Recently, Irish sociology student Shane Fitzgerald fooled numerous reporters by inventing a fake quote just hours after the death of French composer Maurice Jarre.  The quote, originally posted on Jarre's Wikipedia page, wound up in blogs and publications around the world.  Fitzgerald says this was done to teach journalists the importance of double checking the facts listed in Wikipedia before publishing them.  Maybe some of these writers would have been hip to the hoax if they had used Wiki Alarm.

The King of Pop has been feeling the crunch of the recession just like the rest of us, and now he's getting a little hard for cash.  In an effort to stay afloat, Michael Jackson has decided to start auctioning off items from his world-famous Neverland Ranch.  For this endeavor, Jackson has employed Julien's Auctions to create a catelogue of what's up for grabs.  JuliensAuctions.com will give you an interactive experience as you peruse Jacko's mysterious and bizarre auction items.

Summer is just around the corner!  Are you ready to show off that beach body yet?  If you're still getting around to developing that perfect six pack of abs, you may want to consider StrongestMan.org for a little information.  The site has a graphical interface that lets users select workouts by muscle area, and pulls routines from sources likw WikiHow and Del.icio.us to give you what you're looking for.

Do you ever have those moments when you look back upon your past and think of someone who greatly impacted your life?  Ever wish that you could reach back and give them a personal "Thank You" for being such an influence?  This, and many other themes of gratitude, is the basis of a new social website called ThankingOfYou.com.

Graffiti, as an art form, has evolved very quickly to involve everything from depictions of urban surroundings to territorial tags of gangs.  Many may think of it as the defacing of public property, however Graffiti Creator sees it differently.

Musée de la Civilisacion, as you may have guessed, translates from French into "Museum of Civilization" and is located in Quebec, Canada.  Their latest exhibit takes you back to ancient Egypt to learn about the process behind mummification, and the significance of the rituals these desert dwellers engaged in to secure a blissful afterlife.

With swine flu giving the world the willies about traveling, hand washing, and even breathing, it would be great to have an up-to-date referrence as to what the situation is around the world.  If you've been following the media's coverage of the pandemic, you get blasted every day with a dose of fear that can only be good for ratings.  Why not see how things are really shaping up?

Social media is one of the cheapest, most effective ways of branding.  And for musicians, branding is what it's all about.  An artist can spend time developing social media accounts and multimedia promotions to get their name out there, but how can they tell if it's effective?  Well, unless you have big money to spend on market penetration assessments, you can use RockDex.

If you're a news junkie like the rest of us, you'd better take a look at Newseum's new addition to their website.  They've got headlines from around the world on a graphic interface that is both easy to navigate and comprehensive to the entire globe.

If you're a frequent visitor to forums, then surely you know the importance of having a cool avatar.  The net nerds of the world will never take you seriously unless they like whatever crazy picture you use to mark your forum territory first.  There's plenty of different ways to make custom avatars using offline programs like Photoshop, but now there's Alpoy, a site dedicated soley to avatar collections.

This website won SXSW's award for "Experimental Websites" back in March, and looking at it now, I can totally understand why.  The site is by far one of the most unique things I've seen on the internet this year.  Beyond that I'm a totally avid reader, and this site will tickle the fancy of any bookworm or lover of short stories.  Enter into the delightfully interactive story-telling world of the aptly titled We Tell Stories.

ShortcutWorld is aiming to make a comprehensive repository of lists that will have every keyboard shortcut for any given program.  Already they have a pretty good list of programs going.

Whether you're a chemistry student, or a full-time lab worker, you've probably spent some good time staring at the Period Table of Elements.  But you might not have even seen a version of the Period Table like Ptable.com.  Prepare to have your atoms shaken up by the amount of information you can get from this site.

The site, which is currently in public beta testing,  features some 515 videos of different vocabulary words.  Far short of being a literal dictionary, WordAhead focuses on more distinct or uncommon English terms, making it perfect for getting that "word of the day" fix.

This new social service wants you to strike up conversations with complete strangers.  Omegle puts you in a private chat with someone completely random, and the handles are simply "You" and "Stranger".  Kinda weird, right?  But who knows?  Maybe this will catch wildfire.

So you sit there and think, "How am I going to get through to the weekend?"  Well, you could play games, or watch silly videos, or you could achieve enlightenment of the ancient Buddhas by folding paper into funny shapes!  Origami.com is here to help bring you to nirvana, or at least help you kill a few hours while you sit there, suffering at your desk.

Legendary golf club maker, Callaway put together a nice promotional online video game for their new line of drivers.  The drivers, as well as the game itself, are of particular interest to anyone that golfs.  For those of us that aren't golfers, you can really have a blast playing this game.  There's a lot more to it than just a silly gimmick to garner attention to the product.

Distill is a service that filters Digg stories by the number of "diggs" they receive.  It can also show you what's hot on Digg now, or give you an RSS feed to whatever number of Diggs you specify.

Frito-Lay of North America presents a Snack Strong production that you won't soon forget.  This truly unique and innovative use of multiple online medias is a really cool experience (especially if you like scary movies and such).  The site, Hotel 626, requires you to use a webcam, a microphone, and register with the site so that they can immerse you properly into this hellish nightmare.  Don't worry it's not that hellish.  In fact, it's pretty fun!

As a blog reader, surely you know about the significance of using Wikipedia links.  The user-generated information resource has become a staple of online research, and sometimes reading Wiki articles is just plain fun.  Wikirank is a new service that displays all of the current trends on Wikipedia, such as most viewed pages of the month, trending topics, and lets you search throughout them to get all the info you need.