Category: Research (Page 2 of 2)

The Wayback Machine

April 18, 2022 / Jesse Mueller / 0 Comments

The Internet Archive is more than just a free online library. Another great resource of theirs is the The Wayback Machine.

The Wayback Machine is crawling the internet, constantly, like Google and other search engines. But this creation backs up archival copies of websites as it crawls. And you may use it yourself, to see what a website looked like at some time in the past.

You might just use this for the novelty of seeing a website (Amazon? eBay?) from many years ago. But the research possibilities here can get serious. Some people use The Wayback Machine to find info that was changed or removed. You can copy the URL from any website, and paste it in to the Wayback Machine’s search field, to see what’s available from back in time.

And if you come to use this tool a lot, know that they also offer an Android and iOS app, as well as various browser extensions, also free for all to use.

National Day Calendar

December 17, 2021 / Jesse Mueller / 0 Comments

Did you know today (December 17) is National Ugly Christmas Sweater Day? It’s also National Maple Syrup Day and National Underdog Day.

With only 366 days in the year, every day is a recognized day to celebrate or remember something serious or silly. Or many things, depending on the day. Check out the National Day Calendar website to see what’s special about today!

The Native Land Website

October 11, 2021 / Jesse Mueller / 0 Comments

Happy Indigenous Peoples Day! The Native Land website is a wonderful research tool, for anyone interested in Native American or Indigenous Tribes of the world:

Native Land Digital

This website lets you explore the globe (or enter an address) to find a wealth of information about Indigenous Peoples and their history. You can find tribe names, boundary information, treaty-related history and links to modern websites of many tribes.

Whether you’re researching your own family history or teaching a future generation, this website may hold a ton of valuable information for you!

Weather Visualization Websites

October 10, 2021 / Jesse Mueller / 0 Comments

NOAA and Wunderground and TWC are plenty nice for weather info. But have you seen these sites? You may find them way more fascinating:

Please enjoy these weather tools, to view a bigger picture of our planet’s weather or to teach your kids about meteorology, or just to explore & relax!

Fall Foliage Prediction Maps

October 3, 2021 / Jesse Mueller / 2 Comments

I love maps. Some mapping geniuses have created these interactive fall foliage prediction maps. Now you can know when and where the autumn colors will be at their finest:

Smoky Mountains.com’s Fall Foliage Prediction Map

ExploreFall.com’s Fall Foliage Map

You might also find foliage maps specific to individual states at this link.

I hope these help with your travel plans this year and in the future. Happy Autumn, everybody!

HowManyOfMe.com

July 9, 2021 / Jesse Mueller / 0 Comments

Updated in 2023: I am sorry to say that the original HowManyOfMe.com website has gone down, and I can’t find any evidence of its return. Rumor has it that a Jeopardy contestant mentioned this site, and the ensuing web-traffic was more than the site creator could endure.

If HowManyOfMe.com is ever resurrected, I’ll update this post with news. For now, check out this similar site for name frequency data.

HowManyOfMe.com will tell you the frequency of occurrence for any name in the USA. Type in a name and it will report how many people in the US have that first name. Or a particular last name. Or even a combination of both names.

HowManyOfMe.com might just be a quick bit of entertainment. It boggles my mind to see that there are 85 other people in the states with my full name. But I can also see this being a useful tool for someone choosing a stage name or pseudonym.