Sure, everyone knows The Grand Canyon (Google), the Redwood Forest (Amazon) and Niagara Falls (Youtube – this analogy would work a lot better if, you know, the Grand Canyon bought Niagara Falls for $1.65 Billion) but there are plenty of second and third tier sites out there that are worth checking out.  Lets go check out the Wall Drugs and Giant Balls of Yarn out there…

The Internet Movie Database

Known to its friends as IMDB, you have probably seen this one before, but you’re going to want to visit again and again.  IMDB has all the info you need to pull an all night 6-degrees-of-Kevin-Bacon session.  For all you mobile web heads out there, put this one in your bookmarks for easy access during trivia.

Pandora

An internet radio station that tunes itself to your tastes.  This site is a part of the Music Genome Project which is an attempt to identify “genetic” traits of music (major and minor tonality, heavy use of vocal harmony, east coast rap lyrics, etc), and map out a massive catalog of music.  It then uses these “genetic” similarities to fine tune a music station just for you.  All you have to do is seed it with one or more songs or artists that you like, and rate the songs (thumbs up or down) that it suggests for you.  I should add that its suggestions are much better when you don’t confuse it with too many varied types of songs.  Luckily, you can create as many stations as you like, each with a different musical focus.  Best of all, it’s free!

Hulu

The future of broadcast TV is unknown, and it looks like the big players are starting to broaden their horizons.  NBC, Fox, PBS and a few others have signed on to this joint venture, wherein you can watch clips, full episodes of certain shows, even full-length movies (a small library now, but growing constantly) for FREE online.  The quality is outstanding (some video is offered in full 1080p HD – looks great if you have your computer hooked up to an HD TV), and the limited commercial breaks are almost unnoticeable.

There’s plenty of others, some of which we will hopefully get around to visiting soon, but for now, take a road trip to these sites and enjoy the scenery.