I am listening to Pandora radio (www.pandora.com) Christmas music as I write this final column of 2009.The music certainly sets the mood. It’s nice to have Pandora at one’s fingertips, free, no file-swapping, nothing illegal about it. Choose between classical, jazz, swinging, or other genres of music and create your own station.

Screaming Santa (http://screamingsanta.ning.com/). After you’ve tuned in to Pandora, then set your sights to Screaming Santa, where it’s fun to look through the “albums” of photos of kids who are very unhappy when they encounter Santa, often for the first time. To be truthful, some of those Santas really ARE scary looking. But not only weepy children featured, adorable and smiling children with Santa add to the mix. My vote for best stays with the screamers, because you cannot pose scared children.

Classic Showbiz (http://twitter.com/ClassicShowbiz). Did you read that URL carefully? It’s from Twitter, for heaven’s sakes. I usually do not troll Twitter, so I imagine I am missing out on lots of good stuff to tell you about. This tweeter has good stuff, namely links to episodes of old-time television Christmas shows. Such as the Walton’s 2-part episode. Remember the kinder, gentler days (1977) of John-boy and his siblings? Nostalgia abounds through the links at this Twitterer’s site. Bob Hope, Shari Lewis, I Love Lucy, Mr. Magoo and a bunch of additional vintage fare is waiting for you to access it. Go ahead and take that walk down memory lane—you don’t need cable television, just a fast Internet connection and plenty of spare time.

North Pole (www.northpole.com). This is a kiddie wonderland that can keep youngsters from preschool to sixth grade distracted from searching the house for hidden presents. One of the nicest parts is where you plug in a child’s name and some additional information and get a personalized, printable Christmas story that will thrill the younger set. And, you can choose from three themes: Elf for a Day; Christmas Eve Cleanup, or North Pole Christmas Party. Shucks, since they are free, you can choose all three and have plenty of bedtime reading in addition to The Night Before Christmas. If your child forgot to tell Santa absolutely everything he or she wanted in the letter sent to him, he can write another one online and get a quick reply from the man in the red suit. And if that is not all, there are lots and lots of recipes for the grownups, thanks to a link to Mrs. Claus’ cookbook. The North Pole was a fun site to visit, and no one needs a coat to visit there.

Christmas Party Games (www.bowtieproducts.com/christmas_party_games_and_puzzles.). If the holdiday gatherings you attend are dull, then you can pep them up with the group games explained here. They certainly are family-friendly, and that’s important. Some are quizzes whose subject matter is Christmas carols. Follow a special link to access the answers.

As they say, Time Flies When You’re Having Fun. We have reached the last issue of 2009, and everyone at the Beacher is ready for some rest and recreation. Have a wonderful holiday and see you back here in mid-January.

We’re coming close to the end of 2009, and as usual, the time has flown by. Last week I began the task of reviewing all the year’s columns to pick those I consider to be worthy of mentioning again in a modified Top Ten list. While going through the dozens of sites I found in 2009, I also gathered up a few new ones to mention. Let’s look at them:

Let’s Say Thanks (www.letssaythanks.com). Since I did not learn about this until after I wrote the Thanksgiving week CyberScribbles column, I’m telling you about it now, in time for Christmas delivery. You can send a free greeting card to a soldier in the Armed Forces to let them know you appreciate their service to America. You can choose from at least eight or ten designs, drawn by school students, and you can pick a ready-made written greeting or you can write your own. The main thing is to let someone who is serving our country and far away from home know that we are thinking of them. All of us like getting mail, and we can enjoy giving some cheer thanks to this website.

Traffic Wise (www.in.gov/indot.carsprogram.org/). This (Indiana) state-sponsored website is designed to help motorists navigate roads easier. It lets you know which roads are under construction, where you’ll find detours, and how to avoid delays and major headaches. I suppose this web effort is Hoosiers’ tax money at work, but it is a welcome sight for road warriors.

Now back to my 2009 Top Ten list. Last week I featured Gasbuddy.com, ThePaperboy.com, StillTasty.com, BargainBriana.com, and CriminalSearches.com. Here are the rest:

Red Pen (http://redpeninc.blogspot.com). This is the home of one of several online grammar and spelling nazis who scour sites for glaring errors. We all have our pet peeves. My current peeve is using the word “less” where the word “fewer” belongs. Just one of my little quirks. So, it’s nice to know that there are others out there, notably the folks at Red Pen, who think along the same lines.

TGISFW (www. Tgisfw..com). The initials stand for “Thank Gilligan its safe for work.” That means you will waste mucho time at this website. But hey—we all need diversion. This is clean diversion, and that is a rare commodity on the ‘net these days.

Wayback Machine (www.internetarchive.org). If you are a long-time surfer, and I mean going all the way back to the mid-nineties, you might be missing that clunky old website you tagged in your bookmark file of your first computer. Well, guess what? It is entirely possible to take that trip back to memory lane if you can remember the name or URL of that fave. That is what the Internet Archive provides. And that’s not all—you will find open source audio and video files you can download free. Got a hankering for some old Grateful Dead music? This is the place to find them. Best of all, they’re free to download.

Art Studio Chalkboard (http://studiochalkboard.evansville.edu). When I posted this the first time, I had the URL wrong. If you gave up the first time, here is your second chance to kibbutz on art classes and dip your brush into a new hobby. This site is for all levels of artists, and it has won numerous awards.

Guess I will stop with Top Nine this year. In next week’s issue, which is the Beacher’s last of 2009, I’ll tell you about entertaining Christmas-related sites.

I’ve given this blog a new look. Yes, that’s a photo of the dunes in Beverly Shores that I took several years ago, when I still used a film camera. The only thing the masthead has in common with website reviews is that it reflects where the column first appears–in The Beacher, of course!

For the first time ever I spent most of Cyber Monday on the internet, searching for bargains. Since I was not in the market for electronics, my shopping adventure did not lead anywhere. Which is probably a good thing, since I have been exhorting the message about shopping locally in this column for years. Thus, I betrayed my own advice and wasted much of a day glued to my monitor, all for naught.

What I did not do, and should have, was to go back to columns I wrote in March about finding coupons, rebates, discount codes and alerts for good bargains. I would have discovered that Jet Blue was offering excellent prices for one day only on Cyber Monday for one-way travel. The best Cyber Monday deals may have been hidden from the masses of online shoppers, whereas those insider bargain-hunter websites would have been a better choice than a Google or Bing search.

All this brings me to the topics I will be covering this week and next. I’m taking a second look at all the websites I’ve mentioned here since January, and I’m picking my favorites from each month’s listings. (All of the listings are archived by month at http://cyberscribbles.wordpress.com).

Just one thing I want to do before getting into this week’s site reviews. I need to apologize to those of you who used Care2.com to send cards, based on my recommendations. Actually, the site is fine and the e-cards are great. But unless you want an emailbox full of messages from Care2, use a dummy email address before signing up for their free service. Okay. Let’s get on with this week’s reviews.

February 2009

Two websites I mentioned popped out at me right away. The extremely useful Gasbuddy.com is a money saver, if you don’t mind driving a few more blocks to find the lowest gas prices in your area. Bless those local spotters who take the time to log their findings on Gasbuddy for the rest of us to use.

Another site that I use frequently, and that you will like if you are an avid newspaper junkie—is ThePaperboy.com. If I want to know what’s happening in another part of the country, I can have The Paperboy lead me to links to local papers just about anywhere. And by the way, the Beacher is listed there.

March 2009

If I had remembered to check BargainBriana.com, I would have known about that Jet Blue offer on Cyber Monday only. But for as long as I have been writing this column, I have visited thousands of websites and just cannot remember all of them (nor do I bookmark that many of them). That’s why having the archive on the CyberScribbles blog is so useful.

StillTasty.com is another useful site that I had forgotten. It tells you how long it’s safe to keep certain foodstuffs before they go bad.. Another site that fits the usefulness category is CriminalSearches.com, if you are an employer or are perhaps thinking about pursuing a relationship with someone you just met. Be warned that this is a bare bones effort, in beta. It’s free, and that’s nice. But if you are really serious, you’ll probably need to dig much deeper, or use a fee-based background check service.

We didn’t get too far this week. I see that I’m out of room. Next week I will continue with what I consider the Best of 2009 sites mentioned in this column this year.

So. You have survived Black Friday and you have your Christmas decorations hung. Now it’s time to tackle the Christmas card list. Are you going to continue the quaint custom of sending a real, touchable card that gets a stamp and is sent through the postal service, or are you going to send greetings via email? This week’s column addresses both choices.

I found some links through one of my cyber research sources (Streamings) that showcases all sorts of unusual, clever, or tacky mailbox conversions. If mail carriers passed these every day, no doubt their jobs would be more fun. I can imagine these whimsical mailboxes filled with dozens of Christmas cards. And yet, the snail mail version of seasonal card exchanges appears to be an endangered species. Anyway, enjoy browsing through the links to unusual mailboxes.

I usually receive at least one Christmas card—I’m talking the animated email version—each holiday season. I checked over at About.com and found a list of many, many email card sites devoted to the Christmas season. I reviewed several of them, many I had not known about, and list them for your convenience. Most, but not all of these email card sites have a “free” section of cards, but the idea is to subscribe for a fee to use the service’s best cards. The artists who create the animated or otherwise painterly e-cards deserve to be compensated for their skills. My guess is that many of these artists will see an increase in business as more and more people choose the e-card route to sending season’s greetings to friends and family.

Ugly Mailboxes (http://uglymailbox.com). Blogger Linda takes pictures of intriguing mailboxes and then posts them on her blog. She calls them “ugly,” and true, some are. Others, in my opinion, are very clever works of art. By the way, I like this blog’s banner title, and I’m glad someone has taken the initiative to post a phenomenon that may be extinct fifty years from now.

Sam’s Mailbox Picture Collection (http://sblom.com/mailbox). More fun mailboxes to view.

There I Fixed It (http://thereifixedit.com/tag/mailbox/). You might think this has to do with hardware and tools, but you will be surprised.

Care To Cards (www.care2.com/ecards). Send an e-card and help a nonprofit in the process. Lots of choices of free cards here. (Thanks to Tian for alerting me to this site).

Jacquie Lawson Cards (www.jacquielawson.com). Count yourself lucky if you have received one of her animated e-cards. They are delightful. You can subscribe and send any of your choice for a $12 annual fee. You can send your chosen card to as many people as you want, too.

Spirit Cards (ww.spiritcardcenter.com). Lovely, peaceful, and free. Thanks again to Tian for telling me about this site.

For many, finding a job has become one of this year’s biggest challenges. Not being an authority on the subject, I can’t really say how important having access to a computer is to a successful job search. I only can guess, and my guesstimate would be high. Career counselors talk about the importance of preparation for an interview. That includes researching the company, researching current salaries, and so much more. Here is where the internet becomes such an important resource.

Just a few clicks and one can find encyclopedic amounts of information about prepping for an interview. Same goes for the actual job hunt. A handful of job search sites can spew out dozens and dozens of job listings. Surely you’ve noticed that your favorite daily newspaper’s Sunday classifieds have shrunk. That is where access to a computer and internet connection come in. Most libraries have internet access, with the added plus of a reference librarian who can direct you to books (yes, books) that can help, too.

Meanwhile, I’ve attempted to screen a half-dozen or more job websites to help job seekers save time. Here are some alternatives to the biggest names in online searches: Monster, Career Builder, and Hot Jobs.

Simply Hired (www.simplyhired.com). You can search thousands of job boards in one place, thanks to this website. I liked what I saw very much. It gives company descriptions, trends, salaries, and when each job was posted. It also has statistics that can be helpful for those who are broadening their search outside their regional area. Find out what cities are noted for the highest job growth, or lowest unemployment rate, or highest average income. Learn also where the lowest average home costs are, currently. PC Magazine ranked Simply Hired among the Top 100 Job Sites and I can see why. It has the world’s largest job search engine and has data for fifteen countries outside the U.S. Put this among your top five sites. It’s worth checking out.

Indeed (www.indeed.com). Plug in your “what” and “where” and be prepared for a fast response. Try it.

Hound (www.hound.com). Stay away from this website. I say that based on what my Web of Trust (WOT) application from Firefox told me. Hound is supposed to have a poor reputation. Just remember that there are plenty of other job search sites that are more reliable.

Career Journal (www.careerjournal.com). This is the Wall Street Journal’s contribution to an online job search and information site. It is very well done, and chock-full of helpful advice.

Freshjobs (www.freshjobs.com).Its postings are no older than one week old, and that is good to know. However, when I plugged in “Education” in “Indiana” the search came up with zero results. That did not give me much confidence in this site.

Job Search Shortcut (www.jobsearchshortcut.com). Mark this one as a keeper and must-see. It gives you direct links to 720 thousand company job listing pages in 41 metro areas. It saves time going directly to the business’ web site, and you are assured that you have not ended up on some renegade site.

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Sorry, readers. There was no CyberScribbles column in the November 19 Beacher. My fault.

I had been away from my computer for more than a week and I did not miss it. I consider that a good sign. However, I had to find a computer to use to print out my airline boarding pass while I was on vacation. All the fuss made me think about the current state of internet addiction in the United States. I did a little research, and I unearthed the following information.

Winston Ross’ Homeless Brother (www.newsweek.com/id/216911). Ross, who is a reporter for a West Coast newspaper, wrote an article for Newsweek about his brother’s internet addiction. It is an interesting read, and anyone who might be wondering if they—or someone close to them—might be addicted to their computer might want to read the article. Ross’ unemployed, homeless brother lives in a tent. He has use of computers available to him at a nearby university, where he spends ten or more hours a day. In the Newsweek article, Ross stated that China and South Korea have declared internet additiction as their number one public health threat. Can the U.S., among other countries, be far behind? Ross listed intervention resources in his article that can be found on the internet. I checked them out, so read on.

PC Moderator (www.pcmoderator.com). This is an online timer that oversees the amount of time one spends online. It is not available for Apple computers, however. The PC Moderator would come in handy for those who are disciplined enough to log off after setting it to the maximum time for online activities.

Center for Internet & Technology Addiction (www.virtual-addiction.com). Dr. Dave Greenfield, based in West Hartford, CT, has information, including a quiz, to help determine if your online habits create a problem for you. He offers several types of counseling.

Center for Internet Addiction (www.netaddiction.com). This spot has been around since 1995. I liked the abundance of information available here. In addition to a list of signs and symptoms of internet addiction, you will find a number of self tests. They include the IAT (Internet Addiction Test), a quiz for obsessive online gaming, cybersex addiction, compulsive online gambling, online auction addiction, plus a partners addiction test and a parent-child addiction test. The Center for Internet Addiction asserts that one American in eight suffers from problematic internet use.

ReSTART (www.netaddictionrecovery.com/). ReSTART is the first U.S. Rehab facility for internet addiction. This is a 45-day program where clients live in natural surroundings in the Pacific Northwest—coincidentally not too far from Microsoft headquarters. The website gives an overview of the program and views of the grounds, and also provides another addiction survey. The rehab facility, named Heavensfield, has not filled to capacity yet. Maybe they should open a wing for compulsive text messagers and cell phone users.

Identity Fraud (www.myidscore.com). Unrelated to internet addiction, this website is a service of a security company. Answer a few questions and you will receive instantly your id fraud vulnerability score. Scores are from 1 through 999, with the higher numbers showing that one is more susceptible to identity fraud. When you have found your score, you can click on several links for additional information.

I was watching an informercial featuring Sixties music when the idea came to me to look up websites devoted to that tumultuous decade. I thought it would be easy. It wasn’t until I changed my search to “60’s memories” before anything interesting showed up. Here is what I came up with for the bell-bottomed, tie-dyed, Beatles-loving Make Love Not War generation. It’s nice to know that not all of us tripped out at Woodstock, because we were too busy raising children or engaged with our first jobs, or were sending care packages to relatives and friends in the military.

A Sixties Jukebox (http://moreoldfortyfives.com/TakeMeBackToTheSixties.). A big thank you to my friend, Charlotte, who sent me this link. If you don’t want to pay for the set of c.d.’s advertised on television, this might be the next best thing. Listen to Donovan, Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, the Beatles (of course), and dozens more of your favorite groups from decades past. If you have sufficient memory on your computer, you can leave the jukebox playing as you surf over to other Sixties websites.

60’s Museum (www.60smuseum.org/). Someone from McHenry, IL started this website, but I am not sure if the project is still alive or not. The objective was to have a bricks-and-mortar place somewhere in the Northwest burbs. Despite its lack of updating, this website shows care and quality. It is worth a look.

Sixties City (www.sixtiescity.com). This is a British version of the 60’s nostalgia phenomenon. It has less relevance to us stateside because many of the references, outside of the Beatles, are unfamiliar.

Woodstock Story (www.woodstockstory.com). There has been a lot of talk about Woodstock this year because 2009 marks the 40^th anniversary of the iconic event. This site is also promoting West Fest (October 25) in San Francisco. Once again, we midwesterners get pushed out of the loop. East coast, West coast, and then there is Willie Nelson’s Farm Aid. I guess that’s the midwest’s nod to the big, big concerts.

The Old Hippie’s Groovy Site (http://members.aye.net/~hippie). This site proves that old Hippies never die, they just adjust to new social conditions and take up new causes that need to be addressed. This site is full of rants.

Hippydom (http://hippy.com/hippiedom.). This offers a fairly thorough look at Hippie culture, including a large section devoted to the Merry Pranksters—Ken Kesey’s band of tripsters.

Jeffs60s (www.jeffs60s.com). Jeff is an ordinary guy who happens to be a writer and graphic artist who has put together a visually interesting look at the day-to-day life of a sixties school child. His collection of memories are fun to read by those of us who lived those years. It answers a lot of those “remember when?” questions.

It happens every year at this time. I go through each calendar month without mentioning anything relevant about it until we get to Halloween. Then, for some reason, I find myself scouring Halloween sites to tell you about. I like to find new ones, when possible, and often the websites I may have cited last year disappear into the land of the lost. My list is not very long this year, so I expanded to include November 1st’s Day of the Dead.

Virtual Carve a Pumpkin (http://carveapumpkin.bhg.com/). Say you want to get into the spirit of Halloween without making a lot of fuss, or mess. Here is your chance to “carve” a pumpkin and show it to the world. You will be given a half-dozen choices each for pumpkin color, eyes, nose, and mouth, and you can combine them in any number of ways. The only downside is that you will have no pumpkin seeds to roast when you’re done.

Extreme Pumpkins (www.extremepumpkins.com). Browse the photo gallery of some amazing, orig carvings here. I have come to dislike those stencil-cut jack-o-lanterns, but these extreme pumpkins are definitely worth taking time to see. There are how-to’s in case you want to tackle a carving project. Good luck.

Pumpkin Gutter (www.pumpkingutter.com). Scott Cummins creates interesting dimensional carvings, plus he provides peculiar and fascinating facts about the orange fruit.

Costume by the Stars (http://astrodispatch.com). Here’s a twist on how to decide what to wear on Halloween. Find out what planet rules your ascendant, and then dress according to that planet. For example, if it’s Mars, you could dress as a warrior. My planet is Neptune, so I might choose some fantasy figure, or just drape myself in yards and yards of a glittery fabric.

Unique Costume Ideas (http://crafts.suite101.com/). Look for a link to “101 Halloween Idieas” and you’ll be all set. You could dress up as a cloudy sky, and all it takes is some cotton balls and a few other items. There are dozens of links to very interesting Halloween websites, so this is a great jumping off point. I found myself on a page describing Halloween coffins, and yes, you can buy several varieties of them for your yard, or party. And if you want more links to pumpkin carving sites, you will find them here.

Day of the Dead (www.inside-mexico.com/featuredead). This site provides a nice description of the celebration that takes place across Mexico. There is a nice folk art gallery, too. You will want to learn more about those sugary confections made to honor relatives and friends who have passed away. Most importantly, you’ll learn that there is nothing macabre about this day of remembrance.

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