Internet Today
Back in the mid-to-late 1990s, there was a local Portland internet service provider called Teleport, located inside the Spalding Building on Southwest Washington Street downtown. One of the employees there had a daily feature on Teleport's website called "World Wide Web Today", which he eventually made a standalone site called WebToday.
Many other locally-based, small ISPs existed at the time, alongside community-based non-profit "freenet" systems, and many of them had similar web pages or newsletters. Before sophisticated search engines and social media, those pages introduced users to many useful and fun resources one could find online.
This page serves as a homage to that tradition, and also as a way for me to share many of the cool things I find online outside the short lifespans of social media timelines.
This will be a very eclectic one, covering many different subject matters.
Also check out "What I've been reading"!
The newest entry is at the top.
Your smart TV is spying on you
It automatically takes a screenshot of whatever you're watching every 15 to 60 seconds and sends it to a central server.
(2026-04-21)
An interactive map of the Portland area passenger rail system a century ago
With its extensive streetcar and interurban systems, Portland was known as a train city.
Portland and Willamette/Tualatin Valley Electric Railways, 1920
A stylized diagram of the Southern Pacific Red Electric system
(2026-04-21)
Explore how we engage with the internet has changed over 30 years
(2026-03-01)
Oregon communicable pathogens tracker
Oregon Health Authority wastewater monitoring (COVID, RSV, influenza, and measles).
(2025-02-19)
Protect your privacy from stalkers, doxxing, and creepers
Remove data from Instant Checkmate
Remove data from FastPeopleSearch
Remove data from TruePeopleSearch
(2025-02-02)
Portland area event calendars
Aggregated calendars of community events.
(2025-02-01)
Mass surveillance in your city
An interactive map of Flock Safety ALPR installations.
(2025-01-31)
Non-cooperation library
How to derail autocrats.
Non-cooperation Library (Freedom Trainers)
(2026-01-23)
Singing the entire Bible
Somebody has finally put the entire text of the Bible into songs... or so I thought. Sure enough, the music has been AI-generated, per the "AI transparency" disclosure. It is unclear if the music and song were performed by humans, however.
Bible in a year through song (YouVersion)
The Music Bible AI transparency
(2026-01-22)
ALMA Observatory virtual tours
The Atacama Large Millimeter Array (ALMA), located in the Atacama Desert of Chile, is a joint U.S.-Europe-Japan project sponsored by the European Southern Observatory, the National Science Foundation, and the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan.
(2025-01-21)
A multi-faith calendar
Use this convenient, all-in-one calendar to find out religious holy days observed by Christians, Jews, Muslims, Sikhs, Pagans, and more!
(2026-01-20)
The creator of prepaid mobile phones
If you have used Boost Mobile, Tracfone, or any other no-contract, pay-as-you-go cell phones, it is because of her invention.
Arlene Harris (Wireless History Foundation)
(2026-01-17)
Music from Minnesota
MNspin is a project of the Hennepin County Library in Minneapolis to showcase Minnesota-based musicians. Free to stream from anywhere (downloading requires a valid HCL card).
(2026-01-16)
Open Historical Map
It's just like the Open Street Map, but for historical maps.
(2026-01-13)
A map of gay and lesbian neighborhoods
Based on the 2020 U.S. census records, this map displays areas with a high concentration of gay and lesbian married couples.
(2026-01-12)
"Of the world"
(2026-01-10)
The big list of all Chinese rulers and dynasties in history
From the 26th century BCE to the 21st century CE
(2026-01-08)
Explore the world of Gemini!
TLGS ("Totally Legit Gemini Search") is your go-to starting point for the growing world of Gemini.
(2026-01-03)
360-degree Seattle live cam
A panoramic view of downtown Seattle and Elliott Bay from the Space Needle. Select past dates and time-lapse plays are also available, in addition to the live video feed.
(2026-01-02)
A good place to keep up with Oregon news
The State Library of Oregon offers this great service that very few people seem to know of its existence.
RSS reader friendly too.
Copy this URI into your RSS reader
(2025-12-30)
The Gullah nation and its language
The Gullah people were descendants of West African slaves who have lived in the coastal areas of the U.S. South, including South Carolina and Georgia. In 2000, they officially declared themselves to be a nation. Perhaps the most famous of the Gullah is U.S. Supreme Court justice Clarence Thomas, who grew up speaking the Gullah language. Today, the only remaining intact Gullah community is in Hogg Hammock on Sapelo Island, Georgia.
The New Testament in Gullah / De Gullah Nyew Testament
(2025-10-08)
History of Oregon's "sanctuary" law
On July 7, 1987, then Governor Neil Goldschmidt signed into law HB 2314, now codified as ORS 181.850, upon passage by the Legislative Assembly of Oregon on its third attempt.
The history of Oregon's so-called "sanctuary" law (University of Oregon)
(2025-09-19)
Open-access digital libraries for academic research
Open-Access Theses and Dissertations
Open-Access Digital Theological Library
(2025-09-03)
Gay and lesbian oral history of Oregon
Gay and Lesbian Archives of the Pacific Northwest (GLAPN - now called Oregon Queer History Collective) and Portland State University conducted a series of oral history interviews with Portland's LGBTQ+ leaders and cultural figures. Full interviews are recorded and are available at Oregon Historical Society's digital collections.
GLAPN oral history project (housed at Oregon Historical Society)
(2025-09-01)
Virtual educational programming from California State Parks
PORTScasts is a series of free virtual educational events (on Zoom) produced by California State Parks.
(2025-08-28)
More historic photos of Oregon
Searchable archive of historic photos, mainly from Salem area (Marion County Historical Society and The Statesman Journal)
Oregon Historic Photograph Collections (Salem Public Library)
(2025-08-26)
Mapping the human rights violation profiteers
(2025-08-21)
Donald Trump social media archive and fact check
A searchable database of all social media posts on X and Trump Social from Donald Trump.
(2025-08-18)
Use free, libre, and open source software
Look up free and open-source alternatives to many popular commercial software.
(2025-08-16)
Chinuk Wawa lessons online
This course teaches the northern dialect, which is spoken mainly in British Columbia. The basic elements are pretty much the same as the southern dialect spoken in Grand Ronde.
(2025-08-16)
AI sermon outline generator
There's much to be said about the roles of artificial intelligence in religion, but one of the things that AI could help the overworked ministers is to do some of the grunt jobs that are time-consuming but not necessarily creative. This AI tool generates main theses and outlines from up to five Bible passages.
AI Sermon Outline Generator (OpenBible Labs)
(2025-08-15)
808 common words between Chinese, Japanese, and Korean
Different pronunciations, same characters.
(2025-08-10)
Historical artifacts of Apple Computer
Apple Fritter is a blog and a forum dedicated to the early history of Apple Computer and its products.
(2025-08-09)
Sample random pages from Small Web!
This displays a random post from Small Web sites.
Download a full list of known Small Web RSS/Atom feeds
(2025-08-07)
U.S. public broadcasting archives' LGBT+ collections
Public broadcasting and LGBTQ+ communities are subjects of targeted politicized hostilities these days, so it is worth remembering both at the American Archive of Public Broadcasting.
"The LGBT+ Collection includes over 700 public radio and television programs and original materials contributed to the American Archive of Public Broadcasting (AAPB) by 35 stations and organizations from across the United States. The recordings date from the late 1950s to 2018."
(2025-08-07)
Hate SaaS?
Since about 10 years ago, "software as a service" (SaaS) became the predominant model of business for computer software. Nowadays to use commercial software means having to give away your credit card number for auto-billing. I genuinely hate this, and apparently I'm not the only one.
(2025-08-03)
An excellent alternative to Google Maps
CoMaps is a free and open-source Android app that is fast, easy to use, and private. Maps are downloaded to your device (allow 500MB to 1GB of space either on your smartphone or on a Micro SD card), so there is no mobile data required while on the go -- and no data is transmitted to Google or any other third party. CoMaps is based on OpenStreetMap, a global collaborative project run by volunteers. You can help improve the maps by joining the OpenStreetMap, too.
(2025-07-29)
A great source of Mediterranean recipes
This website has been one of my go-to sources for mostly Mediterranean and Middle Eastern recipes.
(2025-07-23)
Download free music MP3 legally
Free Music Archive was started by radio station WFMU and is a great place to discover new music and to enjoy it for free.
(2025-07-21)
See the aurora borealis!
This is a live cam from Churchill, Manitoba (58°47' N), on the northwestern shore of the Hudson Bay. It is on year-round and 24/7. The town is in the Central time zone (same as Chicago).
(2025-07-17)
220kB open-source text editor from Microsoft!
The classic MS Edit from the MS-DOS era is now back as cross-platform, open-source software. It is written in Rust and can run on Linux by simply executing it. It is only 220 kilobytes in size, making it a very lightweight text editor by today's standard.
Download MS Edit (Linux 64-bit or Windows)
(2025-06-25)
Cable TV weather nostalgia
In 1995, I got myself an "extended basic" cable TV service from TCI and one of the channels was the Weather Channel. It was a good source of background noise while I studied as all it did was to display the local weather report while playing some "elevator music" in the background.
(2025-06-08)
Older entries:
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Copyright 2022-2026. Articles on this site may be used freely under the terms of the Cooperative Nonviolent Public License version 7 or the latest, whichever the newer (CNPL v7+). All other uses require the express permission of the author. See the contact page (on Gemini or WWW: willowashmaple.sbs/contact; on Gopher: gopher://willowashmaple.sbs:70/0/willowashmaple/contact) for email and other ways to get in touch.
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