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

How Do You Solve A Problem Like Maria

>> How Do You Solve A Problem Like Maria
>> Singalonga Sound Of Music
>> BBC News: The Cult of The Sound of Music
Tomorrow Andrew Lloyd Webber will be one week closer to finding his Maria for the imminent West End Revival of The Sound Of Music. BBC 1’s latest reality talent show follows the legendary composer’s quest to find a new West End superstar, and this site feature loads of video highlights, episode guides and a photo competition in which members of the public are invited to re-enact scenes from the show. Meanwhile Singalonga Sound Of Music is the official site for the Sound Of Music karaoke events which turn the original film into a massive party complete with fancy dress and authentic edelweiss!

Radio London

>> Radio London
39 years ago this week, the Marine Offences Bill became law – bringing to an end the reign over the UK’s airwaves of the offshore pirate stations. This is one of the most comprehensive fan sites dedicated to the pirate ships – with a particular emphasis on Radio London whose star roster of DJs included Tony Blackburn, Dave Cash, Pete Drummond, Kenny Everett, John Peel, Keith Skues, Ed "Stewpot" Stewart and Tommy Vance.
A true labour of love, the site features over 900 pages of enthusiastic and expert content. Highlights include a complete set of Radio London Fab Forty charts from 1965 – 67 featuring information and photographs which form a mini-history of the times and music.
Also recommended: The Pirate Radio Hall Of Fame

Flickr - 21st Century Photo Sharing

>> Flickr
There are plenty of good online photo albums, but Flickr stands way ahead of the pack as a brilliantly flexible service with a terrific emphasis on photo sharing. The site is equally well suited to creating a public gallery of photos taken with your camera-phone, or a secure password-protected group of photos of your children that can only be viewed by you and their grandparents.
Any Flickr user can leave comments about any photos in your public galleries and as with social networking sites like MySpace you can link directly to the galleries of other Flickr members to build up a group of online friends with similar interests.
All your photos can be allocated a selection of key words or tags, making it easy to search all of your own photos of your friend Ted, or the Eiffel Tower, or indeed all the photos of Teds (or Parisian landmarks) posted anywhere on Flickr.
If all you want is a good functional photo album, Flikr is certainly that, but encourage your friends to sign up and link to your galleries and you’ll soon discover how photo sharing can become highly addictive!

Find Extra Work

>> Find Extra Work
This is a detailed guide to many of the ways you can supplement your income or find self-employment in the UK.
Suggestions range from Film & TV Extra work (From £65 for a day’s work, or more for jobs “that require you to perform certain skills like horse riding, skating, etc or have your hair cut really short”) to mystery shopping, nude modelling for art classes, strawberry picking or writing the Star Letter to the TV Times!

How Posh is Your Surname?

>> Surname Profiler
When I first mentioned this site last year, there was massive interest – so much so that they struggled to cope with the surge of traffic. At launch the Surname Profiler allowed users to search for a surname and see where in the British Isles that name was most common in 1881 and 1998. Recently the site has added statistics which rank each surname by social status. Apparently only 3% of Britons have higher-status surnames than Mendoza, whereas Wright is a much more middle-ranking name!

Never Forget

>> Never Forget
Over the last few years I’ve featured a few online reminder services for birthdays and anniversaries, but new site Never Forget is one of the most flexible and fully-featured sites I’ve tried so far.
For any birthday or anniversary you’ll receive 14 day, 3 day and 1 day reminders by both email and text message. And best of all, if you still don’t manage to sort out a card or present in time, the site acts as your personal secretary, sending out an automatic greetings email or text message in your name on the day itself!

Big Bubble

>> Big Bubble
It’s Day 79 in the Big Bubble tank and tankmates Nat (A 24 year old Glaswegian goldfish chef) and Sarah (22, a guppy promotions girl from Bradford) are both up for eviction. You can follow developments live on the Tank Cam or discover what the tankmates think of their fellow fish in the Diary Tank. I’m hoping that ex-roadie Dave (who travelled the world with Voodoo Death Fish) will win this year’s contest.

Ceefax Online

>> Ceefax.tv (Ceefax search engine)
>> Teletext Now and Then
This is more an exercise in enjoyable nostalgia than a super-useful service, but it does serve as an enjoyable reminder of text-based information services in the days after the testcard but before the internet!

Excuse My French

>> BBC 2: Excuse My French (Watch and rate video clips)
>> Excuse My French Online Challenge
The last time I tried watching a TV language programme, it was all “Ecoutez et Repetez” and pretty dreary. By contrast, BBC Two’s Excuse My French is part reality show and part language course: Ron Atkinson, Esther Rantzen and Marcus Brigstocke are spending a month immersed in Provencal life and culture, with the aim of doing their day jobs – but in French!
The online challenge invites you compare your French skills with those of the featured celebrities while brushing up on your vocab and pronunciation. Check out the rest of the BBC Languages site for more interactive language tutorials.