This page is meant for expressing gratitude to the makers of several websites from which people like this author could be benefited, either through the useful information found therein, or through the various freebies that could be downloaded therefrom. (Updated on Oct, 2005)
Search Engines, Web-mail and Website Services:
rediff.com -- Needs no introduction to
Indian netizens. A fast and appropriately indianised search engine, news, chat,
voice-chat & hobbies site, along with a fast email service rediffmail.com. People can also request
his/her website to be listed here by e-mailing to submiturl@rediff.co.in
yahoo.com -- Needs no introduction. A good
search engine, news, chat, voice-chat and hobbies site, along with a very
popular email service mail.yahoo.com
(The indianised search version with even preview of Indian movies is yahoo.co.in)
google.com , altavista.com and lycos.com -- Three very good search engines (the
first one is exceptionally faster). One's website also can be submitted therein
for getting listed.
geocities.com lets
one make a upto 11-MB website for free, such as this one (angelfire.com offers similar facilities).
General Software Utilities -- downloading, splitting, zipping, anti-virus, word-processing, graphics etc.:
gozilla.com and speedbit.com -- Each of them gives for free
an excellent download-facilitating software (Gozilla or DAP) that speeds up
download by choosing among mirror sites, and can resume broken downloads from
where it was left.
geocities.com/riturajkalita/vy_splitter.zip
now hosts (with due permission from the developer) VY-Splitter, a free
software (developed by M V Vyjesh) of only around 180
KB size that allows splitting and rejoining of big files in a very user-friendly
way, so that they become portable with floppy disks! geocities.com/riturajkalita
offers several more freeware packages
download.com and zdnet.com offers many important freebies for
people to download. To download from zdnet.com etc., you need to become a member by filling in a
form.
winzip.com is the site for
the fantastic WinZip software for compressing and clubbing up files and folders,
quite frequently to a size less than half of the original!
adobe.com offers the free "Adobe Acrobat Reader"
for PDF files.
freeav.com and grisoft.com offers very good, frequently
updated free antivirus software.
mslit.com offer's classic e-books to be
read using the well-known (free) Microsoft Reader, many hundreds of them
being free. Microsoft Reader, with the
allied free text-to-speech facility installed, allows e-books to be
read aloud automatically.
software602.com offers the free 602 PC
Suite, which is almost comparable with Microsoft Office, in terms of its
word-processing and spreadsheet-management facilities.
netscape.com & mozilla.org offers the renowned free internet
browsers Netscape or Mozilla Suite/ Mozilla FireFox (they are comparable to
Internet Explorer). Netscape installation includes that of the free Real
Player, (fine audio/ video player)
trellian.com & netscape.com offers Trellian WebPage or
Netscape inclusive of HTML composers comparable to FrontPage.
rsalsbury.co.uk/rd.htm offers a
free word-processor for writers designed by Richard Salsbury, UK. It offers some
shorthand-type facility.
irfanview.com
offers a fantastic picture-manipulating software designed by Irfan Skiljan,
Austria.
windowsupdate.microsoft.com
provides updates for Windows. The "Critical Updates" help in making the system
secure, while other updates help to get access to improved accessories.
microsoft.com offers many freeware
offered by Microsoft. office.microsoft.com provides updates for
MS-office accessories.
babylon.com --
Provides free, off-line, very-easy-to-use dictionaries {English-English and
English-(Other Language)}; an word- speaking software; currency, local time and
other conversion tables. Also accesses an encyclopedia when online.
Assam, North-East India, India, Their Newspapers
etc.:
assam.org is one of the
leading Assam-specific site, and includes e-mail & chat facility.
assampolice.org An Assam-resident might
have something to inform to it.
northeastvigil.com is a particularly
informative site on social socio-economic aspects of North-East India.
pratidinassam.com & assamtribune.com/ offers access to Assam newspapers
Asomiya Pratidin & The Assam Tribune.
assam.faithweb.com offers for free the
Aadarsha Ratne class of True Type Fonts designed by Rabin Deka,
USA. These are free treasures for anyone willing to type or e-mail in
Assamese.
kiranfont.com offers for
free the Kiran true-type font, which I find to be the most user-friendly
Hindi font developed till now.
guwahati4u.com is website named
after the city of Guwahati, concerning and the state of Assam.
sangaiexpress.com offers free access to
the newspaper The Sangai Express from Imphal, Manipur.
telegraphindia.com offers free access
to The Telegraph newspaper from Kolkata and several other Eastern-Indian
cities.
freespeech.org/manushi gives access
to the humanist monthly "Manushi" from N Delhi.
countercurrents.org is a site
offering many scores of thought-provoking exhaustive essays on contemporary
sub-continental and global socio-political concerns.
Educational Institutions, Science & Technology Education, Jobs:
e-learningcenter.com/free.htm
offers several free online courses in computer operations.
ignou.org is the official site of the Indira
Gandhi National Open University (India), a distance-education institution known
offering recognized quality education at a cheap price.
ets.org is the website for Educational Testing
Service, Princeton, USA.
ugc.ac.in is the
official site of the University Grants Commission, the university regulating
body in India.
csir.res.in is the
official site of Council of Scientific and Industrial Research, India. (For
syllabus of CSIR-UGC JRF/LS NET exam may try the page csirhrdg.res.in/syllabi_NET_05.pdf
)
iitk.ac.in, iitkgp.ernet.in, iitb.ernet.in etc. are the official sites of
Indian Institutes of Technology at Kanpur, Kharagpur, Bombay (Mumbai) etc. (iisc.ernet.in is the site of Indian
Institute of Science, Bangalore).
naukri.com is an excellent, India-specific, job
site in cyberspace.
Daily life: Health, Railways, Airways, Phone, Weather, Taxation, Dictionaries, Instant Knowledge:
familydoctor.org, healthfinder.gov and health.uab.edu are very good sites for free
but authentic disease & treatment info.
bsnl.co.in is the website of the public sector
Indian telecom service corporation BSNL (Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited), allowing
access to the BSNL landline (e.g., kamrup district landline) & cell phone bills, Dataone Internet Usage etc.
sancharnet.in & sify.com are the sites of the two major internet
service providers in India.
timeanddate.com/worldclock gives the current date and time in cities around the world.
indianrail.gov.in is the official site
of the Indian Railways: it allows to search the full schedule (timetable) and
also permits enquiries about individual reservation status.
indian-airlines.nic.in, jetairways.com, airdeccan.net & flykingfisher.com are the official sites
of Indian Airlines, Jet Airways, Deccan Airlines and Kingfisher Airlines
operating in India.
wunderground.com gives information
about the current weather in cities and towns all over the world, including
those in India and even in N-E India. Babylon Pro software from babylon.com offers similar facilities by
contacting the web.
caclubindia.com
is an India-specific website on taxation & accountancy etc.
dictionary.reference.com offers
a very good online dictionary in English language (may download also).
freelang.com offers free
downloadable dictionaries in Hindi, Urdu, German etc. (hint: install both
the program & word-list).
encyclopedia.com & britannica.com are very good encyclopedia
in cyberspace introducing almost any topic you may think of, in a simple
informative way, for free in an introductory level.
wikipedia.org offers a totally free
encyclopedia: you can even edit and add any entries therein without any
authorization!
thesaurus.reference.com offers a
very good online thesarus (synonyms database) in English language
Chemistry -- Chemical-Information Searching, Journals and Software etc.:
scirus.com is a fine search engine
specific for science information only, where you can opt for journal/ web-source
or both.
scholar.google.com is a
similar-purpose search engine specific for academic (scholarly) information
only.
chemweb.com is a huge collection-system of
information (including abstracts from most journals) lying free on the web
relevant to chemists, from which the desired chemical information is better
searched using chemweb.com/search
scienceworld.wolfram.com/chemistry
is a quite good (though elementary) chemistry encyclopedia lying free on the
web.
pubs.acs.org/about.html
gives access to scores of American Chemical Society journals (may search for
author/title/abstract).
rsc.org/Publishing/Journals
gives access to scores of Royal Society of Chemistry (Europe)
journals (may search therein).
mdl.com offers ISIS/ Draw, the renowned software
(with help!) for drawing molecular structures and chemical equations etc.
gaussian.com/techinfo.htm is the
know-how providing official site of the theoretical-chemistry computation
software Gaussian planaria-software.com and msg.ameslab.gov/GAMESS/pcgamess.shtml
respectively offers ArgusLab for creating (from scratch!) &
modifying molecular models, and PC-GAMESS for performing state of
the art theo. chemistry computations.
chem.gla.ac.uk/~louis/software offers
ORTEP, the well-known crystallography visualisation software,
with some other ones.