New Website

Shakespeare at sea? Poker cruise? Antiques on board? A new website, ThemeCruiseFinder.com, can help you locate a cruise themed on whatever interests you. There are cruises dedicated to golf, cruises about religion and cruises featuring concerts from various musical genres. While some cruisers prefer general-interest trips where the focus is on a destination, others enjoy meeting people with similar interests or spending their time on board learning about a subject that interests them rather than relaxing.

Ever wonder whether you'd be better off working someplace else? A new website, Glassdoor.com, is trying to make it easier to find out by compiling free snapshots of the salaries paid by hundreds of major employers, along with anonymous company reviews written by current and past workers. By providing sensitive salary information and sometimes blunt reviews of companies, Glassdoor is bound to upset some employers, Jupiter Research analyst Barry Parr predicted. "It just makes me wonder how long it will take before they get sued."

The Pentagon said Wednesday that it has created a website to help veterans who face difficulty returning to jobs or finding new ones after deployments in Iraq and Afghanistan. Michael Dominguez, principal deputy undersecretary of Defense, said the program, dubbed TurboTAP, seeks to improve on the Transition Assistance Program by letting National Guard and Reserve members get job data, build a resume online and do a job search, all in one place.

Blame Angelina and Brad and their do-gooding, orphanage-visiting ways. Or maybe it's all the hurricanes, tsunamis and tornadoes. Whatever the reason, more tourists -- such as college students on spring break, jet-setting luxury travelers and retiring baby boomers -- are using their vacations to volunteer. In the latest example of the growth of "voluntourism," United Way, one of the nation's oldest and largest community service organizations, and CheapTickets.

There was a time when you had to attend a church to listen to the weekly sermon or become a regular member to hear a choir whose music you really love. These days, thanks to iPod, you don't have to actually be there. A website called GodCast 1000 (godcast1000.com) has been launched to help users "put God on your iPod." It bills itself as the largest free directory of Christian music, sermons, video and Bible study on the Internet.

From its very beginnings, the Smithsonian Institution has taken and collected photographs. Masses of them. John Brown's steely eyes were captured in a daguerreotype by August Washington in 1846. A now-extinct Tasmanian hyena, sleek and striped, attracted photographer Thomas Smillie in 1891. Harry Bowden went to Jackson Pollock's chaotic studio in 1949 and found an unintentional abstract of cans and brushes.

As a young teacher, Kristen Bowers toiled night after night, struggling to grade tests and come up with innovative teaching materials for her English courses at South Hills High School in West Covina. "I remember thinking, 'Can somebody just invent something so I can have a life?' " said the 32-year old San Dimas resident. Unsatisfied with the little she found in the way of help, Bowers spent two years creating literature and writing guides she could share with other teachers online.

Depending on whom you ask, Lala.com -- a new website that helps song lovers trade entire compact discs for less than the cost of a single iTunes video download -- is either the music industry's salvation or yet another nail in its coffin. Those in the pro-Lala camp like to tell the story of its founder, Bill Nguyen, a Silicon Valley wunderkind who sold a previous start-up for $850 million and set out to use some of the proceeds to help music aficionados like himself discover new tunes.

Today's forecast: Sunny skies, highs in the 70s -- and a 1-in-10,000 chance that an earthquake will cause shaking severe enough to move heavy furniture. The quake forecast comes from a new U.S. Geological Survey website that launched Wednesday, providing the public for the first time with an up-to-date quake-probability map for all of California: pasadena.wr.usgs.gov/step.

Pauline Rubin of La Jolla considers herself computer-savvy, and she and her husband, Charles -- at 68 and 75 years of age, respectively -- take a number of prescription medicines between them. Last Monday afternoon, the intrepid Pauline Rubin logged onto Medicare's newest website and searched for a prescription card that would cut their costs and ease their drug purchasing decisions. But there would be no "cowabunga" moment. "Oh, forget that!"