Quick reference web sites
 

I have a couple of web sites I like to use for quick references that I'd like to share. I'd like to hear which sites you prefer.

First is a great dictionary lookup. It actually does look ups on many different dictionary sites. It's like a cross between a dictionary and a search engine.
www.onelook.com

The second is for acronyms. I've been around the web a while, but occasionally I find an acronym that is unfamiliar. This site will show you more ways to interpret an acronym than you can imagine.
www.acronymfinder.com

You can never go past www.wikipedia.org for encyclopaedic knowledge...especially in the 'hard' sciences.

Well, here are some obvious ones, but some really good ones too..

www.google.com
- of course!

www.dictionary.com
- I find this very useful

http://www.economist.com/research/StyleGuide/
- Learn yourself gooder English

http://www.askoxford.com/
- Ask Oxford anything about the English language

http://www.howstuffworks.com/
- Fun site which can be very interesting sometimes

www.webopedia.com
- Simple site that is sometimes usefulu for quick technical term look-ups


Cool thread...

Mr Mephisto

I'd forgotten about howstuffworks. It's really a great site for getting into the why of the way things are.
Thanks.

I use refdesk quite a bit.

A couple more for your edification.

I often hear about an actress/actor and wonder what other movies I may have seen them in. <font color="red"> www.imdb.com </font> is a great reference.

Finding a movie review may be helpful if you are familiar with the reviewer's likes and dislikes. <font color="red"> www.mrqe.com </font> has a long list of reviews for any given movie so you can see if it was preferred or disliked by lots of different critics.

Is there a dictionary site out there that lists words in alphabetical order like you would find in an actual dictionary?
One where it shows a list of words running down the page.

I use http://www.onlineconversion.com/ quite a lot.

Here's one I find very helpful:

CIA's World Fact Book
http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/index.html

try webopedia.com

There used to be an awesome site called WHQuestion where you could ask any question and then rate people on their answers. I got free coasters from them once too. Unfortunately they closed down a couple of years ago, but another one started up and I can't remember what it's called although it's nowhere near as good.

I also use imdb a fair bit and google of course.

http://www.convert-me.com/en/

I love this site. You can covert almost any weight or measure, etc. to any other.

Interactive Units Converter

Welcome to our site! Here you will find interactive calculators for many measurement systems both commonly used like metric and U.S. Avoirdupois and quite exotic like Ancient Greek and Roman. U.S. to metric conversion is now easy and fast!

We plan to add new measurements and units regularly, so please come back often. It might be a good idea to add this site to your bookmarks, so you could easily return when needed.

for looking up sequences of integers:
http://www.research.att.com/~njas/se...s/index_b.html

for looking up almost anything mathematical:
http://mathworld.wolfram.com/

I use www.refdesk.com as my home page. You can get to almost any reference site from this page .... along with news, google, etc.

Not exactly related, but I recently discovered http://www.melissadata.com/Lookups/index.htm

for phone numbers/addresses/statistical data.

Scientific questions can be found at the Mad Scientist Group:

http://www.madsci.org/

You can search for questions already asked and answered, or submit your own. It is frequented by scientists of many different backgrounds who just give thier honest opinions.

For Non-Science related questions (just about everything) I like the Straight Dope! Cecil Adams, worlds smartest human.

http://www.straightdope.com/

I like everything2.com but it's far from being quick.

http://www.freetranslation.com is good for language translations. It does a pretty mean English to Spanish translation...but the Spanish to English kind of...sucks.

www.bookfinder.com now seems to be better than abebooks.com for finding whatever book you want new or used.

great thread, giving it a bump

I just bookmarked 5 or 6 new sites. Thanks.

Yahoo Education!

I use it all the time. You can simultaneously search:

• The American Heritage® Dictionary, Fourth Edition
• The American Heritage® Spanish Dictionary, Second Edition
• Roget's II: The New Thesaurus
• Columbia Encyclopedia
• Bartlett's Familiar Quotations
• Gray's Anatomy of the Human Body
• The Oxford Shakespeare (woot!)
• World Factbook
• Conversion Calculator

Just thought of one more, for anyone interested in German/English translation: http://dict.leo.org. A great site, not just for vocabulary, but also for colloquial phrases and whatnot.