To finish the year, I've collected a potpourri of fun sites all related (in one way or another) to the new year. Some deal with what the future may hold for us and others have more immediate use, such as the Web cams that will bring you the New Year countdown live from Times Square. Have a happy and safe new year.
"In your great-grandchildren's lifetime, dinner might be served by robots, and airplanes might fly without pilots. Who knows?" Futurists make educated guesses about the future so companies and government can be can be better prepared. But with technology changing so rapidly, the futurists say it's hard to imagine more than thirty years out. These predictions, from National Geographic "World" magazine, include video-conferencing wristwatches and driverless voice- recognition taxis.
When you think of counting down to a New Year, what place comes to mind? If you're like me, the answer is obvious: New York's Times Square. I grew up watching the Times Square New Year's countdown on television, so these five (yes, five) Times Square Web cams just seem to shout "Happy New Year!" I wonder how many people will be tuning in to the Net this year to watch the ball drop. For more Web cams, click on the EarthCam logo in the upper left hand corner. They even have a selection of Web cams just for kids.
"From the top of the Eiffel Tower, everything you've always wanted to know about the year 2000." And they mean everything � including science fiction, news reports, electronic postcards, art, book reviews, and predictions from futurists. The entire site is "tr�s magnifique" and is my pick of the day, but my favorite clicks are History and Science Fiction, both found under Year Zero, Year 3000
"This is the first time in history the entire world has faced the same technology problem at the same time." This New York Times Learning Network feature covers all aspects of the Y2K bug with clarity and without hysteria. As you peruse the articles, try the Knowledge Tools (you'll find them just below the author's byline) which give you the ability to turn on Vocabulary (hyperlinks to dictionary definitions) and Geography (clickable atlas references.) Menu links to the rest of the Learning Network site run down the left-most column.
The following links are either new discoveries or sites that didn't make it into my newspaper column because of space constraints. Enjoy!
Kidlink New YearsAuld Lang Syne |
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