About

The internet used to be a bunch of links to other places, with cool stuff on each website. Then we spent a couple of decades with search engines that worked, and people stopped needing to know where to find each niche website they were going to only use a couple of times a year.
Now things are broken again, and people often don't know where those sites are, or are trying to see if generative AI will do it instead. The truth is, it won't work, or it'll be worse, and either way -- please don't use the plagiarism machine.
This site is a catalog of niche websites that do one or two things, do them very well, and are easy to use. They're free, they don't make you sign in anywhere to use them, and if they have a paid version you aren't constantly prodded to sign up for it. Exceptions to any of these general rules will be clearly noted. Anything that requires a download will be in the Software Page.

To request a type of resource, fill out this form. If you would like to be notified when a resource is located, include a contact email. Regardless, the resource will be put on the site if one is located and it fits the overall mission of Links That Burn.

To submit a link for the site, fill out this form.
I'm in the USA, so the websites I have listed right now are USA-focused if they are region-locked. My long-term goal is to have this available and useful for multiple regions and languages! I'm especially interested in links where the actual site has support for multiple languages.

Outstanding resource requests, not yet fulfilled by previously submitted links:

1. Digital to Physical Media guide - burning discs with media, music to cassette tapes, etc.
2. Design help/inspiration
3. Resources to help students understand how to use Word/Excel/Google Docs/Google sheets, DuckDuckGo, etc. (This will be part of a planned page of resources to help people who didn't have access to a computer skills class, or who would otherwise like a basic refresher to help them better navigate online.)

Website names and links are crowd-sourced through a publicly-available fillable form, and then manually checked and added to the site. Websites which become listed share a few characteristics:

1. They do a specific thing or related set of things very well.
2. They are are amusing, useful, and/or informational.
3. They are free to use.
4. If they have a paid version available, they do not pester the user to sign up for it. As the number of paywalled or obviously annowing features increases, the likelihood that it will be listed on LTB decreases.
5. They do not make the user sign in to access basic features. Sites which require a login just to browse will not be listed (with rare exception). Sites which require contributors and/or editors to sign in may be listed (e.g. wikis, databases, archives).
6. Unless the whole point is that software is available to download, they do not require a software download in order to use them.

The link submission form asks for the website name, link to the website, a brief description, and any languages in which the site is available. It does not ask for any personal information about the person submitting the link.

The information provided is manually checked by a human, and then added to the website in the appropriate category or categories. The descriptions provided through the form are used as a starting point, but, wherever possible, descriptions from the sites being catalogued are used to describe each site on LTB.

Robin, person who cares about books and people's access to information.

"Generative AI" or "generative artificial intelligence" is a term for the "large language model" (LLM) style of predictive content generation. They started out as predictive text but are now used for images, audio, video, etc. The best case scenario is that generative AI takes information people freely chose to provide to it, and then makes guesses based on that information as to what someone might say in a given situation as outlined by the prompt. In practice, the information is usually stolen, the outputs are frequently incorrect and full of bigotries, and the whole thing is a massive (capitalist) project to avoid paying people for their work.

This project is an offshoot of Books That Burn, a book review podcast started in 2019 by Robin their sibling, Nicole. It's called "Books That Burn" because the podcast began as a discussion of fictional depictions of trauma in books. Robin started a book review blog (Reviews That Burn) shortly thereafter, reviewing sci-fi, fantasy, and other genres of fiction. When I (Robin) got the idea for Links That Burn, it seemed especially fitting as a name, because LTB is a project of helping people easily find the useful sites which still exist and have not yet disappeared.

• German Translation by Malin K.
• Cassildra
• Jasper
• ArcTan
• Dax
• Bailey
• Everyone who has ever sent in a link

An Incomplete List of Software and Technical Resources Utilized at various stages of web development:

• Elest.io
• Favicon.io
• GIMP
• GitLab
• Microsoft Excel
• NeoCities
• Silex
• StackOverflow
• TextFixer
• TinEye Color Palette
• W3Schools
• WAVE Web Accessibility Evaluation Tools

1. Improve and maintain the site.
2. Build out pages.
3. Determine additional categories at various levels of nuance.
4. Process and list 10-50 new websites per week.
5. Basic accessibility testing to accompany any major site structure changes.

1. Basic Accessibility testing for site navigation.
2. Transferred to new version of the site.

1. Troubleshoot any issues from the migration to NeoCities.

1. Split the main list into categories by type, add category toggles to the interface.
2. Add a RSS feed.
3. Advanced accessibility testing, find screen-reader users to beta-test if possible.
4. Figure out how to add a search bar.

1. Make list of sites which are available in multiple languages, have an indicator or some way for visitors to know at a glance which sites are multi-lingual.
2. Add website color/theme options (Dark Mode, Colorblindness-Friendly settings).
3. Make a "welcome to the internet" starter pack of set-it-and-forget-it things to do and a list of sites to teach basic/useful computer skills for people who didn't have computer skills/typing classes (or want a refresher).
4. Make a page for author's websites.

1. Hire translators to localize the site in 2-3 languages.

1. Hire translators to localize the site in 5-10 languages.
2. Hire translators to localize the site in every language for which we have links.