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Beyond Weather.com

Find detailed weather forecasting and news at AccuWeather.com. A ton of Doppler radar images show the weather in action. Select your state, and the site gives you a static image or an animation for your area. AccuWeather can also provide hour-by-hour forecasts over three days and up to a year's worth of historical data. You can sign up to receive e-mail weather updates and storm alerts, or you can download a desktop application that provides current weather information and displays a personal radar screen. Free (though limited) weather info is available for handheld users. PDAers with a wireless connection who cough up $3 a month can receive a healthy subset of AccuWeather services, such as hourly forecasts, 15-day outlooks, warnings of severe weather conditions, and more.

When the Going Gets Tough...

The tough hit the road and look for a good place to stay. Travelaxe helps by scouring nearly two dozen travel and hotel Web sites for the best deal on hotel rooms. To use the site you first install a small app. Select the start and end days of your trip on a calendar, use the drop-down menus to choose your destination, click a button, and you'll get a screenful of offers you can compare side-by-side. Travelaxe won't book the room for you, but takes you to the appropriate reservation site to close the deal. At the time of this writing, Travelaxe tapped listings for 35,000 hotels in 535 different locations in 36 countries.

The 411 on New Software

If your profits--or your mental health--are riding on the next release of a vital application, turn to BetaNews for the scoop on when it's coming, what the prerelease version does, and where you can get it. The site updates news frequently on beta programs and services, freeware, and shareware. Many stories have beta tester comments and direct links for downloading the app. A useful companion site, VersionTracker.com, monitors thousands of shipping shareware, freeware, and commercial programs for PCs, Macs, and Palms. Each citation notes the version, the system requirements, what the program does, and what's been changed, along with a download link.

Fast Track to Financial Data

Annual reports usually get tucked under a short table leg, but if you're researching a competitor or a client, they provide valuable financial and cultural information. If you need data on American companies, turn to Annual Report Service, which provides links to annual reports on corporate firms from A to Z. Carol takes a nearly identical approach but includes European firms. Searching, however, is more precise at Carol. You can sift by business type (for example, "Banks Commercial" or "Banks Retail"), region (the United States or Europe), and stock exchange. (And don't forget about an old, reliable source if you need a quick hit: A free search at Hoovers.com supplies snappy company summaries and, often, quarterly financials.)

Tool for Googlers

Google's great, but Google Alert makes it better, by performing automated searches on a regular basis and e-mailing you the results. You can do a simple search, or hone it by including or excluding words, sifting through updated pages only, searching a particular Web site, picking a specific format (say, PDF), and more. Google Alert includes a useful miniature browser for viewing results--just click on the link at the top of the e-mail message the service sends you. Note: Google Alert is not affiliated with Google.

Get an E-Secretary

On the run? Having a senior moment? Let the automatic e-mail reminders from Time Cave give you or someone else a helpful nudge. Just enter the e-mail address, type your message, and pick a delivery time (from 1 minute to three years in the future). Time Cave does the rest. It's a handy tool if you're busy or you're on the road without your normal office programs (or a handheld device) to nag you.

The Antiquarian Booke Nooke

If you can't find what you want at Amazon.com, hie thee to AddAll, which searches used- and antiquarian-book dealers all over the world. You can search by author, title, ISBN, binding, price range, and other attributes. The results page details each book's condition and vintage, as well as the store's contact information. More important, AddAll delivers results. When we searched for books by the 1920s humorist Robert Benchley, for example, AddAll ferreted out 480 titles, while Amazon.com found only about 25.

Digital Mulligan Stew

Your fridge contains onions, lemons, and some pork; the pantry holds flour and baked beans. This is dinner? You bet. Head over to Cooking By Numbers, check off what you have from the site's list of 50 staples, and voilà--relevant recipes appear, rated 100 percent (if you have all the ingredients) or a lesser percentage (if you lack a few). While gourmet cooks may find the pickings slim, the site is perfect for the desperate parent or the forgets-to-shop bachelor. A great companion site: the Cook's Thesaurus, which has the scoop on any ingredient--how it's eaten and prepared, how to tell when it's no longer fresh, alternative names, and acceptable substitutes.

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