I’m a big online radio fan and was given a great tip (thanks Jody) to try out Radiotime.  It offers a lot of stations you can’t find elsewhere with a special emphasis on local radio.  You register for free and give your zip code and then you can discover all sorts of local radio that you had been unable to listen to before.  They also have categories that will lead you to radio stations and radio shows from across the country. 

The site offers presets that let you either set a preset for a radio station or for a specific show.  This is one of the best interfaces I have found with lots of functionality and choice, but even better it just works well.

FollowFridays is an event on Twitter that is worth knowing about. 

You just place a #followfriday hashtag in your tweet and then list a bunch of people you would recommend people following.  Here is one of my recent ones:

#followfriday #kidlit @markblevis @mitaliperkins @C_Spaghetti @LindaJoySinglet @readergirlz @SheilaRuth @misrule_au

The @ symbol in front of each person’s Twitter account makes it a link that people can click on. Pretty slick, huh?

The # symbol turns a word into a hashtag, putting it into a category that is then browsable.  So the tweet above will have hashtags for both followfriday and kidlit.

YouTubeEDU is a new service that aggregates all of the content from over 100 colleges and universities.  You can view campus tours, lectures and college news in one handy place. 

Direct students trying to make a school choice here as well as adults interested in some lifelong learning online.

If you are offering a collection of links for people who are trying to live frugally, this is a great one to share.  StillTasty offers detailed information on specific foods that allows you to know how long your food or beverage will remain safe to eat and still taste good. 

You can browse by category or enter the specific name of the food or beverage you want to know about.  The site also offers information on basic food safety and answers user questions as well.  When you get to the list of foods, you will find that they are very detailed.  If you look in dairy, cheeses are listed individually along with type of package and whether it has been opened or not.  Then when you click on that, you will be told how long it can be kept safely in both the refrigerator and freezer.  Plus there are tips specifically for that food to help keep it safe.

Academic Earth will wow you with its incredible content.  Professors from the top universities in the US offer courses and lectures via video here.  You can browse the site by university, subject or top rated professors, lectures or courses.  Or head to the playlists which offer collections of lectures based around a theme.

Just in scanning the site quickly, I have a list of lectures I would love to see. 

I should mention the really nice touch of having a dim the lights feature which allows you to darken the surrounding screen when you are watching a video.  Very nice.

The 2009 James Beard Award Nominees for Best Book have been announced.  The great thing about the Beard nominations is that there are so many categories and so many nominees.  I love lists of nominees because it allows for more browsing and enjoyment of top books. 

You can find the lengthy book award nominee list here.  It’s a great way to promote your library’s collection of cookbooks.  Yum!

NetLingo is an online dictionary that offers definitions of Internet terms.  It has both a larger dictionary and then other categories to aid in finding things.  You can also take a look at some of their Top 50 lists to make it even more limited.  I can see it being useful for many functions.  Parents to understand texting speech, teachers to lead discussions with teens, or just finding out what that word used on a web site or an email means.

They offer several Words of the Day that you can subscribe to via email.  Plus they have a blog and RSS feed you can follow.  Useful information nicely presented in a variety of ways.

New Twitter users and others who follow just a tiny number of people really don’t understand the power of Twitter.  I’m hoping to offer you a few quality people to follow with a focus on professional librarianship.

My number one recommendation is #1 Bestsellers where the bestselling items on Amazon are tweeted every day.  Yes, you get toys and other items mixed in, but you also get the bestselling books and albums delivered right to your Twitter account.

Lots of publishers are also using Twitter to announce new releases, do PR and even offer free copies.  You can find Penguin, Little, Brown and Co, and Harper Collins among others.

ALA also has a lot of Twitter accounts.   General ALA news, TechSource, LITA, PLA and OIF are some of the ones I follow. 

If you have favorite authors, you may want to look for them on Twitter too.  The teen and children’s literature field is really strong on Twitter and I follow as many authors as I can find.  It’s great fun to get a glimpse of their process through their tweets. 

Do you have any favorite people you follow on Twitter?  If so, let me know!

AllTop is a handy site for discovering feeds on a wide range of subjects.  It lists the top feeds for any subject, though I do have quibbles about the order of some of their lists.  You will find if you know quite a bit about blogs in a specific field that the order is odd.

Now AllTop has made their site even more useful by adding MyAllTop, a feature that lets you build your own list of top blogs that span different subjects.  Each feed offers the most recent 5 posts, so it is a quick and easy way to check your top feeds for new news. 

A handy little website that will let you check out how your website looks on a wide ranging number of browser types.  You can pick and choose browser types to test them out.  With a free account, it does take some time, but still will end up saving you time and energy.