Here you have arrived at the obligatory links page. Now, I've thought for a while, and I really can't imagine anything more uninteresting than looking at a bunch of somebody's favorite links. So you see, I'm confident that this page will feel right at home with the other pages on this site. Look, I had no choice, really. Personal web pages must always have a list of links. A sort of heretofore unwritten rule that must be followed. I've tried to provide somewhat of a gloss, for those (like Doug Mandell) who are into this sort of thing. Oh, and for the record I know that "links de oblige" is not french for "obligatory links;" it just should be.
News
Slashdot.org: News for Nerds. Stuff that Matters.Salon Magazine: News/Culture/Commentary site. It limits its content to non-subscribers, but still a great site. The only site that I pay money to view. It's that good.
Wired News: Excellent articles on the wired culture.
Ars Technica: Excellent blog, similar to Slashdot, but perhaps a bit more technical. There are not nearly as many submissions as Slashdot, but they tend to be more thoughtful.
The New York Times: Great news, interesting stories. The New York Times crossword puzzle. Requires free registration.
NPR.org: All the great NPR shows available on the internet.
Entertainment
The Onion: Online version of the famous satiric newspaper.
The Filthy Critic: A great movie reviewer. He's about as harsh as they get, but he's always entertaining.
IMDb: stands for Internet Movie Database. Excellent, fast, and hassle-free source for movie information.
ESPN.com: Best online sports coverage I've found.
The Sports Guy: Hilarious column on sports and guy culture. The sort of site I check everyday even though new articles only come up once or twice a week.
IGN Playstation 2: This site offers great news, previews and reviews of Playstation 2 games. Unfortunately, they've been feeling the squeeze and have locked much of their content under a premium service. Still, all the content does become available eventually, and it's a good place to go.
Music
General
The All-Music Guide: My nomination for the overall best site on the web. It is simply incredible, with mountains of information on musicians and recorded music. I use this site probably as much as I use Yahoo, which is saying alot.
KCRW.org: An LA radio station that has escaped corporate agglomorization. I particularly like "Morning becomes Eclectic," a nice play on words on the classic Eugene O'Neill tragedy "Mourning Becomes Electra." It takes its name very seriously, as the hosts interview just about any kind of musician there is, and a few non-musicians to boot. Great stuff.
Artists
bobdylan.com: This site has news, liner notes, lyrics and the usual stuff. What's great is that there is a minute-long clip of every song in the troubadour's catalog in RealAudio. Furthermore, there are a number of rare songs and live recordings available at full-length. It's a very well-made site, but it's got somewhat of a corporate feel to it. You can tell that his Bobness has very little to do with it. Not that I blame him.cowboyjunkies.com: On the flip side, the Cowboy Junkies website is band-maintained. As a result, it's a bit raw, but has tons of cool stuff for the fan.
SHEEBA: is Jane Siberry's website. She's pretty good at keeping the place interesting.
I also visit and enjoy Indigo Girls', Maria McKee's, and Michelle Malone's websites.
Computer
c|net: News, reviews, and downloads for computer-related things. Their subsite, builder.com, is a great resource for web-development.
Tom's Hardware
Anandtech
Ars Technica
These sites all blend in together for me. I check them to keep up on computer hardware (me? a nerd? no...) and do research here before buying anything. I like Tom's Hardware the best, but Anandtech and Ars Technica have some nice features (such as buying recommendations).
The Register: British technology news.
Reference
dictionary.com: I use this all the time. There are a number of dictionaries available online, including the OED. But none of them have a URL that's so easy to remember. And the OED costs money.
Japanese<=> English Dictionary: This is a nice, free dictionary; it helped me get through college. You don't need a japanese computer to view the characters on this site, by the way. Site also contains many interesting links about Japan and Japanese on the web.
WordReference.com: A nice multi-language dictionary.
Babelfish: Real-time website translation. Totally sweet.
The Vaults of Erowid: A great resource on the subject of drug politics.
Miscellaneous
AvantGo: Offers a great program for handhelds which delivers web-content to your handheld, whether it's wireless or not. The service only works for registered sites, however, so I use Sitescooper for other web sites. Nothing is as slick as AvantGo, so I use this as a supplement rather than a replacement.