Written by: Tom Hilton. Posted: May 27, 2020.
As I have mentioned in the introduction to "My Internet Enabled Life, you can see the world while sitting at your PC in your own house or apartment.
Here is a list of websites that offer an amazing assortment of places to visit, theater performances to watch, TV series, and movies.
Technology You Will Need
Warning, you will need a sound-enabled PC so you can hear what is going on. Most laptops have built-in speakers as do many PC monitors - but not all.
Another alternative, perhaps an even superior one, is to pug headphones or earbuds into your laptop or PC. If your headphones have a big standard RCA jack (the shiny metal male part of the plug), you can buy a 6.35mm (1/4 inch) Male to 3.5mm (1/8 inch) Male adapter for the smaller female slot common on many PCs. Most earbuds come with the smaller 3.5mm jack.
Volume adjustment might be on one of the ear cups of headphones. If you hear no sound, check the headphone volume adjustments. If still no sound, check the lower righthand side of the toolbar at the bottom of the screen - click the little speaker icon to unmute and/or increase-decrease volume. If still no sound, move your cursor over the lower right portion of the website and click on the speaker icon there too - it also might have a volume slider
World-class Museums You Can Tour Virtually
This website provides tours of 12 world-class museums:
Just scroll through the website and click on the hyperlinks to visit the museum’s virtual visit options. Warning, navigation at each museum takes a little trial and error to master, but you get a lot of information with the photos and you can usually zoom in and out for close-up views. Also, some museums provide sound effects, background music, and/ or narratives.
Ivy League Courses You Can Take from Home
450 Ivy League courses you can take online right now for free:
You might not want to invest the time to earn a PhD, but you might be curious about Aristotle, why Rome fell, how to build a database, learn about Italian Opera, architecture, and much more. Just scroll down a few pages to get to the course links. Courses are grouped by field of interest.
Virtual Tours: Pyramids, Taj Mahal, & More
Google Arts & Culture:
This page offers a lot of links to virtual tours to places you never thought you would see like the Pyramids, Taj Mahal, Opera houses, famous artists’ studio museums. You can stroll down the streets of neighborhoods whose buildings have been covered with street art, or even tour cities like Paris.
US National Park Virtual Tours
Visit US National Parks:
This page enables you to pick a park and view it from paths, mountain tops, and even bird’s-eye views. Usually the tours are narrated.
Virtual Dives
Go diving in National Underwater Sanctuaries: (link is external)
Never been scuba diving before? Here is your virtual chance to see what you missed without getting wet! A variety of tours are one mouse click away.
Broadway from your Computer
Broadway at the click of a mouse (though not always free):
- For about $9.00/month, you can watch films of recent and even ongoing NYC Broadway musicals and dramatic plays on BroadwayHD.com(link is external).
- Do you prefer Covent Garden to Broadway? You can watch London's theater at DigitalTheatre(link is external). It too is a subscription service but costs about the same as BroadwayHD.com. £7.99/month. You can sign up online with any US credit card. Warning, it might be cheaper to purchase an annual subscription if your credit card charges a currency exchange fee, as such fees are often flat regardless of amount.
- One of our almost daily watches is Amazon Prime(link is external). We joined for the discounts and expedited shipping. The cost is $119/year. We never even looked at Amazon Prime Video for the 1st two years until a friend suggested checking it out. Not only are there tons of free old movies accessible, but also a lot of Amazon-produced TV series which, if you wish, you can watch an entire season in one all-day sitting. In addition, Amazon offers older TV series from sources like Netflix and HBO, and especially from BBC. They are usually excellently produced, and many of the BBC series were never re-broadcast by our PBS. They also provide access to recent and current movies, but those require an a la carte fee. But , hey, you can watch a recently released movie and not have to pay a taxicab to and from the nearest cineplex moviehouse.
Movies, Books, Music
Still want more???
Google or type "Free Music," "Free Movies," or "Free Books" in your browser's search bar. That should keep you busy many many months to come.
WARNING: When searching for anything "Free" it is best to ensure your anti-malware or anti-virus protection is not switched off before you download any file to your computer as some "Free" files come with free viruses, trojan horses, adware, and other malware.
If you are streaming online (i.e., not downloading a file) many free sites like Youtube.com are less likely to infect your PC.
