I am not a big fan of arbitrary capitalization. You know what I’m talking about; when a company name just sticks a capital letter in there for no particular reason. However, I like eXtension enough that I’m willing to make an exception. eXtension, at eXtension.org , is a project brought to you by over 70 universities (list here) which provides expertise in sixteen topics.

These topics are divided into five categories: Community, Disaster Issues, Family, Farm, Pest Management, and Youth. A couple of these categories only have a couple of topics, while Farm and Community each have five. The topics contain articles, advice, and questions-and-answers. (There will be more topics added over time.)

I’m really surprised at some of these topics and how extensively they’re populated. Let’s take one of the Community topics, “Imported Fire Ants”. Its page is http://www.extension.org/fire+ants. There is a ton of information here — a management plan, a whole raft of publications and case studies, a video, and a hundred questions-and-answers about imported fire ants. There’s even a calendar listing Fire Ant-related events (granted, there are only two of them, but…) The page has an RSS feed as well as a tag cloud. (Whoever planned out all the extras along with the content, like the search and the RSS feed and the tag cloud, did a great job.)

If you’re interested in lots of content from this site, you can also browse all the news, all the Q&As, the full calendar of events, and all the self-learning lessons.

The site is actively soliciting questions in all its topics and has plans to expand past the sixteen topics currently being covered. Absolutely worth a browse.