A playful new site can help you make decisions, as long as someone has written up the topic in its question-and-answer format. If not, you could have a go yourself, and then let other people improve it
Netbytes: Scribd lets anyone upload their article, textbook or novel for other people to read online, download or embed in their blog – mostly free, but sometimes for a fee
Wolfram Alpha is the first small step on the way to having a system that answers questions. It doesn't have anything like enough data to be useful at the moment, but it could become invaluable in the future
Netbytes: Reportage photographers take lots of great pictures that never make the papers, but Boston.com collects them into sets that provide an enthralling background to the news
Netbytes: Anyone even slightly interested in web design and photography will find entertaining stuff at Smashing Magazine, though it does go deeper for professional developers
About.com was a pioneering website that was a bit like Yahoo with expert human guides. It's still popular today, under the ownership of the New York Times
When you're planning a holiday, TripAdvisor is a great place to find out what hotels are really like, and it's now part of an expanding network of useful travel sites
Netbytes: Jakob Nielsen's site wasn't intended to be ugly – it's just a mid-90s design – but it's still packed with good advice about usability, says Jack Schofield
Chips off the old Soviet bloc
English Russia is a blog that collects odd and often negative picture stories from Russian-speaking countries, mainly for the amusement of westerners