Remember when web surfing meant exploring a vast, uncharted territory? These days it's probably more like your morning commute: essential but routine. There's still plenty to get excited about, however, even for business people who don't have time to search out the latest hot sites. For TIME's guide to the Best Websites for Business, we looked for the most useful and fun new sites, as well as for innovative features on familiar favorites. Here are our picks, with a top choice in each of 10 categories:
KEEPING INFORMED
BEST DIRTY LAUNDRY internalmemos.com This latest project from Philip Kaplan, the man who brought us the profanely named rumor mill F_____dCompany.com bills itself as the Internet's largest collection of corporate memos and other internal communications. A great idea, simply executed--so long as you can bypass the dull stuff and ferret out the juicy tidbits (like a list of 467 employee salaries at Terra Lycos). Kaplan says he just posts whatever people send him; some memos (the ones he thinks will have wide appeal) are free, whereas others are accessible only to subscribers paying $45 a month or $180 a year.
cbsmarketwatch.com Rather than link to the same wire stories found at other business sites, MarketWatch has its own staff of reporters and writers delivering up-to-the-minute market news and first-rate commentary. Next to every company name are links to that firm's stock chart, profile, related news and other information.
Dow Jones Interactive djinteractive.com This pricey but invaluable service for serious news junkies draws from 6,000 publications in nearly two dozen languages. Searching, browsing, headlines and lead sentences are included in the $40 annual fee, but reading a whole article costs $2.95 a pop.
Frontline pbs.org Here you'll find links to past segments of the fine PBS documentary series. Archives are neatly organized by topic, so you can easily find highlights like the interview with Jeffrey Skilling during Enron's glory days.
marketplace.org This nationally syndicated radio show prides itself, and rightly so, on delivering business news in fresh and entertaining ways. Click to listen to the day's Web-only morning report or the most recent evening broadcast. The archives are free.
stockhouse.com For $16.95 a month, "Power Members" can use MediaScan to search hundreds of news sources at once, without banner or pop-up ads getting in the way. Power Membership also includes real-time stock quotes (other users get them delayed) and full access to its BullBoards community forums.
FINDING AND FILLING JOBS
BEST UPSTART flipdog.com The Godzilla of job sites is still Monster, but FlipDog offers an intriguing alternative. Every night "while you sleep," its JobHunter search engine sniffs around the Web for job opportunities that meet your criteria--the location, categories, employers and keywords that you specify--and then e-mails you what it finds. Some leads are delivered with the caveat that you must go directly to the potential employer's site to apply.