number on the vehicle itself. Often on the door/drivers’ side.

American Bus Association:

NTSB Highway Accident investigations Accidents | Studies

[pic] The NTSB ship accident/safety investigation site

Cruise Ship Schedules and Sailing information (not a gov’t site.) The US Coast Guard conducts safety inspections of cruise ships. In fact, you can find

Inspections on virtually all passenger vessels. The link is

Weather and Natural Disasters

[pic]The mother lode of disaster planning contacts and information-

150 years of hurricane tracks from NOAA

One of the coolest parts of the site is that you can enter a zip code or a city and query historical storm tracks for that community. So when a storm is heading for a location, you can find the history of storms to that location in a click or two.

Coastal Population tool-this is a wonderful tool you can use to map how many people live on any coast line and what the population trend has been for that area. It is vitally important to predict evacuation size and damage estimates. Just pop in a state and county.

Real time imagery of storms, saffir-simpson hurricane scale explained and more resources

Billion Dollar Weather Disasters-a page full of information on the worst storms

Regional Climate Centers

State Climatologists

Another Disaster collection-ham radio operators use this

A listing of major international disaster relief efforts going on



Volcano watch-real time space views of some of the world’s most active volcanoes from Michigan Tech

A library of every recorded weather event-county by county some data going back to the 1800’s. It is a remarkable tool

Disaster Finder - A Who’s Who of disaster resources, from comets that could hit the earth to how to deal with animals when you have a big fire, earthquake or hurricane.

A site fire Firefighters and EMT issues-excellent

Airport maps, live traffic cams and traffic-road conditions updated constantly

Live weather radar-every NEXRAD sweep in the country

-a new science website that lists and finds reliable government science information

Crime/Courts

Find a sex criminal in any neighborhood.

A listing of thousands of police departments

[pic]A listing of virtually every police officer killed in the line of duty in Americ in the last 100 years.

Possibly the best collection of crime data sets on the web-includes international data too

Crime Stats direct from the gov't. A mega site includes everything from Interpol to DEA most wanted—you will use this one!

FBI most wanted list and photos :

The Journalist's Toolbox (), managed by journalist and former Northwestern University instructor Mike Reilly, includes some 15,000 links, from the sublime to the silly. Choose from a list of "beats.” ().

Criminal Justice Journalists () is a national association of crime, court and prison writers, editors and producers.

Legal news: outstanding site that links you to top stories involving courts, suits and issues. Often provides original documents online

Courts online-including state federal and appeals connections:

Court sites-every state/many counties

America Most Wanted

Police Departments

Child Predators

Scanner Frequencies

Federal Courts online

AboutTerrorism-a one stop website for journalists with Q and A about terrorism issues, groups and policy.

The website () of the Police Executive Research Forum, a national association of law enforcement bosses from large cities and based in Washington, D.C., has convenient links to most important criminal justice agencies. PERF's site also has scores of web links to the departments of its members, as well as research reports on topics such as racial profiling.

The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press website () offers several good tools for journalists, including a section on access to electronic records and a helpful state-by-state guide to shield laws and reporter privilege. The RCFP site offers information on access to public and private property for journalists, as well as a thorough FOIA primer. Its section entitled Tapping Officials' Secrets offers a state-by-state information guide.

Also, National Criminal Justice Reference Service searches 1,500 publications.

Juvenile Court laws-a state by state guide:

What are your rights as a reporter to get into public places and/or private places

Hatewatch –monitors hate crimes

Campus crime stats from US Education Dept.

Prisoner Lookup for every state and many counties-one megasite

A listing of every state Corrections Department-many states now have “offender locators” and parole dates for prisoners.

A website for Prison Administrators which includes hot topics-lots of story ideas

This is a site that monitors Supreme Court and Appeals Courts matters-collects stories from around the country daily.

The site is run by attorney Howard Bashman of Philadelphia

Sports Specific

[pic]A headline and link to sports pages in newspapers nationwide includes regional breakouts –another collection

[pic]Bad Jocks is like The Smoking Gun only for sports

A huge collection of Women Sports resources by sport

Journal of Quantitative Analysis in Sports

A Basketball Rumor site

A Football Rumor Site

NCAA Statistics page

|Fall |Winter |Spring |

|Football |Men's Basketball |Baseball |

|Men's Soccer |Women's Basketball |Softball |

|Women's Soccer |Men's Ice Hockey |Men's Lacrosse |

|Women's Volleyball |Women's Ice Hockey |Women's Lacrosse |

|  |

|Archived Team-by-Team Final Statistics |

|(Search by student-athlete, coach or team) |

More statistics than anybody could ever need:

|Baseball Sites |

|Baseball- All you really need |

|The Baseball Engineering Home Page |

|Baseball Statistics from CNN/SI |

|Japanese Baseball |

|John Skilton's Baseball Links |

|MLB History |

|MLB Rulebook |

|SABR: The Society for American Baseball Research |

|Sean Lahman's Baseball Archive |

|Total Baseball |

|Basketball |

|Current NBA Stats |

|NCAA Final Four |

|Cycling |

|Union Cycliste Internationale |

|Fencing |

|United States Fencing Association |

|Football |

|NFL History |

|NFL Statistics |

|Quarterback Rating Formula |

|Golf |

| Tournaments & Results |

|GolfWeb |

|Horse Racing |

|Breeders Cup Stats |

|Kentucky Derby Stats |

|Hockey |

|NHL Players' Association stats |

|Goalie Statistics |

|Olympics |

|Official Olympics Site |

|Soccer |

|Soccer Links |

|World Cup Soccer |

|Tennis |

|ATP Tour Player Statistics |

|WTA Tour Rankings |

|Volleyball |

|Volleyball Worldwide |

Publications

Published articles dealing with sports statistics.

Sports Data

Links to sites containing data for several professional and amateur sports.

Sports Pages

A collection of websites with general news and information about sports. Also, a page of Official Team Websites for pro teams!

Statistics on the Web

Links to academic departments, conferences, employers and more!

Sports Statistics as a Career

Information about our most frequently asked question

A collection of ballparks and stadiums in America

Database for NBA teams

A collection of significant golf courses worldwide

A collection of surfing information including webcams

An exhaustive pro football reference page going back decades

The exhaustive pro hockey database site

Website that monitors high school and college scouting for sports includes some video

Website that monitors college recruiting

[pic] The watering Hole for sports journalists to chat

Military Resources

Google’s government search engine

List of US Naval ships mailing addresses from the US Navy

's personnel finder

News about chemical, biological and nuclear weapons from Global Security Newswire

Department of Defense site

Jane’s Defense Weekly-an authoritative voice outside the government

The Pentagon

Department of Defense Almanac a vast resource with links to all branches of the military, some of which you have never heard of.

Special search engine that just looks at 1-million military pages

Economics

You can use this handy calculator to compare the costs of living in U.S. and selected Canadian cities. Find demographic information from government statistics bureaus in Australia or Canada.

The definitive one-stop source for information about Latin American nations can be found by visiting LANIC at the University of Texas.

Download population, housing or economic data for any community in the U.S. from the Census Bureau.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics has made a variety of useful national economic data available through its site. The "Economy at a Glance" section offers monthly employment, inflation and growth numbers for the past 14 months. The "Data" section offers access to more detailed BLS timeseries employment data.

Find an expert to help you on a business story

Examine information about the nation's taxpayers from the Internal Revenue Service.

The Population Reference Bureau provides population resources and world population data.

Useful and Fun

[pic]This site collects stories and data about amusement ride accidents and deaths.

A site where people post pictures from cell phones or their personal collections. Includes sorting by tags/topics

-if you are starting from scratch on a subject and need to find out about it fast, this is a great way to start.

Very useful calendar site-what is the date of Easter two years from now? How many days are there between this date and that date and so on.

Create an FOI letter to most government agencies with a few clicks

The 100 Most Misspelled Words used by journalists

The 100 Most Often Mispronounced Words

Find a rhyme. Type in a word and you get results instantly

Find out what acronyms and abbreviations stand for

News for Nerds-Slashdot-believe me, this is the place that geeks get their news about web stuff

Cnet-another Internet front edge site which is a little less nerdy than Slashdot-always out front on stories

Iping tool-will call you and remind you of appointments, wakeup calls, will give you a wakeup call and read you news headlines. You program it.

The most popular search words on the web-ranked weekly by Lycos

Search engine that searches thousands of full text books online

Who is linked to whom on the web

The Lost Remote-all about convergence

Editor and Publisher Magazine

Journalism Ethics Guidelines-Written by Poynter’s Steele and Tompkins for RTNDF

Investigative Reporters and Editors (IRE)

also try by Jonathan Olsen

Background information on any city or town in the US

Online Maps from National Geographic You can put in just about any city in the world and get a map of it, even street maps. There are also historical maps, railroad maps, battlefield maps Check it out

Government agencies: There are several bipartisan and respected sources of analysis in the federal government. For budgetary issues, the Congressional Budget Office ().

For management issues, the General Accounting Office (). CBO and GAO sites are both searchable.

Theme Park Insider- a website that monitors theme park safety

The American Fact finder-from the US Census Bureau

Can We Tape? A state by state listing of laws about how and when it is legal for you to tape a phone conversation or an undercover conversation from Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press

MSNBC’s Jonathan Dube’s site includes tons of search engines, online news and journalist resources

In some states you can search vital records such as birth and death online some of the records are for pay, but can be worth it if you do not have time to wait for government agencies to respond, and often government searches cost you money too. So online can actually be cheaper.

[pic]The Smoking Gun specializes in finding actual documents from court filings, government archives and FOI requests

6,000 Live Cameras around the world

The site header says, “Are you sick of posting URLs in emails only to have it break when sent causing the recipient to have to cut and paste it back together? Enter a URL into the text field and the site creates a tiny URL that will not break in email postings and never expires.”

[pic] Hottest Words on the web The Lycos 50 and Yahoo’s Buzz List

What is everybody else looking at on the web? you can watch what key words other people are putting in-live. Refreshes every 15 seconds. Includes a filtered and unfiltered version. Choose carefully, the unfiltered version is no-holds-barred and gets pretty weird.

How much do people working in any occupation earn? See the Bureau of Labor Statistics charts

Day Care Inspections-may states put these online, searchable by facility and owner

Terrafly-fly over and zoom in on any address.

Investigate businesses-use the Better Business Bureau site to investigate their standing with BBB

I need an expert NOW- 11,000 professors listed by areas of expertise, emails and phone numbers. These experts WANT to help that is why they signed up to be on profnet. Here is some advice on how journalists use profnet.

Rapdict a dictionary for rap words and lyrics.

: Who is John Doe? Investigative Tools From the Duff Wilson (Seattle Times) Reporter’s Desktop, this is a simple list of resources you can access to get personal information about almost anyone in the United States. It is a fantastic tool to learn how to systematically investigate anyone.

Other expert sites

Ask a Linguist Ask A Reporter Ask Jeeves Answer Point

Ask Joan of Art (Smithsonian) Ask the Experts (refdesk)

Capitol Questions :Ask The ExpertExpertCentral Experts Exchange Pitsco's Ask an Expert Page

A nice collection of specialized search engines

Encyclopedia of Computers Encyclopedia of Mythology

Encyclopedia of Philosophy Encyclopedia of Religion Encyclopedia of Science

Junk Science and Hoax Busters

– a one stop shopping center to search for myths and legends

Archeological Hoaxes:

Computer Virus Hoaxes:

Don't Spread That Hoax:

Famous Hoaxes:

Health Hoax:

Junk Science:

Myths and Legends:

Skeptic's Dictionary:

Urban Legends:

UFOs:

Viruses, Worms and Trojan Horses:  

For-Pay Sites

Lexis-Nexis () -- The journalists' survival site for archived stories and clippings. The site also, for a fee, gives you government records and civil court

AutoTrackXP this is a favorite among investigative reporters and often is worth the price if you need the information fast. () -- more than 4 billion public records, including names and addresses, vehicle registrations, drivers license information, business reports, corporate and business information, booking and arrest information, criminal records, trademarks, bankruptcies, phone numbers, liens and judgments, property ownership and professional licenses.

DataQuick () -- Sells real estate information online including valuation, sales, ownership records and titles. A lot of this information is available free through your county clerk’s office but this is fast. You pay for speed.

VitalChek You can buy birth, death, marriage and divorce papers through these guys from the states. Of course you could go directly to the states but again you are paying for speed.

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