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Want to know who is the best when it comes to the world’s reference websites?

We’ve compiled the list complements of Amazon-owned, Alexa but we really figured that the list missed some really notable reference sites so in the spirit of an important award ceremony, we’ll start by hat tipping our fantastic runner-ups.

Here are (drum roll)…

THE TOP 10 HONORABLE MENTIONS…

1. Google Earth – which is a desktop app but has recently been promised its own website so it kinda qualifies
2. Ted – which is a small non-profit dedicated to the spread of good ideas
3. Open Yale Courses – or try Stanford or Harvard tuition for nothing, nada, zip.
4. About.com – find out about almost absolutely anything.
5. Librarians Internet Index – for information you can trust, compiled by librarians for the world to enjoy.
6. Gary Price’s List of Lists – A database of ranked listings of companies, people and resources freely available on the Internet.
7. Ancestry.com – My great, great, great grandfather is on ancestry.com (true story). It is an awesome resource for figuring out the secrets of your family’s past.
8. Ref Desk – Fact checker for the Internet. I also really like Internet World Stats.
9. Getty Thesaurus of Geographic Names – Look up (almost) anywhere in the world.
10. Universal Currency Converter – Convert anything to anything to figure out what it’s worth.

THE WORLD’S TOP 20 REFERENCE SITES.

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Renowned for making vehicles driven by James Bond, it came top of the annual poll, reclaiming the number one spot from Apple’s iPhone which came second.

Apple’s iPod was named third coolest, followed by Blackberry and stereo and TV maker Bang & Olufsen.

The survey was run by The Center for Brand Analysis which creates league tables based on the opinions of marketing experts, business professionals and thousands of British consumers.

Key factors in the selection process included, style, innovation, desirability and originality.

Vivienne Westwood topped the fashion brands in the poll, which began in 2001, while Ray-Ban was judged the coolest fashion accessory.

Google and YouTube were the only Internet brands to make the Top 20.
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It’s out.

Interbrand’s List of 2010 World’s Best Brands. Coca-Cola retains its top spot as the number one ranked brand on the list.

A number of prominent brands faced extraordinary crisis in 2010 resulting in stalled growth, value loss and in the case of BP, failure to make the ranking this year. BP’s environmental disaster and inability to make good on its brand promise of “Beyond Petroleum” led to it falling off of the list and helped competitor Shell emerge as an industry leader.

Although the Toyota (#11) recall caused the brand to lose -16% of its brand value, its long-standing reputation for reliability, efficiency and innovation helped it weather the crisis better than expected.

Goldman Sachs (#37) was once the envy of Wall Street, but now faces the dichotomy of strong economic results and an angry public that will continue to lash out until the company begins to demonstrate that it is making sincere efforts to better align its ethics with its brand.
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Lonely Planet have announced the winner of its online photo mosaic competition, created to celebrate the publication of its 100 millionth guidebook.

Indian national Sreesailam Pasupula, 33, of Mumbai was declared the winner with his arresting photograph of glamorous girls parading on a performance stage at Pushkar ka Mela, the world’s largest camel fair in Rajasthan, India.

A gallery of the 50 finalists can be seen at www.lonelyplanet.com/gallery or check out The Australian’s Gallery.

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MUSIC AND VIDEO.

1. Vimeo - Vimeo is the video-streaming service of choice for creative types — the indie darling to YouTube’s blockbuster. For casual viewers, Vimeo is the place for shorter, artsier clips.

Read more from Time or visit the site.

2. Movieclips - Need to find a scene from your favorite film? With more than 12,000 film snippets, Movieclips has one of the most comprehensive collections available on the Web — and there’s no need to wade through duplicates.

Read more from Time or visit the site.

3. Grooveshark – Free online music-streaming hub Grooveshark is a pick-and-choose listening service that depends on its users to upload content.

Read more from Time or visit the site.

4. MOG - A subscription-based music-streaming service based in Berkeley, Calif., MOG offers unlimited listening for a low monthly rate.

Read more from Time or visit the site.

5. Labuat - A beautiful, user-interactive site, Soytuaire.Labuat.com invites users to paint to music.

Read more from Time or visit the site.
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A brand new list – Time Magazine list of the top 50 websites.

See what’s hot in the summary below.

1. Flickr – photo hosting website.

There aren’t enough librarians in the world to look after Flickr’s archive of 3 billion photos, much less file them away for future reference.

2. California Coastline – A man, a helicopter and a digital camera: those three elements combine to create one of the most engrossing sites on the Web.

3. Delicious – Delicious (formerly del.icio.us) started out as a kind of Flickr for bookmarks (it’s no coincidence; Flickr and Delicious are both owned by Yahoo!) but is now more useful as a search-engine hack.
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TWO bank robbers who blew themselves up trying to make a sizable withdrawal from an ATM have been declared the 2009 winners of the Darwin Awards.

Organisers say the annual “prize” is given to “those doing the most to improve the human gene pool … by removing themselves from it”.

The awards are named after Charles Darwin, the Father of Evolution.

This year the dubious first place went to the pair of bungling thieves in Belgium who wildly overestimated the amount of dynamite they needed to rob a bank.

They both were killed when the blast demolished the entire building the ATM was housed in.

Police only found the body of the second robber some twelve hours after digging through the debris.

They had initially assumed he had made a getaway.

The bankrobbers just edged ahead of second-place getter, Florida man Shawn Motero, who was stuck in a traffic jam when nature called.

He got out of his car and jumped over a concrete wall to find a more secluded spot.

Unfortunately, the 30-year-old had not realized he was on a bridge and fell 65ft (19.8m) to his death.

Award organisers said the accident proved you should “look before you leak”.

Police revealed Mr Motero had been drinking at a bar in Pompano Beach before his tragic death, adding: ‘He probably thought there was a road, but there wasn’t.’

The first woman to be nominated for the award came in at third place.

Rosanne Tippett drove her moped through a police road block – straight into a flooded river.

After being rescued by police she jumped back into the water to rescue her vehicle – and drowned.

Before embarking on her final journey the 50-year-old had phoned her mother and told her: “My moped has two rubber wheels, Mom, I’ll be fine.”

Her mum later admitted: “She loved that thing.”

Other nominees for the 2009 awards included an armed robber who used gold spray paint to disguise his face as he raided a convenience store.

The paint released toxic fumes and Thomas James, from South Carolina, collapsed and died shortly after the robbery.

To add insult to injury, the disguise didn’t work – with witnesses having no problem identifying the 23-year-old.

From Adelaide Now.

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So here is an interesting story, and (as a mother) one that’s close to my heart, Forbes has declared its pick of who made it to list of Most Successful Children’s Book Characters In Hollywood.

The biggest cross-platform success is Shrek.

Yep, the big, green ogre has been a box office blessing for DreamWorks, spawning three films that earned an average of $343 million each at the American box office and a thriving franchise.

Although William Steig’s 1990 book never became a leading title, the film’s popularity propelled several movie tie-in books to land on the category’s bestseller list.

In second place on the Forbes list of most successful screens stars from children’s literature is Dr. Seuss’ legendary character the Grinch.

The green creature with a heart “two sizes too small” was introduced to generations of children and adults in 1957 in the pages of How the Grinch Stole Christmas, which has sold over 3.5 million copies since.

The character became a big-screen star in 2000, portrayed by Jim Carrey. The film earned $260 million at the domestic box office.

Rounding out the top three is Larry Daley from Night at the Museum.

Milan Trenc originally published the story as a picture book in 1993, to be followed in 2006 by a bestselling, novelized version penned by Leslie Goldman.

The film version and its sequel, starring Ben Stiller as Larry, the hapless father who becomes a night guard at the American Museum of Natural History, earned an average of $214 million at the domestic box office.

To compile its list of the most successful children’s book characters on the big screen, Forbes considered movies released after 1980 based on children’s books with prominent lead characters.

Adaptations of young adult fiction–for the over-12 set–were not considered.

Rankings are based on domestic box office earnings; in instances involving one or more sequels, box office results were averaged in order to gauge the overall “star power” of each children’s character.

(While the production of a sequel is a clear indication of a character’s proven financial potential, an increase or decrease in popularity is evident using an average, rather than cumulative box office totals.)

So why does Hollywood continue to churn out kid-fiction films?

Simple: merchandise.

With steady ancillary revenue from coloring books to sleeping bags to adult T-shirts, classic characters bear incredible brand value.

Check out more at Forbes.

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It feels good to be the boss, commander-in-chief of all you survey.

Of course, the job is dramatically elevated in status if you’ve earned a place on the latest Forbes list, The 200 Best Small Companies.

The Forbes list of America’s 200 Best Small Companies features enterprises that have annual revenue between $5 million and $750 million, have been publicly traded for at least a year and have a stock price no lower than $5.

Rankings are based on earnings growth, sales growth and return on equity in the past 12 months and over five years.

So who is the best?

(In USD, for the previous 12 months)

1. Lumber Liquidators, which operates hardwood flooring stores, earning $507M
2. Allegiant Travel, which provides discount flights and vacation packages for small market cities, earning $521M
3. Quality Systems, which develops information systems to automate medical practices, earning $257M
4. LHC Group, which provides home-based health care services, earning $467M
5. Green Mountain Coffee Roasters which distributes and sells coffee-related products, earning $716M
6. Transcend Services, which provides medical transcription services, earning $57M
7. Rackspace Hosting, which provides hosting and cloud computing services, earning $579M
8. NVE, which uses nanotechnology to make sensors for medical devices, earning $25M
9. American Public Education, which provides online post-secondary education for military and public service communities, earning $128M
10. American Science & Engineering which makes security X-ray detection systems, earning $234M
11. Dolby Laboratories which develops audio technologies for entertainment and electronics industry, earning $719M
12. HMS Holdings which provides cost recovery services to government health care programs, earning $205M
13. Synaptics which designs user-interface hardware for PCs and electronic devices, earning $473M
14. Jos. A. Bank Clothiers which retails men’s clothing and apparel, earning $727M
15. PetMed Express which markets prescription and nonprescription pet medications and products, earning $228M
16. Medifast which makes weight-management products, earning $127M
17. Orion Marine Group which provides civil marine construction services, earning $283M
18. MSCI which provides financial market benchmarks and risk management models to the investment community, earning $432M
19. InterDigital which designs wireless technology for mobile phone makers, earning $259M
20. Capella Education which provides online post-secondary education, earning $298M
21. AZZ which makes electrical gear and provides galvanizing services, earning $400M
22. Middleby which manufactures commercial cooking equipment, earning $658M
23. Emergent Biosolutions which manufactures vaccines against biological agents and disease, earning $230M
24. Hittite Microwave ( HITT ) which develops circuits and modules for voice and data transfer systems, earning $170M
25. Almost Family which provides home nursing services, earning $269M

See the rest and find out what sorts the wheat from the chaff by visiting Forbes.

P.S. Into more lists or awards news?

Check out posts tagged with lists and posts tagged with awards.

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