Living Online

the best of the net every month

Air Traffic Control

Here's a great online resource. My friends were flying in from San Francisco, and I typed their flight number into thetrip.com's Flight Tracker and found out that the plane would land half an hour later than scheduled. The information is updated once a minute, and you can even see where the plane is on a map. Flight Tracker saved me half an hour of waiting at the airport. You can also use the service to automatically send e-mail to your friends when your plane lands.

Good Music

Rolling Stone's new portal, tunes.com, offers what you'd expect from any decent commercial music site--a million song clips, a thousand videos, profiles of 85,000 artists. But the thing I like most about tunes.com is the way it lets you tap into other users' music collections to find out what you've been missing. Here's how it works. When you click on a picture of an album you like, you get a list of other people who like the same album. You can then click on a person's name to see what other albums he likes and to hear 30-second sound clips. If you want to get in touch with a like-minded music fan, you can contact him through tunes.com's messaging system. The site was designed with pest protection in mind, so other users won't know your real name or e-mail address unless you provide it for them.

For Movie Maniacs

The Internet Movie Database (imdb.com) is the Net's best resource for movie and video information. Among its 180,000 movie titles, I've always found what I've been looking for, from Fifties bondage queen Bettie Page's Teaserama to George Lucas' 1970 science fiction classic, THX 1138. The reviews and credits are linked, so a click on Lucas' name, for instance, will produce a page with everything he's directed, written or produced. The site offers more than reviews, plot summaries and credits. You can read memorable quotes, trivia, "goofs" and the details of alternate versions of the film in question. You can also review, comment on or rate a movie. When I'm in the mood for a video but am not sure what to watch, I cruise around IMDb and follow interesting links. Sooner or later I'm able to find what I want. The Internet Movie Database was purchased by Amazon, so if a movie is available on video, or if there's a biography of the director or a cast member in print, you can be certain there'll be a link to a site that sells it.

Surfer, Heal Thyself

A few months ago I had a flu that I couldn't shake. As soon as I'd start to feel good--wham!--I'd wake up in the middle of the night with another fever and chest congestion. My doctor couldn't tell me anything I didn't already know, so I went online to treat myself. At www.healthshop.com I filled out an anonymous questionnaire about my condition, and the site suggested, among other things, that I might have a "disturbed immune system." It prescribed a regimen of 30 supplements, including primrose oil, ginseng concentrate, saw palmetto concentrate, essential fatty acids concentrate and echinacea. It also offered to sell me the stuff for around $300. I wanted a second opinion.

Andrew Weil (askdrweil.com) integrates traditional and alternative medicine. I've used Weil's site before--it was the source of two surefire remedies (stinging nettles tablets to treat hay fever, and very hot water to relieve the itching of poison oak). This time I found an article about how the immune system works and how to keep it strong. Besides suggesting a low-fat, low-protein diet to boost your immune system, Weil recommends the use of "tonic" mushrooms from China and Japan: zhu ling, maitake, shiitake and enokidake. I ordered a bottle of Mushroom Complex capsules on vitaminshoppe.com for $11.20. They seem to have helped--I haven't so much as sniffled in nearly three weeks.

How to Get There from Here

One day, all cars will have computer navigation systems with a dashboard video map and a friendly voice that tells you you missed your exit. You can buy one now (try Alpine's Navigation and Information System at alpinel.com), but it'll set you back a couple grand. Until the price drops, I'm happy using driving directions I print from online map sites such as maps.yahoo.com and mapquest.com. You enter your starting address and your destination, and the sites create turn-by-turn directions along with a map that traces your route. I've become hopelessly dependent on online driving directions, but every once in a while I run into trouble. Near the end of a trip from Los Angeles to Pismo Beach, the printout told me to "turn left on unnamed road." I ended up at a landfill. Now, I always make sure the directions are complete before I hit the highway.

Beyond Amazon

I went to amazon.com to buy a copy of Gordon Sander's book Serling: The Rise and Twilight of Television's Last Angry Man, but it was out of print. When Amazon doesn't have a book in stock, it throws up a page that says, "We'll query our network of used bookstores for you and send an update within one to two weeks." Fortunately, many places online will sell me the book today. First I went to isbn.nu and found a used copy for $12.45. Then I checked another bookseller search engine, addall.com, which located several other online stores carrying the book, with prices ranging from $12.45 (powells.com, 10- to 15-day shipping) to $19.90 (fatbrain.com, two-day express). When I'm looking for a book that's way out of print, like Roger Price's hilarious polemic The Great Roob Revolution, I turn to Bibliofind (bibliofind.com), a search engine that contains the inventories of thousands of used bookstores. Four booksellers had the book, at prices ranging from $10 for a well-worn copy to $25 for a copy in very good condition. Barnes and Noble (barnesandnoble.com) offers a rare-and used-book service that's worth-while. If you still can't find what you're looking for, try an online auction site, such as ebay.com.

You may contact Mark Frauenfelder by e-mail at [email protected].