Introduction

Here are some websites that seem situational, but turn out to be very nice when you know them.

Summary

• Anglish
• AlternativeTo
• Chadnet
• Cheatography
• Codewars
• Coolors
• DeepL
• Flaticon
• Haveibeenpwned
• HuggingChat
• JustDeleteMe
• Ninite
• OpenGameArt
• Pixabay
• Portapps
• Sample Focus
• Spyware Watchdog
• Wikiwand

Anglish

Anglish promotes linguistical purism (i.e. preferring use of anglo-saxon expressions and limit borrowing from other languages), but I use it personally to improve my English vocabulary. It’s a bit like, in France, looking for French words to replace anglicisms.

AlternativeTo

AlternativeTo gives you alternatives to softwares, applications, games and websites.

For example, you can look for alternatives to Adobe Premiere Pro, and refine results using filters. Thanks to these, you can choose to display only open source softwares available on Linux, or ones that are specialized in visual effects, free and available on Windows. Oddly enough, you can’t choose at the same time free and open source filters.

There is a News category to stay informed about softwares/apps releases, companies or developers. A RSS feed is also provided, which is very appreciable.

Chadnet

Chadnet has a collection of articles and websites focused on several areas : History, science, health, etc.. If you’re looking for a good read, go for it.

⚠️ Some articles are not checked, so you’ll have to be careful.

Cheatography

Cheatography gathers cheatsheets, which are images, texts and schematics explaining briefly concepts, a bit like revision sheets.

Although the majority is in English, you can still find cheatsheets in other languages in this website.

Codewars

Codewars offers programming problems (also known as “katas”). Perfect for training since it is concrete and fun. You choose the programming langages you wan to progress with, then progression mode (learn the basics, practice and repeat, rank up). Note that you have to create an account.

Katas’ difficulty is expressed in kyu. A kata with 3 kyu will be more complex than one with 5 kyu.

Coolors

Coolors generates five complementary colors for you. This can be very helpful when you make websites, reports or Geometry Dash levels.

If you are not satisfied with the color palette, but one or more of them appeal to you, you can lock them, so that next palettes use these coolors as well. Finally, when a palette suits you, it is possible to generate a permanent link to access it next times.

DeepL

This is probably the most well-known website on this list but I wanted to mention it.

DeepL Translator is a translator that, unlike Google’s one, has a better understanding of expressions and avoids word-by-word translation. Obviously it is not perfect, this is the reason why I advise to check translations with other translators as well, like LibreTranslate (disroot). I like this one, as it is open source and easily usable with JavaScript. Nevertheless, it is more word-by-word, and gives translations sometimes nonsensical. So be careful.

Here, the correct translation is “I feel comfortable in my new shoes”, and not “pumps”.

Note : DeepL does not have dark theme, I use Dark Reader to have one.

Flaticon

Flaticon gathers vectorized images. Ideal when you are looking for icons, images or logos for a vidéo or a game. However you have to credit the authors.

There is also Freepik (in fact, it was Freepik that created Flaticon), which has photos, videos and models, but free assets are more limited.

Haveibeenpwned

Haveibeenpwned check if the email address you entered was exposed to data leak. If so, it will show the impacted websites and you will have to modify your passwords. This also works with phone numbers.

HuggingChat

Do you know ChatGPT ? Don’t you find his answers sometimes strange ? Hesitating to take out a subscription to GPT-4?

Save 20$ per month and use HuggingChat. Not only it allows you to choose the chat model (the default one, MistralAI, is already very good) but it also gives you better answers in general, and has a better tone. Moreover, you don’t have to log in to chat, and if you reach the message limit, you can erase cookies to lift it.

The only downside is that by default MistralAI tends to give a substantial amount of text, even you ask him to give you short answers. You can fix that either by switching to another chat model (like Gemini) or by modifying the system prompt. To do so, create a new chat, click on the gear icon next to the model name, then in the text box, write that you want the answers to be as simple as possible.

JustDeleteMe

JustDeleteMe gives information about deletion of web service account. It indicates difficulty and steps, visible when clicking on "Show Info...". What I appreciate with this website is its straightforwardness. For instance, to delete a Facebook account you need to go to go through the settings from top to bottom (hiding on purpose options like this is called a dark pattern). JustDeleteMe just gives you the link, with the chain icon.

Of course, not all websites are here, but in you don’t find one you can contribute.

Ninite

Ninite allows you to install and update several softwares at once, quickly and easily. Very useful when you just bought or reset a PC.

Note that this service is Windows-only. On MacOS’ side, there are macapps.link and, to a lesser extent, Setapp.

OpenGameArt

OpenGameArt is full of free assets (images, textures, sound effects, musics) which can be used for video games. However, you have to been careful with licenses : sometimes you must credit the author, other times you are not allowed to modify/remix the content.

Pixabay

Pixabay offers royalty free images. Very useful for illustrating reports, websites or videos. Other similar websites exist, such as Pexels and Unsplash.

Portapps

Portapps gathers portable softwares, which don’t need any complex installation (there is only one path, one repertory containing the program and necessary files) nor require pas de admin rights. You can store them in a USB key and use them on other PCs without any problem.

There is also PortableApps, more complete but with more specific softwares as well.

Sample Focus

SampleFocus allows you to find royalty free samples, and attribution is not required. However you will have a limited number of downloads per week.

Spyware Watchdog

Spyware Watchdog gathers articles reviewing popular services and determine whether these are spywares or not. Also its definition of spyware is a bit fussy, it is nonetheless fascinating to find out what softwares we use regularly do behind our back.

Wikiwand

Wikiwand enables to read Wikipedia articles with a more modern and customizable interface. You can adjust the theme, size, text width and align. A change from Wikipedia’s austere (but sober) appearance.

Furthermore, Wikiwand uses AI pour to sum up or list the top facts about articles. You can hide this panel by clicking on the three dots on the right then on “Hide AI brief panel” (even if it’s in gray, you can click on it).

Additionally, an addon exists, which redirects automatically Wikipedia pages you visit to Wikiwand, but I don’t recommend it, as it collects more data than necessary [archive]. Also, Wikiwand displays ads if you don’t use the addon, so if it bothers you, use an ad blocker like uBlock Origin ou, ideally, uMatrix.