My two favorites:
BentoPDF - A privacy-focused PDF editor that works client-side
Cobalt Tools - Video downloader with a clean interface and good compression (YouTube stopped working and hasn’t been updated, unfortunately, but community instances exist that may address this)
https://chestofbooks.com/crafts/index.html - has a bunch of stuff from old USA books and magazines. Seems that the Crafts section is the most impressive
Linuxdaw.org, an awesome database of VSTs (virtual instruments) and effects that natively support Linux. It’s a great resource for musicians trying to escape the enshittification and spying of Windows.
I don’t know how unknown it is but nobody has mentioned it yet so https://www.wolframalpha.com/
For those who enjoy the zen of wrenching
That’s epic
Have you ever seen a letter or symbol somewhere that was not in copyable text and wondered how to even go about searching for what it is called? https://shapecatcher.com/ Just draw the symbol you see and it will find Unicode symbols close to it. Very useful.
It’s a lot of really random stuff. I go through a few sites now and again instead of doom scrolling and I always seem to find at least one really interesting or fun thing.
A lot of the personal project sites and just weird stuff feels like the old internet and it makes me happy
Not particularly useful at all, but meets the obscur box for sure, and I didn’t read the “useful” part of the title until after already typing this post.
I used to frequent this page in the early 2000s:
The Best Page In The Universe. https://maddox.xmission.com/
Specifically, he had an amazing blog post about Ben Stiller at the height of his career: https://maddox.xmission.com/c.cgi?u=ben_stiller_should_star_in_every_movie^___^
https://www.webdesignmuseum.org/
lets you easily see what old websites and software looked like, often over multiple years.
Mindblow: Find websites pertaining to local affairs.
There are very interesting events I go to in my local area, but we don’t often think about how much of our lives on phones are built around what’s happening 300 miles away from us.
Find a website where some interesting event or discovery might lead to you actually saying hello in person to someone.
If you want to tie your shoes, Ian’s shoelace website.
Way too much in depth on a niche topic, but that’s why it’s so awesome
I have been seeing shoelace infographics since I was a teen on ifunny, and only 14 years later do I finally get to find out where its from!
I am happy to have participated in that connection.
If you want to make a big poster by printing smaller sheets of printer paper, all the first page of Google results is sites that let you upload your image and then make you sign up for an account. So here’s https://bigspread.niy.ai/ instead
Now I’m curious which posters you’re printing.
Internet speed tests without all the tracking and advertisements
This one always gives terrible speeds. It feels like its missing something in its tech stack.
It wants to run cross-site scripts on more than 20 other domains.
No Flash, No Java, No Websockets, No Bullsh*t
Wait, what’s wrong with websockets?
I’m not sure why they specifically point it out, but websockets is wholly unnecessary for a speed test, so I imagine it’s just to keep it as lightweight as possible
I don’t know to be honest, never had any issues with them… I think it’s meant like the site is very minimal in general
Nothing that I know of🤷♂️
Especially useful on my TV’s anemic Sony browser when I’m trying to diagnose of my network is crapping out or the apps are just in a go slow.
This site needs more people to know about it (and it was only one guy called Iain MacDonald maintaining it. I think one other person joined him recently).
It’s called NewsMap. It’s a wall of headlines that updates over time. No distractions, no images and you can choose your region and the topics you want to see. The dude revived it after the original site went down for some reason a few years ago. Pretty cool, specially for my ADHD brain.
It’s super cool, if only it wasn’t pulling from Google exclusively.
So, correct me if I’m wrong by all means, but Google News is just the channel isn’t it? Right now I’m seeing content on there from a dozen different news organisations (BBC, Reuters, Sky News, The Guardian, The Telegraph etc.)
What’s the negative with it being conveyed via Google News?
It’s an aggregator but I have zero trust in Google to not be involved with subtle content manipulation and censorship. However it’s mostly out of principal. I deGoogled my life already, so using this would go against that stance.
Most of things I find are very niche interests so it’s not really useful for everyone to know about, but I wish it was easier to find niche communities for my interests to share these with.
https://retrogamecorps.com/ - has been amazing since I started getting into retro gaming last year.
https://mariushosting.com/docker/ - has been the site that got me into self hosting with my Synology NAS and I still use it as a resource regularly even though my docker containers are on a separate Debian server now.
https://ext.to/ - my go to torrent aggregator.
https://alexandrite.app/<your Lemmy instance> - has been the best desktop frontend for Lemmy that I’ve found.
https://drawabox.com/ - I’ve been getting back to trying to improve at sketching and this is one of the best resources I’ve found.
https://gp2040-ce.info/ - made it possible for me to make my own custom hitbox controllers for Street Fighter.
https://github.com/joe-scotto/scottokeebs/ - Joe Scotto’s resources helped me make my own macro pad and I want to make my own full keyboard next.
Thanks for the Draw A Box link I was in a similar mood.
