Miles Mendoza's Website of the Day ... and more!

Flight Checker

Website of the Day: Thursday 31st March

>> Money Saving Expert Flight Checker
Regular listeners to Jeremy Vine will already be familiar with moneysavingexpert.com from Martin Lewis’ regular appearances on the Vine show. In fact the site has been one of my most useful (and most visited) bookmarks since I first saw the site in 2003. The site’s new flight checker automatically searches the pricelists for four of the budget airlines to find the cheapest flight on a particular route within a set timeframe – so as well as finding the best price you’ll also find the cheapest time to travel.

The FakeFunk Jump Project

Website of the Day: Tuesday 29th March

>> The FakeFunk Jump Project
Long-standing listeners will know that I have a soft spot for sites with lots of photos of people doing daft things in famous locations. Hence this selection of shots of people jumping up and down in the UK, Viet Nam, Sweden, France, Japan and all over America was bound to find its way into the Website of the Day hall of fame! The site points out that jumping is good because:

1. People make funny faces when they jump
2. It’s interesting to compare different jumping techniques
3. Jumping makes people smile and evokes happy childhood memories of spacehoppers, trampolines and swimming pools!

Shop Horror

Website of the Day: Thursday 24th March 2005

>> Shop Horror
Excellent! A site created to pay tribute to the great British tradition of pun-tastic high-street shop names. Webmaster Guy Swillingham has travelled the British Isles photographing shop-fronts that have earned their place in the Shop-Name-Pun Hall of Fame. As well as marvelling at the likes of Wok This Way and Cliptomania, you can submit your own suggestions for pun-tastic shop names.

Doctor Who

Also mentioned today:
>> Official Doctor Who
The official BBC site tells you pretty much everything you could wish to know about the new series and the classic series. Very definitely a labour of love. Do post comments here after the programme on Saturday - I'll be interested to hear what you thought of it - I think it looks great!

Free tagging for luggage, keys, mobiles and laptops

Website of the Day: Wednesday 23rd March

>> pi-tag.com
This site offers a free and secure service to help you tag anything from luggage to keys, laptops and even pets. You’re allocated a unique number which is linked to your contact details. If you lose a tagged item, then the finder can contact you via the site, but (if you choose) your contact details stay secret.

Googlefight

Website of the Day: Tuesday 22nd March 2005

>> Googlefight
Corrie Vs Eastenders, Chavs Vs Sloanes, Blur Vs Oasis, Blair Vs Howard, Jamie Vs Nigella: At last, here’s the definitive answer to all those “Who’s Best?” conundrums. Googlefight is like an instant barometer of popular culture; Simply type in two phrases, and click the button labelled “Make a Fight” to find out which phrase is the most popular (as rated by Google).

Justice for Kirsty

Website of the Day: Friday 18th March 2005

>> Justice for Kirsty
Tonight at 1140 BBC2 is screening a documentary called Who Killed Kirsty MacColl. The programme charts Kirsty’s mother’s attempts to investigate the real circumstances of Kirsty’s death four years ago in a powerboat accident off the coast of Mexico. The Justice for Kirsty campaign site tells the story in full and explains how you can support the campaign.

Kirsty MacColl fans will also be interested to know that several of her albums have just been reissued with bonus tracks (including the rare Titanic Days, which includes fan-favourite Soho Square) and there’s a box-set due at the end of the month featuring previously unreleased material.

Related Links:
>> BBC Four: Who Killed Kirsty MacColl
>> Freeworld (Official Site)
>> Kirsty on ZTT Records
>> Kirsty on BBC Music

The Baby Name Wizard

Website of the Day: Thursday 17th March

>> The Baby Name Wizard: Name Voyager
Great fun and really interesting, this is the sort of thing the web does much better than print or telly - If there was a British version (this is American) it would be the dog's bee's knees.
The site is an interactive graph charting baby name popularity over the last century. Type in any name to see a new graph illustrating that name's ranking in the thousand most popular names of each of the last 10 decades. You'll learn that Gertrude was most popular between 1900 and 1910 but Miles has never been more popular than it is now (presumably thanks to the Frasier effect).

Einstein Year

Website of the Day: Wednesday 16th March

>> Einstein Year
Three good reasons to pick an Einstein-friendly site today:
1) It’s National Science week
2) Monday would have been the mad-haired physicist’s 126th birthday
3) 2005 is Einstein Year, celebrating the centenary of the publication of his three most significant papers which redefined the way we view the entire universe.
So what essential features belong on a site celebrating the joys of physics? Start with an online game called Time Twins starring a space-traveling teddy bear and featuring Einstein's famous Twins Paradox, and lots of lasers, teleportation and the Beagle 2 space prob. Then add scientific poetry written by Muppets (really!), a free Einstein-inspired mp3 download of a rap by DJ Vader, an interactive murder mystery game, and a screensaver download that helps with the search for gravitational waves.

Interactive maps and route-planning

Website of the Day: 15th March 2005

>> Map 24
I've been using Multimap as my site-of-choice for finding maps and driving directions for the last few years, but Map24 really raises the bar, by introducing animated interactive maps and route planning. While no route-planning site is as useful as a friend who knows the best shortcuts, this is the next best thing!