Internet Technology

Pauline Wallin, Ph.D.

Independent Practice
Camp Hill, PA 17011

Refdesk It is amazing how much data you'll find at your fingertips on this page. Bookmark it to have ready access to facts, news, reference tools, help sites and searchable data bases.

The Digital Librarian An alphabetical listing of dozens of topics, each with dozens more links when you click on the topic.

Excite's reference page

Yahoo's reference page

Galaxy An interesting collection

About.com Reference Search contains not only dictionaries and thesauri, but also quotations, famous speeches, street drug slang, encyclopedias and library catalogs.

Newstrawler. Conduct a parallel search of news services, magazines and general journal articles from around the world

Hotsheet. A directory of links to news, search engines, research tools and more

Infomine. This is a list of scholarly internet resource collections

zdnet.com A rich site for computer information, news, software and hardware reviews

Legal Search Engines

Legal Engine calls itself "Your starting point to online legal research." It includes links by topic, as well as by state and country. There are links to two major legal search engines: Findlaw and Lawcrawler.

At Law Guru you can conduct simultaneous searches on multiple legal resources.

The Law Engine is a well-organized collection of references to courts, law libraries, news stories and more.

Government and Legislation

GovSpot is a non-partisan government information portal to the Web. There are links to government agencies, polls, news items, documents and more.

At ProjectVote-Smart you can read about your legislators' backgrounds, issue positions, voting records, campaign finances and the performance evaluations made on them by over 100 conservative to liberal special interests. You can also write email to your candidates.

Mental Health Sites for the Lay Public

Many of the sites listed above can be useful to the lay public. 

Both Mental Health Net and About.com's Mental Health Resources  list not only written materials, but also forums and chat channels for people to particpate in online discussions.

The APA site, NIMH and the American Psychiatric Association all include consumer-oriented information at their sites

Yahoo's Mental Health section provides hundreds of links to various web sites and organizations.

John Grohol's Psych Central is a user-friendly site that invites interaction.

Clay Tucker-:Ladd's Psychological Self-Help is a huge, searchable and comprehensive online self-help manual

iVillage's AllHealth "mental emotional page" is aimed at women, and offers timely articles as well as message boards and scheduled on-line chats.

Support-group.com lists online resources to hundreds of bulletin boards, chats and links.  The site is organized alphabetically by disease/condition.

Custody Source is a collection of links organized by state.  It is aimed at parents involved in custody battles.

Divorce Net addresses the larger issues of divorce, including financial concerns, laws, custody and more in a searchable, state-specific database.

OTHER SITES OF INTEREST: SHOPPING, SHAREWARE, TECH SUPPORT AND OTHERS

Shopping Amazon.com and Barnes & Noble are well-known online bookstores. But you can use them for more than just ordering books. You can also search by author or topic if you're not sure what you want, or if you are doing a literature search of books.

Although Amazon and B&N give great service, their prices are not always the lowest. If price is important to you, the following sites will compare prices on books : EvenBetter, Addall, Best Book Buys. These "shopping bots" display book prices, inluding shipping, from multiple online merchants.

For comparison shopping for other products, try one of the general shopping bots. Some of the more popular ones include My Simon, Price Scan and Bottom Dollar. Also check out CNet's Shopper for price comparisons on computers, software and supplies. Most of the Search Engine portals and the Metasearch sites have links to online merchants. At Flamingo World you'll find a list of special deals and coupons from dozens of merchants on the web. My favorite merchants for computer supplies include Outpost.com (fair prices and free overnight shipping) and Discount Cartridge Company (generic Epson cartridges for under $6)

Shareware ZDNet and CNet both have huge banks of shareware and free files and programs to download. Also try FreeWare Arena

Tech Support and Advice: Service911 contains tutorials and videos to help you with your computer problems. They also have technicians ready to respond to your questions by email or in real-time chat mode. Live experts are also available at Expert City, but there is a fee. You select the "expert" and the fee from a list of technicians and their ratings. The Internet Help Desk contains specific internet connection and browser troubleshooting guides. GoofyGuys is highly rated as a source for straightforward computer hardware and software advice. For the latest news and reviews on anything computer-related, see ZDNet and CNet.

Miscellaneous Quackwatch Run by a retired psychiatrist in Allentown, PA, this web site claims to be "your guide to health fraud, quackery, and intelligent consumer decisions" Urbanlegends.com This is a collection of hoaxes, including phony email viruses, stories of people who have had kidneys stolen, of the $225 chocolate-chip cookie recipe, and other false accounts.

U.S. Copyright Office The copyright clearance center simplifies the getting and giving of permissions.

Travelocity At this online travel agency sign up for the "Fare Watcher" service. Pick one or more destinations, and Fare Watcher will send you an e-mail whenever the fare changes. This is especially useful when your planned trip is a few months away, and you can wait to buy your ticket during a price dip.

Humor Gateway A directory and searchable source of humor and satire on the Web.

PC Magazine's Top 100 Web Sites Editors' favorites in 20 categories.