Wayne F.

Reader's Digest, published in dozens of languages and in multiple editions, is a perennially ubiquitous magazine publication that's been around for almost 100 years. I grew up finding a copy in almost every doctor or dentist office, and my mom was an avid subscriber.

It's always been packed with quizzes, a joke section, feature articles, and an excerpt from a novel. The format today appears to not have changed much but of course now most features and articles are available on the internet, and there is much competition in the publishing industry, with many other places to get your reading on. Yet this mainstay doesn't appear to be going away anytime soon. It still deserves a read.

GovTrack is an open data-type website which uses government community data to track federal legislation, and information about your representatives & senators in Congress, including voting records, and original research on bills and votes. You can search by legislator or by subject, to get the information on specific lawmakers or legislation. This site should be a must-have bookmark for activists or anyone looking for the latest information regarding specific bills in Congress.

This site has been useful to me several times. There are other sites that offer you a paid service to download & print legal forms, but this site is totally free. There are hundreds of legal documents in dozens of categories to choose from, available to download & print as. Pdf documents.

It's about time I gave Brightstarprotect some props. They offer protection plans & process claims with several phone carriers.

I received a refurbished iPhone with a hardware problem (bad wi-fi chip). Contacted this company, described the issue, & they provided me a case number, had me ship in the defective device, and I received a replacement - all within a week, with no problems. Great, courteous, fast service. I'm only surprised not to see any other reviews on Sitejabber.

This free service site offers the ability to take any uploaded image and blur the selected face (or area) then download and use the doctored image. This service comes in handy if you want to distribute a photo but don't want your face (or the subject's face) to be recognizable. It's free (Although donations are accepted), simple to use, and the original photo remains intact.

This business information site gives snapshots of history, revenue, number of employees, competitors, news & other tidbits of info on millions of businesses, large and small. It offers a daily opinion poll in different business sectors, and free user-customized emails like a "daily snapshot" of selected companies, which I actually look forward to in my inbox.

Owler is a useful site for anyone in business leadership positions and anyone who wants to stay abreast of the latest happenings in any industry. I personally like the snapshot of technology companies, which lists every single piece of info on new technology from all the tech companies.

We've all been there, just like Donald Trump forgetting the words to "God Bless America" we struggle to remember the lyrics to that favorite oldie but goodie. I use lyrics.com, which claims to be the 'web's largest resource for music, songs, & lyrics' and is a repository for thousands of songs, searchable by artist or song title. Very cool.

Have you ever wanted to get a previous version of a web application or software but didn't know where to look? Well, oldversion.com carries archives of download links for thousands of programs, from Adobe to Zbar. I didn't find any previous Apple OS versions, but for Windows aficionados there are tons of downloads available.

This site is ideal for anyone with older computers that can't accept newer versions of software.

This is an interesting site that has various categories like travel, food, movies & books in thousands of user-curated lists. Many lists are rankings for the top 10,50, or 100 in these categories. You can even create a to-do list. A scoring system allows users to earn points for creating lists. Since most of the lists are not certifiable no claims to authenticity can be made, but some lists do come from reputable sources.

Pinger offers a service app called TextFree available for androids or iPhone. Upon registration, you can pick or be assigned a phone number in whatever area code you choose. The app can then be used for text or phone calls. The free version has ads, and gives 60 minutes of talk time with unlimited texting (you still have to pay for SMS service). You can also earn additional free minutes by clicking on the ads.

This service is cool if you want to mask your phone number & don't want anyone to know your real number, because the recipient can only see the textfree number. You still need cellular or wireless service to use it.

I stumbled across this site that contains hundreds of public domain music tracks in dozens of genres. No registration is required, and ownloads are free using the Creative Commons licensing (which allows use for any non-profit, personal, & non-commercial use). The site only asks for donations, which is optional.

This is the home of the Internet Information Center. You can go directly to https://internic.net/whois and find out some basic information (owner, address, etc.) about any website domain name on the internet. Comes in handy if you're researching a website's origins.

Internic was the predecessor to what is called the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) which is responsible for "coordinating the maintenance and procedures related to internet website namespaces" according to Wikipedia.

If you've ever looked for a place to download sound effects you can use for ringtones, add to videos, or add to a performance, freesound.org is the place to go. The downloads are free after you register, because freesound acts as a sort of clearinghouse & provides the audio free through Creative Commons.

The sounds are licensed for any personal, non-commercial use.

There are many social media management apps with features having the ability to schedule posts from multiple accounts on multiple social media platforms & manage twitter follows/unfollows.

I still occasionally use other social media management apps like this in running multiple accounts, but Crowdfire is my favorite. It's graphically pleasant, operates smoothly, and is easy to learn & use. I've used it for four years and have never had any technical issues. The basic service is free. I haven't used the premium/pay versions, but basic is all you need for a staff of one.

This sponsor-driven site is a pretty decent, but an overly comprehensive source of basic info on educational institutions. It offers lists of what it deems the "best" online as well as brick & mortar colleges & universities. This site is so jam-packed with page after page of rankings, links, and features that it seems like overkill and you can spend hours here doing dizzying research on schools, sometimes going in circles.

Bestschools has expanded over the years to include a breakdown of career descriptions & degree programs. Many of the schools appear to have paid for advertising on the site. Overall, it's still a fairly good place to start for information.

Have you ever wanted to register for a website but didn't feel secure giving your real name? Well, here's a site that allows you to generate a legitimately looking name, based on your input. It's kind of fun to see who your internet alter-ego would be. This name can also be used with disposable email address sites like guerillamail.com (check out my review about that site: https://sitejabber.com/reviews/guerrillamail.com#1)

I can't remember how I stumbled across Playing For Change, but I was initially mesmerized, then enamored with the music from this movement. It's all about using music to bring people together from all around the world.

Playing For Change brings hundreds of musicians from dozens of countries together in videos to create classic music and videos like you've never heard before. The cover of classics like "Stand By Me" and Lennon's "Imagine" are truly astounding, and I promise they will amaze you. You can also find the videos on YouTube with millions of views.

I'm old enough to remember getting an annual little pamphlet from the Social Security Administration that contained how much I had earned in my lifetime from my very first year of earnings until the present. Well that same statement is available online. It also includes the ability to apply for benefits or a replacement card (card replacement feature not available in all states).

Like most people, I protect my number and SS information like my bank account. But if you trust online banking, you should have no problem here. The SSA has to protect our data and have encryption in place, along with two-step authentication to secure your account, and I've been confidently using this site since it first went online.

If you've ever entered an email address on a website and received an endless legion of spam emails, this may be a way to avoid that in the future. Disposable email addresses are used to register with and receive confirmation emails from any website. You can also send somewhat legitimately-looking emails from this site.

Guerrillamail also operates as lasersharks.com. This should not be used for a site you really want to get legitimate emails from. A cool tool for fighting spam in your real email.

This is a nifty little one-page site that has only one purpose - to give you the carrier for any phone number you enter. That's it. Comes in handy sometimes.