Online Reference Resources
Everyday Life

• Activity Calorie Counter -- a calculator for how many calories you have burned doing what you do!
• Aging Resources -- for folks 50+, covers all areas, from law and health to grandparenting, employment and fun!
• Area Code Info--keep up with changing area codes across the nation.
• Calling Abroad -- international calling codes.
• Congresspedia -- "designed to be a place where you can get a closer look at representatives in Congress and a better understanding of the environment in which they work. Because this site is a wiki, it’s open for anyone to edit or add new information, so you can share what you know with everyone else. To help insure fairness and accuracy, Congresspedia is overseen by a paid editor."
• Consumer Recycling Guide-- Tips on how to make it easy. How to deal with easy recyclables, hard-to-dispose of recyclables, price guide to recyclables, tips on how to reduce your junk mail, etc.
• Classical Cooking Dictionary/Glossary -- useful when reading cookbooks.
• Cookin’ With Google -- a specialized database function that allows you to provide a list of ingredients (what’s in the fridge?) and get back a list of recipes that Google finds for you. Courtesy of ResearchBuzz.
• Cooking Techniques -- "Once you learn how to handle these fundamental techniques, you will be able to handle most recipes"
• Cook's Thesaurus--what can you substitute in a recipe when you've run out of some key ingredient? Substitutions for 1500 ingredients are listed here.
• Crime Reports -- Enter an address, a city/state, or a zip code, and get a map of criminal activity in the area over the past weeks.
• Daycare.com -- Search by zip code through 11,000 member daycare providers, each with a page supplying basic information about the facility (including state license info)
• Digital Daily Tax Info-- The IRS answers your most frequently asked questions about taxes, with links to tax forms and more.
• Death & Dying -- wills and trusts, resources and more.
• Disabilities Etiquette--a guide to acceptable terminology to use to describe people with disabilities, as well as a guide to how to deal with people with specific disabilities to accommodate their needs.
• Doctor Finder -- from the American Medical Association. SAU not liable.
• Election and  Candidate Info -- for any year and place, also an online way to register to vote!
• eXtension -- an interactive learning environment delivering the best, most researched knowledge from the smartest land-grant university minds across America. eXtension connects knowledge consumers with knowledge providers - experts who know their subject matter inside out.
• Fact Monster -- the ultimate homework helper!
• Finding Information on the Net--a Tutorial--a really well done presentation on how to analyze your information needs, phrase your search, select the search engine that will do what you need to do.
• Flight Arrivals--and departures, delays and cancellations. Realtime updates for over 40 airports in the U.S. and Canada .
• Flight Tracker--type in an airline and flight number and this neat site actually shows the realtime postion of the plane over a map, plus gives height, speed , etc...
• Fone Finder -- ever wonder what part of the country an area code is from? With this simple database, one can type in area code for geographic location OR type in place to find what area code serves it. Useful.
• Food and Nutrition Solutions -- Tips and guides on food preparation, preservation, safety and storage, and tools for nutritional analysis. Particularly useful: Its "Is it safe" guides for a number of questionable-appearing foods and suggestions for reducing cholesterol, fat and sugar.
• Free E-Books -- free downloadable books on business, religion, fiction, self-help and more. No, really, they are free with directions how to download and use.
• Gas Prices by Zip Code -- just type in your zip code and get the latest gas prices for your area from least to most expensive and which stations have what price. map included !! Updated every evening.
• Government Benefits  -- the official (.gov) government benefits website that for free helps you find government benefits you may be eligible to receive.
• Government Information Change--Have a question about forms, benefits, who to contact about what in federal government (or state or local)? Check here.
• Growth Charts--These are the revised charts for tracking the growth of children, and detecting problems with weight early, from the Centers for Disease Control. It also calculates your Body Mass Index.
• Healthy Body Calculator -- a very neat tool that tells you how many calories to consume with what goal of weight loss. Also calculates your BMI and optimum weight.
• Hoax Busters -- from our friends at the U.S. dept. of Energy, it "describes some of the warnings, offers, and pleas for help that are filling our mailboxes, clogging our mailservers, and that generally do not have any basis in fact." Also a section on real costs of e-mail hoaxes. Searchable.
• Hoaxes Online and in E-mails -- find out the truth before you forward it on!
• Home Ec 101 -- what you wish your mom had taught you!
• Home Maintenance and Repair: 
• Home Path--the complete guide for the would be first-time homeowner, including "do I qualify," kinds of mortgages, closing costs, steps your lender follows, papers you need to keep. It is for a certain lender, but the steps show the basic process. We do not endorse any lender, per se.
• HomeworkNYC.org -- from the New York Public Library. Excellent!!!
• House Net--a how-to-do-it site for home improvement, lawn and garden care, decorating, sewing ideas, etc.
• How Not to Get Hit by Cars -- for those with bicycles... "This is a far cry from normal bicycle safety guides, which usually tell you little more than to wear your helmet and to follow the law. Don't confuse wearing a helmet with biking safely. An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. It's better to not get hit. That's what real bicycle safety is about.... very useful tips for preventing car on bike intimacy."
• How Things Work: The Physics of Everyday Life
• How Stuff Works--demonstrations and explanations of things like the workings of car engines, pendulum clocks, smoke detectors.
• How To Hunter -- "the Web's biggest directory of free how-tos." Browsable and searchable.
• Identity Theft: A Quiz for Consumers -- this is a .pdf file, you'll need Adobe Reader to view it (free download here)
• Interactive Healthy Eating Index -- an online dietary assessment tool that provides information on your diet quality, related nutrition messages and links to nutrient information. System requirements are listed as well.
• Internet Use Agreements with your Child -- prepare, pre-warn and talk!
• Iowa Register to Vote Form
• IVR Cheat Sheet -- this is a neat site that tells you the phone number and how to most quickly reach a human being of all sorts of corporations and retail and airlines, etc...
• Kids Games --  the outdoor, run around, neighborhood kind, like 'Capture the Flag' and 'Red Light Green Light'
• Kids Hub -- lots of fun games with a learning edge. Requires Flash 5 Player Plug-in (download free on the site).
• Lawyers -- Find a lawyer by location or specialty.
• Learn2.Com--the "ability utility," designed to teach you step by step how to do various things such as carve a turkey, iron a shirt, drive a stick shift, set up a stereo system. Be sure to scroll down.
• Literacy Directory -- type in a location and get info on actual programs in your area that teach literacy, ESL GED etc...
• Living Home--all things home improvement, including an "Ask the Garden Guys" feature, and a "we'll calculate it for you" feature for how much lumber, wallpaper, etc. to buy.
• Living Wills: Forms -- also has downloadable 'Power of Attorney for Health Care Decisions' forms.
• Make-Stuff.com -- homemade formulas for things from glue to skin creams to paper maiche. Searchable.
• Meta-Efficient -- "For a product or technique to be considered meta-efficient it must be: Energy & Resource Efficient, Affordable, Reliable, Non-polluting, and if possible, Portable.The information presented here will be of interest to those who wish to live more simply and self-sufficiently."
• Museum of Hoaxes -- explains hoaxes perpetuated by the media and the Internet.
• Museum Stuff -- thousands of museums and exhibits worldwide. Searchable, browsable.
• MyMoney -- learn how to balance a checkbook, buy a home, figure out 401ks and more...from the U.S. government.
• Noise Pollution Clearinghouse -- includes research on the health and learning effects of noise, and federal and state laws governing it.
• Personal Safety Tips--advice from the City of Phoenix, Arizona. 
• Podcast Directory -- find ALL sorts of podcasts!
• Project Vote Smart -- "Thousands of candidates and officials, five areas of information. What would you like to know? Project Vote Smart (PVS) is a citizen's organization dedicated to serving all Americans with accurate and unbiased information for electoral decision-making." An excellent site.
• Publications from Kansas State Agricultural Experiment Station--everything from how to get your kids to do chores to how to plant bulbs and so much more. Agricultural experiment stations produce hundreds of useful publications, available for free, but few people know about them. Full-text online.
• Register to Vote -- secure online registration, no excuse now!
• Restaurant Inspection Reports -- In IOWA, find out here if your favorite restaurant or one you think of going to is clean and passed inspection and why.
• Roberts Rules of Order
• Science Fair Center
• Science of Cooking --An Exploratorium project that uses pickles and eggs and candy and breads to teach about fermentation, micro-organisms, the geography of spices, fat, proteins, etc. It includes recipes and activities as well.
• Seatbelts Save Lives -- a graphically stated description of what actually happens to the human body in a car crash.
• Snopes.com -- a good place to verify those e-mail forwards BEFORE you become alarmed!
• So You Wanna....  -- a place to find out how to do things of all sorts with step by step instructions and encouragement. Buy a laptop? Play poker? Pay off student loans? Be a sitcom writer? Grow a window garden? and lots more.
• Study Guides and Strategies-- gives students improvement in their test-taking skills, study techniques, time and stress management.
• Tide Stain Detective--all you ever wanted to know about doing laundry.
• Tornado Safety -- a must-read!!
• Urban Legends--did that actually happen to a friend of a friend? Get the real scoop. 
• Vegetarian and Vegan Recipes
• The Victory Garden -- great tips and projects to get started, plus recipes!
• Zip Code Look-up -- find the zip code for any address!