Wow, so much Info... but where to look?

SoleraU provides a huge variety of easily accessible resources. There are brief info summaries and a huge number of journals, magazines, courses, and technology resources.
Check out the links and bookmark what you like.
SoleraU
The Observer
Vacation Ideas
Bill's Blog

Free Courses

Did you know that Solera University has thousands of courses provided free by the nations best universities? iTunes U has a huge number of free courses from theology and history to physics. UCTV has seminars on a variety of subjects.

Lately I have been listening to podcasts of Dragnet and The International Spy Museum Spycast with talks by ex-CIA and KGB operators. Its totally cool with fascinating insight into what's really happening. I Also listen to Inside CRF (Council on Foreign Relations) and old cowboy shows on Westerns-OTR.

It is amazing what is available and its FREE. Click iTunes to download..

No cash? No problem! Many top universities offer free courses online. This list ranks several of the best free university courses available.
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LibriVox - free audio recordings of books

LibriVox volunteers record chapters of books in the public domain, and then we release the audio files back onto the net for free. All our audio is in the public domain, so you may use it for whatever purpose you wish. We get most of our texts from Project Gutenberg, and the Internet Archive and ibiblio.org host our audio files (for free!).
LibriVox

Getting help for academic subjects

When University of Central Florida junior Nicole Nissim got stumped in trigonometry, she checked out what was showing on YouTube. It turned out YouTube was also full of math videos. After watching a couple, the psychology major said, she finally understood trig equations and how to make graphs. "I was able to watch them at my own pace, and if I didn't get a concept, I could easily rewind it," she said. "It was a lot clearer once I watched the video."

Math videos won't rival the millions of hits garnered by laughing babies, but a YouTube tutorial on calculus integrals has been watched almost 50,000 times in the last year. Others on angular velocity and harmonic motion have more than 10,000 views each.
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Tha Khan Academy has a many academic courses that may be perfect for studying math and science. visit the Kahn Academy

La Brea Tar Pits

The Page Museum is located at the Rancho La Brea Tar Pits in the heart of Los Angeles. Rancho La Brea is one of the world’s most famous fossil localities, recognized for having the largest and most diverse assemblage of extinct Ice Age plants and animals in the world. Visitors can learn about Los Angeles as it was between 10,000 and 40,000 years ago, during the last Ice Age, when animals such as saber-toothed cats and mammoths roamed the Los Angeles Basin. Through windows at the Page Museum Laboratory, visitors can watch bones being cleaned and repaired. Outside the Museum, in Hancock Park, life-size replicas of several extinct mammals are featured.
Page Museum - La Brea Tar Pits

Where to get books

There are several collections of books on the internet both in and out of copyright protection. Check the menu at the right for a list of collections. Google provides out of print and excerpts of newer publications. Amazon provides comments and ratings. Op-Amp provides hard-to-get technical books.

Learn Computer Basics

Here is the spot to begin learning about computers. It is not really all that difficult, but there is definitely a vocabulary that includes symbols. Over the years these have become quite uniform among different programs and presentations you will see.  So after an initial orientation and familiarization you will be able to use the same information over and over. So push through and soon the incredible resource of the Internet will by yours. 

AARP and the San Bernardino Public Library offer free online courses to familiarize you with computers. These are great places for people new to computers to get their initial orientation.

Free courses are also available to teach you about Microsoft Office and the excellent free Open Office software which is my favorite.

Google is a wonderful resource and searching is only the beginning. So there are some Google Help pages that provide the basics of searching. 

This is also a really an excellent free course first offered to beginning Harvard Extension School students. It is complete with videos of the course lectures and a number of other videos providing supplementary information. Take a look at the link - you will be impressed.

Learn about Blogger

Blogging is a great way to meet people and make friends. I am very happy to have met so many fine folks in our community who I would never have met without SoleraU. Blogging can be an excellent way to organize what interests you.

SoleraU is based on Blogger which is owned by Google. There are a lot of gadgets you can add to make your blog highly customized. SoleraU might look like an integrated application at first glance--it was designed that way. But in fact, it is composed of a number of separate blogs that are connected with "linked lists"--a pretty flexible arrangement.
Blogger Help Center
Blogger Help Videos
YouTube Instructional Videos

Bell Labs

It has been a bit over 60 years since the invention of the transistor, truly a "disruptive technology" that enabled many dependent inventions that changed our world. William Shockley led the team at Bell Labs that developed the first point contact transistor. This is but one of the presentations on important events that changed our lives.

Bell Labs on the Transistor

National Science Foundation

The National Science Foundation (NSF) is an independent federal agency created by Congress in 1950 "to promote the progress of science; to advance the national health, prosperity, and welfare; to secure the national defense…" Many of the discoveries and technological advances have been truly revolutionary.
The National Science Foundation is truely an interesting web site to visit. 

Link to NSF - Discoveries

Foreign Language Courses

To find Open Courseware in your language use Google search for:
Open Courseware and your language like German
Wikiversity.org has courses in English and other languages.

Art & History

You might want to visit the Louvre.fr or Wikiversity.org for their collections.
The Louvre has images historical art including Mona Lisa.
Wikiversity has a collection that includes Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel.
You might get some great "wall paper" for your computer here.