www.atlasobscura.com

The Atlas Obscura is “a compendium of the world’s wonders, curiosities, and esoterica”. The website serves as a “definitive guidebook and friendly tour-guide to the world’s most wondrous places”, and is a collaborative collection of amazing places that aren’t found in your average guidebook. From miniature cities and glass flowers to gigantic flaming holes in the ground and homes built entirely out of paper, the portal offers a range of interesting places for you to discover. Everyone is “welcome and encouraged to add a place for inclusion and to edit the content already in the Atlas”. So whether you’re planning a trip or just want to read about places with great stories that appeal to your sense of wonder and curiosity, then Atlas Obscura is the ideal site to go to.

www.cutestpaw.com

If you like pictures of adorable animals (and who doesn’t!), then here’s a webpage that you might enjoy. Cutest Paw gives you “the cutest animal pictures [from] around the world”. The website has aww-inducing pictures of animals including cats, dogs, rabbits, mice, monkeys, squirrels, orangutans, birds, and many others. So if you want to drown in a sea of animal cuteness, then don’t forget to give this website a visit.

www.chow.com

CHOW claims to be “the smartest food site on the Web”. You can find “entertaining videos, original stories, tested recipes, and in-depth discussions about restaurants, cooking, and more” on their Chowhound boards. Food and cooking enthusiasts can access food related stories, videos, and discussion threads at CHOW; on the recipes page, you can simply enter a single search term to find a range of recipes, or use the Dish Decider feature to narrow your results. You can also register for a free membership to be able to sign up for newsletters, leave comments, and post recipe reviews; you will also be able to weigh in on existing discussion threads, start new ones, and ask the community of Chowhounds for food tips and recommendations.

News-e-land

l Digg and News.me merge: The news aggregator website Digg, which allows users to submit and vote on news stories, has been sold to the technology group Betaworks. An announcement on the website states that “Betaworks is combining Digg with News.me, a Betaworks company with an iPad app, iPhone app, and daily email that delivers the best stories shared by your friends on Facebook and Twitter. Digg will join a portfolio of products developed by Betaworks designed to improve the way people find and talk about the news.”

l Google Nexus 7 released: Google has released its much anticipated 7-inch Nexus 7 tablet. The $199 device enters a competitive market and will compete with the likes of Amazon Kindle Fire and Barnes & Noble Nook. Nexus 7 is powered by a quad-core processor and comes with the Android 4.1 Jelly Bean operating system.