Digital Tool Tuesday: Useful (and offbeat) websites for features reporting

In this edition, some resourceful websites to use in lifestyle reporting, courtesy of The Journalist’s Toolbox, itself a great compilation of what journalists need to navigate reporting in the digital age.Food Timeline

http://www.foodtimeline.org/index.html

Simply done, this is a timeline of the history of food. Want to know when “The Virginia Housewife” was first published? This timeline has that. Want to find out when the first dedicated baby food was produced; it’s got that, too. Click on the hyperlink and get a lot of well sourced material to mine for any food history story. Bonus: a page that outlines food prices in the past.Supertracker

https://www.supertracker.usda.gov

A USDA site, this includes great consumer information and personal tools for weight loss and increasing activity. Editors will find the Food-A-Pedia a useful tool to discover nutritional information on any food.Math for journalists

http://www.robertniles.com/stats/

Math tutorials from the L.A. Times Robert Niles. We like the simple explanation of percent change.

And, just for fun

Ugly Dress blog

http://www.uglydress.com

An archive of the world’s ugliest dresses. A great way to report on ugly bridesmaid dresses.

Gallery of Regrettable Food

http://www.lileks.com/institute/gallery/

Indexed list of dishes to die for. Or die of.

More offbeat sites: http://www.journaliststoolbox.org/archive/cool-sites/