Five Web Sites I Love

By Curtis Lu, P.E.

For your reading pleasure, and to serve as proof that there is intelligent life out there on the Internet, Today's Engineer is profiling interesting and useful Web sites for your edification. What's in your bookmark list?

1. Slickdeals

 
www.slickdeals.net

Their blurb: Founded in 1999, Slickdeals.net is a free, user-driven deal sharing site with a mission to provide consumers an avenue to collaborate and share information in order to make the best shopping decisions. Slickdeals achieves this by providing its users a forum for communication and various shopping tools. Slickdeals.net prides itself on being user and community focused, never allowing paid placement for frontpage deal listings.

Why I love it:   I love a great deal when I can find one.  This site aggregates some of the latest and greatest shopping deals available.  You can search for a deal, discuss a deal and even rate the deals.  They have been around for a while and have perfected how get great deals to you – and they make it easy for you to share good deals with the world.

2. Travelzoo

 
www.travelzoo.com

Their blurb:  Travelzoo (NASDAQ: TZOO) is the most trusted publisher of travel deals. Our team researches, evaluates and tests thousands of deals to find those with true value. We recommend only deals whose accuracy and availability we can confirm. With over 18 million subscribers, we are the largest publisher of travel deals on the Internet.

Why I love it:  Whenever I need to travel, Travelzoo covers all my needs.  The newsletter lists some of the best deals around, and what I personally look forward to are their extreme deals on entertainment.  Travelzoo locates hard-to-find discounts on plays and shows.  And with their new search technologies and new site, fly.com, you can search for the best deals out there – even from your favorite travel site.

3. OpenTable

 
www.opentable.com

Their blurb: OpenTable is the leading supplier of reservation, table management and guest management software for restaurants. In addition, the company operates www.opentable.com, the world’s most popular Web site for making restaurant reservations online.

Why I love it: When I need to make a dining reservation, this is where I go.  This site lets you reserve your table with the click of the mouse or a touch of the screen.  You can find out if a participating eatery has space available, and what specials they are offering. OpenTable even has a points system where you can earn points towards free meals.

4. Giveaway of the Day

 
www.giveawayoftheday.com

Their blurb: Welcome to Giveaway of the day project, the new initiative in the software distribution world! Every day we offer for FREE licensed software you’d have to buy otherwise!

Why I love it:  Sometimes you just don’t want to pay hundreds or even a few dollars for legit software.  This site gives away full copies of legal software that are useful and have support.  I have been able to get software that creates PDFs and backup DVDs, and software to secure my PC.  Best of all, they even have a sister site that gives away games.

5. Yelp

www.yelp.com

Their blurb: Yelp is an online urban city guide that helps people find cool places to eat, shop, drink, relax and play, based on the informed opinions of a vibrant and active community of locals in the know. Yelp is the fun and easy way to find, review and talk about what's great — and not so great — in your world.

Why I love it:  Are you looking for a restaurant to try or a hotel for a future trip?  Don’t you want to know if the establishment you are going to is any good?  Aren’t there times you want to vent about your experience?  This site has all of that:  useful reviews from average Joes, current information about the establishments, a helpful newsletter about the latest and greatest places in the area, and forums to chat with fellow yelpers.  Additionally, if you are a regularly contributing member/yelper, you can attain elite member status — which can get you into VIP events.

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