Hmm – maybe I should do a website a month – I’ll try to get back to every Wednesday – but sometimes time just slips away from me.  I should also post some other content – but my greatest thoughts seem to come when I’m not a near a computer and when I’m near a computer I don’t feel like posting!

This week’s website is The Hunger Site This website is a very simple site to visit.  You simply visit it, click where it says “Click Here to Give – It’s Free”, and they’ll donate money to help feed the hungry.  They raise their money in two ways, one is by selling ads that appear after you click and the other is through items they sell in their store.  You can click once each day.  Although your small little click might not be much – over the course of a year and with everyone’s clicks – it can really make a difference.  For example in 2008 over 4,000 tons of food were able to be purchased with the funds raised.  So add it to your bookmarks and visit every day to help out.

Also, while you are there, check out the sister sites of The Hunger Site which all operate the same way for different causes.  The other sites are The Breast Cancer Site (funding mamograms), The Child Health Site, The Literacy Site (providing books), The Rain Forest Site, and The Animal Resuce Site.

So instead of pointless clicking on your computer – your clicking can now make a difference!

This week’s Website Wednesday site is Print What You Like.  This site allows you to take any website and get rid of items on it you don’t want to print.  It works quite simply.  You go to the Print What You Like page and put the URL of the page you want to print into the box and click “Start!”.  This then brings up your web page on the screen with some controls on the left.  The general idea is you click on items you don’t want to print and then click “Remove”.  The page updates to show what the page now looks like.  There are other options to help refine what you have selected, or you can just select the items you want printed and “Isolate” them.  Once you have the page how you want it you can print it or save it to HTML or a PDF file.  One word of caution – one time I used this and the text on the page didn’t wrap properly and it got cut off when it printed out – so just double check your output to make sure it has what you expect on it.

Ooops – missed another week last week – that happens – gave you something to look forward to this week. 🙂

This week’s site is Flight View.  This is a great website if you need to follow a flight to see when it’s going to be at its destination.  You can check on a variety of flight information here including a report for an airport of how many flights are on time or delayed, viewing all air traffic for a particular airport, or detailed flight information for a particular flight.  There is even a real-time view that constantly updates the position of the airplane on a map with estimated arrival information.  For flights not in the air you can view estimated departure and arrival information.  For flights in the air you get the live tracking ability and flight information including aircraft, speed, and altitude.  So next time you need to get information for a flight – don’t forget to check out Flight View.

It’s probably about time that I recognize WordPress through a Website Wednesday post.  WordPress is the software I use to run my blog site. WordPress comes in two flavors.

The first is how I’m using WordPress – I downloaded their free software and run it on my own server.  The website for using their software on your own server is at http://wordpress.org/ It takes a little more work to get the software running on your webserver and you need to run your own webserver to use the software like this.  This way does allow more customization of themes and plugins though.

The second flavor is the WordPress hosted solution where you create an account on their site and use their servers.  You don’t have quite as much flexibility in customizations but they take care of all the setup and installation for you.  The website for this method is http://wordpress.com/

A further explanation of the differences between the two is at http://support.wordpress.com/com-vs-org/

WordPress is very powerful and I’m sure I’ve barely scratched the surface of what I can use it to do with my website.  Hopefully as I find motivation and time I will explore other things I can do with WordPress and my website.

So if you are looking for an option for running a website that focuses on blog type content you might want to consider WordPress.

Today I present a new site to me and a new site overall.  It’s called Raffstar It’s still in Beta, but from what I’ve seen and used – everything seems to be working fine.  To summarize it I will quote what the title bar says on the home page “Win prizes. Support charities. How cool is that?”

You register for a free account.  Then after you sign in you can get tickets for various prizes from gift cards to resteraunts to a Ninentdo Wii to a Blu-Ray player.  These tickets are free.  Each drawing happens after so many tickets are issued or after so many days.  The only catch is after the drawing ends – if you win the prize you have one hour to claim it, otherwise it goes to the next person on the list.  Some raffles you can get a ticket each hour, while others you can only get one per day.

Each raffle item has a charity associated with it.  The raffle page has information about the charity, a link to the charity’s website, and a link to make a completely optional and voluntary donation.  Eventually after the site gains popularity the charities will get some of the advertising revenue as well. This site is free because the prizes are donated or paid for by an advertiser and through the advertising revenue.

So go ahead and check out Raffstar and let me know if you win something!