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Power outage tracker

PowerOutage.us is a near real-time map of power outages in the United States. States are color-coded based on the number of customers experiencing power loss. By clicking on individual states, you can access more detailed information about the specific outages in the counties of that state. — MF

Reducing browser tabs

It’s been a long while since I found anything to improve my web browsing habits, but I have quickly incorporated One Tab into my daily routine. Like many folks, I tend to keep a million tabs open. One Tab, a free Chrome extension, will collapse all my open browser tabs into one tab, which will open into a list of “open” pages. I find it much easier to navigate this list than the row of tabs, and it can instantly restore any tab. So I have all the open tabs I want, without having a bunch of open tabs. Extremely clean and simple. – KK

Digital Poetry Notebook 

I write poetry and I’ve never found a writing app that is conducive to writing poems until now. Poke!Book is nearly perfect: it’s free, and it stores everything locally in your browser. Having two notepads side by side—one for notes and the other for my working poem—is incredibly helpful. The lined notepad expands infinitely, and makes it painless to delete and change line breaks. And best of all, it doesn’t auto-capitalize when you start a new line. — CD 

Classic science fiction

I’ve run out of worthy new science fiction movies to stream, so I was happy to find the old episodes of Firefly streaming on Hulu, or downloadable on Amazon or Apple+. I missed them when they originally aired in 2002, so it’s a joy to watch them now. Firefly is an inventive “space western” set 500 years in the future, a science fiction drama with engaging characters – a ragtag collection of misfits – and what a science fiction series should be. I rapidly binged all 14 episodes (plus the Serenity movie), and can see why its fans are so ardent. — KK

Red hot ball experiments

The Red Hot Ball Experiments Instagram channel has nearly 500,000 subscribers. Each video begins with a close-up of an item, such as a kiwi fruit, a bar of soap, a deck of playing cards, or a glass jar of honey. Then, a red-hot iron ball is placed on the object. We then get to see what happens to the object for the next minute or so. Must-see TV! — MF

Similar Song Finder

This search engine Similar Song Finder is helpful for creating Spotify playlists based on your favorite song of the moment. I tested it out with songs of different genres and it’s great for creating “mood” playlists. — CD 

03/24/24