Weekend update: Other things I found this week:

I've started collecting links from the Appalachian mountains, since I've always had a special fondness for the area (I lived and had a natural food store in Black Mountain, NC for about 5 years after leaving DC. Even when I lived in DC the Shenandoah/Blue Ridge Parkways were where I headed whenever I could get out. Now we own a house in far Western NC and go there whenever we can.)
So I'm thinking about doing a page just of mountain links. I've found some good ones lately, even a few blogs. One is a photoblog by a Boone, NC, photojournalist, Marie Freeman, called Blue Ridge Blog. She's had some beautiful photos recently.
This week I found Blue Ridge Music Trails: a guide for travelers to the Appalachians. I really hoped the Floyd (VA) Country Store was my secret (and thousands of Washington Post readers', since they wrote about the Friday night hoedown a couple years ago). But I'm also glad to see they also mention the Friday night concerts at the Campbell Folk School, in Brasstown, where I'll be heading. If you love real country music, this is a useful resource.

See where all this blogging/linking stuff can lead you? A whole new world.

More useful links....

Reference :

Who knew Crayola had a database of colors? This one links to Burnt Sienna, and includes a cultural history of brown, and historical information on this Crayola crayon. What a fun reference tool! Found via Wonkette, of all places.

Searchable database of Grammy winners.

Printable maps of the U.S. from National Atlas.

NANPA: area codes database from North American Numbering Plan.

WW II RAF Reconnaissance photos: over 5 million, digitized. New site, has not worked for me yet. Also see this BBC site.

Birmingham Civil Rights Center new redesigned site.

Iraqi Society for Higher Education Abroad: Iraqi academics' site, in Arabic but has translate to English function. BBC story about this.

Ships of the World: a historical encyclopedia.
Tools:

RSS Reader from Yahoo (in beta). If you are on MyYahoo, you can have it add RSS feeds from blogs, news sites, etc. to your page.

Two other Web-based news readers getting attention: Bloglines and My Feedster.
Journalism:

Gannett News Department's Web site is now online to the public. This includes lots of good work, training, standards, and resources, although some are still restricted by passwords (G), like the Census resources.
Business:

Financial Institution Fraud and Failure Report, 2003 long PDF from FBI. Contains statistics on investigations, including by city. There are descriptions of major investigations too.
Statistics:

State-level U.S. military casualties, Korean conflict, Vietnam War from National Archives. You can get them sorted alphabetically or by hometown within a state.
Governments, Politics:

Congressional Preview Package, 2004 from Capital Eye (Center for Responsive Politics), on the issues.

Beyond Red and Blue Mass. journal Commonwealth proposes a new political map of the U.S. (via Sheila Lennon.)
News:

Baltimore Sun RSS feeds: for getting mail direct to your news reader.

More for your news aggregator: PR Newswire RSS feed
Florida, Public Records, People: no links this week.

Some Interesting stories/Weblogs:

Wonkette: a new Gawker-style blog for DC.

An Orchid blog from Caracas, with incredible pictures.

The Pants on Fire Mobile Is on its way to South Florida. (via Florida Blog).

Mariani v. Bush suit from 9/11 widow claimes administration knew in advance, did not use proper procedures to avoid tragedy.