Websites
Curated corners of the internet worth visiting.
From hidden gems to sites that consistently deliver value.
Storyterra - Mapped Movies
An interactive world map of 120,000+ movies, tv-shows, books, and games organized by place and time. Click any city, region, or country and use the time slider to surface narratives from specific centuries or years. Great for trip prep (I check a destination’s movies and stories before traveling).
Literature Map
A great discovery tool for readers that shows you new authors based on the ones you already enjoy. Type in a favorite author, and the site generates a “map” of similar writers, visually clustering names that are more closely connected. It’s a quick way to expand your reading list, stumble onto hidden gems, and explore beyond your usual bookshelf.
Food Timeline
An educational archive that traces the history of what we eat and drink, from ancient times to today. The site pulls together historical references, recipes, and cultural notes, showing when different foods first appeared and how they evolved. It’s both a research resource and a curiosity rabbit hole.
OneZoom Tree of Life
A zoomable, single-page map of 2M+ species showing how all life is related. Each “leaf” links to species info and is color-coded by IUCN status (green = not threatened, red = threatened; many grey for unknown, some black for extinct), making it great for discovery and conservation context. It’s free to explore and surprisingly addictive.
Chosic Playlist Generator
Free, web-based tools to generate and organize playlists by mood, topic, genre or a seed song/artist, with options to preview and save to Spotify. It also includes utilities for finding similar tracks, analyzing playlists, and even naming them. Most of us get stuck in our 20s & 30s when it comes to the music we listen to (I include myself in that) which is why I love Chosic: it makes discovering new music a breeze.
Old Maps Online
A free portal to explore historical maps by location and time using an interactive world map and timeline. You can search places, browse contributions from libraries/archives and the community, and overlay old maps on modern ones to see how cities and borders changed. Ideal for research, travel curiosity, or teaching.
Book Recommendations
book.sv is a minimalist, data-driven book recommendation engine built from millions of Goodreads users’ reading histories. I use it when I want fresh suggestions on what to read next. Its strength is how it mirrors patterns of actual readers rather than algorithmic guesswork: the “Similar” and “Intersect” features reveal unexpected links across genres or themes. It’s a quiet but surprisingly insightful way to surface books I wouldn’t have found through typical channels.
The Internet Archive
Internet Archive is one of the last places online that still feels like the early internet’s promise: a giant public library. It has millions of free books, movies, music, software, and archived websites (including the Wayback Machine). If you like going down high-quality rabbit holes, you can lose hours here, in a good way.
Very Noise at Once
A wildly nerdy (and addictive) map of Spotify’s genre universe, created by Spotify’s former “data alchemist” Glenn McDonald. Click a music genre and you’ll usually find multiple ways in, e.g. a broad sampler, a beginner-friendly intro, what fans play right now and the more obscure songs of the genre. Perfect when you’re bored of your own listening habits.