• Get access to TOR websites without running TOR yourself: http://www.tor2web.com/ #
• XMPP based website chat room: http://www.speeqe.com #
• Free Jabber/XMPP proxy service: http://www.jabber80.com/ #

• Mobile version of Wikipedia: http://mobile.wikipedia.org/ #

• Educating all about the wonders of Google: http://www.letmegooglethatforyou.com/ #
• Textile formatting quick reference: http://www.hobix.com/textile/quick.html #

• File sharing website with no size limits: http://fileai.com/ #
• Online tool to help calibrate you LCD: http://tft.vanity.dk/ #
• Visualization of Facebook activity (written with http://www.jmonkeyengine.com/): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wTQf8MqEfg0 #
• Upcoming graph visualization environment: http://www.rhizomenavigation.net/ #

• Book on Python to check out: http://www.greenteapress.com/thinkpython/ #
• Python development environment: http://ipython.scipy.org/moin/ #

• Awesome looking temporal web analysis tool: http://link.brightcove.com/services/link/bcpid1460879066/bctid3727447001 #

• Windows screenshot program that lets you customize where the screenshot is stored: http://www.brandonz.net/projects/zscreen/ #
• Track websites for price drops: http://www.shoppingnotes.com/ #

• Archive of LIFE magazine photos: http://images.google.com/hosted/life #
• Tool to pump dummy data into a MySQL database: http://spawner.sourceforge.net/ #
• Buy and host your name: http://www.nombray.com/ #
• The AI landscape: http://www.aaai.org/Magazine/Poster/ailandscape.jpg #
• Public datasets from Amazon: http://aws.amazon.com/publicdatasets/ #

I finished reading this book a few months ago and I wanted to write a little something up about it. I liked how the author started with the really basic concept of binary numbering systems and then gently built complexity on top of it to describe modern computational theory. I was also impressed by how well the author used easy to understand examples to describe some very complex ideas.

I would highly recommend the first half of the book to even a casual computer user (who wanted to better understand the mind of the computer geek in your life). However towards the middle the content gets a little heavy for the casual reader. Also you could tell that the author wrote most of the book early on and then when he finally tried to put it together for publishing a lot had developed in the computer industry. You could tell because the last few chapters felt as if they were just thrown in and tried to quickly cover both the ideas of a GUI and the Internet.

On the whole I would say it is a good read but I wouldn't put it to the top of your list.

Petzold, C. (2000). Code: the hidden language of computer hardware and software. Redmond, Wash: Microsoft Press.
http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/45355686