Google Books

You may have heard that the search engine, Google, has been working to get books digitally scanned. Many books are already available at Google Books. Of particular interest are the books that allow "Full View," meaning that they are entirely scanned in and available for reading. So if you visit "Google Books" make sure you go to Advanced Search and click on "full view" to limit your search to books whose whole content is online.

The Letters of Emily Dickinson, for example, are available, as is Moby Dick and Great Expectations and Tom Sawyer and Silas Marner and ...

Edna St. Vincent Millay's wonderful "Renascence and Other Poems" and The Complete Works of William Shakespeare and . . .

Arthur Davison Ficke's "Sonnets of a Portrait-Painter" and "North of Boston" by Robert Frost and all of McGuffey's Readers

Or Indiana: A Guide to the Hoosier State (which happens to contain a decent explanation for the term "Hoosier" that I had never heard before.)

Other books just have limited previews available, a few pages, like "Henry and Ribsy"

If you're a teacher and want everyone to read the same book, or If you're in a book club, or just want to read the same book as someone else, what a cheap way to go... aside of the cost of the computer, of course.

FotoTickr

An interesting series of photos floats across a web page, your mouse can stop them, or you can click to select one: FotoTickr

FotoTickr Animals

Fort Wayne Police Scanner

Did you know there was a Fort Wayne City Policy & Fire Scanner online? I didn't. It seems to work best using Internet Explorer (rather than Firefox or any other browser) and it may require you to run an active X control to allow it to function the first time. I used to have a nice scanner and then the Police went all digital on me... so this is nice. It may not make it through any work-type proxy servers, but it's nice for home.

Similarly, the Allen County Police & Fire Scanner is online is well.

via The Aboite Independent website.

If you're out of state, check out Scanner Buddy.