You will find here variety of links with some commentary that I've gathered from various sources such as newspapers, books, TV, radio, magazines (e.g. ComputerActive, WebActive & WebUser my favourites), Internet and, of course, real-life news from my sources. 

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General News and Interesting Links

7^th Mar 10 Travel Rants is a blog about travel-related issues. It is more sophisticated and informed than its name suggests. Travel Rants offers a wealth of personal experiences and opinions in the form of interesting, well-written articles that keep you engaged throughout.

6^th Mar 10 ESPN Sport covering football, rugby, tennis, cricket, Formula One and more. ESPN offers news, analysis and multimedia in a well-organised, easy-to-navigate layout. The quality of content, which includes blogs, photo galleries and videos, is excellent and complemented by extra features such as an ‘on this day' page, a daily newspaper round-up and a resident expert you can ask sport-related questions. On the downside, there's no forum (although you can become a fan of ESPN on Facebook) and not as much exclusive free online video.

4^th Mar 10 Book a Tree - If you love reading but worry about the drain on natural resources that books entail, you'll appreciate this green online bookstore. Bookatree.co.uk promises to replace the wood used to create its wares by putting 15 per cent of its profits towards planting trees in or near your neighbourhood. It sells a wide range of paperbacks, hardbacks and maps at competitive prices - some cheaper than Amazon - as well as audiobooks, which also count towards the reforestation scheme.

3^rd Mar 10 Airfare Watchdog - Save money when booking flights online using AirFare Watchdog. Owned by TripAdvisor, this UK version of a popular US site lets you instantly view the lowest airfares by entering the name of a departure city on the homepage. It presents its hand-picked results as an alphabetical list from which you can choose a destination, and then view details and check availability for your desired dates. Alternatively, you can search for fares to a specific city or browse the Top 50 Fares to find out where is currently cheapest to fly to.

2^nd Mar 10 The Zouk - Booking hotel accommodation online can involve hours of comparing rates and availability to find the perfect room. The Zouk saves you time by doing the hard work for you. Simply submit a request specifying your preferred dates, destination, price range and other requirements and the site will search for matching hotels. You can then review the results and accept the best offer to arrange your room. Accommodation types include apartments, pubs and private property and the service is completely FREE.

28^th Feb 10 Dwink - If you want to know what, where or how to drink, check out this online magazine. Dedicated entirely to the wet stuff, Dwink has been set up by two alcohol experts to broaden our imbibing horizons with bar recommendations with drinking advice, bar reviews, cocktail video recipes and much more.

26^th Feb 10 OnePlace tells you how councils, police, health services and others are tackling issues in your area. How well is your council doing its job? Are people in your area generally unhealthy? Find out at this government resource, which provides statistics and ratings for 152 local authorities in England, as decided by the Audit Commission. Oneplace uses green (for exceptional) and red (for action needed) flags to highlight notable achievements and problems in each area. The site is easy to use, letting you browse by region or keyword, and presents lots of interesting information clearly. Let's hope it expands to include the rest of the UK soon.

25^th Feb 10 ShoeBox360 - With Facebook and Flickr letting you share photos online for free, this subscription-based photo-hosting service sounds a little redundant - an issue it's keen to refute. Essentially, you pay the site to store your high-quality photos of events. You can then give people a code that lets them view, download and print the images in your ‘shoebox' and add their own pictures.

24^th Feb 10 Usborne Children's Books - This children's-book publisher Usborne has relaunched its website to splendid effect. The attractive, themed homepage gives you access to all areas of the site - including the whole of the extensive Usborne catalogue and the gift-ideas section - while still finding space for illustrations, while the search facility suggests titles as you type. Usborne's resources for teachers and home-based booksellers have been seamlessly integrated, while the tab-based design makes it easy to switch between reviews, author information and extra content, including the welcome ability to read first chapters online.

22^nd Feb 10 RadioTuna is a real-time search engine that finds you music by a specific artist or of a particular gene that's playing online right now. RadioTuna claims to check more than 20,000 stations worldwide and lets you hear the results through its embedded media player with a single click. You can bookmark your favourite broadcasts and buy tracks from Amazon.

20^th Feb 10 Spoken Ink - Download short stories from Spoken Ink to listen to at your convenience. Short stories provide the perfect audio fodder for dull journeys and cold nights in. It offers a selection of tales, lasting from 10 minutes to two hours, which you can download to listen to on your iPod, mobile phone or PC. These are written by such famous authors as Roald Dahl, Charles Dickens and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and read by the likes of Prunella Scales and Timothy West, with prices starting at 49p per story.

Music News and Useful Links

Musiq Trader - Musicians seeking second-hand instruments, sheet music, recordings and accessories will love this new website. This site also has information on learning to play and wealth of links to music-related sites.

Musicians Benevolent Fund is the music business's own charity - the largest in the UK, funded entirely by donations and bequests from music lovers and musicians. They provide help and support to musicians and their dependants and those in related occupations when illness, accident or old age bring stress or financial burdens.

Not sure what the name of a song is? Use your computer keyboard to tap the rhythm of the song. SongTapper.com will help you find the name of the song. Its fun, its easy, and thousands of daily visitors find it very helpful. All you have to do is tap the song rhythm and SongTapper does the rest. After tapping is complete you will see a list of matching songs. If yjey can't identify your song, you can teach their system by entering the song name.

Premier Promotions specialise in Event Management as well as marketing, promoting and introducing venues, tribute artists, cabaret acts and disco's. They are the 'introducing party' for tributes or disco's for your venue, or venue's for your event.

Click here to listen London's Radio Magic on 105.4 MHz

Click here to listen Digitally Imported - Electronic & Dance Music Radio 24/7

More Useful Links

BT Directory Enquiries

Calendar

Calculators

Dictionary

Free Music Software

Local Information

Maps

Quotations

Thesaurus

Translator

World Clock