STONES of PHILLY

The internet is a pretty miraculous resource. No matter what you want to find online, it’s almost a guarantee that you’ll be able to source a website that gives it to you, for better or worse. Whether it’s cooking tips, money saving hacks, or finding the latest tech, there are plenty of websites out there to help you live your life better and more efficiently, but given the vast size of the internet, it might be hard to know how to find some of them. Here are 10 websites you need to put in your favourites list right now.

1. Money Saving Expert

We can’t overstate the importance of Martin Lewis and the MoneySavingExpert network. Lewis’ site is totally free, but it’s priceless in the volume and quality of advice it offers. Whether you want to know where the best place to get quick loans might be or you want to get advice on how to start up a new mortgage plan, MoneySavingExpert can help you. The site is friendly but professional; it’s obvious Lewis genuinely wants to help as many people as he can with their finances.

2. Instructables

Do you love making things? Need some new ideas, or perhaps just want to see what the world is creating right now? Instructables is the site for you. It showcases the creations of people around the world; some of them are incredibly useful (a method for fixing a chipped phone case, for example), while others are just cool (the retro gramophone-style Bluetooth speaker particularly caught our attention). If you love arts and crafts, you need Instructables on your favourites list.

3. Copy Paste Character

Okay, so it’s fair to say this one might be just a little more niche, but we still think CopyPasteCharacter is an incredibly useful site to bookmark. If you’ve ever been working on a document and you’ve needed to insert a special character – a trademark symbol, for instance, or a copyright mark – but you haven’t been able to access the keyboard shortcut, then this site will be a godsend. Just head over to the site, search for the character you want, and copy and paste it.

4. Down For Everyone (Or Just Me)

Have you ever logged onto a website, only to be greeted by a 404 error? Did you spend the next thirty seconds refreshing the page, wondering if anyone else was experiencing the same thing as you? With Down For Everyone (Or Just Me), you don’t need to wonder that anymore. Simply type in a URL on this site and it’ll tell you whether other users are also struggling to access that website. This can save precious seconds when you’re trying to refresh a page but you could be working instead.

5. Doodle

Trying to organise any kind of meeting – whether it’s a wedding party, a business gathering, or a band rehearsal – over platforms like WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger can very quickly get messy. That’s where Doodle comes in. This site lets you and your friends join the same event, input your availability, and coordinate a time that works for everyone. With Doodle, you’ll never need to have that “but you said you were free Tuesday evening” conversation again.

6. Full Fact

Fake news is absolutely rampant right now. With misinformation receiving degrees more engagement on social media than real information does, it’s never been more important to know whether you’re being told the truth or not. Luckily, there are sites like Full Fact out there (with Snopes being another excellent option) that will show you the truth behind a story. Full Fact often features stories that are currently circulating, so if you’ve seen a viral story and you’re just not sure of its veracity, visit Full Fact.

7. eHow

While its cousin wikiHow might be better known, eHow is a far less ridiculous platform if you just want to know how to do something. The range of content on offer here is impressive; there’s very little you won’t be able to learn by using eHow, so it’s well worth taking a look at it if you’re looking for a tutorial. On the front page right now, there are tutorials for how to measure text point size, how to care for a kangaroo paw plant, and how to stop herons from stealing fish from your pond, among others.

8. AlternativeTo

Want to find a free alternative to a piece of paid software? AlternativeTo can help you do just that. Using crowdsourced information and answers, this platform attempts to recommend alternatives to (see what they did there?) the software you use on a daily basis. Let’s say, for example, you’re using Microsoft Word, but you’re getting annoyed with a certain feature. AlternativeTo will show you different office suites you could be using instead, like LibreOffice or Google Docs.

9. ReviewMeta

There’s nothing more annoying than browsing the Amazon page for a product, only to realise that most of the reviews for it are fake. This is an endemic problem on Amazon, with many companies submitting their own fake reviews to inflate their score. ReviewMeta helps you sift through the reviews to spot common tropes and other features that frequently appear in fakes, so you can see what customers really think of the phone you’re about to buy.

10. TV Chart

At this point, it’s pretty much beyond contention that Game of Thrones becomes weaker by its sixth or seventh season, with the eighth not worth bothering with at all. TV Chart allows you to find out whether that’s true of other shows you’re about to watch by showing you an aggregate of all the reviews the show has amassed on a season-by-season basis. Should you start with season two or skip the fifth one? TV Chart can help you decide.