The Monterey Bay Aquarium Seafood Watch program helps consumers and businesses make choices for healthy oceans. Our recommendations indicate which seafood items are “Best Choices,” “Good Alternatives,” and which ones you should “Avoid.”

Seafood Watch recommendations are science-based, peer reviewed, and use ecosystem-based criteria. Since 1999, we’ve distributed tens of millions of pocket guides, our iPhone application has been downloaded more than 70,000 times, and we have close to 200 partners across North America, including the two largest food service companies in the U.S.

http://www.montereybayaquarium.org/cr/seafoodwatch.aspx

Our Courts is a web-based education project designed to teach students civics and inspire them to be active participants in our democracy. Our Courts is the vision of Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, who is concerned that students are not getting the information and tools they need for civic participation, and that civics teachers need better materials and support.

http://www.ourcourts.org/default.php

Metacafe is an online video entertainment site; sort of an offbeat cousin of YouTube although they are totally unrelated. “As the world’s leading independent online video site, Metacafe makes it easy to find videos from your favorite content creators – and we help you discover new ones.” It’s loaded with movie trailers, music videos, tv clips and more.

http://www.metacafe.com/

The United States Geological Survey provides some very interesting pages on their website. One of them shows maps with locations of earthquakes around the world within the last 7 days. Earthquakes in the news make this site a great resource as it provides exact locations, rates of magnitude and answers to frequently asked questions.

http://earthquake.usgs.gov/

Staffer Jessica Branciforte has come up with a quick quiz to test you on your knowledge of banned books in keeping with Banned Books Week–traditionally the last week of September. Check out her quiz and read a banned book this week to celebrate the Freedom To Read.

http://www.handmadenews.org/article/index.php?id=3845

Interested in watching a fresh take on wine reviews?  Take a look at Gary Vaynerchuk’s televised reviews of wine. “Gary’s key goals are twofold: “First, I want people to try different wines. How can you have a favorite if you only know a few? Second, I tell people to trust their palates. If a wine appeals to your palate, then it’s a good choice. Don’t feel pressured to like popular brands or what experts recommend. Buy what ‘brings the thunder’ for you.”

http://tv.winelibrary.com/

If you’ve got some kids hanging around who love mysteries and you can’t get to the Library to borrow some of our terrific mystery books, then check out Mystery Net’s Kids Mysteries. The site offers short mysteries, chillers, magic tricks and even mysteries written by other kids. There are also reading suggestions for books for your next trip to the Library.

http://kids.mysterynet.com/

We just found a great tool for looking at our blog feeds and it also enables us to organize the feeds into categories and create favorites within the categories–and so much more. It weaves your favorite content into a fun, magazine-like start page and it’s so easy to set up and use.

http://www.feedly.com/

The Association for Library Service to Children (ALSC), a division of the American Library Association, maintains a list of hundreds of links to recommended web sites for kids up to 14 years old on its Great Web Sites for Kids page. The links are organized into subject categories including: Animals, The Arts, Sciences, Mathematics & Computers and History & Biography.  There is also a link to sites of interest to parents, caregivers and teachers.

http://www.ala.org/gwstemplate.cfm?section=greatwebsites&template=/cfapps/gws/default.cfm

HopStop is one of the best city transit guide websites. They provide door-to-door subway and bus directions and maps for several metropolitan cities including NYC, Boston, Chicago, Washington, San Francisco as well as Paris and London. You can also search for places to eat, drink, sleep and see in the City Guides.

With HopStop you can:
- Send directions by e-mail or text message to a cell phone directly from the website
- Plan a trip with multiple destinations using the Itinerary.
- Get directions or the locations of nearby subway and bus stops remotely on your cell phone or PDA with the HopStop Mobile service.

http://www.hopstop.com/