I thought I would submit a blog entry about websites that I have found that have a good user friendly feel and have good functions for the common web surfer. The websites, in my opinion, that are not noticed as much as they should be. Rather, these are websites that I rely on almost everyday and most people could find them beneficial too.

Follow up:

Media Fire
http://www.mediafire.com
This website is great for storing files that I would like to access from other computers. I could use a USB thumb drive but during those occasional times in which I forget it I would like to have files backed up here. Keep in mind that this website will not store your files indefinitely you must access your files at least every 60 days. If you want to back up important files for a small fee you can visit http://www.carbonite.com which has a free trial.

Photo Bucket
http://photobucket.com/
I like how this website is setup. The function of this website is to upload image files and have a link to that image to use in forums or to email friends or family links to those pictures. Although if those pictures are personal I would recommend just emailing them the images as email attachments. Another website that is used to host images is www.imageshack.com. This website will store your image for a lifetime as long as it does not violate the ImageShack terms of use.

Dictionary and Thesaurus
http://dictionary.reference.com http://thesaurus.reference.com/
These website are essential to people going to college or in a business where you may here or read about words that you don't know the definition of. Google has a great feature that will search several websites for the same definition because there can many more definitions for the same word that may have a more modern definition or may not be an official English word yet is used. By going to Google and using a define: before a word you can get its definition. There are many abbreviations that have no definition within a dictionary. For example, if we search "define:boinc" we get the definition or the what the word stands for.

Free Online College Classes
http://ocw.mit.edu/OcwWeb/web/courses/courses/
These are classes that you can take to learn about a certain subject before you get into it. These classes are non-credit but are great if you want to learn about something being taught at MIT. Some classes contain video lectures which are great because you get to see the professor lecture. Stanford has a similar idea. At Youtube.com there is a Stanford channel where you can watch videos of college classes. Many people will watch these videos to prepare or get an idea of what a class or major is about. Here is the link to the Stanford video channel: http://www.youtube.com/stanford

Free Rice
http://www.freerice.com/
This website is designed for you to work on your vocabulary. For every word you answer correctly, Free Rice will donate 20 grains of rice to third world countries. But besides that fact, its nice to work on vocabulary. There are many benefits to having a greater vocabulary.