Back in the mid-to-late 1990s, there was a local Portland internet service provider called Teleport, located inside the Spalding Building on Southwest Washington Street downtown. One of the employees there had a daily feature on Teleport's website called "World Wide Web Today", which he eventually made a standalone site called WebToday.
Many other locally-based, small ISPs existed at the time, alongside community-based non-profit "freenet" systems, and many of them had similar web pages or newsletters. Before sophisticated search engines and social media, those pages introduced users to many useful and fun resources one could find online.
This page serves as a homage to that tradition, and also as a way for me to share many of the cool things I find online outside the short lifespans of social media timelines.
This will be a very eclectic one, covering many different subject matters.
The newest entry is at the top.
You can browse through the front pages of newspapers from around the globe.
Today's Front Pages (Freedom Forum)
NTS is an ad-free music streaming from over 80 cities across the world.
Preev has been around for over a decade now, no one is yet to beat this simple user interface and ease of use. (You can also directly enter a URL like this, instead of using the pull-down menus: preev.com/ltc/eur).
While Google Maps provides bicycle route information, VeloPlanner is built for bicyclists. The map is based on OpenStreetMap.
Use this interactive map to see bike routes and trails in and around Portland, Oregon.
HebCal shows the dates of Jewish holy days, Shabbat candle-lighting times, parashat ha-shavuah, daf yomi, and more, as well as a simple converter between Gregorian and Hebrew dates.
This little website creates an instant, retro-style photo either from an uploaded picture or from a webcam.
Did you feel the ground shake?
This is another simple match-three game.
Not every country uses the A-to-F grading system. In Portugal (and Macau) a 20-scale grading is used. In some schools in Argentina, an "A" means a passing grade (aprobado), not an excellent grade. In Japan, a "5" is an equivalent of the "A" in the U.S. This handy tool can convert your grades earned abroad into the U.S. format.
These mobile apps are developed to circumvent censorship by combining the best of VPN, encryption, and DNS technologies. They are eady to use and no account signup is necessary.
In the United States, college textbooks have been very expensive for many decades. Students have long come up with different solutions to keep the costs down, such as textbook exchanges, textbook rentals, and used copies. Now there are textbooks that can be downloaded and used freely, and they are revolutionizing education.
Surveillance capitalism and hypertargeted ads are the games Meta plays when you use Facebook, Instagram, or Threads.
How to change your Meta privacy settings
This fun website replicates the good old fridge-magnet poetry! Not only that, you can share the exact positions on the "fridge door" so that your friends can continue making a poem!
History is full of boycotts, some of which have left permanent marks in our collective consciousness.
Major boycotts that changed history
The People's Union USA (which has called Feb. 28 a national day of consumer boycott).
This visualization platform shows the latest trends in COVID-19, RSV, and influenza throughout Oregon.
Oregon Respiratory Viral Pathogen Wastewater Monitoring Program (Oregon Health Authority)
CDC, despite the recent political changes at the top, continues to publish the national trends.
CDC National Wastewater Surveillance System
CDC National Respiratory and Enteric Virus Surveillance System
This interactive map shows the history of the world through time.
It is said that learning a new language is also about learning a new way of thinking. Therefore, speaking multiple languages can rewire one's brain and also change the ways one looks at the world. Linguists have long known this possibility and it is articulated in the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis. Linguist Suzette Haden Elgin tried to test this hypothesis by inventing Laadan, a feminist language.
With the recent censorship of certain parts of the Christopher Village LGBTQ+ history by the U.S. National Park Service, it is now up to the private NGOs connected to the Stonewall National Monument to provide the full story of the Stonewall Riot and the birth of the modern LGBTQ+ liberation movement.
Stonewall Forever is an interactive educational site
Stonewall Visitor Center is privately funded and is not subject to the Trump Executive Order.
Donate to the Stonewall Visitor Center
Educational videos produced by the Obama and Biden era Stonewall National Monument are still online
The Public Art Archive, a project of Creative West, is an interactive map of public art mainly in the United States but also abroad. The map features photos of the artworks, information about the artists, and accompanying artists' statements.
Charlie Sprinkman created "Everywhere is Queer" after driving over 80,000 miles in 40 states as a truck driver for an organic juice company.
An OPB article about Charlie Sprinkman
Aurorasaurus is a crowd-sourced map of aurora around the world. Users can report aurora sightings.
How to catch aurora (National Science Foundation)
On this anniversary of Oregon's admission into the United States, here are three great resources to learn about the Beaver State:
The Oregon Encyclopedia (Oregon Historical Society)
Oregon History Project (Oregon Historical Society)
Oregon Experience (Oregon Public Broadcasting)
A "food desert" is a place where access to affordable and healthful food is either limited or nonexistent. This may be a remote rural area or an inner city. The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) Economic Research Service (ERS) has compiled data from 2015 and visualized them as an interactive map.
USDA Food Access Research Atlas
Part 1 (2024-12-05 through 2025-01-29)
----
Copyright 2022-2025. Articles on this site may be used freely under the terms of the Cooperative Nonviolent Public License version 7 or the latest, whichever the newer (CNPL v7+). All other uses require the express permission of the author. See the contact page (on Gemini or WWW: willowashmaple.sbs/contact; on Gopher: gopher://willowashmaple.sbs:70/0/willowashmaple/contact) for email and other ways to get in touch.
----
