Personal memoirs provide us with lessons in history that a classroom textbook cannot replicate.

It was a chance discovery while hunting for web tidbits on the Moon landings that gave me an insight through someone’s contributed memory. If you go to the site and type in ‘moon’ you will get quite a few others.

So what exactly is BBC Memoryshare?

Is it just meant to be an online keeping place of user contributed personal memoirs or does it add more value with the BBC stamp?

BBC Memoryshare is positioned as a living archive of memories from 1900 to the present day. Life experiences are pieced together as a mash of linked videos, images and text commentary. But the USP is that these digital anecdotes are in the context of recent and historical events. Like a timeline but more personal. Memories take the form of text, photos and videos. Users are invited to contribute and build up the content and relate it to dates. With the passing of time these collective memories become a historical record of events.

What’s in it for BBC?

In their own words:

The BBC wants to build an open and collaborative approach with audiences in order to deliver programs built on audience participation. Memoryshare is a means for the BBC to connect with individuals who have stories to tell about their own lives, and gives everyone a simple tool to search and discover contemporary news and social history content.

What’s in it for us?

The serious and the not-so-serious user can read or watch these memory snippets, research background events and tie in to context material even going back as far as January 1st 1900. You can search for memories against a particular day or event by using the search box.

Contributions apart, it is also a place for people to peep into the life events of others. Just like any other social media site, users can comment on the personal memoirs of others.

The growing collection of memories straddles the other BBC sites as well; wherever content can be enriched with a personal recollection. The list can be found in the About page.

Contributing your own memories

To be a part of BBC Memoryshare takes a free signup. It’s a quick four step process where you have to settle a username, go over the rules, give some personal info and verify your email.

BBC says that sometimes it contacts users who send in memories and asks them to be a part of their program. That’s a bit of an incentive to give some valid contact info. To be a part of a BBC program and sharing your experience is a memory of its own.

A log-in later, you are ready to upload your memory hopefully for posterity. Clicking on the Add your own memory large button takes you to the first of several panels.

Give your memory a Title. Give a description of What Happened. The more descriptive and true to life you are the better. For a more graphic job, you can include web links and links (only) to images and videos. To be more specific pin it down to a date and a location. The final panel is for entering some keywords which really help to index the memory for search. All that done… You can now publish your memory, or you can preview it and go back to edit any mistakes.

The profile page keeps track of all memories you have submitted. You can add, edit or delete your memories here.

The BBC hopes it to be a lasting archive. After all, memories are supposed to last forever. BBC Memoryshare is a social sharing site with a slight historical twist and the added extra of the BBC track record. Though the site may sound and look Euro centric, it does have universal appeal. There are many places around the web where we can park our memories. How does BBC Memoryshare sound to you?

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

New on MakeUseOf ? Get cheat sheets and cool PDF guides @ www.makeuseof.com/makeuseof-downloads/

• YouTube.com – Online Video Sharing Site (23)
• Yahoo Answers – Get Fast Answers (4)
• Wikipedia – Biggest Online Encyclopedia (13)
• Wikia – A Wiki Community Portal With Any Topic You Care To Know About (7)
• WeGame.com – YouTube for Video Games (12)

So, I did what I always do when I have something to research – I turned to the Internet. I quickly discovered that while there are certainly free genealogy websites out there, the truly valuable or unique ones are few and far between.

During this research, I learned two things about people interested in genealogy. First, many of them are clearly not web page designers. Second, they really, really love links.

The Top 10 Free Genealogy Websites to Find Your Ancestors

Without exaggerating, there are thousands of genealogy websites out there. MakeUseOf has touched on genealogy resources before – such as Mackenzie’s review of the GRAMPS software that lets you track your research, or Kinshuk’s review of the Kindo family tree building tool. When it comes to genealogy websites, they mostly all seem to be nothing more than lists of links to other resources.

Occasionally you’ll find a truly useful website with a search feature that accesses real data. For the purpose of this article, I will provide a list of the top 10 free genealogy websites that would be most valuable to anyone first entering into the hobby. These sites provide valuable tools, guides and access to databases that are overflowing with historic data.

10. KindredTrails.com – Lots of Links to Valuable Resources

There are two things that mark KindredTrails as a “typical” genealogy website. The first is that there are links to Ancestry.com on almost every page. This seems like a sort of pandemic with genealogy sites.

Secondly, like most other ancestry sites, KindredTrails is very much a link-oriented site. However, it does make it onto the top ten list because the site is well designed, the links are well organized. Additionally, the links provided on this site are very useful and valuable.

9. Access Genealogy.com – A Great Mix of Research Resources

Access Genealogy is up a notch from the typical ancestry website. Its main page is pleasantly clean and well organized. Along the left side you’ll find links to some of the most unique research sources including charts, links to old letters, military records, native american records and much more.

One of the more fascinating resources here are the transcribed cemetary records. There are researchers in every State around the U.S. that walk through the oldest cemetaries and actually transcribe names along with birthdates, date of death and family members. This resource alone will hold your interest for hours.

8. The Olive Tree – The Starting Point for Any Amateur Researcher

Olive Tree Genealogy is another private researcher’s website holding a collection of links and resources for historical data. One thing that sets this site apart from others is that it’s apparent a great deal of research went into the provided links. The website creator, Lorine McGinnis Schulze, writes that she started the site in 1996 in order to provide free resources to other researchers.

The truth is, she delivers well on that promise. One of the more impressive links on the site are the ship passenger lists where you can search through the names of your ancestors who immigrated to the U.S. decades ago. Another very useful resource for anyone first starting out in genealogy is the “guide for beginners” that walks you through each step of finding your ancestors, and gives you the specific resources you should check out first in order to conduct that research.

7. GeneaBios – Reading about Life Stories

Ancestry research aside, if you’ve ever found yourself fascinated by the life story of someone who lived a hundred or more years before you were born – then this biography database should be your first stop. You can search through the database alphabetically or just search by specific name.

This database turns up a very long list of biographies written up by genealogy researchers who’ve conducted a thorough investigation and provide their results. Read about the person who built the old stone tavern in the middle of town, or the lives of the people who founded the community where you live.

6. Family Tree Searcher – Online Quizzes to Help Your Research

The family tree searcher is another website created by a private researcher. This site is unique in that some of the resources are actually interactive quizzes that allow you to customize your research method.

One very useful quiz in particular is the “free advice” quiz, which asks you a series of questions about what you’re looking for, and at the end it provides you with a customized “research plan” along with the free resources that are most likely to help.

5. Genealogy Today – The Google of Ancestry

Of all privately created websites, this one is probably one of those that you could bookmark and use for all of your research needs. This site provides links to the usual resources like census data or death records.

What makes this site stand above the rest are the more creative sources offered, such as funeral cards, ration books, criminal records and even business cards. As many researchers know, the most successful results usually come from the more unorthodox methods.

4. U.S. National Archives – The Prime Source for U.S. Ancestry Information

If you’re in the U.S. and you’re a historical researcher, the National Archives should be at the very top of your resource list. Eventually, most other websites end up linking to these resources anyway, so why not just start at the source?

This is where you’ll find census information, military records, immigration records, and even bankruptcy records. There are even articles and information on historical researching techniques.

3. U.K. National Archives – A Plethora of U.K. Historical Data

The UK also has a valuable resource for history buffs in the form of its own National Archives website.  The main page of this website offers links to data such as births, marriage and deaths, census records, passenger lists and much more. European history is long, and these resources are unbelievably thorough and archived all the way back a thousand years.

On this website, you’ll also find valuable guides and articles on researching family and military history.

2. US GenWeb Project – The Top Source for U.S. Researchers

One of the largest and most valuable resources for historic information available to U.S. genealogy researchers is the USGenWeb project.

This project is made of up historical enthusiasts who actively volunteer their time and energy to provide free information for other researchers throughout the country. Just click on the State where you’re looking for information, and you’ll go directly to the State’s GenWeb site where the free resources for your community and local history are provided.

1. WorldGenWeb Project – World History Buffs Unite!

Once you get involved in genealogical research, the fastest thing that becomes apparent is that the hobby knows no borders. You’ll find expert researchers in just about every country from all around the world, and the best research available that brings all of these global enthusiasts together is the WorldGenWeb Project. This resource provides researchers with a safe place where they can focus on valuable and useful resources to conduct their research. Click on the country of your choice and eventually you can drill down to the specific community, and related free genealogy websites where you can hunt for more ancestral information.

Are you a history or genealogy enthusiast? Do you have any of your own favorite resources? Share them with other readers in the comments section below.

Photo credit: maralina!

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

New on MakeUseOf ? Get cheat sheets and cool PDF guides @ www.makeuseof.com/makeuseof-downloads/

• Top Educational Websites For Children That Are Fun (29)
• ToddlerKeys Makes Your Windows Computer Baby Friendly! (9)
• Restrict Windows and Web Access for Kids with KidsMenu (12)
• Preschool Online Games That Are Fun For Children (16)
• How To Become a Hero & Help Find Abducted Children using Mobile Amber Alerts (11)

Yes that is why you learned about your Web History and cookies. You even know how to delete them when you are done with your porn your research. But what happens if you forget? Will you be fired, divorced or worse?

If this has you worried then Close N’ Forget is the plug-in for you!

Simply browse on over to their plug-in page here (in French) and you can do your due diligence and read up on it here in English.

After running through the plug-in installation you will have a right click option that looks like this:

The red X followed by “Close and erase cookies for the current site” is Close N’ Forget’s icon. Now for easier use we will add it to our FireFox’s favorite quick links by following these steps:

• Right Click on your tool bar at the top of your browser. And choose Customize.

• Select the Close and forget button, you might have to scroll down. It will look like this:

• Simply drag and drop the icon to your favorites bar and you will see it as the red x icon like this:

Now that we have the icon readily available to us let’s look at the options. This is what will happen when you hit that magic red x. We can see and configure the settings by going to our add-on manager within Firefox. You go to Tools –> Add-ons.

Select Close N’ Forget and then hit options. You can tweak exactly what it will junk with the options above.

The Author says:

Thanks to a few simple options, you can control how your privacy is protected when you close a tab with Close’n Forget. To do that, simply go to the extension manager and open the Close’n Forget options dialog.

You can then activate or not the cookie removal, and you can extend it to all subdomains of the current page’s domain. For example, if the page currently loaded in the tab is http://www.foo.com/bar.html, you can remove cookies for www.foo.com and for .foo.com, but also for media.foo.com, ad.foo.com, tracker.foo.com and so on !

You can also remove the visited site from the browser’s history.

Now let’s put it to work!

You do some super secret browsing and then you go and hit that red X on your toolbar. The button glows an eerie redish brown when you hover over it to help you distinguish it from other  buttons. Hit the button and it closes the active tab and displays a message at the bottom of your browser like so telling you what it did. If nothing appears nothing was removed:

So with the right options selected (all of them!) you can safely and securely remove whatever site you want from your browsing history. But remember if someone is watching you with monitoring software this will not help!

How do you protect your browsing history and how do you get rid of nasty entries from your history? Do you automate it or do you do it manually? Share your methods with us in the comments.

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

New on MakeUseOf ? Get cheat sheets and cool PDF guides @ www.makeuseof.com/makeuseof-downloads/

• 6 Reasons Why Mozilla Firefox Is Safe Compared To Internet Explorer (23)
• Three Firefox Security & Privacy Add-ons that can Co-exist (23)
• The Winners of ‘Extend Firefox’ – Best Firefox Addons (14)
• Share Your Firefox Data Across Operating Systems & Computers (21)
• Really Delete Your Browsing History – wipe MRU & index.dat files (23)

Here are ten amongst the many we can turn to for quick reading.

Thinkexist

I have met a lot of hardboiled eggs in my time, but you’re twenty minutes – Oscar Wilde

A compilation of 300,000 quotations by over 20,000 authors should be enough to last a lifetime. The quotations are arranged around tabbed Quotations (which give the top user rated quotations), Authors, Topics, Keywords (an alphabetical index) and a Contributors listing. Thinkexist has a search box which lets the user search by a word. Though a user needs to do a free registration to go beyond the first four pages.

You can suggest a revision, send a quote as an e-card, comment on a quotation or bookmark it. Thinkexist quotations can also be added to a website/blog through a copy-pasted HTML code. Get a daily quote in your email for free or get one printed on your T-shirt at a cost at the online store. Thinkexist takes the power of sayings quite seriously.

Quotes.net

I’ll make him an offer he can’t refuse – from The Godfather

Could a website on quotations be named anything else? The site lists thousands of quotations which can be browsed, searched, heard and translated to several languages. A user can search quotes by Author, by Subject or from Movies.

A small pointer at the end of each quote takes it to its individual page where one can click the voice icon to hear it aloud, translate it through a dropdown, rate it or add it to your bibliography. Even though not all the translations are word perfect, this is a nice feature.

Quotations Book

Keep true to the dreams of your youth – Johann Friedrich Von Schiller

A very neat website with a community feel. Search for a quotation or pick it up by People or Tags. You can send it across to friends or discuss it at the website forum (quaintly called the Village Inn).

QOTD (Quotes of The Day) can be added at numerous places – websites, blogs, Facebook, Windows Vista Sidebar, Pageflakes, iGoogle, Netvibes and even as a plug-in on Skype. And of course, you can get it by daily email and feeds too.

Famous Quotes and Authors

The crisis of today is the joke of tomorrow – H. G. Wells

25,000 quotations from 6,700 sages is a large resource and all that is neatly arranged around the usual Topic, Author and Most Popular. If a website only has to be about the sayings of the wise and famous then this is it. But I wish they had a QOTD mailing list.

Litquotes

All things are ready, if our minds be so – William Shakespeare

Quotations gleaned from the great works of literature. Although Litquotes does not have a huge collection yet (about 1,900), its focus on literary quotations arranged around Topics, Book Titles and Authors gives us some gems.

The website also has a gift shop though for now it seems a bit limited in range.

Quotes Daddy

If you can’t convince them, confuse them – Harry S Truman

Another Web 2.0 site with a warm interface, it features over 1,000,000 quotations. It lets you add, share and even create your own quotes. The service is enhanced by customizable widgets and APIs (Application Programming Interfaces) which can be added to blogs and websites.

The one feature you might like to try out immediately is the random Gmail signature quote which inserts a quote as a Gmail signature using the Quotes Daddy feed.

Quotiki

Ah, beer. So many choices, and it makes so little difference – Bender Bending Rodriguez

Quotiki is a Wiki for quotations. And just like any Wiki you can submit, edit, rate and collate quotes.

As of date, the Wiki shows a collection of 1,300+ quotes and rising. The site is typically simplistic with a search box and tabs which allows you to find quotes by Sources, People, Tag and Users.

Quotes4all

When women go wrong, men go right after them – Mae West

Surprisingly, this site does not announce itself by its name on the landing page. There’s just a random quote and the author photo. Quotations can be narrowed down by Authors, Topics, Voting or a Random choice. There is an Animation section which simply are Java applets displaying scrolling quotes.

The one feature I find handy is in the Preferences section – I can filter the quotes by size (small, medium or large). You can opt for a mailing list to get a QOTD and also use the Tools section to integrate quotations with your site, iMac dashboard or the iGoogle page.

Quotegasm

Three may keep a secret, if two of them are dead – Benjamin Franklin

A user-powered quotations site with a very simple but easygoing interface. Still at a nascent stage, it is advertised as the YouTube for quotes as it lets users put in new quote, edit existing quotes as well as rate, review, share, categorize, and bookmark quotes. That means you have to register which is a five second process.

Quotag

At Google, we have a saying: launch early and iterate – Google

This web service is not a straight out quotations site. It is in fact a service which allows us to ‘save, manage and share the most remarkable quotes people find while browsing the net.’ A simple bookmarklet allows us to mark the text in the browser, add tags and include it in our Quotag account for sharing. All user harvested quotes can be read by the tags. One can login to the site using a Google account. iPhone users have it good as they can import the quotations and read them on the device.

These 10 websites should be more than enough to give us a glut of great quotes.  Or do you know of any other good quotation websites? If so then speak out in the comments below.

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

New on MakeUseOf ? Get cheat sheets and cool PDF guides @ www.makeuseof.com/makeuseof-downloads/

• Studeous – Collaboration Suite for Teachers and Students (19)
• Practice Your Vocabulary With VerbaLearn (14)
• Find a Teenage Pen Pal Anywhere in the World With ePaLs (8)
• 5 Online Resources For English Language (ESL) Teachers (11)
• Websites For Students: 10 Online Learning Tools (82)

Some of these images date back as far as 1750 and others are as recent as the 2000’s. You may browse through photos grouped by people (FDR), places (Taj Mahal), events (the Kentucky Derby), sports, or any cultural keyword you can think of.

For example, here’s a word that’s been thrown around lately: “depression.” Type that in to find photos from the Great Depression of the 1930’s.  You can start from http://images.google.com/hosted/life or simply add “source:life” to the search box on any Google Image Search page. Framed copies of any photo you find are available for purchase.

Other Image Collections

It should be noted that Life’s sister publication, Time, also has an extensive (but not yet Googleized) photo archive dating back to 1999. It can be found on the Time homepage, but here’s a direct link. You may also use the site’s search function, where photo essays will show up on the right sidebar.

National Geographic magazine offers thousands of beautiful stock photos at NationalGeographicStock which can be searched by keyword. You may also specify whether you want royalty-free images and/or images which may have their rights managed.

NASA’s Johnson Space Center has a collection of over 9000 press-release photos of America’s manned space program. More can be found here. Both can be searched by keyword.

America’s National Archive has but a fraction of its materials in its Archive Research Catalog. However that still amounts to over 140,000 digitized photographs and documents which can be searched by keyword, or leisurely browsed.

Rounding out our list, Image Services at the University of Pennsylvania Library has archives in several categories: Fine Arts, Chemistry, South Asian, or Shakespearean. Certain large images are only permitted for use on UPenn’s domain, however all images can be viewed from outside UPenn.

There’s some beautiful stuff and potential desktop wallpaper to be found in these collections. You may find some more wallpaper fodder via this February article by Tina.

Do you know of any other media treasure-troves?  Do you have any favorites?  How else can we use archives such as these? Let us know in the comments.

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

New on MakeUseOf ? Get cheat sheets and cool PDF guides @ www.makeuseof.com/makeuseof-downloads/

• What are you lookin’ at? Cool Sites To Feed Your Photo Fetish (8)
• Top 5 Free Websites for Quality Copyright Free Photographs (37)
• Top 10 Free Genealogy Websites to Find Ancestors (26)
• TinEye – Searching For Images With An Image (19)
• The Wayback Machine – Browse The Internet Of Yester-Yore (5)

I’ve been working on it for a couple of years now, and I just love this program, GRAMPS. GRAMPS stands for “Genealogical Research & Analysis Management Programming System.” That’s a mouthful, though, so it’s GRAMPS. GRAMPS is available for Linux, Windows, OSX, BSD, and Solaris, but the Linux versions are generally the most up-to-date. If you’re using one of the other OSes, there is a live CD available.

If you’re a genealogy enthusiast and you’ve used software to track your records before, you’re probably familiar with the GEDCOM format. The thing I loved about GRAMPS to begin with was that it worked directly with the GEDCOM. Nowadays it does have its own format available, but it can still use the GEDCOM directly. It also automatically backs up the file when you save, so if you screw up royally, you have a checkpoint.

As with any genealogy program, you can enter names, dates, places, etc. One of the features I like is that you can set the quality of the dates to regular, estimated, or calculated and also include that it was before, after, or about a certain time. I find this useful when I’m going through census records and figuring out “So she was 20 in May 1873, meaning she was either born in early 1853 or late 1852…” since I can’t really be properly accurate without something like a birth certificate. You can also create an event, like a ship arriving at port, just once and link multiple people to it. The list of events you can choose is extensive. There are definitely more options than what I recall Personal Ancestry File having and if you find yourself thinking, “wow James and Joseph sure named their kids a lot of similar na—oh…they’re the same person…crap,” there’s a tool to merge people as well.

Of course, GRAMPS allows you to store media attached to the people and events. By “media,” I do not simply mean photos. Videos, audio clips, and scanned documents are all options. So, even if you do spend a lot of time transcribing some old form, you can have the original there. Many people take issue with using just transcriptions because of the possibility for error in transcribing. If a scan of the original document is attached, however, you have a verifiable record available and yes, one photo of many people can be attached to all of them.

Speaking of verifiability, it is extremely important to cite your sources when doing genealogical research. GRAMPS provides for this, as well. There are two tabs on the left marked ‘Sources’ and ‘Repositories’. These two are meant to work together. Everything you reference goes into a source. The sources then go in a repository. If you looked at a bunch of old newspaper clippings and records in the library, the library would be your data repository. A church’s collection of family records would be another repository, with each baptism certificate they’ve got on hand being a source. Since headstones are great sources for birth and death dates, cemeteries also qualify as repositories.

Shown above is part of Henry VIII’s relationship view. As you can see, one generation backwards and forwards is displayed for the person in focus (Henry VIII). The person can be removed from any of the families listed by clicking the minus sign, and the families can be edited with the pencil & paper button. Clicking any of the people brings them into focus in that view. Each person’s birth date and location, death date and location, and gender is shown with their name if it is available.

There is a vast array of reports available to be generated by GRAMPS. By far my favorite is the fan chart. I once showed one of my family to a professional genealogist friend, and she said she’d need to check out Linux again. This was before I knew about GRAMPS for Windows, if it even existed at the time. Ahnentafel reports are highly-detailed reports of a person and his or her descendants. Large, multi-page charts are possible as well. The option to create a full book out of the data is a nice one, for example as something to give out at a family reunion. Plus as we are in a web-based world, I figure I ought to mention that it can generate websites.

It’d be impossible to cover all of the features found in GRAMPS, or show examples of the many charts it can generate, so just give it a try yourself. If you’ve used GRAMPS before, what did you think? Got any other open source genealogy apps to recommend?

GEDCOM for Tudor family found here.

(By) Mackenzie is a college student who likes to promote Linux and Free/Libre Software. Most of her free time is spent on the computer, helping new users, or hanging out with some of the friends she’s made in the Linux community. Check out her blog, Ubuntu Linux Tips & Tricks.

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

New on MakeUseOf ? Get cheat sheets and cool PDF guides @ www.makeuseof.com/makeuseof-downloads/

• Two Home Inventory Tracking Apps to Insure Your Assets (11)
• Top 10 Free Genealogy Websites to Find Ancestors (26)
• SimpleD Budget – Free Budget Tracker Software (Windows) (9)
• What’s This “Linux” Thing and Why Should I Try It? (125)
• Wakoopa – Find Out What Software You (And Others) Use Most (10)

How To Use It

To use Hooey, you first need to register as a user and then download and install the Hooeey toolbar. After you are through with your browsing for the day, you can log in to your Hooeey account and then upload your entire browsing history or just a part of it, with just one click.

Web History Analysis

You can also turn off website recording anytime by clicking a button on the toolbar. Hooeey also lets you tag the links while you browse and share them with your friends. It further lets you analyze your browsing habits through charts and graphs and makes the data visually appealing.

Features

1. Records web browsing automatically

2. Tag, comment and rate your history record, even when you are offline.

3. Access your web history from any computer.

4. Analyze your web history and browsing habits based on different metrics and parameters.

5. Share links with friends and track them too.

6. Web tours – This is a unique feature of Hooeey which lets you combine different websites and create a slideshow and send them to your friends.

Overall, I think Hooeey is a nice tool and it can certainly come in pretty handy if you visit several websites in a day and use them to extract information.

(By) Abhijeet Mukherjee is addicted to the internet and loves blogging and freelance writing. He blogs about tech tweaks, blogging tips, productivity hacks at Jeet Blog

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

New on MakeUseOf ? Get cheat sheets and cool PDF guides @ www.makeuseof.com/makeuseof-downloads/

• Welcome to My Firefox: Extensions, Themes, Setup (14)
• Transmute – Migrate Bookmarks Between Your Browsers (3)
• The Winners of ‘Extend Firefox’ – Best Firefox Addons (14)
• StumbleUpon-Discover Websites that People Like (3)
• Stumbleupon Tools To Stumble Around The Web (14)

1. Federal Bureau of Investigation

Being a true-crime fan, the FBI website is a regular stop for me. Not only does the FBI use their site as a recruitment tool but they also discuss closed cases and they take you “behind the scenes” so to speak to let you see how the Feds cracked the case. Here is a good example.

You can also learn about the various FBI departments, the history of the FBI, and of course view the famous Most Wanted Lists.

But what really makes the FBI website stand out is how much you can download. Scattered throughout the site are PDF downloads of cases, forensic science subjects and much more. All now we need is a FBI badge generator and an alien costume and we can play Mulder and Scully!

2. Central Intelligence Agency

At first glance, you might think there isn’t much to the CIA website but there are some interesting sections.

For example, take a virtual tour through CIA Headquarters, view an encrypted monument at Langley to see if you can break the code, go on a virtual tour around the CIA Museum, but the best feature of all is the annually updated CIA World Factbook. Never be bad at geography ever again. You can even download a copy of the Factbook free of charge.

But if you’re looking for files on who killed JFK, you’ll be disappointed.

3. Library of Congress

One of the most famous libraries in the world and now it’s online. Browse through documents and collections. “American Memory” provides access to documents, maps, audio, video and photos. Search through past and current legislation making its way through Congress. Oh and if you’re planning a personal visit to the LOC, check out what they are currently exhibiting.

4. National Archives

For those with an interest in history, this site is a must-go-to. The amount of information available here to view and to download is just staggering. So it’s impossible to cover it all here. A few highlights though -

View and download a high-resolution scan of the Declaration of Independence and the US Constitution.

Make online visits to the Presidential Libraries, view the documents of the White House and subscribe by RSS feed to “Document of the Day”.

5. NASA

As well as a true-crime fan, I am also a Trekkie, so NASA is another of my favourite websites. View the Interactive Features section to see space-related material including photos, slide shows, videos and podcasts. Subscribe by RSS feed to “NASA Image of the Day”, view the NASA World Book and read up on past and current missions. One small step for me, one big download for my PC.

Do you have a favourite government website not included in the list above? Tell us about it in the comments!

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

New on MakeUseOf ? Get cheat sheets and cool PDF guides @ www.makeuseof.com/makeuseof-downloads/

• How To Make Your Own Books From Wikipedia (9)
• 8 Reference Sources that are NOT Wikipedia (3)
• Yahoo Launched a Time Capsule (3)
• Who are you? What your pig drawing, browser type, fav. drinks, etc. reveal about you! (6)
• Whadja say? Online Word Pronunciation Guides (9)