I hope this post may be of use to people thinking of visiting Amsterdam, whether you be a regular reader, or have arrived here via one of the search engines…
Forums
Amsterdam Coffeeshop Directory Forum - An offshoot of www.CoffeeShopDirect.com . Friendly most of the time, with all sorts of questions answered, not just weed based.
Channels.nl Forum - Not just weed based, you will find threads get a little more heated here. If you have never joined a forum before, perhaps start off at the ACD one listed above, and progress here once you have found your feet.
Virtual ‘Dam - Relatively new addition, seems to have no massive egos currently residing 
Maps
Amersterdam CoffeeShop Direct - Maps and SO much more. The amount of info collated here is mind boggling. If you intend to boggle your mind whilst in Amsterdam, do check this site. From this site the ACD Forum listed above was born. So much info of use, I have downloaded the site to my PDA, so I can browse it offline, if there are no free WiFi hotspots in range.
WiFi Hotspots - A pretty comprehensive of official WiFi hotspots. I am also taking a program WiFiFoFum with me, to easily detect where kind citizens have left their WiFi network open for others to piggy back and use their internet access.
Wiki Map of Amsterdam - With places of interest marked. Most have descriptions attached if you click on them. Very easy to navigate around.
GVB Transport Map - The English version with trams, buses, trains and metro services marked out. Simply click on the area you are interested in to zoom.
Nemisis’ Map - Assuming you have Flash installed on your internet browsing device, an incredibly helpful layered map. Difficult to succinctly describe, check it out and click on top right buttons to see how much info is packed in. Each point has further information if you hover your cursor over the area.
Google Earth - Well worth installing. Free, and you can place pins in your favoured destinations. When you are done with that, you can then do all the obvious things like checking if you left anything out in your back garden the last time a satellite took a photo of your area! Once I have returned to Kazakhstan, I will be publishing some data files that should pinpoint locations of worthy places of interest. I have a draft copy, but many places are not yet confirmed in terms of their exact location.
Other/Misc
Who Is In Town? - Particularly useful if you belong to a forum. You can easily check who else will be around at the same time as you. Assuming you don’t dislike their online persona, you can arrange to have a ‘real world’ meeting and see if you have anything (apart from the obvious 
) in common.
Muffin Man - A MySpace page dedicated to a brand of special muffins. Blatant advertising, but has a little information at least.
St Nick’s Canal Boats - If you would like to take a trip around Amsterdam’s canals, I’d recommend using this non-profit organization over the big operators.
Escher Museum - No idea how good this is yet, but I (like many ex-students) appreciate his works of art, so I’ve provided the link for now. Will try and provide a proper review after our trip, assuming we make it there.
erowid.org - a collection nearing academic standards of information pertaining to drugs. Although mixed in with personal views, you will find a lot of cited research results and scientific facts here. Useful for reassuring yourself if this will be your first experience in Amsterdam, or if your know-it-all friend is spouting rubbish.
I am also collating all these sites in one place so I can find them easily whilst in Amsterdam. Hence the following unique phrase to allow me to find this specific post easily - purple horse.
It is worth checking the other pages of sites I have listed - many have different sections, each useful, but if I link to each section on each site, I’ll be typing forever.
If anyone else has any sites they would like to see listed, leave a comment or contact me, and I’ll add it on.
No sites have currently requested these links, nor is any compensation involved.
