Everything you didn't want to know about Lord of the Rings

http://www.glyphweb.com/arda/

I loved the Lord of the Rings, but I hated that I needed to refer to other sources such as the internet and books to understand some of it's lore. Let us be honest, I think about 100% of people who saw the movies and did not read the books fully understood what was going on during the movies.

The Interactive Guide to the Works of J.R.R. Tolkien could answer all of your questions as well as confuse you a little bit more. There are tons and tons of pages of information regarding the world of Middle Earth. You can learn about the Ents, or find out the difference between Saruman and Sauron.

If you are a hugely obsessive Lord of the Rings fan you will love this site. If you are like me and only like the movies but couldn't get past page 100 of The Fellowship of the Ring, you'll find this to be kind of laboring.

Internet Vices

http://www.patrickmoberg.com/internet-vices/

Here's a little page that compares various social networking sites to their real life addiction. Enjoy...in moderation.

What do you fear?

http://www.phobiaguide.com/


It's pretty straightforward. Anyone have a phobia in particular they can say they have? I'm a Cacophobia type of guy to be honest.

Open Table

http://www.opentable.com/

Picture this: It's the Valentine's Day, and like every other irresponsible husband, you did not plan ahead and get dinner reservations. Your wife's favorite restaurant is all booked and instead you are having some White Castle while some crazy person next to you asks you if you're going to eat all of those sliders. Open Table, a online restaurant reservation tool can help you avoid this for next year.

After logging onto your site, you choose your location. Like any other website that incorporates going somewhere to use it's services, this works better in major cities then here in Derby, CT. After picking your location, you are given a choice of picking a particular participating restaurant or doing a little browsing. Let's say you want to go to the trendiest, most popular spot: you can click on the "Most Booked" tab. Let's say you want to go to the place that has the best mood and looks the prettiest: you can click on the "Best Ambiance" tab. Besides that, you have a list of different options from health food to kid friendly restaurants.

After choosing the type or particular restaurant that you want, you choose a time, date, and amount of people available, and you're all done. One of the best parts is that this site has apps for all the major mobile services such as the Iphone, Blackberry, and Android, so feel free to download so you can use it whenever you are feeling spontaneous. Good luck next Valentine's Day.

Google Buzz

http://www.google.com/buzz

Google is at it again with the newest add-on to their email service, Buzz. Buzz, like the Flock browser is all about super powering your social networking experience. It allows you connect your Facebook, blogs, Twitter, and anything else you can imagine to your gmail. The attempt is to come up with a more streamlined social experience.

Besides just integrating all of your favorite social sites, Buzz seems to be trying to take traffic away from these sites as you can add all of your gmail contacts to your buzz. You can also, send status messages, comment on them, as well as upload pictures and video directly from Buzz.

If Buzz catches steam, there is interest over what happens to Google Wave, which was supposed to replace gmail. While Wave is still in the testing stage, Google has yet to really show people why they need to use Wave over just plain email. Overall Buzz is the nice new treat in the Google suite, but I have a feeling Yahoo or some other company has the same product. Unfortunately Google has it now, and that's the only brand many people care about.